The Shine Way

We make a difference every day with our Social Enterprise business model.

These are just some of the stories from our journey to raise aspirations and create opportunities.

We’d like to say a special thanks to all the photographers whose work is featured on our site.

“Award Winning Theatre” by Brian Slater and Tutti-Frutti Productions, “Health Workers” and “This isn’t forever…” posters by United Nations, “Chef in Kitchen” by Ronan Kruithof, “Daisies in field” by Andreas Kretschmer, “Spice in spoons” by Calum Lewis, “Milk and Cookies” by Christina Branco, “The Matrix” by Markus Spiske, “Lady with Magnifier” by Clement Falize, “Raising hand” by Felicia Buitenwerf, and “Pallet Garden” from the BacktoFront Blog.

 
 

RAISING ASPIRATIONS & CREATING OPPORTUNITIES

We opened our doors in 2008 with a mission to raise aspirations and create opportunities for disadvantaged communities. We believe this starts by empowering women to reduce socio-economic inequalities in the UK.

To create the change we envision, we empower women in business, art, and life, support non-violent women ex-offenders, bring the arts and science to local children,  inspire and connect entrepreneurs, and continually reduce our impact on the environment.

 

Empowering Women in business, art, and life

The facts are depressing:

  • Business: We know on average women earn 70% of what men do, but the disparity gets even worse for female founders. Less than 2% of venture capital funding and less than 5% of traditional business finance (loans) are given to women founded businesses each year. This is compounded by women holding only 33.5% of senior leadership positions in the UK. (2024)

  • Art: While women account for a healthy majority (65-75%) of art degrees, they comprise less than 15% of gallery space in commercial galleries and the number is even lower for museums.

  • Life: Despite making up half the world’s population, women continue to be at a disadvantage in life. 8 in 10 women experiencing menopause are working without any support, leading many to quit in their prime earning years. Significantly more women than men live in abject poverty, are the victim of sexual harassment, and are not allowed into education systems.

To counteract these trends, Shine uses its resources to make positive change for women in business, art, and life. This includes leveraging our profits, our business model (workspace, food, and art), and partnership funding. Our flagship programme, SheCanShine, makes in impact in all three areas. Our work includes:

  • Our SheCanShine Programme empowering women led startups; providing office space, networking, mentoring, and education for female founders.

  • Our Art Gallery, one of the largest private galleries in the North of England; we display and sell women artists (90% of our gallery), support local women artists with exhibitions, and work with local universities to increase awareness of women’s issues through art.

  • We run several events on Menopause awareness, provide Menopause support to women in our business, and champion women’s health in a variety of ways with our partners in both academia and the NHS.

  • We work with other women founders to increase the amount of women in both leadership positions and startups.

  • We provide world class children’s theatre to over 400 children at Harehills Primary ever year, along with sessions on growing and making food.

SUPPORTING EX-OFFENDERS

Every year, 17,000 innocent children are adversely affected, separated from their mothers who are incarcerated for short term non-violent crimes. Upon release, many remain separated because they cannot find work and subsequently, housing. This is why we support non-violent women ex-offenders as they transition from prison to a new life as a productive member of society. Our support takes the form of job training, employment, emotional, and logistical support for women based locally and nationally.

Here’s a quick look at our impact to date…

  • 12 non-violent women ex-offenders have re-integrated into society by finding a home, re-connecting with their family, and finding work with direct support from Shine.

  • As a result, 29 children have been reunited with their mothers and given a chance to thrive.

  • Shine continues to support 2-3 new ex-offenders per year, saving society more than £2,500,000 to date. Importantly, 40% of every offender’s salary, while serving a sentence, is given to a victim support fund.


“I have made a success of my life after serving a sentence.  I enjoy my job and really do not know where I would be without the support I have from Shine” — Martha


Listen to the women themselves…


INSPIRING CHILDREN

Socio-economic barriers are broken down when children from all backgrounds are able to experience the arts and how nature works. As such, we support local children from our neighbourhood, Harehills, with education (gardening and food) and experiences (arts, theatre). To this end, we operate a fruit and vegetable garden scheme with children planting and picking the food and an annual theatre production for children from Harehills Primary.

Here’s a quick look at our impact to date…

Over 2,500 local children from Harehills, who wouldn’t have had the opportunity otherwise, have attended world-class theatre productions and learned to create vegetable gardens.

GROWING ENTREPRENEURS AND ARTISTS

The biggest obstacle for entrepreneurs and artists is the same—money and market. While access to finance is important, we focus our efforts on helping both of these communities become sustainable by attracting more money into their businesses with low cost inspiring spaces, connections to customers, and zero commission sales. 

To date, using our resources and connections, we’ve helped local and regional entrepreneurs secure over £250,000 of new business. On the other end of the spectrum, we help artists sell their work and keep the proceeds, with 100% of sales revenue, nearly £10,000 at last count, in our large gallery going directly to the local and regional artists displaying their work, with 90% of them being women artists.


IMPROVING THE ENVIRONMENT

Like many progressive businesses, we recycle, reduce, and reuse to shrink our carbon footprint. But, we also focus our environmental efforts locally in an attempt to reduce the health inequality around us. The environment plays a large role in the life expectancy of Harehills residents, which is up to 10 years less than much greener areas north of Leeds. To this end, our business operates 100% electric vehicles with 0% emissions and we’ve grown our green footprint around the building, to include both food and flower gardens containing sustainable plants. We are constantly improving our cycle and walking amenities for the building. We’re now working with the local neighbourhood to improve pedestrian and cycling routes, along with an ambitious scheme to plant more trees throughout Harehills.

Here’s a quick look at our impact to date…

  • Shine uses 100% electric vehicles to transport its food to your site, saving over 12 metric tons to date (6 metric tons per year) of CO2 from being released into the atmosphere.

  • Shine use 100% compostable or recyclable paper materials and utensils in the packaging and serving of our food.

  • Shine is plastic free, replacing all plastic beverage bottles with glass since 2018.

  • Shine’s recycling programme has diverted over 10 tonnes of waste away from landfill.