Archive for the ‘Hear from a Host’ Category

The Hub | February Events

Monday, February 1st, 2010

Hurrah – February is upon us. I can even hear spring. Great events and happenings this month – check them out and pass on to your friends!

All the best,

The Hosting Team…
x

 lunch-in-a-box-heart-sandwich 

Hub Lunch | Of Love, Thursday 11th February
Hub Islington, 1-2pm

Valentine’s Day! Kitsch, flowers, candle-light, romance, love. LOVE! Uhoh.

A light-hearted twist on our weekly Sexy Salad Club – bring in food to share and we’ll spice things up a little, set the mood, dim the lights, put on that special album… 

 

This event is free! Bring food to share and you’re welcome to bring a friend. Any questions or marriage requests to alex.rinsler@the-hub.net

Hub Launch | Hand Views – Exhibition & Book, Tuesday 16th February
Hub Kings Cross, 6.30pm

Handviews is released annually: a portrait of people’s opinions through their hands about their current lives and wishes. Hub member Ana Garcia photographed in January in the Hub for the Handviews book and exhibition. Hub members who took part can now see their hands on the walls of Hub Kings Cross and in the Handviews book. 

This event is free! Get in touch if you plan to attend: eleanor.whitley@the-hub.net

  

The Hub

  

  

  

  

Hub Members Council | Monthly Meetup, Wednesday 17th February
Hub Islington, 5-6pm
The Hub Islington Members Council is a monthly meeting open to all members. We talk about things we would like to see going on in the Hub and discuss with Hosts how best to get make them happen. We have a monthly budget of £100 and 16 hours of time, so we can use of this to prioritise new exciting projects.

 

All Hub Islington members are welcome, if you plan to attend please email alex.rinsler@the-hub.net

Professor David Nutt

Hub Pioneers | Professor David Nutt, Wednesday 17th February
Hub Islington, 6.30-8pm

Professor David Nutt was until November 2009 Chair of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. Since being asked to stand down by the Home Secretary he has now set up the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs, with four of the five members of the ACMD who resigned with him last year. Its mission is to make public the evidence on the relative risks and harms of drugs without regard to political sensitivities.

The circumstances around his dismissal fired national debate not just about the impact of drugs, but also the boundaries between science and politics and the role of Government in our society. He will join us to speak more about his work and take questions.

The Hub Pioneers series is an opportunity to meet people at the forefront of social change who may not necessarily be seen as social entrepreneurs.

Attendance is £4 for Hub members and £5 for non-members – space is strictly limited so please email alex.rinsler@the-hub or call 020 7841 8900 to confirm your place.

BIS logo

Hub Office Hours
| with the Public Sector Innovation Unit from the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills,
Tuesday 23rd February

, Hub Kings Cross, 2-4.30pm

 

A representative of the Public Sector Innovation Unit (PSI) from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) will be working out of Hub Kings Cross from 2-4.30pm the 23rd Feb. The interests of the PSI Unit lie in exploring the opportunities to connect innovative entrepreneurs with government, in order to support fresh thinking within the public sector in both policy making and service delivery. 

Hub Kings Cross, The PSI from the Dept of BIS and, Volans invite you to come and connect to use this exciting opportunity to be in touch with a representative of the UK Government.  This representative will be joined by a member of the Volans team who will be able to share insight on how partnerships between entrepreneurs and the private and public sector can be catalytic and mutually beneficial for all parties involved.

This is an informal drop in session. If you have any questions please contact Eleanor at Hub Kings Cross (eleanor.whitley@the-hub.net). Please note: the UK Government representative is not responsible for the funding arrangements for social enterprise and so will not be at the Hub to advise on this. However, they will try, where they can, to point you in the right direction.

clearlyso
Hub Partnership | Investor Speed Dating in association with ClearlySo, Tuesday 23rd February
Hub Kings Cross, 7pm

Social enterprises have two minutes to pitch to each of our carefully selected investors. Investors will then have two minutes to ask questions about your business, capital requirements and expected financial and social returns. After this more formal part of the evening ClearlySo hosts drinks at the bar downstairs… often where the real connections are made!

If you are interested to take part please contact Simon Evill from ClearlySo on 020 7281 7913.

 

The Feast at King's Cross... 

Feast | Hosted by Hub Kings Cross & Food Stuff, Wednesday 24th February 
Hub Kings Cross, 7pm

On the last Wednesday of every month, Food Stuff and the Hub host a feast. The invitation is for people who love food, cooking it, talking about it and most of all, eating it, to come along with both an open mind and a dish to share to eat with people that feel the same.

An informal evening with a very loose agenda, we hope to create a feast where conversation about food, life, love and everything in between, can flow freely. In February we’re very excited that Andy from Mindapples (an online campaign that encourages us to explore the five a day we need for our mental health) has put the date in his diary and will be thinking about the dish he’s going to bring. Whether you’re keen to talk more about Mind Apples, or a million other things, we look forward to seeing you there.

If you are interested in joining please get in touch with Eleanor at Hub Kings Cross (eleanor.whitley@the-hub.net) or Holly at Food Stuff (holly@foodstuff.org.uk)

 

Starsuckers

Hub Screening | Starsuckers, Thursday 25th February
Hub Islington, 7-10pm

 

Premiered in the 2009 London Film Festival and heralded by the Sunday Telegraph as “Thrilling” and “Revolutionary”, Starsuckers exposes the toxic effect that the media and celebrity are having on our world. Filmed in secret over two years, Chris Atkins (of award-winning Taking Liberties) and his production team posed as tipsters, making up stories for the tabloid press and seeing how far they could get. Chris will be joining us to introduce the film, and for Q/A at the end.

