Through the collaboration between eXpression Umeå and Sustainergies, some thirty creators and students gathered last Wednesday with the aim of concretising the work of entrepreneurs towards the UN's global goals. The work resulted in 16 individual action plans for more sustainable businesses.
Last week we told you about it cooperation initiated between the sustainability organisation Sustainergies and eXpression Umeå to create more sustainable businesses. This week saw the first joint workshop where creators from the pre-incubator programme eXpress worked with students from Umeå University. Together they carried out materiality analyses from the companies' perspective in relation to the global goals and then individual action plans were created for each company to contribute to the SDGs.
It was a luxury to have the help of such talented students. I've found the SDGs to be big and difficult to grasp from the perspective of my business, but with the students' help we were able to create concrete sustainability tasks that I can start working on right away.
Emelie El-Habta, founder of COLLARK.
For COLLARK, the work with students Marcus Sundin and Simon Nygren resulted in two checklists that the company will apply in its operations in the creation of new concepts and in the selection of collaborations. The checklists verify that new concepts are designed in a sustainable way and that partners are chosen to match COLLARK's values, while contributing to the global goals Sustainable consumption and production and Sustainable cities and communities.
The workshop with eXpression gave interesting insight into start-ups here in Umeå. I was inspired to work with creative ideas and it was fun to discuss real solutions for sustainability with entrepreneurs with the goal to contribute to a more sustainable society and business.
Einar Danielsson, one of the participating students from Sustainergies.
Another participating company in the workshop was artist, songwriter and producer Vicki Jacobson. The latter two parts of Vicki's business are male-dominated and this is something she is passionate about changing.
The workshop made me aware of the global goal of reducing inequality. It's something I'm passionate about, and in collaboration with student Rebecca Berggren, we came up with the idea of a YouTube series where I show how the work can be done in order to inspire more young girls to dare to try. The goal is to create the series in Q1 2021.
Vicki Jacobson, artist and music producer.
The workshop was the first activity of the collaboration and further activities are planned for more and more sustainable companies in the spring.
