A Partnership Built on More Than Signage
Two organisations. Almost a century of history between them. And a collaboration that was always going to make sense.
At Hollywood Monster, #MonsterImpact isn’t a tagline.
It’s the standard we hold ourselves to across everything we do. Visual Impact means creating work that can’t be ignored. Executional Excellence means delivering without drama, without excuses, without compromise. Planet Positive means taking responsibility for the environmental footprint of every project. Own the Outcome means solving problems rather than passing them on.
And Community Champion means this: that the impact of what we do reaches beyond the job. That we invest in people, build careers, develop skills, and create opportunity, not just within our own walls but in the communities we work in.
The partnership with Better Pathways is Community Champion in action.
How it started
LoveBrum brought them together. The Birmingham charity that champions the people, places and projects that make the city worth caring about connected Hollywood Monster Chairman and LoveBrum founder, Tim Andrews MBE, with Better Pathways, and two conversations in, something clicked. Better Pathways had been running their working signage operation and social enterprise, out of Digbeth for years.
Hollywood Monster had been building one of the UK’s most capable large-format print, signage and digital screen facilities in Tyseley for over three decades. The connection was obvious. But how to make it work? And work long-term for the benefit of the people they serve and the clients that trust them?
Hollywood Monster has been part of the construction and property signage market for over 35 years. Long-standing relationships with major contractors. A technical infrastructure that includes some of the most advanced large-format print equipment in the UK. A track record of delivering at scale, at pace, and without drama.
Over the past few years, social value has rightly become a genuine commercial factor in how large contractors choose their supply chain. It shapes procurement decisions, sits inside tender scoring, and carries real weight in how major construction and infrastructure businesses evaluate the partners they work with. For Hollywood Monster, with the depth of capability and track record it has, that shift prompted a straightforward question: what does our social value story look like, and does it reflect what we actually believe?
Better Pathways: sixty years of doing something important
Better Pathways is a mental health charity based in Digbeth, Birmingham.
They’ve been there since the mid 70’s, which means they were quietly changing lives in this city long before social value became a procurement category.
The charity runs two social enterprises: Better Packing and Better Signage. These are working commercial operations, delivering real projects for housing associations, construction firms and corporate clients.
They are also the vehicles through which Better Pathways delivers its vital vocational pathways programme, built on something the charity has understood for a long time: that work, paid or voluntary, is good for mental health and wellbeing.
Around 130 people come through Better Pathways every week. Some are on the Employment Preparation Pathway, a structured programme designed to help people get ready for the job search journey. Some are supported volunteers rebuilding confidence and routine after a long time out of work. Some come with social care budgets, choosing Better Pathways over a traditional day centre.
Everyone arrives with different needs and different starting points. The programme meets them there.
Sue Roberts, Chief Executive of Better Pathways, describes it plainly. “For some people, just not being isolated, feeling like they’re giving something back, feeling great about themselves – that’s enough.
For others, it’s about going into employment. Everyone comes here with different needs.”
The numbers give a sense of the scale. Better Pathways’ participants contributed over 27,400 volunteer hours in 2024/25 alone. But the most honest measure of what the charity does is found in the individual stories.
There’s an apprentice working in Better Signage right now who came through one of Better Pathways’ employment programmes at a point when he was genuinely struggling with his mental health. Getting there before lunchtime was a challenge.
Sustaining effort through the day was harder still. Better Pathways worked with him and brought him on as an apprentice in the signage division. He flourished. Recently, he emailed Sue to tell her what the experience had meant to his life.
Naseem Taswar, Service Delivery Manager at Better Pathways, puts it simply. “We transform somebody’s life. That’s what we do here. You literally can’t buy that.”
What the partnership looks like in practice
The scale of the two operations is different, and that’s precisely what makes the partnership work. Hollywood Monster takes on the large, complex, high-volume briefs. Better Signage handles work that continues to expand as its capacity, capability and growth journey, but every project that comes through Better Signage’s door is also an opportunity for the people working on it.
Better Pathways’ participants will spend time at Hollywood Monster’s Tyseley facility, getting hands-on experience across one of the Midlands’ most technically advanced print operations. Hollywood Monster’s team will work alongside them, sharing knowledge, building skills, and giving people on Better Pathways’ vocational programme real insight into what a large-scale commercial print and signage business looks like from the inside. The structure will follow the work rather than the other way around.
“We chose Better Pathways because of who they are and what they’ve built over sixty years,” says Tim Andrews MBE, Chairman of Hollywood Monster. “The signage connection matters. But it’s the depth of their community impact, and the fact that they’ve been doing this work long before it was fashionable to care about it, that made this the right choice. When LoveBrum brought our worlds together, it didn’t take long to see what we could build.”
What it means for Hollywood Monster and Better Pathways customers
For clients with ESG commitments, the social pillar is often the hardest to evidence in a way that feels genuine. Choosing a supply chain partner whose work directly supports people back into employment, week in, week out, is one of the clearest ways to demonstrate that your business is making decisions that go beyond the bottom line.
Working with Hollywood Monster means your projects are contributing to Better Pathways’ vocational programmes in a direct and evidenced way. We can tell you clearly what that contribution looks like, in employment pathways supported, volunteer hours generated, and outcomes achieved, in a form that’s useful for your own ESG reporting.
If that matters to how your business operates and who you choose to work with, we’d like to talk.
This is the beginning
There’s no end date on this partnership. No milestone at which either organisation considers the job done. Both sides are committed to building something that gets stronger over time, measuring what works, and being honest when things need adjusting.
If you’d like to know more about the Better Pathways partnership, or you want to talk about what it could mean for your projects, we’d love to hear from you.
