Southgate School’s shoe upcycling project is included in a special edition of the famous magazine

Pupils from Southgate School outside the Houses of Parliament (credit Louise Haywood-Schiefer)

Pupils from an Enfield school visited the House of Lords to launch a ‘takeover’ of Big Issue after their idea for a new social enterprise was featured in a special edition of the publication.

Six schools took part in the event hosted by the magazine and The Social Enterprise Academy, with Southgate School pupils presenting a pitch for their own social enterprise idea. The pitch was for an upcycling project involving pupils bringing in unwanted shoes that could be customised and then resold. Among those watching was Lord Bird, founder of Big Issue, and Neil McLean, CEO of The Social Enterprise Academy.

The other social enterprise pitches from the schools taking part included creating sustainable food products from waste ingredient; growing produce; reducing waste and recycling in creative ways; and using community spaces to trade fairly and improve mental wellbeing. Each pupil involved had been thinking about the future, and what they can do to make it better for themselves and for everyone.

The social enterprise schools programme was established in 2007, in partnership with the Scottish government, and now operates across Scotland, England, and internationally. It enables young people to identify a social or environmental issue that is important to them, before designing and launching a trading social enterprise that will directly address the issue.

Big Issue has worked with The Social Enterprise Academy for the past five years to create a ‘schools takeover edition’ of the magazine, which pupils sell in their schools to raise money to support their own school social enterprises and their wider communities.

In the coming weeks, the pupils will be taking part in sell-off challenges, selling copies of the magazine’s special edition to raise funds for their social enterprises.

Big Issue editor Paul McNamee said: “Every year when we work with The Social Enterprise Academy we see schools’ social enterprises getting bigger, bolder and more creative.

“From growing produce to making food and sharing it in their communities, to ingenious ways that pupils are upcycling clothes, to raising awareness of rainforests and helping hedgehogs to cross the road – there is so much joy and energy in these projects.

“It’s especially exciting this year to see how social enterprise schools is growing in England and much further afield. We see school students learning blacksmithing and using chook-poo for projects in Australia, and young people in Malaysia making sure their classmates are able to reach the library and don’t go hungry.

“It all shows how the brave, compassionate and creative approaches of young people actively running social enterprises can make real impacts – locally and globally.”

The Social Enterprise Academy chief executive Neil McLean said: “We can see from the stories in this year’s magazine the magic that happens when one young person believes they can make a real difference. Their passion and purpose as social entrepreneurs is infectious and spreads to their classmates, their school and the wider community.

“We need social entrepreneurship now more than ever to help tackle the challenges facing the world.”

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