Collingwood have this week received the wonderful news that we’ve been selected as finalists at the Growing Business Awards 2020 (https://growingbusinessawards.co.uk/finalists).

We’ve been shortlisted for The Bridges Positive Impact Award, which recognises growing businesses that are demonstrating financial success while also driving meaningful positive change for people and/or the planet.

For us this recognition is great more many reasons. Particularly, it recognises our creative, participatory learning model, and our commitment to young people’s education all over the world. But it also recognises our ability to make this sustainable and to grow our programmes exponentially from a business perspective. This has enabled us to stay resilient throughout Covid-19 and invest creatively in developing learning solutions to meet the challenges it brings.

Of course, the catalyst for Collingwood’s success has been the Smashed Project – an arts education project in 25 countries around the world, adapted in delivered by a global network of theatre companies and educational stakeholders which has reached over 900,000 young people to date. Our goal is to work with 5m young people by 2025.

It’s been an incredible journey, sharing our methodologies, beliefs, and skills with our family of project partners, and learning so much about how to adapt projects culturally and linguistically to meet local needs. Most importantly, from Peru to Cameroon, Australia to Italy, we have been lucky enough to experience the reaction of young people, often in areas of highest need, who respond so enthusiastically and learn so much from the programme.

As a company, we always feel that we’re merely scratching the surface – with so much more to do. But sometimes it’s great to reflect on what we’ve achieved so far and the talented team we have here who make things happen every day.