School of Business
Soft Touch Arts
Established: 1986
Legal structure: Charity and Company Limited by Guarantee
Who we are
Soft Touch works across Leicester and Leicestershire using arts, media and music activities to make positive life changes for disadvantaged young people who lack opportunities. Soft Touch run a range of fun and engaging projects and in a typical year engages around 1.500 participants. The charity also operates a café, run by young people who are taught many skills including menu planning, food preparation, managing money and customer service.
The challenge
After almost 40 years of trading, Soft Touch Arts was engaged in succession planning and wanted assistance to explore and revisit practices, principles, values and ethics to ensure these were carried forward into the next generation. The enterprise also used project support to strengthen working practices and to identify new markets and possible contract areas.
What was required
Soft Touch Arts seeks to provide quality services for young people, whilst maintaining a sustainable business. Priorities were the exploration of alternative income streams to consolidate sustainability, to ensure a smooth succession transfer, and café expansion and consolidation.
Tools used:
- Business modelling
- Market research
- Succession planning
- Action planning
- Implementation
This resulted in the development of a new senior leadership team, development of new training programmes, and identification of new approaches to employment strategies with regards to employees, freelance and sessional workers.
Growth acceleration through
Business modelling: Focusing on creative solutions to address succession needs. Identifying potential new markets. Exploring options for the café and other areas of operation.
Business planning: Thinking through and developing elements of the business plan. Putting ideas under headings for development. Utilising skills to evolve ideas into action.
Action planning: Led to fresh staffing structures and development of new management team. Delivery of succession plan and retirement of founder members. Refurbishment and reconfiguration of café and new menu.
“The Growth Accelerator supported our leadership succession process with a series of coaching sessions with the co-director’s team which led to redefined responsibilities within the leadership team. We also received assistance to implement a salary review, all of which strengthened our organisation.
The Growth Accelerator project has been a really good network for Soft Touch. The Growth Circles and other events put us in contact with a wider, more diverse network of organisations, which is proving especially helpful with community cohesion work. We are working more closely with local enterprises and have established some promising collaborations, including with City Retreat and the St Philips Centre. We have already undertaken some shared actions with City Retreat via LeiStars and have plans for teams and young people from varying organisations to forge links and work closely together.”
Danny Myers, Director, Soft Touch Arts
