Category Archives: Blog

Last Friday was EO Day 2025, a celebration of employee ownership businesses and the business model itself. It serves as a reminder of everything that’s great about this adventure that a snowballing number of companies and organisations are on in the UK and around the world. We were fortunate to begin the festivities a weekContinueContinue reading “A very EO fortnight”

On Friday I found myself sat on a bar stall at the front of the room for a You Are The Media lunch club event in collaboration with Bournemouth University, celebrating the launch of the new Digital Marketer Apprenticeship degree which Mark Masters, Ella Orr and I were were invited to review earlier this year.ContinueContinue reading “YATM Lunch Club panel on ‘experience’”

A one day conference dedicated to the Star Wars TV series ‘Andor’? Take a bow Dave Tree! To bring 13 members of the production team to Fordingbridge Town Hall to talk about their work on the show was an incredible feat.The only event of its kind, for a series that is also the only ofContinueContinue reading “‘Andor’ celebration in Fordingbridge”

You Are The Media Creator Day has been growing since its inaugural year in 2022 as a rebooted replacement to the former YATM Conference. In 2023 it added Failed Nights to the programme, the Wednesday evening before Thursday’s main event. In 2024 the after party and sea swimming were made official fixtures. This year Creator Day became CreatorContinueContinue reading “YATM Creator Day 2025 (and other event stories)”

Thank you to the team at Why Small Business Matters and Northumbria University for having me and guest host Rachel Clarke on the latest episode of their podcast to talk about employee ownership. I share the Grapevine journey to EO, adventures we’ve had in our two years since our transition, inspiration we’ve taken from Salad,ContinueContinue reading “Why Small Business Matters podcast”

It looked like I may have a space of a few weeks without any shows. There was one I’d pencilled in as a possibility, knowing it would likely be a solo excursion. Then, a couple of other events found their way to me. At the tail end of April I accompanied Ed Shaw to seeContinueContinue reading “Glorious Sunset”

Yesterday my colleague Daisy and I spoke to the Dorset Chamber Future Leaders group about employee ownership as an emerging industry trend, how we’ve embraced it at Grapevine since 2023 and some of the other initiatives we’re supporting to explore what ‘good’ business means in our changing world. Image credit: Dominic Arthurs For us, andContinueContinue reading “Future Leaders guest talk”

This week I got to see the iconic punk band, Descendents playing in Bournemouth. They were more or less done with regular touring when I got into them around the time of their 2004 release Cool To Be You. The idea that they’d be playing 20 minutes from my house, 21 years later was inconceivable.  ThisContinueContinue reading “The proud, the few, Descendents”

This week our business partner Gamma, presented Grapevine with the award for ‘Marketing Team of the Year’! As a small business, our marketing budgets are limited. In recent years we have adopted a more relationship building based approach to our marketing and communications activity that leverages our most important asset as an employee owned business,ContinueContinue reading “Marketing team of the year”

Today marks two years since Grapevine transitioned to an Employee Ownership Trust. We celebrated last Thursday, with our annual ‘Co-owners’ meeting, looking back on our last financial year and sharing plans for 2025, followed by drinks and pizza from Da Mario.In addition to the experience in-house as an employee owned business, a big part ofContinueContinue reading “2nd anniversary of employee ownership”

February was a busy month and included three gigs, running at almost one per week, bringing the 2025 total to a respectable five so far. First up were Bowling For Soup at the BIC. A venue almost four times the size of the one I saw them play at their supposed height 21 years ago. We spentContinueContinue reading “A hangover you do deserve”

I don’t need an excuse to visit a brewery… I have an archive full of them, but I’ll always welcome one, even if it’s first thing in the morning, as was the case yesterday for the latest Dorset Ambassadors event. I’ve been over to Hall & Woodhouse’s Blandford Brewery before, but this was my first timeContinueContinue reading “Hall & Woodhouse visit”