Circularity Sessions: Sustaining a Circular Business
How can you make circularity work for your business or organisation?
Whether you’re growing a product company, delivery services to citizens or other businesses, or running a community organisation, how do you make your business viable and have real positive impact?
The first in our Circularity Sessions series focuses on connecting the community of circular economy pioneers with peers and experts so you can:
- Get clarity on how to make truly sustainable decision
- Grow your business for greater impact
- Find support and wisdom from others who are on the same journey
In this session, we’ll hear from two inspiring founders sharing their stories of growing businesses focused on sustainable design, and how they’ve overcome the challenges encountered along the way. The speakers are:
- Jo Barnard - Founder and Creative Director of Morrama, an industrial design consultancy that creates beautiful, planet-conscious product and packaging experiences. Since foundation in 2015, Morrama has been shortlisted for emerging design team of the year by Dezeen, and won multiple awards including 4 D&AD pencils and gold and silver at the Pentawards. Jo and her team work with forward-thinking brands to craft products with a focus on storytelling that have resonated with audiences around the world.
- Emer Gillespie - Founder & Creative Director at Spark & Bell, the purpose-led lighting studio. Emer is a designer, maker, and creative collaborator, driven by the belief that design can spark joy and support positive change. She founded Spark & Bell in 2015 to bring together craftsmanship, sustainability, and creative expression in lighting. Today, they’re a certified B Corp and one of the world’s highest-rated decorative lighting studios, still hands-on, still values-led, and growing with intention.
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What You’ll Learn
- Hard-won advice about how product companies can pivot or adapt how they make money or deliver value.
- Insights into trying new service models like repair, refill, subscription, leasing, or take-back.
- Overcoming the barriers (e.g. pricing, logistics, customer understanding) in building circular products
- Understand how circularity can be a competitive advantage, and not just a cost.
- Get insight into the financial and organisational realities of growing a circular business.
Why You Should Join
- Hear first-hand stories from founders and designers who can share their experiences of trying to make circularity happen in their own and in clients’ businesses.
- Make connections with experts and peers in the growing circular economy.
- Be a part of Brighton’s pioneering community of sustainability change-makers.
- Develop your skills, knowledge and confidence to act and have impact.
For more infomation visit Mayor of London and GOV.
The people I have met here make it a dream coming in a few times a week! I don't see myself being able to go back to working from home the same way I did before coming to Plus X Innovation, I don't think I could leave the sense of community behind. It really is something everyone who is working from home should try!
Central Research Laboratory has contributed to our journey in many ways: access to a network, manufacturing, procurement services, and workshop facilities. CRL enables us to feel like a slightly bigger company than we would otherwise be if left to our own devices. Being here at CRL as a cohort member, makes it feel a lot more real and plugged in into the ecosystem.
Besides the workshop facilities, the best thing about working in the Brighton hub has got to be being able to collaborate with people in the same building as you. The variety of expertise and experience in the building is awesome.
We could not be in a better place to grow as a company. We get amazing support from the Plus X Innovation staff, plus collaboration opportunities with the other inspiring residents and companies. We feel like we’re living in the future of workplaces in the present and that is pretty damn cool.
Through my time at Plus X Innovation my business has turned from a student project into a registered R&D company. My favourite thing about being at Plus X Brighton is having a mini family in the office and a beautiful space to be the best you and make the best connections.
Who should attend?
- SMEs and founders with the ambition to create truly sustainable products and services
- Entrepreneurs and leaders who want to build businesses and organisations that thrive and grow to have positive impact
- Designers and product developers
- Organisations and brands exploring new service-based models to meet sustainability goals, such as product leasing, take-back or repair models)
- Anyone trying to grow a sustainable enterprise that doesn’t fit the conventional startup mould – and want to see how others have succeeded in staying true to their values
