EIC and BTC tenants joined together today for the 2023 Xmas lunch of turkey baps and minced pies.
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Congratulations to the STEM Workshop – on milestone birthday
The STEM Workshop has recently taken up residence within the e-Innovation centre as the business begins to expand and celebrate its business growth. The company celebrated its ‘5th birthday’ this week which was quite a milestone for its founder Leanne Mee who founded the company in 2017. Leanne is an experienced leader and teacher who has worked in education for over 20 years. Leanne founded The STEM Workshop as a result of the decline of the delivery of Design and Technology and Engineering in schools, she wanted to support more schools and educators in having a wider impact across both Shropshire and the Midlands.
Leanne was invited to a prestigious parliamentary reception last week at the House of Commons in Westminster to be part of the launch of #EngineeringKidsFutures which is a new campaign and report written by The Institute of Engineering and Technology. The report presents some stark facts about the Engineering economy and the state of Engineering education in schools.
What Leanne does at The STEM Workshop already addresses many of these recommendations that have been presented to government, one of which is that Engineering should be taught from primary age and upwards in schools. At The STEM Workshop Engineering and Design and Technology are at the heart of each workshop where children are not only immersed in learning about D&T and Engineering but they are also connected to a career across Engineering to support in raising those aspirations from an early age and breaking down any barriers. The workshops are designed to align to the D&T curriculum but also provide opportunities for children to apply their knowledge from Maths and Science allowing them to contextualise their learning. Teachers are provided with plans and resources following the workshops to allow the learning to embedded and sustained.
See below extracts from a recent workshop where Leanne was working with a group of Year 3 pupils at John Randall Primary in Telford, connecting their learning to mechanical engineering, the pupils were designing and making working models of the great glass elevator.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/12jqJLIER9yPCL19EbIBwhVqwxV9jJHrA/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Gcd93M3J9VbE_uJx_O56Knwww8w5laYP/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZQOILXuaKWeMshqeLE6M_9T9B9T24g55/view?usp=sharing
Since The STEM Workshop founded in 2017 Leanne and her growing team have engaged with over 50,000 young people running workshops both at primary and secondary level, including numerous teacher training workshops and community events. They have a growing number of clients that they work for including The University of Wolverhampton, supporting many community events such as Sci Fest and community days. The Design and Technology Association, In-Comm Training a local apprenticeship training provider running a number of initiatives as part of their community engagement offering, Shropshire Council, Severn Teaching Alliance, Wolverhampton Council. University Centre Shrewsbury, MAKE uk an apprenticeship training centre in Birmingham, Recently gaining a contract with The Royal Academy of Engineering running a funded project for them across 20 schools in the midlands and many more including working with schools direct.
Leanne gained recognition for her work last year, through winning the prestigious Excellence Awards run by The Design and Technology Association for Development of STEM Learning Opportunities which she received at the Savoy Place in London. This year Leanne then became sponsor for the Outstanding pupil award aged 6 – 11years and had the privilege of awarding this award to an extremely talented young man. Leanne is keen to give back to allow for growth within the subject.
To find out more about what we offer at The STEM Workshop explore the website https://thestemworkshop.co.uk or you can follow them on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn.
e-Innovation Centre tenants – Buildfifty5 Anticipate Major Growth
BuildFifty5 Living, part of the well-established project management and construction development company BuildFifty5 Ltd, launched in early 2019 to focus on the redevelopment and improvement of the affordable homes, older persons, and assisted living markets.
“Over the last 17 years we have amassed a wealth of experience working with private and institutional developers and funds. During lockdown, we spent time refining our approach and preparing the ground for what we anticipate being major growth during the next few years,” said Kieran Danby, co-owner of Buildfifty5 Living.
With its team operating from the E-Innovation Centre, BuildFifty5 Living works closely with affordable older persons accommodation, housing and assisted living registered providers to deliver bespoke and affordable homes, which in turn will help to regenerate high streets and communities.
Up to and during lockdown BuildFifty5 Living facilitated a £2.7 million scheme for Citizen Housing (a housing association group that owns and manages 30,000 homes across the West Midlands) for the construction of 24-homes on the site of a former pub in Smethwick. Kieran Danby, co-owner of Buildfifty5 Living, said: “The redevelopment of the Thimblemill Pub site demonstrated how we identify opportunities that benefit from the fresh approach to design, procurement and collaboration we bring. Many companies had overlooked the brownfield site, however, we recognised the opportunity to galvanise a team that successfully overcame the challenges involved and delivered a fully affordable scheme.”
Mr Danby added: “Set against the background of ever-increasing house prices, living costs and pressure on appropriate public services, demand for affordable, supported and specialist housing has never been greater, particularly in the West Midlands and Shropshire.
He adds: “Our approach dares to be different. Our site acquisition strategy is enabling us to be one step ahead of the game. So much so, that we are now helping to re-develop sites within Telford Borough, our own county of Shropshire and much further afield across the UK.
Runners Up in the UK IT Industry Awards 2022
nFocus Testing, the longest established UK-owned testing services provider, are today delighted to announce they were runners up in Services Company of the Year category at the prestigious UK IT Industry Awards.
The UK IT Industry Awards are the UK’s largest and most respected IT industry awards. Presented by the BCS and Computing, the awards are a benchmark for outstanding performance throughout the UK computing industry.
Read more on this here