Opus becomes Patron Member of the Sheffield Social Enterprise Network
Sheffield, May 2026: The Sheffield Social Enterprise Network (SSEN) is pleased to announce that Opus has joined SSEN as a Patron Member, formalising a long-standing relationship rooted in shared values, systems thinking, and a commitment to building a fairer and more resilient future for the city.
Opus is a Sheffield-based worker-owned social enterprise that works to create and support responses to urgent systemic challenges through storytelling, convening, and demonstrating new possibilities in practice. Originally established through music and poetry events in the city, the organisation has evolved into one of Sheffield’s most distinctive civic and systems-focused organisations, working locally and nationally across areas including community resilience, climate, democracy, culture and economic transition.
The partnership reflects a deep alignment between the two organisations and builds on years of collaboration across events, media, public conversations and systems-focused work connected to Sheffield’s social enterprise ecosystem and wider civic infrastructure.
This has included shared work around the Sheffield City Goals, developed by Opus alongside Dark Matter Labs, as well as broader efforts to strengthen understanding of where value sits within the economy, how social enterprise contributes to long-term systemic change, and how we can better align impact, finance and delivery.
As a Patron Member, Opus joins a small group of organisations helping to support the shared infrastructure that underpins Sheffield’s social enterprise and wider VCFSE ecosystem. Patron Membership helps resource the connective, developmental and advocacy work that often sits outside commissioned programmes but plays a vital role in enabling collaboration, experimentation and long-term systems change.
The relationship between SSEN and Opus has also helped create a wide range of connections across the city and beyond, strengthening collaboration between social enterprises, cultural organisations, anchor institutions and wider stakeholders interested in Sheffield’s future economy.
Terry Murphy, CEO of SSEN, said:
“We’re really pleased to welcome Opus as a Patron Member. In reality, this builds on a relationship and alignment that has already existed for a long time. Opus has consistently played an important role in helping create the conditions for different conversations, collaborations and possibilities to emerge across the city.
What makes this partnership particularly meaningful is the shared understanding that a lot of the most important work happens in the spaces between formal programmes and structures. Convening people, building relationships, creating space for ideas to develop, shifting narratives and helping connect different parts of the system together. Patron Membership helps us continue to resource and hold that space collectively.”
James Lock, Co-founder and Director at Opus Independents, said:
“We’ve worked with SSEN for many years on a variety of projects, so we’re really proud to put that relationship down on paper and become a Patron Member of the network. A healthy and diverse social enterprise sector will play a vital role as we transition towards local economies that prioritise human flourishing as well as the more-than-human world. We’re looking forward to continuing to work both with SSEN and many of its other member organisations to develop new civic infrastructures in South Yorkshire that will allow us to make better decisions and to sense into the complexity of the challenges we face. ”
SSEN’s Patron Membership is designed for organisations that want to play an active role in supporting Sheffield’s social enterprise and wider VCFSE ecosystem, while helping strengthen the shared infrastructure, relationships and long-term conditions that enable social and economic change.