Blog: VASL attended Future Focus 2025 Posted on Thursday, 23 October 2025

One hundred charity workers and trustees from across Leicester City and Leicestershire met at VAL’s (Voluntary Action Leicestershire) annual Future Focus conference, to discuss how the Voluntary and Community Sector (VCS) could become more sustainable, inclusive and digital.

The day began with an inspirational speaker, Andy Pierce, who explained how he had set up a charity which uses the power of horticulture to help improve people’s mental health and wellbeing through: nature walks, yoga/tai chi outdoor sessions, doing breathwork, nurturing plants and bees and providing a safe haven. Results have been so impactful that Andy has a vision to incorporate mental health awareness across the school system starting with using persona dolls to inspire children in the Early Years with nature stories and then in Key Stages 1 and 2 developing an animated character to talk about the link between health and the environment. In Key stage 3, this learning will be reinforced through real people sharing their stories of transformation. “I would like all pupils to leave schools with the skills of Mental Health First Aiders.”

Next, the ‘State of the Sector’ session used interactive technology (e.g. mentimeter) to gather the views of delegates on topics like what issues were increasing expenditure for charities, how sustainable charities felt in the current challenging funding climate, how many partnerships charities engaged in, and what benefits and challenges these brought. Other areas explored how many charities worked with the public sector, and how many had policies on AI, Accessibility, a Digital Strategy and Environmental Action Plans. These responses were then collated into word clouds and response scales giving an indication of both the strength of the sector and diversity of opinions. Group discussions on each table enabled delegates to share their experiences from the ground.

Workshops about the current local government reorganisation and its implications for the VCS, how to increase the accessibility of charities for all people with protected characteristics, how charities could utilise unused buildings and how to enhance the use of digital technologies in the volunteering journey; these all gave delegates a chance to share experiences and develop their practice. The digital workshop explored how digital technologies could be used to scale activity (e.g. micro volunteering) to engage more people; how processes could be streamlined for efficiency (e.g. volunteer recruitment) and explore how the customer experience of volunteering could be improved (e.g. through regular volunteer dialogue and community building via What’s App or online tea breaks).

A vital part of the conference was the opportunity to network, to catch up with existing contacts and make new ones. VAL also held their AGM during the day enabling all to hear about the challenges and achievements of the previous year, and plans for the new year, including the further expansion of the VCS Chief Executives Officers Peer support network.

As always, Future Focus.

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