power station GROWTH FUND
The Powerful Community Benefit Society Limited are undertaking a share issue to complete our feature documentary Power Station with the goal of £250 000
The Powerful Community Benefit Society is a Community Benefit Society registered under the Co-operative and Community Benefit Societies Act with the Financial Conduct Authority (MO46209) The registered address is 107 Lynmouth Road, London E17 8AG.
By subscribing for shares issued by the society in this share offer you will become a member of it thus and owner of the society and its assets along with other members. Our rules and other supporting documents are available on our website: www.power.film/PowerStationFilmShares
WHO WE ARE AND WHAT WE DO
Power Station is a scalable ‘show and do’ project building grassroots power whilst challenging those in power to act. Beginning in lockdown, the project has so far brought solar to 5 local schools and 16 houses on Lynmouth Road, Walthamstow through a mixture of crowdfunding and partnership with Solar for Schools.
The idea of every viable building in Britain producing its own energy is a beautiful and infectious one that has underpinned this work. Importantly it has led us to a “street by street” vision for organising a transition. We have created a network of 50 streets across Britain that all want to do the same - diverse communities in locations as far-reaching as Swansea, the coast of Northern Ireland, Glasgow and the South West.
Putting people and planet above profit, we want every building, regardless of tenure, to get energy and heat from renewables, to get insulated and to get to own a part of this and to benefit from it.
We want to scale our operations and the first step towards this is to complete our feature documentary of the Power Station story and call to action for a Summer 2025 release. We aim for it to be seen by over a million people up and down the country in cinemas, village halls, churches and online.
OUR IMMEDIATE PLAN
Our feature documentary is almost finished - we are 75% of the way there - but completing it is difficult without raising more cash. Getting the feature film completed and out there is the cornerstone of our marketing plan to grow our community benefit society and increase our income - not to make ourselves rich - but rather to have a positive impact on our community - while also being paid fairly and having some security as cultural workers.
We’ve applied to every fund we could to complete the film, we’ve got a few but many we haven’t. Waiting around for funds is incredibly expensive and has no doubt cost us almost a year. This is a typical situation for many films, they are prevented from getting to the public by well-intentioned bureaucrats and gatekeepers presiding over small pots of money while fending off important projects. But we are determined for our message to get out and for our film to be seen.
We have also applied to the BFI audience fund to help us raise the money for an ambitious cinema release. Again we can’t simply rely on hope that they give us this money.
So our proposal is to raise a pot of money to finish the film and start to fund the distribution of the film and get our next projects started.
We have ambitious plans to scale our operations and bring new projects to life that impact the UK cultural conversation at a critical time. To grow and sustain this we must do one thing at a time.
OUR CBS HAS BEEN DORMANT UP TILL NOW – AND INSTEAD WE HAVE BEEN DOING MOST OF OUR BUSINESS THROUGH OPTIMISTIC FOUNDATION CIC (Community Interest Company). NOW WE WANT OUR CBS TO TAKE ON THE WORK. OUR CBS:
· Is built from long term engagement with the contested sites of East London.
· Believes in the power of artists to help shape the dominant stories of our times.
· Empowers action through education and creativity and makes the space for this to thrive.
· Deploys a variety of cultural practices to argue for and create a more socially, economically and environmentally just world around us.
· Makes big issues accessible to wide audiences.
· Makes transformative action contagious in the midst of turmoil and uncertainty.
The CBS is led by artist and filmmaker Hilary Powell and Dan Edelstyn. Our core but multifaceted project is building a POWER STATION and involves a diverse team across community engagement, online movement and membership site building, art and film production and local and national partnerships and collaborations– from solar to food growing co-ops, community organisers, artists and economists – all imagining, growing and building thriving communities and world.
