Love Your Local Market is a great opportunity to kickstart partnerships with local colleges and offer ‘have a go’ business initiatives with free pitches. Rebecca Coghlan from Portsmouth City Council explains more.
“As part of the Love Your Local Market celebrations, I contacted local colleges and schools to see if there was any take up from students who had products 'ready to go' and who wanted experience of running a stall. I am part of the City Development/Regeneration service and we are keen to support and encourage entrepreneurial behaviour. We see the markets as opportunities for small businesses to move out of their kitchen and reach more customers by having a market stall.
“We are lucky enough to have a few sites for markets all with a different appeal and different footfall which we can offer space in. There are markets that are run in- weekly and there are speciality markets that run each month. Our weekly market managers agreed to offer pitches free of charge to under 25's as did our markets operators that run the monthly speciality markets.
“We had take up from a secondary Academy, and two FE colleges. The academy students have some art/design work that was ready for sale, handmade cards and other stationery items. The FE college students had clothing.
“Our experience was that the Academy students (aged 16) were much more organised possibly due to more teaching staff involvement in the activity."
Rebecca’s top tips
Contact the Markets Department at Portsmouth City Council on 023 9284 1982.
Contact Rebecca Coghlan, Economic Growth (Place and Markets) on 07904 436310 or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
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Mission For Markets is a campaign run jointly by NABMA and NMTF