GUNPOWDER PRODUCTION: ‘WEARPEACE’ Social Campaign Activism in communities of need.

GUNPOWDER PRODUCTION:

‘WEARPEACE’

Social Campaign Activism in communities of need.

GUNPOWDER PRODUCTION is intended to engage with young people within the Manchester Metropolitan area, who are at greatest risk of becoming involved in gang and gun culture as victims, witnesses or offenders.

-engagement through art- encourage young people to share their attitudes and beliefs

-exploit creative concepts to exciting enterprise learning -drive enterprise learning towards real and profitable solutions

- manufacturing new artefacts with recycled gun metals-selling to very rich people (or people who care)

-‘WEARPEACE10’ (2009 – ongoing)

SOCIAL PARTNERSHIP IN GUN CRIME REDUCTION

The problem of street weapon proliferation is one thatmajorly impacts on young people as both offender andvictim; there is clear evidence that young people offer a

vulnerable and pliable customer base for those prepared toMake business from the sale of ballistic hand-held devices

and bladed weapons. CARISMA and charities based inInner urban Manchester, in partnership with the GreaterManchester Police, are striving to counter street violence

and insecurity and build social cohesion.

“WEARPEACE” (“Gunpowder Production”), is anevolving social enterprise theme that mitigates guncrime. Through engaging young people in a newsocial enterprise, we seek to actively reduce gunmetal, via grinding and smelting, into a rawmaterial for fabricating new products forcommercial use; the basic idea is to createconcepts for ideology focused commodities to bemanufactured from the gun metal of confiscatedweapons; thereby giving a voice and a role toyoung people within a wider, community driven,gun crime reduction and social cohesionprogramme.

Not-For-Profit Objectives

The WEARPEACE initiative is specific to the focusedneeds of collaborative partners that already operate associal enterprises in the Inner South Manchester urban

area and evidences how existing networks andpartnerships can make use of creativity and design in their

own processes to build larger and more invasive socialcampaign messages. In this instance the process is

leading to the manufacture and distributive retail of ethicallybranded goods, whilst maintaining core input from underrepresented voices in the community. The partnership

seeks to develop sustainable systems of incomegeneration and campaign promotion through creative

practices leading to social enterprise.

Problem 1

We need to understand and evaluate our

options for moving toward commercialising

the concept and realising income to support

the charity, CARISMA.

a) Do we license the concept (‘WEARPEACE’) to retail distribution companies or outlets; literally present the business idea as an ethical brand for exploitation by a third party under license from the stakeholders?

i. We need to understand the potential business model

(structure and lines of responsibility); who maintains control and authority.

ii. What options could the license content cover?iii. We need to scale our own operational commitments (a

set of scenarios). iv. We need to access existing precedents. v. We need to research potential commercial partners

who would be empathetic and, therefore, responsive.

b) Do we initiate a social enterprise start-up (as a separate though connected entity) to take the project forward and take full responsibility for business operations? This would present two options for consideration.

i. Do we focus on two or three product lines that we can distribute through points of sale in retail environments with both public and private sector partners? We need to scope a potential business model and minimum commitments.

ii. Do we supply the recycled metal and brand narrative to a network of maker retailers in the crafts sector; thereby creating a stakeholder community? We need to scope a potential business model and understand what legal protection is necessary to secure the baseline concept.

Problem 2

The process of production is complex and hasencountered obstacles that are very specific to thebasic concept for our project. Because we aremelting down guns from the police armoury, thereare clearly going to be security risks andobligations. In addition, the supply side of ouroperation has issues that are related to ethics butalso to quantities and measures and these are thethings that are going to impact most on unit costsfor production; unit cost is currently an unknown.

a) We need to work backwards, from the sale price to the suppliers costs. Using the two business types from problem one we need to calculate backwards, reducing costs at each stage of delivery so that we can make an estimation of our constraints or limitations on the cost of supply (even as a percentage). We need two or three model scenarios.

b) We need to model the cost distribution (in percentages) of luxury branded or high value goods with some degree of assessment of the impact on the market demand side. We need two or three model scenarios.