Brightwayz Over the Years
Brightwayz started life as Brightkidz - a social enterprise inspired by our founder Alison’s experience of organising a ‘walking bus’ scheme at her son’s school in 2003.
Recognising other parents’ needed help to run their own walk to school initiatives, she set up the social enterprise to offer practical information and resources to support them. Bright waistcoats, stickers and badges were some of the first products developed and the range quickly grew.
Supporting Active Travel Campaigns Across the UK
Very soon local authorities from across the UK heard about Brightkidz and became regular customers, using the engaging, customisable products to support and promote their own active travel and road safety schemes - not just for children but for adults too. Brightkidz, now known as Brightwayz, provides UK-wide information support and products alongside local consultancy services to help workplaces, councils, schools and communities make their active travel schemes a success.
Local Projects to Understand Our Customers
In 2022, with the support of Cycling UK and Sport England, we set up Kettering Community Cycle Club to enable local people to have a go cycling out and about in a safe group. Alongside that we also launched the trial of the Kettering Active Travel Hub in partnership with Kettering’s Royal Hotel - providing free, manned indoor cycle parking on key event days alongside other active travel activities.
We lead on a host of many other local grassroots projects, proudly helping make real changes in our local community, and as a result using this experience to serve our national customers better - because we truly understand their issues and challenges they face.
Ambassadors for Social Enterprise
As well as being successful in our active travel endeavours, we are also keen to promote the ‘social enterprise’; way of doing business and support others in this. We established and proudly head up the North Northants Social Enterprise (NNSE) network – a network of fellow social enterprises in our county.