Background to the Exhibition
Following the HMRC Corporate Responsibility summit last October attended by Gordon Brown, Chancellor of the Exchequer and The Prince of Wales, President of Business in the Community, a series of important recommendations were made to bring about a step change in impact, scale and partnerships between the public and private sectors to achieve more collaborative action on key social and environmental issues.
- Leadership by example is critical to increasing the impact of corporate responsibility.
- Larger organisations and domino businesses have the opportunity to play an important part
in spreading best practice. - Partnership between private, public and voluntary sectors holds the key to successful expansion of responsible business.
- Greater communication between organisations and about corporate responsibility to wider audiences is vital for promoting mass involvement.
With the encouragement of the Chancellor, Business in the Community has been seeking the ways to transform these recommendations into reality-particularly building on the importance of communicating corporate responsibility to wider audiences. In the last three years we have worked closely with the British Council of Shopping Centres (BCSC) and learning from key shopping centres-particularly Meadowhall, Merry Hill, and White Rose- mobilising people and communicating the importance of local community initiatives.
As a result of our experience, Business in the Community is working with the property and retail sector, through our partnership with BCSC, to pilot innovative ways in which shopping centres can act as engagers, mobilisers, and catalysts for consumer action. With a focus on climate change, this exhibition answers questions about an increasingly urgent issue for us all.
Through the generous support of BSkyB, this unique partnership creates the opportunity to pilot this initiative and exhibition in the twelve core cities and the three nations before a wider rollout to many more shopping centres and public spaces. In addition HMRC has agreed to take this on as a pilot. We will also be suggesting to some of our member companies that the atrium of their offices would be ideal to take on the exhibition.
Through the support of the property companies we now expect this project to roll out to many more centres throughout the UK reaching an even greater audience.
