The Ideas Studio

A rare peak behind the scenes of the Ideas Studio, as things begin to happen as a result of working on an idea. Jo Salim and Will Blundell talk about their journey, along with their college Andy Roles (who couldn’t be at the podcast recording but has been instrumental), talk about getting their idea around increasing Mental Health First Aiders provision across the line, at the very moment that they cross that line.

Mark Lowe reacts to the Wunderhaus episode and explains how some of carbon zero politics and challenges work within the world of UK housing.

The inventor of the first carbon POSITIVE house joins Hywel to talk about getting his idea to market and the challenges.

No, not the football guy. Ian Wright was a Housing big wig, and left to create a network of disruptors trying to improve and innovate the sector. He is a very interesting chap, and sounds a bit like Vic Reeves to Hywel’s amateur non-north-east ears. 

The final of three thoughts from Hywel, whilst sipping a Bloody Mary on a plane above the Atlantic.  This time about observing one of the most brutal but also innovative places in the world, in the middle of the desert in Nevada. 

The second of three 'thinking' podcasts from 700 miles per hour inside a metal bullet!  Hywel asks the question - how would you know WHEN to work on something, if you didn't know what that thing was yet? Who could have imagined flying, and so why would you work on a flying machine?  And how does this work in an organisation that is great at delivering things that already exist.  

Thoughts from the mid-Atlantic from Hywel, around how ideas come more easily when we are on holiday, or in Airplane Mode, and how easy or difficult this may be to translate to the busy world of work. 

Inside The Ideas Studio 
The best way to show how the ideas studio works is maybe to do it with the help of a participant. Let’s call them a Producer as it’s a studio. 
Sean is a ForHousing colleague who brought forward an idea… Well, a number of ideas! Where he ended up is working on something called the Social Model of Disability’.

Welcome to a new podcast from ForHousing’s Ideas Studio. A place for innovators to think, share, and talk about how we can try to make change happen. Special guest Jenny Chapman talks to Ideas Studio producer Hywel about how we got here and the surrounding issues and aims of innovators in large organisations.

Eric McBean had been absent for a few months.   What better time to catch up with him than as we start a new podcast!   The new podcast is available on your work iPhone. Right there, easy. Just click this on your work phone (or copy and paste it and send to your work phone, then click it!) and click subscribe and you’ll get new episodes automatically: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-ideas-studio/id1615529318

This podcast is to try and help you move quicker and innovate better from the ground up. Of course, we don’t know it will do that. We are, after all, writing this before episode one. So, who knows? ForHousing, a progressive landlord, has something strange in production… The Ideas Studio is a one to one, streamlined, low maintenance innovation department. It is unique in the way it blends together an entrepreneurial approach to business, and the metaphor of film production, to provide simple transformative and practical ‘person led’ support to internal innovators. This podcast is hosted by Hywel Evans and, occasionally, Eric McBean. Both ForHousing colleagues, who couldn’t be more different yet have precisely the same understanding of ‘how to start things’. Eric is an incredibly old man who was born in Birmingham in the 1950’s and has run more businesses and enterprises than you have had cups of coffee, Hywel is an attractive young genius and star of stage and screen who has spent his years working in what he terms ‘hyper-creative’ environments - the arts and media. By meeting, they realised it is rare that people recognise creative industries and ‘entrepreneurialism’ as following the exact same process. Making a film, and starting a flower shop, are surprisingly identical. In this podcast they hope to explore the mind-sets and reasons that traditional industry and employment innovate slowly, and explore ways to increase agility. Along the way they’ll be joined by guests striving for innovation to show exactly how impactful it is and that it’s not something to be afraid of. Welcome to your Ideas Studio Tour! Please get in touch if you’d like to join us on an episode and talk about your own innovations. Ideas@forhousing.co.uk