Spectra is a
multi-disciplinary
social impact
company.
Spectra is a
multi-disciplinary
social impact
company.
intersection of the private,
public and charity sectors,
tackling significant
social challenges
Founded
in Wolverhampton
in 2014...
Our roots are in supporting young people through ‘restorative practice’, which is about helping to build and maintain positive, healthy relationships, resolve difficulties and repair harm where there has been conflict.
Our team members come from different professional backgrounds, including law, tech, marketing, education and local government leadership.
Our two core offerings are Spectra Studio and Spectra Public.
Spectra Public
audience insight, stakeholder insight, frontline service provision, promotion, stakeholder recruitment and management, impact reporting.
Spectra Studio
Social impact consulting, including:
CSR strategy and delivery, internal ED&I policy development and project delivery, community engagement strategy and delivery.
Our work in numbers
on our programmes in 2023
we're partnering with for social change
Some of our collaborators
Some of our projects
We created a ‘Purpose Playbook’ with Nike – the first of its kind - to help build purpose into all sneaker-related activations.
Nike have created some of the most impactful and memorable purpose-driven campaigns in recent times. With sneaker culture booming like never before, the Nike NBHD wanted purpose to be at the centre of comms and activity planning when it comes to sneaker releases.
Spectra worked with Nike to create and internal, universal planning too – a ‘Playbook’ -for building purpose into all sneaker related activity.
- Playbook featured contributions from 6 leading thinkers from academia, sustainability, politics, governance and fashion
- And 6 cultural influencers across London, Paris and Berlin
- Playbook has been shared with Communications teams in across multiple EMEA markets incl. UK, France, Germany, Netherlands and Italy.
We deliver central government's major care leaver support programme, the Care Leaver Covenant (funded by the Dept. for Education)
The Department for Education (DfE) is the government department responsible for children’s social care, which includes policy relating to children-in-care and ‘care leavers’ (young people who’ve spent time in the care).
In 2018 we were appointed as the delivery agent for the DfE’s Care Leaver Covenant programme, an national inclusion initiative that engages all sectors and industries in supporting care leavers to live independent and meaningful adult lives. As delivery agent, we manage the programme end-to-end: creating all brand and media assets, managing databases of both care leavers and industry partners who ‘sign up’ to the Covenant, and periodic progress reporting to the DfE.
- Recruited over 330 organisations to sign the Covenant since 2018, including ITV, Thames Water and Liverpool Football Club Foundation.
- Over 2000 young people have taken up opportunities created by the Covenant team
- Over 2900 young people signed up to Covenant community portal, receiving regular opportunities and information from Covenant signatories.
We are tackling digital poverty with Sky – providing free equipment, skills and entertainment to vulnerable young people across the country.
Spectra were selected as one of Sky’s partners, helping to deliver Sky Up’s ambitious goals, with our partnership focusing on support for young people who grew up or spent time in local authority care. Digital isolation and building digital skills are pressing challenges for the care experienced community and we’re tackling this by providing cohorts of young ‘care leavers’ with free technology, free broadband and access to exclusive Sky events and opportunities. Spectra’s role has been to work with local government to identify young people to join the programme and help to guide the young people through the 12-18 month programme term, ensuring they get the most out of their tech devices and interactions with Sky.
- Partnering with local governments, from Dorset in the South-West to Gateshead in the North-East, to create the most possible impact.
- Distributing free brand-new laptops and 18-months of free Sky Broadband to 150 young people (in Year 1).
Spectra original content
Independence
In 2022 we made our first foray into feature films, executive producing Independence, a bold and original film from Director, Karl Jackson. Independence tells the story of Amba, played by Joanna Rutagambwa. After turning 18, Amba has abruptly left the care system and moved in to her first home, alone. She now faces the ‘care-cliff’ as she struggles to survive living independently.
The film’s director is Karl Jackson and it is produced by his company MirrorDoor and executive produced by Matthew Gordon at Spectra and Aaliah Simpson at the British Film Institute (BFI).
Empire Reflecting back
Spectra teamed up to welcome award winning author Sathnam Sanghera back to his home city.
The Times journalist, author and presenter featured alongside a panel of leading thinkers to discuss several themes emerging from Sathnam’s book Empireland – How Imperialism Has Shaped Modern Britain and Channel 4 television series Empire State of Mind, which together explore how Imperialism has shaped modern Britain.
Empire Reflecting Back had a particular focus on the experiences and reflections of Wolverhampton’s Black and Asian populations.
Empathy Summit
The Empathy Summit challenged the education and business communities to be more empathetic to the care leaver population and ensure that the most vulnerable young people are presented with the opportunities to lead healthy and successful lives.
The Summit was inspired by the author of The Empathy Instinct Sir Peter Bazalgette and featured Lemn Sissay MBE, Poet, Author and Chancellor of University of Manchester; Julie Towers, Managing Director of global recruiter, Penna and many other distinctive voices.
The event revolved around specially arranged music, film, poetry as well as engaging panel discussions. It explored innovative and pioneering diversity and inclusion initiatives from leading universities, employers and public bodies and heard how government is looking to shape policy to increase support for young people leaving the care system.
This essential diversity forum was produced by Spectra and the Care Leaver Covenant, a Department for Education funded programme in partnership with The Guardian Jobs, Universities UK and Greater London Authority.
What our customers say
Connect with us!
West Midlands
Located in:
The Chubb Buildings
38-39 Fryer ST,
WV1 1HT
London
Located in:
Canopi Building
7-14 Great Dover Street
SE1 4YR
Join us
careers@spectraconnect.co.uk
