Current Supporters

Mocha Marketing

Leicester-based Mocha Marketing has announced a partnership with fellow Chamber member Soft Touch Arts.

Situated on New Walk, Soft Touch Arts helps disadvantaged young people and supports them with challenges in their lives. Mocha Marketing developed a close relationship with the charity in 2015 and, over the past year, has regularly supported the charity.

Founder and Managing Director at Mocha Marketing, Gemma Orton, said: “Having been involved with charities at operational level for some time, I know that the skills gap generally is on a PR front as there just aren’t the funds available to support this kind of work – yet without creating awareness, how is the charity supposed to maximise on their efforts?”

Business Development Director at Soft Touch Arts, Christina Wigmore said “Soft Touch is absolutely delighted to be offered this partnership opportunity from an agency that really cares about making a difference in local communities.

Gemma is also the chair of our Business Ambassador Panel and running the Leicester Marathon 2016 in aid of Soft Touch and another chosen charity.

Betty Brown

Local fashion designer and Betty Brown boutique owner, Suhkina Garcia, has taken Soft Touch on board as a charity that she feels is close to her heart.
The creative connection and her own life experience has helped her to decide she would like to support Soft Touch through organising events to raise much needed funds for our work with disadvantaged young people.   She has also signed up to deliver creative input into our celebratory 86:16 exhibition which will mark the 30th year of the charity’s operation.

In September and October Sukhina will be delivering a series of fashion design sessions with a group of young people who have shown an interest in sewing and fashion to produce creations taking inspiration from the 1980s when Soft Touch started.  They will be displayed as part of the exhibition which will run throughout November 2016.  She says

 ” I am delighted to be able to support and champion the hard work that is carried out at Soft Touch Arts. Their passion to aid and enable expression and individuality through the medium of arts, crafts and music and assist those often feeling helpless and isolated is second to none. It’s no surprise that they are my charity of choice and I am really excited for the future!”

Over the past two months Sukhina has helped to raise £800 for Soft Touch Arts.   In June she organised a special pre Leicester Racecourse Ladies Day fashion event at her boutique, donating 10% of sales on the day to Soft Touch.

In August through an innovative ‘fashion inspired by art’ collaborative event at Trident Galleries in Stoneygate she arranged for 10% of gallery sales on the evening to be donated to Soft Touch which raised a further £600.

Alex Polonski commented: “Our gallery hosts regular artist events but it was great to work with a neigbouring designer to put on something very different, bu combining art and fashion in a spectacular fashion show which also raised money for Soft Touch Arts”.

Christina Wigmore from Soft Touch says: we are looking forward to working with Sukhina and Trident Galleries on further collaborations and it is great to have such inspiring and caring creative business people involved with our charity.

Smallman & Son

rg+p

RBS

After meeting Lisa Whitworth, Area Director for RBS, at the Athena Network she brought our local RBS branch manager Oliver Day to visit Soft Touch. Oliver was really excited about the work we do with young people, in particular the preventative work, and he arranged a tour for the branch staff, following which they decided to fundraise for us during 2016. The branch are holding a different fundraising activity every month to support us.

www.personal.rbs.co.uk

Everything Branded & Top Wristbands

Paul and Jen Rowlett from Everything Branded got involved with Soft Touch in 2014 as they were both keen to support local children’s charities and Jen has worked as a teacher so understands how using creative projects can help to build confidence and self-belief in young people with challenges in their lives. They have donated free wristbands and made a donation to support our Brick in the Wall campaign. We have a creative project planned in 2016 with some of our young people creating an art/sculpture piece made from a range of pens the company prints for their HQ in Leicester.

www.everythingbranded.co.uk

www.topwristbands.co.uk

Niche Magazine

Niche have been supporting Soft Touch since 2014. As one of their charities of choice in 2014/15, they have really helped us to raise our profile through making introductions to different businesses, promoting our events and projects through the magazine and social media, and supporting some of our talented young people to progress with their creative careers. Giving young people real opportunities to connect with the business world gives a huge confidence boost and Niche have provided opportunities for some of our young artists and photographers to take on commissions for magazine photoshoots and events. We were also very lucky to be nominated for (and to win the Shaping Tomorrow’s Leaders Award) at the inaugural Niche Business Awards in 2015, and to be one of the charities to benefit from funds raised at this fantastic event. We’re continuing to work together and their caring community approach to connecting and supporting local businesses and charities helps to make great things happen in Leicester.

