The next Birmingham Soup is 1st April – 12.00-15.00 at Impact Hub Birmingham!

The goal of Birmingham SOUP is to offer a safe space where people can gather and share a meal to encourage conversation, relationship building and resource sharing while supporting creative community projects in Birmingham. We want to be democratic, creative, sustainable and inclusive.

SOUP is a great way to raise money, build community support and get connections to local resources that can help you carry out your project.

It’s a really simple process:
-Join us for a public soup dinner! (bring food to share if you can)
-Pay a suggested donation of £5 or more (£1 for kids).
-Learn about creative/community projects happening in Birmingham.
-Vote on which project to fund with the money raised from the dinner.

If you would like to pitch your idea at Birmingham SOUP please take a moment to read our rules and application process before submitting your form. If your proposal is chosen to pitch you’ll have 5 mins to pitch it to the SOUP audience. If your project gets the most votes from the audience you’ll take home all the money from the door. Details here https://birminghamsoup.co.uk/submit-a-proposal/

We’d LOVE to see you on Valentine’s Day to help us spread even more LOVE throughout Birmingham and vote for another brilliant project.

Join us for after work dinner with friends. Bring food to share if you can and listen to 4 project pitches. Each pitch gets just 4 minutes to share their idea and the audience gets to ask a maximum of 4 questions. When you’ve heard all the pitches you get the chance to chat to your fellow investors and the pitchers over some tasty food. Then, when you’ve decided who you think deserves the money the most, place your vote. The project with the most votes gets the money taken on the door that evening.

Everyone is welcome at Impact Hub in Digbeth. We ask for a minimum donation of £5 on the door (more if you like).

Doors open at 6pm for chats, it all starts around 7pm and is done by 9pm.

IF you can bring food then you are very welcome – please note that we don’t have any heating facilities.

IF you have a project you’d like to pitch then the application process is REALLY EASY! Just click the link here and take a look.

Another inspiring SOUP took place in December with 4 more great projects, a load of lovely investors, some fantastic craft stalls and plenty of festive cheer.

Well done to all of our project pitchers! As usual it was really hard to decide but it was Hannah’s ‘Don’t judge a book by it’s cover’ project that took the money.

Read more about the projects here and if you’re inspired then how about pitching at the next event with our very simple application process?

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OK folks we were SO excited to get to out first birthday in October, and were totally on a high thanks to everyone that came and made it so special, that we forgot to add our lovely pics of the night.

We made screen printed tea towels (designed by our very own Erin and commissioned in conjunction with Eye Candy), we had the most STUNNING birthday cake created by Have Some Cake, a mocktail bar created by Girl Dreamer and 4 excellent projects to vote for… What. A. Night!

SO 1 year of #BrumSOUPS and what have we done? Well over 500 of you lovelies have generously invested almost £3,000 in 10 projects. You have listened to 38 people with projects tell their story and helped many of the projects with advice, assistance and knowledge.

The projects with the most votes and receiving funding were:

1. Elliot Lord – Creating unique card beds for homeless people
2. Mohammed Aerosol Ali – The Hubb Arts Centre in Sparkbrook
3. Second Pedals – A bike regeneration project
4. The GAP Arts Project – A young people’s art project in response to the refugee crisis
5. The Danny Campaign – Helping the homeless keep in touch with loved ones
6. Tasty Waste – Reducing food waste through education and community workshops
7. SAD GIRLS CLUB – A collective space for young women with anxiety
8. TICS Magazine – A web based magazine raising awareness of what its like to live with Tourettes
9. LIFT Matters – A social enterprise helping young people achieve their dreams
10. Dibah – Welcome Walk (although Dibah shared her investment with Sharon from Square Peg, Ben from The Real Junk Food Project and Jodi from One Million Lovely Letters – so you could say we’ve had 13 winners).

Our pot luck dinners have served up around 18 Soups (made by our talented SOUP makers from Bearwood Kitchen), countless delish salads and around 200 loaves (kindly donated by LOAF).

By coming to *Impact Hub (*and thank you kindly guys for all the support and hosting us) you have helped to make a real difference to people’s lives. Beyond the people pitching the projects there are of course all the people that the projects help in Birmingham.

SO when’s the next one?
Our next #BrumSOUP is a ‘Wonderful Winter Warmer’ where we’ll be offering you a safe haven to get out of the crazy pre-xmas shopping madness on Saturday 17th December at our home Impact Hub. It’s a family friendly SOUP so all-ages are very welcome.

Doors open 11am and we start at 12noon.

We’re looking for our 5th SOUP winner – is it you?

Got a project that is in its early stages? Maybe it is just an idea? It might be running already; whatever stage your at with a project idea we want to hear from you!

So far we’ve had a winner who makes cardboard beds for the homeless, a new arts venue looking for money to help decorate their space, a business that reconditions old bikes and an art event that aims to help migrants & refugees.

All incredibly diverse but with ONE thing in common; they want to help the community of Birmingham and make the city a better, brighter place to be.

SO if you have an idea you’ve got just under 24 hours to fill out our proposal form – we promise it is VERY easy. All the details are here.

We have made it to SOUP number 4 and raised over £1500 for 4 very worthy community projects for the city. YAY!

February’s SOUP was an after-work gathering (we like to alternate between Saturday afternoon’s and Thursday post work get togethers) which saw Nyrees from Nettlefest, Sharon from The Square Peg Foundation, the Beyond Borders team from the Gap Arts Project, and the delightfully colourful team from new YouTube channel The Vibe, all pitch for the £315 door takings.

SOUP #4 WINNERS
This month’s voting was a close call but it was Gap Arts that caught the audiences imagination!

THANK YOU
Thanks to everyone that came along on Thursday evening to support the projects, to LOAF who once again kindly donated bread to go with our delicious SOUP (red lentil dahl and cauliflower &roasted red pepper this month incase you missed out) and Impact Hub Brum for their kind hospitality and use of their amazing space!

NEXT EVENT
Our next SOUP event will be on Saturday 19th March (doors 11am for a 12noon start). Everyone is welcome so feel free to bring the family – kids get a vote too! We’ll be serving up a SOUP lunch and sharing food and snacks donated by guests.

GOT AN IDEA?
If you have been inspired and have a project idea that benefits the community of Birmingham then why not head over to our ‘Submit a Proposal’ page. Deadline for the next event is Friday 4th March.

Thanks to Ming for the great pics.