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East life
Hackney hero Oleander Agbetu tells us about
the inspiration behind Creative lifestyle CIC
What inspired you to start Creative Lifestyle?
Creative Lifestyle began as a group of four
businesswomen who got together to support
each other as a sort of network and at some point
someone came up with the idea of doing something
that would give back to the community. Charities
are often used as a business model but we wanted
to do something a bit different and someone said
to us, ‘Have you heard about social enterprises?'
'No, what’s is it?' ‘Oh, well it’s a business with a
conscience’. I really
liked the way that
sounded because
the more we learned
about that business
model the more it
suited us. It gives
us the flexibility
of working in the
community, enables
us to apply for grants,
work with contracts
and be able to sell
things, which gives
us the ability to
generate income. And
as a CIC, all the profit
goes back into the
company.
I then went on
a course called
School for Social
Entrepreneurs,
which is a term-time
course about how
to start and run a
social enterprise or charity, where I met lots of
people from likeminded organisations - fair trade
companies and charities working abroad and so on.
It was fantastic and I’m still in touch with some of
those people today.
Eventually two of the women went on to pursue
other projects and my business partner and
Creative Lifestyle director, Veronica Flemming and I
remain today, 10 years on. In fact we’ve just become
incorporated on September 9th.
Ten years is quite an accomplishment in this
economic climate. What’s the secret to your
success?
I think it’s because we are a local community group,
very grassroots. We know the community well and
we both live here, so I think it means a lot that we’re
actually local. We don’t have office space so that
saves on overheads,
and we have a lot
of passion – we love
what we do in terms
of imparting the
knowledge we’ve
gained over the years
and also our love for
the community. We
are also fortunate
in that we’ve done
pretty well in terms of
working with Hackney
Council, Hackney
Learning Trust and
various community
groups. Hackney
CVS has helped us
immensely, and we’ve
been able to get
a lot of local grant
funders as well, like
East End Community
Foundation, Hackney
Giving, The Big
Lottery and Awards
for All.
So the combination of passion, the funding we
get and the contracts that we’ve managed to pull
together all contribute. And between the two
funding streams (contracts and grants) it makes a
massive difference as to how we can actually do
our projects. We’ve learned also to try and work
on a contract basis whenever possible because
with grants your project may not be flavour of the
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