Winner announced for Centre for Enterprise Leadership Programme

BUSINESS guru Martin Kirby declared Manchester’s Got Talent when he awarded a place on the regional flagship business leadership course LEAD to a group of local songwriters.

Martin, who is regionally responsible for the UK’s 7th largest accountancy and financial advisory practice RSM Tenon, was judging a business leadership development competition for Manchester Metropolitan University Business School.

And his vote went to the Northern Song Collective, a co-operative of Manchester writers, artists and producers bidding to break into the multi-million pound music industry.

“It’s quite a quirky choice”, admits Martin. “Rather than just play gigs and send songs to producers, these guys have shown real enterprise. They set up a collective business to create a web magazine; a music channel and so on to promote themselves.

“I like this. It is entrepreneurial, they have a clear picture of what they are trying to achieve, and demonstrate real ambition!”

Jimmy Docherty, from the collective says the website will act as a monthly magazine where labels, publishers and artists can listen to the Collective’s songs from that given month. The site will be fully interactive and will allow site-visitors to vote for their favourite tracks by using song-counters.

“We already have the help and backing from Ronan Keating’s manager Mark Plunkett, also the MD of Ronan’s publishers, Stuart Hornall, as well as Sean Divine, vice-president of ASCAP.

“All we need now is the right inspiration and support to kick-off,” he says.

The MMU competition challenged local businesses with less than 20 employees to win a £2,000 sponsorship package plus a place on the School’ s prestigious leadership development programme, called LEAD.

The LEAD programme is a 10-month practical leadership journey focused on growing businesses by building leadership talent.

Kate Goodman, Reserve Wines, a current LEAD delegate says: “Being a business owner can be very lonely. Having the discipline of meeting other business owners, once every couple of weeks, means we can really talk and go through issues to solve in our business. I get great feedback from people who are in the same situation, who understand.. for me has been really, really powerful and I am really, really enjoying it. I am developing personally as well as on a business level, which has been a great process for me.”