Tickets are £4 to Hub members and £5 to non-members. Space is limited so email alex.rinsler@the-hub.net to reserve your place, or call 020 7841 8900.

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I want to ride my bicycle…

Thursday, December 17th, 2009

I want to ride my bike.

And potentially, you can too. I have just received a letter notifying us of a planning application to put 19 bikes outside the Hub as part of the London wide bike hire scheme. This is REALLY cool! And as much as I’d love to say the Hub organised it, we didn’t. Sometimes, good things just happen.

Nothing much else to say now. I’m going to write to the council in support of the application. And ask them to make sure there is a nice pink bike in there especially for me (!). So let’s just see what happens…

To keep you excited until we know more, here is a picture of my beautiful old shopper (which I got from BikeWorks). Isn’t it lovely?! It has a flat tyre at the moment so if anyone can help me rectify that, get in touch!

Holly

xxHost's heart Bikes!

The Little Show Off – xmas bonanza at the Hub

Tuesday, December 15th, 2009

Xmas parties usually scare me – forced fun, biting cold and bad music. Last Thursday though the Hub surpasssed itself. The Little Show Off is guaranteed fun – part cabaret, part talent show, part marketplace. We have a  fair share of characters and the space here is perfect. What a way to celebrate the end of the year…

I found myself standing in a crowd of 100, swaying to ‘Looking for Freedom’ by David Hasselhoff, throwing paper aeroplanes with the Hoff’s face over a fake Berlin wall led by Adam Taffler – bewigged, bespectacled and be-Germanised as the uberHoff-fan. Later our own Nils Toedtmann (below) introduced us all to Schrodinger’s Wave Theory,  in a home-made suit fit for Where the Wild Things Are. I understand that protons are wild things, and that Nils is very funny.

This is how you do quantum mechanics

This is how you do quantum mechanics

There were performance poets, singer-songwriters, dancers and games, as well as a Christmas market selling everything from fresh mistletoe to spiced pimms, jewellery to sheepskin rugs. Lucy Baker from the Fun Fed put the thing together in aid of SOKO Kenya and the Big C Cycle ride – four intrepid cyclists (including  our Holly and Rachel) raising more than £14,000 for four cancer charities (Marie Curie Cancer Care, Ovarian Cancer Action, the Lymphoma Association and Children with Leukemia). The event raised more than £1700, a thoroughly good show (off).

Love is in the air…

Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009

I use the term love quite freely. I love cooking. I love the X Factor. I love when the weather is crisp and leaves are on the ground just waiting to be kicked. I of course love my family. In all honesty, I love lots of things. Since working for the Hub though, I have also developed a new type of Love. One I like to call ‘Project Love’.

Project Love occurs when you just LOVE someones project (who’d have guessed eh?!). Of course all Hub members and associates do amazing things but there are just some organisations out there, that us Hosts have a soft spot for. We usually keep them secret (it’s not nice to show favouritism after all!) but today, I just can’t hold my love for one particular project, in any longer. So here goes….

I LOVE KIDS COMPANY!

This is the KidsCo philosophy:

Kids Company aims to promote and support emotional well-being. Our approach is rooted in attachment theory and a belief in the importance of ’loving care’. We start by solving practical problems such as housing, health and nutrition, in the hope of restoring some consistency to young people’s lives, and so reducing their loneliness and trauma. From here, the process of emotional repair can begin.

Experience has taught us that children who suffer trauma, abuse and neglect cope with their pain by shutting down their capacity to feel. Punishing these young people only cements their emotional coldness. We facilitate the healing process through the development of sustained, caring relationships, in which both children’s practical and emotional needs are taken care of.

This week, I received a copy of the Kids Co Winter Newsletter and just felt so inspired. One of the first paragraphs in the opening letter from Chief Exec, Camila Batmanghelidjh reads:
We have had a fantastic year. Of the children funded through our Government
grant, 84% are now in education, employment or training, when they were not
before. One hundred and twenty had no birth certificates and we’ve organised
those for them; 117 gained passports; 106 gained National Insurance numbers;
seventy-three received driving licences; 99 opened bank accounts; 57 started
university. For some, we have negotiated entries into top universities without
GCSE or A level qualifications. This is in the context of 400 young people
with serious emotional and behavioural difficulties whose problems were
compounded by extreme poverty.

This is despite a reduction in other donations due to the financial crisi (eek!) and posta strikes. Kids Co have done lots of other amazing things this year but the things detailed above really stood out to me. Things like obtaining a birth certificate will have such a dramatic effect on a child’s life – to begin a journey of feeling, of identity, of history, of being loved, of being valued. To happen at such an important stage in life can help determine the sort of person that child will become.

Kids Co also provides the opportunity to volunteer in exciting ways – for example, recently they have been looking for elves and a Santa to run their Xmas Grotto! And once, they needed someone to house a dog so one of their children to go into rehab (he refused to go until the dog, his best bud, was given a home while he was gone).

It is because Kids Co places such an importance on the little things, the big things and everything in betweem that I love them. And always will. Well done Kids Co, keep up the good work. You can donate to them here.

Holly x