The first week in June is volunteers’ week, which prompted some reflections…

Gliding and other adventures

You might not know that I was brought up in the sport of gliding. Thanks to films such as ‘The Thomas Crown Affair’, there is often a misunderstanding about needing to be wealthy to glide. That is a legitimate way to do it, but the far better way is in a community sports club. Whatever the net worth, for anyone to get airborne, they need several other people to help launch them. One could employ staff… or everyone could muck in. Which is how community clubs operate. So from a young age I was shown that you should always give back to community by volunteering. Some people don’t call it volunteering, instead thinking of it as ‘just helping out’. People who ‘just help out a bit’ keep this country rolling along.

Over the years I have enjoyed a wide range of volunteering: village playgroup and carnival, school governor and Parish Councillor; clearing rhododendron from a Scottish island run by Buddhists; shift leader for the stewards in the Tipi at End of the Road Festival (fire pit, artists access and the actual tent); Trustee at Friends of Westonbirt Arboretum during a key development phase (Welcome Building etc); leading a development group for European gliding; secretary of Hatfield Poly Halls Association to name just a few. I’ve enjoyed some truly memorable experiences through volunteering and helping out, including hosting Geno Washington and his Ram Jam Band at a Halls Association event and watching amazing sunsets in a wide range of fields.

Since the Covid years when I shifted the focus of my business, I have been really enjoying discovering the small business community. I love networking, and after one event in Stroud Brewery, I found myself involved with what became ‘Laptop Wednesday’ for people to have a change of scenery, on the basis that we already have a desk we pay for, so we don’t really want to pay to rent another one.

In late 2023 I attended a workshop run by Tad Hargrave (the ‘Marketing for Hippies’ guy) and everyone there was saying what a great group of people it was and shouldn’t we stay in touch... I was very happy to let the person with the pen and paper take the lead. As I was chatting to Tad at the end, I turned and saw that next to my stuff was the pen and paper with all the contact details on it.

To be honest, I’ve seen more subtle hints from The Universe

I set up an email group and gave it a space on Circle that I had spare. I pocketed the pen.

This year I finally got round to expanding it. So now we have a new community for the (mainly) solo working self-employed people of Stroud. It’s a broad community, as one member said after a sunny meet up in Stroud Brewery ‘we’re such a diverse group, I didn’t think we would have much in common, but there was loads to talk about!’. As the facilitator, it was a tough ask at half time to encourage them to move about that day…

The aim of 'Stroudies in Business' is to create a community. There are no qualification criteria - people self-identify as Stroudies (knitted woolly hats are optional). It is designed to be a minimal admin, free space where people can come and chat once a month. I have added a space on Circle so that people have somewhere to share news about events and offers, and to share social events and gigs. It also has a members’ list and the means of messaging one another directly. The important thing about Circle is that there is no algorithm or data scraping.

My hope is that socialising will increase - people will mention being in Stroud for a coffee, if anyone else is around and wants to join them etc.

There may be collaborations already brewing. People may have responded to somebody describing what they do and how they help, and they may have said ‘that sounds useful, please tell me more / I need some of that / where do I sign up’. I know I have.

It’s not a selling space

There are no 40 second intros (that nobody listens to because they are either rehearsing or re-running their own to work out what they forgot to say, or simply managing themselves to stay out of the red anxiety/meltdown zone). There is no booking system. No fees. People just turn up if they can, buy their own drink, and chat to the person they find themselves next to. Part way through the hour, I encourage a switch round.

Next week, we meet for the sixth time, and the community is up to over 60 people on the email list already. I move both the venue and the meet up times about in the first half of the second week of each month as a moving target means more people over time might be able to hit it. It’s a joyful thing. It isn’t for everyone, and that’s absolutely normal – no guilt shame or judgement here!

Do you consider yourself to be a Stroudie who runs their own business? I usually put the details in ‘Good on Paper’ each month, so you can just turn up, or DM me and I’ll send you the link to sign up to the email list so you get updates and the link to join the Circle community.

And if you aren't (or are) a Stroudie, how do you give back to your communities? Through building connection and vitality, with an unusually high risk of having fun, volunteering is a great way of enriching life.