The Good Business Festival announces live Liverpool launch event

The Good Business Festival today announces its launch event ‘Change Business for Good’, the first in-person, live business event happening in the UK since the first national lockdown in March 2020.

The Good Business Festival, a pioneering new global gathering in the Liverpool City Region, will host ‘Change Business for Good’, a launch event on 28 April at ACC Liverpool, as part of the Government pilot events, a science-led Events and Research Programme (ERP) with lateral flow testing before and after the event – and not vaccine certification in any form – to get audiences back safely as restrictions are gradually eased.

Change Business for Good will feature discussions about how health, growth and social recovery are intrinsically linked to business as we move out of lockdown and examine how businesses can drive future success without returning to old habits that harm our environment, increase inequality and fail to ‘level-up’ our regions.

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The pilot event will launch The Good Business Festival main event taking place 7 – 9 July at venues across the Liverpool City Region. Commissioned by the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority , the three-day event will bring together the smartest minds from around the world to think big, galvanise our ambitions and focus on progress and not perfection.

Event partner Google will be offering digital skills training through Digital Garage; L’Oréal UK and Ireland is launching the L’Oréal Beauty Tech For Good Challenge to find and support the UK and Ireland’s most innovative start-ups; Innocent will be running The Big Grow from an allotment at Knowsley Safari, an initiative to get kids growing their own veg at school, helping thousands of schools to get free growing resources.

Over three days of compelling, thought-provoking and unexpected programming, the festival will be a platform for consumers and leaders to come together and explore the powerful potential of business to improve lives, deliver meaningful change and realise a purpose beyond profit.

The festival will explore the big challenges that our society faces in the economic, environmental, consumer and technological spheres, as well as offering ideas, inspiration and practical solutions to the problems that Covid-19 has exposed and escalated in our society.

With the UK hosting COP26 in Glasgow in November this year, The Good Business Festival will examine the climate crisis. The festival programme will focus on a sustainable and ethical recovery and resilience that helps tackle inequalities, as well as creating positive impact on people and our planet and levelling-up the nation.

Tickets for the July Festival will be available from late April for a small donation to local charities in the Liverpool City Region.

The Good Business Festival is a publicly funded, not-for-profit event and commissioned and funded by the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority. The festival curated by Culture Liverpool and creative agency Hemingway Design,  with a focus on uniting business, civil society and consumers in a collective effort to tackle the biggest challenges facing our world.

The first act of the Good Business Festival was held as a one-day online event in October 2020 launched by Liverpool City Region Metro Mayor Steve Rotheram and featured influential thinkers from across business, tech, activism and economics including Ann Cairns, Mastercard, Timpson CEO James Timpson, London Mayor Sadiq Khan, Cobra Beer Chairman and President of the CBI, Lord Karan Bilimoria, Patagonia’s Director of Philosophy Vincent Stanley, Greenpeace Executive Director John Sauven, and Oscar-winning director and screenwriter Richard Curtis.

Steve Rotheram

The festival is committed to ensuring that its events are COVID-19 secure with the health and safety of attendees being very important and plans for social distancing, sanitizing and deep cleaning in place should they be required.

Frank Rogers, Chief Executive, Liverpool City Region Combined Authority said:

“We welcome the news that a precursor event to the Good Business Festival is being hosted here in the Liverpool City Region as part of the government’s Events Research Programme pilot scheme. We’re pleased that the Combined Authority is able to help play a role in the science-led research around the reopening of the live events sector, which is so vital to our city region economy.

“The Coronavirus pandemic has dealt a hammer blow to people and businesses across our region and around the world but, with the rollout of vaccines gathering pace, there is now hope that the end is in sight.

“As we look now to recovery there is the opportunity to think again about the kind of city region, and world, we want to build and the Good Business Festival is the perfect platform to discuss these ideas.”

“From the Grand National to the River Festival and the Tour of Britain, in the city region we’re known for hosting world class events. So, it’s fantastic to have the Good Business Festival returning for its next chapter live and in-person and we at the Combined Authority look forward to welcoming festival attendees here this summer.”

Claire McColgan MBE, Director of Culture Liverpool said:

“The crisis has given us an opportunity to think about the kind of world we want to live in and there can be no return to business as usual. In the Liverpool City Region we’re committed to building the fairest, greenest, and most inclusive economy in the UK.

“The challenge for many businesses is knowing where to start on the road to good business and that’s where The Good Business Festival can help.”

Wayne Hemingway MBE, Creative Director, The Good Business Festival, commented:

“Business and business leaders have  the power to tackle the biggest problems in our society and Covid-19 has demonstrated that some businesses are walking the walk in this respect (though there are still plenty merely talking the talk) The Good Business Festival Act 1 was hard hitting and heavy on outcomes and actions and Act 2 will be a platform to develop these conversations and connections needed to drive positive change in society. You’d be daft not to be part of it!!”

Get more information here.