Newcastle: Start up support goes international

Newcastle University’s  virtual START UP Connect networking event was attended by students from across the UK, including the London campus and encouraged more introverted students to come forward, as seen in this highlights video. Likewise, their START UP 101 workshop had its largest audience to date with attendees tuning in from India, Pakistan, Spain, Norway, Austria and across the UK. The University’s START UP team continues to provide bespoke coaching for students and graduates seeking to start a business, freelance or portfolio career with virtual 121 appointments and online events. Extra outreach work is being done to help student and graduate businesses navigate their individual business challenges whilst maintaining their entrepreneurial community spirit.

 

University of East London: 2020 EFactor winner announced

Malcolm Collins, a Sports Science with Strength and Conditioning student at UEL, was crowned the winner of the University’s EFactor 2020 competition recently. Malcolm’s winning idea, The Neuro Sports Clinic, supports patients with neurodegenerative diseases, post diagnoses. Malcolm said, “Four years ago I had an idea to use my passion, to help other people. Winning the EFactor will now bring The Neuro Sports Clinic to life. The life skills learnt will stay with me for years.” Kadeza Begum, EFactor Project Manager, said, “This year’s EFactor has posed many challenges as well as opportunities. Although the current pandemic affected our application numbers, we still managed to reach a total number of 119 students apply. Read the full story here.

 

Wales: Summer Start-Up Week – A country-wide collaboration

As welsh institutions closed campuses a chance email ‘anyone fancy collaborating to deliver sessions digitally – a pan Wales start-up week?’ resulted in an unprecedented 22 FE/HE institution collaboration. Funding, time, networks, knowledge and experience were pooled to create a new virtual event within 10 weeks. The resulting web-site, branding, social media, speaker line-up, event co-ordination attracted 500+ participants and 300+ thriving Facebook community. A phenomenal collaborative achievement, excellent engagement and feedback has already led to further collaborative plans for GEW, a virtual Christmas market and SSUW21. The SSUW legacy of ‘collaboration in isolation’ will undoubtedly live on at a time when entrepreneurial spirit is needed more than ever.

 

Nottingham: YES20 – open for applications

For 25 years, entrepreneurs at the YES workshops have walked the team through their personal start-up journeys and how they have had to pivot their businesses out of necessity to keep afloat. Since late March, necessity has made us all pivot, and the unknown variables means multiple scenarios are being planned by us all. This is definitely where the YES team is with YES20. Their autumn dates are still in the diary, and alternative dates for residential workshops have now been scheduled in case they are unable to deliver due to lockdown measures. First call deadline Friday 19 June and second call deadline Friday 31 July. For more details and to register, click here.