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How to scale social innovations: influencing and advocacy

2 Jul 2026
The Line, 58 Victoria Embankment EC4Y 0DS and online
Free

This event took place on Thursday 2 July. You can watch the recording below.

Event recording

Achieving social impact at scale is not an easy feat. Many great ideas languish at the pilot stage or stall after initial enthusiasm because they are unable to influence the right people in the right way.

At this event we discovered what it takes to influence people who can make or break wide-scale adoption of an innovative idea.

Nesta’s head of policy, Isobel Scott-Barrett chaired a panel of experts who have used influencing to deliver results. The panel included Lord Simon Woolley, founder of Operation Black Vote, Charlotte Osborn-Forde, chief executive at the National Academy for Social Prescribing and Clara Snow, mission manager for Nesta’s healthy life mission.

Together, they shared lessons learned from their own scaling journeys, drawing on experiences of campaigning and advocacy, as well as more inside-track policymaker engagement. They also shared how advising and training others can help grow an idea even further.

This discussion was the second instalment of Nesta’s new series, How to scale social innovations, which explores how impactful ideas move beyond pilots to achieve real-world scale, drawing from insights in Nesta’s scaling toolbox, designed to provide practical tools and frameworks for scaling impact.


The opinions expressed in this event recording are those of the speaker. For more information, view our full statement on external contributors.

Speakers

Isobel Scott-Barrett

Isobel Scott-Barrett

Head of Policy
Louis Stupple-Harris_final

Louis Stupple-Harris

Strategic Partnerships Lead, Mission Discovery
Lord Simon Woolley

Lord Simon Woolley

He/Him

Simon Woolley became Principal of Homerton College on 1 October 2021. He founded Operation Black Vote, the internationally renowned campaigning NGO, in 1996 and served as its Director until 2021. OBV works with ethnic minorities in the UK to increase understanding of civic society, participation in Parliament and public life, and to promote equality and human rights. He served as an Equality and Human Rights Commissioner from 2009 to 2012, and in 2018 he was appointed by Prime Minister Theresa May to create and lead the UK Government’s pioneering Race Disparity Unit. The Unit collects, analyses and publishes data on how crime, education and health are affected by ethnicity. Simon Woolley was knighted in the Queen’s Birthday Honours in June 2019 and was created a life peer in December of the same year. He sits as a crossbencher in the House of Lords. He has been awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Westminster in 2012, and the University of Leicester in 2023, and is an Honorary Fellow of Harris Manchester College and Magdalen College in the University of Oxford. He is a regular contributor to newspapers nationally and internationally on topics relating to equality, diversity and social justice.

Clara Widdison.final

Clara Snow

She/Her

Clara is the mission manager for the healthy life mission. Prior to joining Nesta, Clara spent eight years building fairer food environments in retail, community and home settings, with families and communities experiencing deprivation. She played a key role in the design and implementation of innovative new models of food distribution in the UK, including social supermarkets, holiday provision and family recipe boxes. Clara was named one of the Worlds Top 100 Changemakers by The Big Issue in 2020, and is a Churchill Fellow. She is also a trustee at the KFC Foundation. Clara has an MSc in food policy from the Centre for Food Policy, University of London, and is an accredited service design professional.

Charlotte Osbron-Forde

Charlotte Osborn-Forde

She/Her

Charlotte is CEO of the National Academy for Social Prescribing (NASP), a charity working to advance social prescribing through development of innovation, best practice, evidence, new investment models and better awareness. She oversees NASP’s wide and diverse partnerships across the arts, physical activity, heritage, the natural environment and community services. Charlotte champions social prescribing around the world, working with leaders in 40 countries, as NASP is the WHO Collaborating Centre for Social Prescribing Policy and Development. Charlotte has worked in the charity sector for 20 years, directly with disadvantaged communities and closely with the NHS and wider public services to design and evaluate innovative cross sector approaches.

Part of
Scaling projects to achieve social impact

Event information

2 Jul 2026
Free

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