News

Team Revival wins Edventure’s ethical & sustainable Market Challenge

The Frome Artisan & Flea Market Challenge was a competition organised by Edventure Frome that set teams of all ages from in and around Frome the task to design and make an ethical and sustainable product or service to sell at the Frome Artisan & Flea Market (May 5th). The purpose was to encourage social entrepreneurship locally, to support people to make their ideas happen and gain the necessary skills, and provide a fun team-building activity for local organisations.

6 teams of 4-6 players participated in the challenge of designing and making a new product, and created an eye-catching market stall in front of the Library on last Sunday’s Artisan and Flea Market, including Frome Town Council, The Old Church School, Revival, and three teams led by Edventure Apprentices. The market stalls were very colourful, and the teams tried to attract customers through music, theatre and games.

Team Frome Town Council created Well Hung & Green, selling hand-made wooden cloth pegs and bags made of old pieces of clothing. The Old Church School sold a Limited Edition screen print (“There is no place like Frome”) by Anthony Oram on t-shirts and posters. The Edventure Apprentices pulled together three teams: The Hedgerow Harvesters, selling and inspiring people about Wild Food; The Frome Wood Recyclers created the Charmory Armory – selling swords, shields, and wands made of recycled wood, including from the old Library Desks that they recycled the previous month. And one Edventure team made Frome Artist Charcoal from local willow, packaged in recycled tins. The winning team, Revival was created by Charlotte Woodall, Michelle O’Loughlin with the help of Harry and Jack Hight, and Fin and Orla Feeney, and many of their neighbours and friends. The team came up with lots of creative ideas to reuse and beautify old food tins, including herb gardens, desk organisers decorated with old fabric, flower pots and more. They will continue trading at the next Frome Super Market in June.

Although the The Old Church School made the most money of all teams, Revival was the overall winner of the competition because they outperformed the others with their attention to both sustainability, ethics and making money. The judges, Madeleine Mawer and Meki Nattero were particularly impressed by Revival’s involvement of the neighbours and friends in rethinking what can be created from “rubbish”.

The Market Challenge organised by Edventure Frome is unique in the UK as it not only encourages teams to compete to make the most money, but also to create the most ethical and sustainable product. The money and the ethics and sustainability aspect are weighted equally to determine the winner. The next Market Challenge will take place in the Autumn.

Edventure Frome is a social enterprise dedicated to resource young adults with the skills, experience, network and work space to create a meaningful livelihood, and create positive change now and in their future career. The next intake for Edventure’s Apprenticeship in Social Entrepreneurship which provides an opportunity for people to start their own business will be September 2013.