York & North Yorkshire Business Spotlight

Award-winning artist Lucy Pittaway turned her passion into a business 12 years ago. She runs a thriving online store and six galleries across Yorkshire and the Lake District. Since 2018, she has been the Fine Art Trade Guild's Most Popular Published Artist and was Tour de Yorkshire's official artist.

Lucy Pittaway won the 2024 Outstanding Business Growth award.

The Station is a vibrant creative space; a cinema, a café, a gallery, and a place to shop, in Richmond, North Yorkshire, gateway to the Yorkshire Dales. The Station is a community hub where people can get together and create memories; a place where film, food and art are enjoyed in the unique setting of Richmond’s lovingly re-imagined station buildings. A place to catch up over coffee; see an exhibition; watch a film; try new things; shop for local produce and gifts; or share a meal with family and friends.

Manager Dan Westgarth won the 2024 Transformational Leader award after leading a transformative overhaul of cinema operations, improving standards, marketing, and offerings. 

Next Door But One, an award-winning LGBTQ+ and disability-led theatre company in York, promotes creative skills and community cohesion. Their programs include workshops, performances, and professional development for people with disabilities, mental ill health, bereavement, unpaid carers, and the LGBTQ+ community. Partners include The Snappy Trust, Camphill Village Trust, and York Carers Centre.

Next Door But One won the 2024 Community Changemaker award and the Inclusive Business award.

School Kitchen is a sustainable takeaway model partnering with local schools for after-hours home delivery restaurants. They offer diverse, locally supported cuisine, fostering community and sustainability.

School Kitchen won the 2024 One to Watch award.

Situated in the beautiful North Yorkshire countryside, Ellers Farm state-of-the-art, B Corp certified distillery is one of the largest in the country and their vision is to create incredible drinks with a positive impact on people and the planet.

Ellers Farm won the 2024 Purpose Driving Profit award.

Next Door But One, an award-winning LGBTQ+ and disability-led theatre company in York, promotes creative skills and community cohesion. Their programs include workshops, performances, and professional development for people with disabilities, mental ill health, bereavement, unpaid carers, and the LGBTQ+ community. Partners include The Snappy Trust, Camphill Village Trust, and York Carers Centre.

Door 84 is a Youth and Community hub in York, bridging children, young people, families, and caregivers. They provide opportunities for growth and connection, serving 298 young people and over 1,000 community members annually. They offer youth sessions, community groups, a café, events, and volunteer opportunities, promoting mental health and reducing isolation.

KindleWoods CIC, a woodland social enterprise, addresses social and environmental challenges by uniting people and nature. Their innovative mental health programs and community tree-planting efforts engaged 400 volunteers last year, planting over 7,000 trees across North and West Yorkshire.

Tang Hall SMART is a community music and arts-based social enterprise, established in 2014. They run accredited education programmes, employability schemes, community clubs, and a range of events for the community. They have a deep social impact, particularly in the field of homelessness and learning disability. They are located at The Burnholme Centre, where they rent a suite of classrooms, a workshop, studio and office spaces. They also provide sports sessions throughout the week in the new gym next door. They have taken on a second site at The Jam Factory, which consists of several rehearsal rooms, an art room and a recording studio.

Chocolate & Co. offers work and training for those with addiction and offending histories. It began to help break down the barriers to employment for those marginalised and living on the fringes of our community, in York due to struggling with an addiction, and/or having a criminal record.

Art is my Career is a creative studio that reinvests profits into free educational resources, bridging the arts education funding gap.

Park House Barns supports individuals with disabilities through diverse roles and educational partnerships, providing work experience and skill development. They help young people to develop work skills, offering an average of 160 placement sessions each month in their chocolate studio and horticulture centre. They have also partnered with local special schools to offer an accessible educational venue to develop new skills, benefit from new experiences and has been proven to improve personal, social and emotional development.

Careerbay is an online platform connecting young people with local work experience opportunities. Their aim was to make it drastically easier for young people to access a broad range of work experience placements, apprenticeships and other forms of career development, no matter their social background, interests or location. Through working with young people, they strive to deliver a purpose-built career hub, tailored specifically to their needs in order to empower the next generation of apprentices and employees to seize the future they deserve.

Everyday Enable CIC helps businesses improve accessibility through practical advice, training, and support. They offer advice and guidance, disability awareness training and ongoing support to businesses supporting them to be as accessible as possible. They listen to the concerns of the businesses as well as the general public, to build a realistic idea of what the issues are and the impact they are having.

Chopsticks is a community business and Charity that supports adults with disabilities to develop new skills in a workshop environment. It was established in 1997 by a small group of adults with learning disabilities that began working for themselves chopping firewood from scrap timber and selling it to the general public, thus creating ‘Chopsticks’.

Open Velocity is a marketing strategy consultancy made up of ex-CMOs and Marketing Directors with a passion for unpicking complexity and solving for success. They work with Founders, CEOs, Boards and Private Equity/Venture Capital firms to enable them to make better business decisions based on a deeper market understanding translated into effective marketing strategy and action.

Quick Labs provides science-based startups with essential resources, including IP support, business model development, pitch deck feedback, technology insights, grant writing assistance, and investment opportunities, along with access to state-of-the-art laboratory facilities.

Earthbound Scientific is a York-based company who design and manufacture equipment for environmental monitoring. Their products include SkyLine2D, an autonomous system to measure greenhouse gas uptake and emissions on farms and carbon-rich ecosystems, based on IP from the University of York. They have initially deployed prototypes in the UK and EU, but believe that researchers all around the world should have access to the best tools for their work. and approach this by designing disruptive technologies that are user-focused, robust, and generate high quality data to understand how to manage the one planet to which we are all bound.