The Conduit’s 2023 Impact Report

Where do I begin? I’m not exaggerating when I say that the past year has been truly monumental for The Conduit. For starters, London is thriving — and you can feel it when you walk through our doors. In September, we celebrated two years since the opening of The Conduit in Covent Garden. Shortly after, we held a grand opening event for our second club in Oslo, Norway. Aside from those huge milestones, we continued to operate as a serendipitous space for ambitious changemakers to meet, mingle, and form meaningful connections and partnerships.

While we celebrate a fantastic year for our organisation, I’m acutely aware of the huge number of underlying stresses in the world. Democracy is under threat, conflicts raging across the globe, while others bubble under the surface. We’re faced with growing debt and inequality, and a climate crisis that is worse than ever. The Covid-19 pandemic may be behind us, but we’re fooling ourselves if we think antibiotic-resistant superbugs will not come knocking at some point. I don’t mean to say all this to leave you with a sense of doom, but rather as a rallying cry. Faced with the picture of a world in crisis, the task for us becomes a more urgent one, the responses we form must become even more robust. It’s never been more imperative for us to embody the change we wish to see in the world.

How do we go about doing that, you ask? Well, there are a number of ways, including doing our best to achieve net carbon neutrality at The Conduit. We employ a range of rather geeky tactics to optimise our building’s energy use, especially avoiding energy waste during hours out of operation. Optimising our approach to food at The Conduit has also been essential. We operate a net carbon neutral restaurant by promoting plant-based menus, reducing and eliminating the use of single-use plastics, and offsetting what we emit. But we’re also trying to think bigger than individual solutions, and contribute to a systemic change in the food space all the way along the supply chain.

We’re also embodying the change we wish to see through The Conduit Foundation, which allows us to guide more informed and strategic giving. We’ve been able to use our extensive networks to connect philanthropists and philanthropic foundations with organisations doing incredible work. We supported a member’s organisation to give away a million euros in 2023, and this year we're going to do that again.
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Our shared belief in the power of bringing people together is part of why I’m so proud of our programme of talks. We held 160 across our spaces in London and Oslo in 2023 that were attended by 10,000 people, hosting phenomenal speakers like Malala Yusufzai, Christiana Figueres, and Greta Thunberg. A personal highlight of mine was hosting Afua Hirsch, who is one of my personal heroes. It was a pleasure to hold space for discussions on decolonising our memory landscape and reimagining our approach to policing.
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Ultimately, we can make the greatest change simply by existing, living up to our name, and truly acting as a conduit. Our ambitious proposition – our theory of change – remains the same. I truly believe that by bringing together a vibrant community of changemakers around a fantastic hospitality business, and modelling the best of sustainability practices, we create real and lasting positive social change.
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A large part of why this document exists is to hold ourselves accountable to our colleagues, members, partners and investors. When we started this business, we pledged to be transparent on matters pertaining to impact and the change we’re driving in the world. I sincerely hope that these stories, quotes, statistics, and reflections go some way in fulfilling that pledge, and that you come away feeling as proud to be a member of this vibrant community as I am.