Day: 19 February 2025

The team at Eighty3 had a brilliant day recently, and it’s only right we give credit where it’s due. A huge thank you goes out to Chris Dowen for joining us at The Warehouse and delivering a genuinely insightful session on Lean System Thinking training. It was one of those days that reminds you why it’s worth pressing pause on the day-to-day and actually investing in how you work, not just how much you work.

Lean thinking isn’t a new concept, but applying it in a meaningful way to a creative agency environment takes a bit of unpacking. Chris did exactly that. He guided the team through the core principles in a way that felt practical and relevant rather than theoretical and dry. No death by PowerPoint. No jargon for the sake of it. Just real, useful thinking that we could actually take away and apply.

The session gave us plenty to reflect on as a team. From looking at where time gets lost, to questioning the processes we’ve just always done because that’s how we’ve always done them, it was the kind of honest internal conversation that’s easy to put off but genuinely valuable when you have it. We left with new perspectives, a few lightbulb moments, and more than enough to be getting on with.

We’re already thinking about how to put what we’ve learned into action, and we’re quietly excited about what that looks like in practice. A big thank you again to Chris for his time, his knowledge, and for making it such an engaging and worthwhile session. If you haven’t explored Lean System Thinking for your own business, it might be worth a look.

This week, our Development Manager Bec was invited to a closed roundtable discussion at the West Midlands Combined Authority headquarters. Not your typical Tuesday, then. She joined senior figures from the Greater Birmingham, Black Country, and Coventry and Warwickshire Chambers of Commerce to discuss the West Midlands Futures Green Paper and shape the Local Growth Plan that will influence how investment and opportunity flow across our region for years to come.

Bec wasn’t there to nod along politely. She was there to champion the voices that don’t get heard enough at these tables. Small businesses. Creative industries. Young people. The Black Country community. So she spoke up, and she didn’t hold back.

First up: careers education in schools, especially in deprived areas, is failing our kids. They need to see what’s actually possible beyond the narrow options presented to them. How are young people supposed to dream about careers in design, tech, or creative industries if nobody’s showing them these paths exist? Second: there are fewer higher education opportunities in creative industries now than there were twenty years ago, despite the creative sector being one of the UK’s fastest growing. That makes absolutely no sense. We’re particularly concerned about the University of Wolverhampton’s plans to demolish the iconic School of Art and Design. As a Black Country design business, we believe preserving these creative spaces and educational pathways is vital for nurturing the talent our region desperately needs.

Bec also raised the alarm about how difficult it is for small, often family run businesses to access the support that’s supposedly available to them. It’s not about launching more schemes with fancy names. It’s about better communication, actual visibility, and proper follow up. And she didn’t shy away from naming Wolverhampton’s steadily declining night-time economy. This isn’t just a hospitality issue. It affects safety, city pride, footfall, and the sustainability of every local business that relies on people actually being in the city centre.

These aren’t easy topics to raise in a room full of senior figures discussing the West Midlands growth plan. But they’re the conversations that need to happen if we’re serious about creating genuine opportunity across the region. We’re incredibly proud to have had a seat at that table, and prouder still that Bec used it to advocate for the creative, resilient, hardworking businesses and communities we serve every day.

Regional growth plans can feel abstract when you’re running a small business in Brierley Hill. But the decisions made in those rooms matter. They shape funding, infrastructure, education, and opportunity. Having someone there who actually understands what Black Country businesses face, who can speak to the reality on the ground, that’s how you make sure these plans don’t just sound good on paper. They actually work for real people doing real work in real communities. That’s the kind of advocacy our region deserves.