The University of Sunderland has a long history of supporting enterprising students and graduates and has been recognised in the 2021 Knowledge Exchange Framework as the top university in the Northeast for graduate start-ups, and in the top 30% nationally.

The University is committed to providing an inspiring, enterprising and empowering experience for its students, graduates and staff. As well as entrepreneurial skills and initiatives being delivered across a range of programmes, it offers extracurricular start-up support to inspire and encourage a future generation of entrepreneurs; engaging students from the very first seed of an idea and supporting them throughout their business journey.

The enterprise offer at Sunderland is delivered through dedicated facilities, the Enterprise Place and Digital Incubator, and offers a pathway for prestart, early trading businesses and freelancers. It inspires students & graduates to discover entrepreneurial skills via idea challenges and competitions.

With start-up courses, networking events and inspirational masterclasses, the offer provides not only professional, co-working spaces which encourage peer support, but also the business knowledge to research, test and launch an idea. Seed and accelerator funding is also available to help remove financial barriers to start-up.

Based in the University’s commercial hub, Hope Street Xchange building on the University’s City Campus, the Enterprise Place situates its members in the heart of its Centre for Enterprise and Innovation amongst SME’s and the regions first FabLab.

In 2020 the University was successful in expanding its enterprise offer, through funding, to create a University Enterprise Zone in Sunderland which aimed to strengthen cooperative ties between higher education and businesses in the region. The Digital Incubator opened in July 2020 and compliments the existing Enterprise Place offer. The incubator, based in the heart of the Sir Tom Cowie Campus at St Peter’s, is brand new with state-of-the-art facilities and equipment providing a comfortable co-working space, dedicated academic mentoring and links to the University’s mediaHUB.

The University of Sunderland in London offers a range of enterprise support to students and graduates. The Business Enterprise Course gives students the foundation to launch their business ideas, with additional 1-1 guidance, coaching and mentoring and some ad hoc speaker webinars on enterprise topics. Entrepreneurial skills are embedded in the skills framework, which is turn is being mapped across all programmes.

Main Contact: Tim Pain

London Campus Contact: Cassie Wood