Our Story
Flourish Together was born in 2016 when Founding Directors Nickala Torkington, Jo McGrath and Anne Strachan spotted a need for tailored support for women developing social ventures.
Back in 2012, Nickala, Jo and Anne had set up a series of pilot projects under the banner of ‘The Women Supporting Social Entrepreneurs Network’. The network flourished, and in 2016, Flourish Together was set up as a Community Interest Company.
We could see the enormous potential for women to thrive as innovators, entrepreneurs and leaders. Our first-hand experience showed us how social enterprise can empower women to lead change – and lift themselves out of hardship and inflexible work situations at the same time. They just needed the right support – support that wasn’t out there.
Since then, Flourish has grown organically and continues to evolve – adapting services and activities to meet local, regional and national need – to support women changemakers, to foster greater collaboration across the sector and to promote positive change in communities.
Flourish evolved a series of programmes spanning enterprise, leadership, community research and innovation themes and evolved to become a specialist in these areas following backing and continued endorsement from funders and investors including The National Lottery, Manchester City Council, Greater Manchester Combined Authority and NatWest.
In 2022 they began a period of step change finding their niche in outstanding delivery of enterprise, employability and skills programmes, delivery of policy research and community led innovation and taking on a collaborative partnership with Northern Rail, Network Rail and Transport for Greater Manchester to develop the Flourish Hubs concept which develops underutilised train station buildings and transform them for community benefit, powered by social and community enterprise.
Collaborating with other social ventures they have supported to start, Flourish is leading the Flourish Hubs in Stockport (Heaton Chapel) and Altrincham to champion and showcase social enterprise, whilst collectively address local needs. Flourish Hubs provide social enterprise shared office space, meeting rooms and training space for hire, plus deliver a calendar of accessible holistic wellbeing and enterprise support in partnership with others.
Plus over the last 12 years Flourish has supported it’s sister project ‘Pop Up and Retreat’ to evolve which has now trained over 200 people in holistic therapies and natural beauty, with a collective of therapists who now delivery monthly events and Pop Up at public private, VCSE and community health and wellness events. To date in excess of £20,000.00 of free therapies have been offered to the community alongside the affordable treatments at our collaborative Pop Up Spas.
The next chapter looks ever more exciting in 2025 and we continue our step change to evolve digital resources, increase ease and capacity of social value measurement, consistently deliver specialist social enterprise support and expand our Careers in Holistic Health accredited training, alongside delivering the We Lead for Legacy Civic Leadership programme for Greater Manchester in partnership with She Leads for Legacy CIC, across all 10 boroughs.