Fostering social enterprise in woodlands: Challenges for partnerships supporting social innovation

The woodland social enterprise (WSE) sector is growing and has a role to play in the forest-based bioeconomy. Social enterprise is also favoured by neoliberal economic policies, and the range of motivations and possible impacts of WSEs calls for better understanding of how and why to support WSE. This paper examines a pilot partnership project in the UK to gain insights for such support, and for social innovation more generally. It conceptualises the process of starting, growing or diversifying WSE as social innovation, and advisory services as policy tools designed to support such innovation. Making Local Woods Work (MLWW) was a cross-sectoral partnership designed to provide integrated access to WSE advice needs. Our methods re-analyse evaluation data to conclude that policy-based intervention can help WSEs to develop and function, but not in this case to achieve real social innovation i.e. radical rearrangement of power. The study shows that it is difficult for top-down interventions to facilitate the emergence of a more self-sustaining legacy such as a peer-to-peer support network. WSEs are inherently diverse: income sources range from woodland products to social services based in the therapeutic forest environment; they value profit, social and environmental benefits to varying degrees. A support partnership therefore needs to take a flexible and client-led approach to identification of needs. In contributing to the bioeconomy, WSE has much in common with the needs and potential of other small and medium businesses.