Topic: How did it all start

[Seeing the Light] Anyway, I'll talk to you a little bit now about the agency, which at the moment is called 'Seeing the Light'. We're ten years old and the agency grew because I used to be a photographer. That was my job. I was self-employed and about ten years ago I actually wrote a book about how you survive as a photographer. So it's about all the things that you don't learn at art school. It was about promoting yourself when you work, how you found funding, how you got into galleries, how you got your work published. And people told me that it was a crazy idea to write a book, a business book, for artists, because artists only wanted to make work. My response to that was that unless artists did become all business-minded they wouldn't be able to continue making their own work. So it was quite strategic. I self-published the book. I had about 2000 copies made and over the course of the next two years sold them out. The next thing that I did was I got some of the people who had written articles for the book to come to Birmingham and actually look at the work of some photographers. And it took me a long time to get the photographers to actually agree to come and show their work. They couldn't see what was going to happen. But quite a few people get commissioned as a result of that weekend. They got exhibited, they got published. And word started to get round that 'Seeing the Light' in Birmingham and myself were creating a new way of networking producers and potential buyers. The agency's since grown from – the first year I think we turned over 15,000 pounds and last year we turned over a quarter of a million pounds. It's very much the mixed-economy approach and it's also a mixture of different sorts of projects that go from commercial, through education, through things that are state-funded.
[ video ] [ details ]

[Bishopswood Centre] The whole thing started back in 1988 in a temporary building. We're on a national grid substation site, which is like a big transformer really, so all the electricity that comes to all homes in Worcestershire and Herefordshire gets transformed here from high voltage to lower voltage. And often these sites are on good sort of nature sites, so it's surrounded by really good woodland. And they'd been running some <break/> a few nature trails and guided walks from the centre. And back in 1988, the national grid approached the local authority to see if they'd be interested in setting up a centre. So that's really how it all started. It's grown since then and ten years ago this building was built, which is still one of the model buildings in Europe, I guess, that's been built along environmental guidelines with education in mind. And our whole reason for being is to help people live a more sustainable lifestyle, particularly in Worcestershire. The focus of that being through schools, but also working with businesses and working with family groups and all the rest of it. So it's really helping people live more sustainably but also to get them more in touch with the natural world and where <break/> I suppose where we do get our natural resources from as well as getting that source of wonder from the natural world because we got some really good habitats here so that's first rate. 
[ video ] [ details ]

[Broken Saddle] I'm the owner of the Broken Saddle Riding Company, have been for the last eleven years. I used to be in the horse racing industry back in New Jersey, worked around horse racing. I wasn't making any money, and the woman I was seeing at the time decided that she wanted to come to Santa Fe. So I decided to come along with her, because I was very much in love. … I started this eleven years ago. Came up with the name 'Broken Saddle', because when I started the business, my saddle broke. And I 've been doing it now full-time for the last nine years. It took me about two years two get it going and it's been just a lot of fun. For the last nine years we've been riding in the hills. Silver, turquoise mines, the canyons. 
[ video ] [ details ]

[Permaculture Credit Union] <sp>Philip:</sp> I think it was early in '97 when people first started talking about 'Look, can't we do something about a different kind of organization to help people along …', and so they started organizing in '97 and by the end of '99, somewhere in the fall of '99, Nora and I became pretty headway involved. Actually, we were going to meetings for almost a year before that. <sp>Nora:</sp> But I said today it's ironic we've been open two years today. <sp>Philip:</sp> Yes, we opened two years ago today.
[ video ] [ details ]