As winter draws in and it’s tempting to hibernate, there are still reasons to get out and exercise. This Saturday sees another free out-of-borough walk for Hackney Council.

We’ll be having a little walk around Southwark this Saturday. Meet outside the main entrance of City Hall at 11am this Saturday 24^th.

Then there’s a repeat of the special after-hours Gothic Abney Park after hours tour on Wed 5^th December. From Frankenstein to Peterloo, we’ll be looking by lantern-light into the inspiration that London’s dark side gave to the Gothic period.

Last week I was one of the speakers at the Social Enterprise Borough Hackney conference. A rich mix of inspiring new entrepreneurs joined some existing Hackney organisations who’ve been doing great work for years before the current wave of social enterprise took off.

The message was a powerful one: that business doesn’t operate in a vacuum. It can’t ignore its effect on the world around it.

I’ve been showcasing some of these brilliant initiatives for a few years now with walks like this. And I’ve been tying them into Hackney’s radical past, to show how this latest explosion of social enterprises is in keeping with a borough which has seen people try to improve the world for centuries. Hence the #HackneyDifferent hashtag.

If you’ve an organisation that needs connecting to Hackney, or wants to discover the businesses being bold and trying to address pressing social and environmental issues, get in touch. Remember, today’s Hackney is tomorrow’s mainstream.

See you on the streets.