Our Story

Developing learning communities

Contented emerged in 1999 from a community of entrepreneurs, investors and advisors who felt intuitively that society needn't be the way it was. So they set out to learn about change.

While developing stakeholder communities for corporate clients across Europe, a call came from a small town in rural England building a wireless broadband network to enable better interaction among locals and the outside world.

We discovered that partnerships across business, education, health and the voluntary sector can catalyse social, environmental and economic development.

Turning our attention to urban council estates, we ran pilot learning projects in a range of unusual locations and developed new business models for collaborating. Ranging from radio to music and film production, we linked these to the national curriculum and adult education.

Then we began to explore how we might mimic nature's use of diversity to facilitate innovation and switched our attention to multicultural projects engaging disadvantaged groups.

Ideas followed for projects in leisure & tourism - including a bankrupt football club - construction, retail and finance, that could help deliver economic and social benefit, as well as supporting the environment.

With schools, colleges and universities striving for a more enterprising culture,
we have designed an incubator to support creative enterprise and encourage sustainable change, where private, public and voluntary enterprises of any size can invest for an ethical return. We call this approach making WAVES.