BUSINESSES in Swindon came together to mark Responsible Business Week to see how industry leaders can do their bit for the community.

The week-long series of events at the end of April saw a number of town businesses join the venture, including Vox PR who offered marketing advice and skills to good causes such as Incredible Edible, Education Business Partnership, West Swindon Family Centre, Inner Flame and Age UK Wiltshire.

Business connector Ian Browne said: “Once every year we at Business in the Community celebrate Responsible Business Week. Of course this doesn’t mean we only want businesses to be responsible for just five days but it’s to celebrate the great work that goes on and encourage others to think about what they can do.”

Events continued throughout the week with a Swindon Soup session. The idea behind the unusual form of crowdfunding is to support ideas in the town that have never quite got off the ground in the past due to a lack of funding, or those that have been unsuccessful in securing grant funding. Those seeking funding pitch their ideas to a group of people, and those with the most support receive the pot of donated funding.

Mr Browne said: “We had a pitch from 10 day orchestra challenge which is a fascinating concept of a growing roving orchestra that makes music across ten towns in ten days and hysterical pitch.

“We also learned of plans to recreate the GWR children’s fete this summer, marking 150 years of that event and 175 years of Swindon New Town. History is very important and Swindon needs to celebrate its own sense of place in a louder fashion so it was good to see cultural pitches coming forward.

“The winner was Catch 22 who help typically young carers complete their education and they left with £300 towards a professional coffee machine for their social enterprise cafe which is open at the Shaftesbury Centre in Rodbourne every Friday from 9am with bacon butties and now top lattes.

“Topping this news was that an earlier connection with Marks and Spencer has resulted in one of the catch 22 guys getting a permanent job at M&S which is icing on the cake.”

The week was rounded off on the Friday with a busy event at STEAM where hundreds of pupils from Isambard Community School, Swindon Academy and Nova Hreod met with employers to think about life after school.

Mr Browne also delivered a workshop on communication skills, which he said had provided him with some new-found respect for teachers.