www.nichemagazine.co.uk

Glynis Wright & Co. Family Solicitors and Mediators

www.glyniswright.co.uk

The Miller Partnership

Pete and Tracey Miller have been great supporters of Soft Touch since 2015.   Tracey is one of our business ambassadors, helping to raise our profile and input ideas for fundraising events and how we can make the most of our centre at 50 New Walk.    They sponsored our fundraising brick campaign and more recently came up with the idea for the Fine & Funny Dining Event as part of Dave’s Leicester Comedy Festival.   With limited resources it’s hard of us to organise big events from scratch but Tracey has such great business contacts and this ensured that we had a full-house on the evening and brought in other businesses like Kong Events who sponsored the headline comedian Jarred Christmas.   We’re already planning and looking forward to Fine & Funny Dining Mark II as part of next year’s comedy festival. The Miller Partnership are also the first local business to support our KickStart Business Mentoring Scheme, funding two places for young people on a rolling basis.

www.themillerpartnership.com

The White Peacock

Phillip Sharpe and his team have been supporting Soft Touch for the last 2 years since they opened their amazing restaurant on King Street.  Phillip has helped to prepare superb food for our events including feeding the guests and Royal Party for our official opening in June 2015.   Their team are always open to new challenges at Soft Touch and did a fantastic job of providing a fine dining menu for 74 guests at the Miller Partnership’s Fine & Funny Dining event as part of Dave’s Leicester Comedy Festival 2015.   They have also hosted fundraising dining  evenings at the restaurant, raising £750 in 2015, and they are always happy to give our young cooking and catering volunteers experience of delivering event catering.

www.the-white-peacock.co.uk

Arthur J. Gallagher

Soft Touch are delighted and privileged to be chosen as Arthur J. Gallagher Leicester’s charity of the year for the second year running in 2016.  The staff will be running fundraising events and helping us with other projects such as painting our new building and volunteering on our projects with young people.   Charity support from local companies really does help to make a difference to the lives of the young people we support.

www.ajg.com

Spearing Waite LLP

“I am a partner at Leicester law firm Spearing Waite LLP. I work with Soft Touch offering enterprise based mentoring to help young people develop business related skills as part of the arts projects they are involved in. Working with Soft Touch is personally rewarding and a great way for Spearing Waite to get involved with the local community and give something back.”
Michael Lawrence: Director, Spearing Waite LLP

www.spearingwaite.com

True Potential Wealth Management

Julie Langton, Wealth Management Partner of True Potential Wealth Management is a supporter of Soft Touch Arts and has made us her Charity of the Year for the third year running. “I have been inspired by the great work that Chris, Gill, Ruth and the Team at Soft Touch Arts do by helping young disadvantaged young people turn their life around by helping them develop their creative side, through art and music. Soft Touch Arts is my chosen Charity for 2014

Julie Langton: Partner, True Potential Wealth Management

www.tpllp.com

Maiyango

We have been working closely with Maiyango on our Well Cool project and promotional events. Maiyango chefs have given our young participants experience of working in a commercial kitchen and in working on outside events.

www.maiyango.com

Newby Castleman: Chartered Accountants

Newby Castleman have been our accountants for many years and they have helped us out with generous donations towards the running of our events in our new building.

Newby Castleman has not only played a significant role in helping Soft Touch to expand, but also with the financial complexities that come with being a charity.

Being a voluntary sector/charity organisation brings all kinds of challenges in financial reporting and VAT, and Newby Castleman has given us brilliant advice over the years and made their services very affordable as a charity with limited funds.

More recently we have been working together on the complex finances for our building development project and it’s great that they have been supportive by sponsoring some of our business reception events and awards.”

Arch Creative

We met Joe and Darren from Arch Creative at the 2013 Leicester Mercury Business Awards.  Both our organisations were finalists.  In 2014 again we were both finalists and we both won our categories, Arch winning the Creative Industries Award and Soft Touch won the Not For Profit Organisation Award.   Arch have provided graphics workshops for our young people, joined our business ambassador panel and helped with our branding and design work.  They designed this website! Arch Creative have helped us out with various graphic design services including our new logo and a donated Apple computer!

www.archcreative.co.uk

The Practical Printer

“Life is sometimes hard. Things go wrong, in life and in love and in business and in friendship and in health and in all other ways that life can go wrong. And when things get tough, this is what you should do. Make good art.” 
― Neil Gaiman, Make Good Art

Everyone is creative in some way.

Some, however, don’t have the opportunity to express it. Simply put, Soft Touch Arts helps young people to direct their creative talent in a positive way, it gives them the confidence to go out into the big wide world and make their mark.

The Practical Printer believes that the future belongs to the creative energies of today’s youth. By supporting Soft Touch Arts, we believe we are helping to support everyone’s future.

Running the Leicester Half Marathon was a brilliant opportunity to raise funds for Soft Touch and a great experience – I’m up for it in 2015!

Jacqui – The Practical Printer

www.practicalprinter.com