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Day: 24 March 2016

Win £10,000 for your startup through Venture Further

Written by Charlie Spargo on . Posted in Features.

The Manchester Enterprise Centre’s (MEC) Venture Further scheme is a business startup competition hoping to find some of the best business idea proposals which have the most potential for success.

Entrants can win up to £10,000 in four categories: business, social, digital and research. Business proposals have the potential for commercial success through a new product or service, social proposals are those that can improve the lives of people and communities, digital proposals apply technology for new experiences and innovative opportunities, and research proposals focus on the application of university-based research to real-world problems.

The winners of each category receive £10,000 to implement their proposal, while a runner-up in each section receives £2,500.

The deadline for entry to the first round of applications is the 29th of March at 23:59. Proposals that make it to the final round will pitch their idea to panels of experts such as Professor Luke Georghiou, Vice-President for Research and Innovation; Professor Kenneth McPhail, Associate Dean Social Responsibility; Professor Chris Taylor, Associate Vice-President Research; and Kris Matykiewicz, Head of Business Engagement.

 

Below are two case studies of previous Venture Further winners, Jenny Berry and Olumayowa ‘Mayor’ Osundeko.

Photo: Manchester Enterprise Centre / Weber Shandwick

Jenny, Your Own Words creator

Poet and English Language student Jenny Berry has always recognised the power words had on people and while studying at the University of Manchester, she used her undergraduate research project to create ‘Your Own Words’, an initiative which she hopes will help rehabilitate prisoners and other vulnerable populations in the Greater Manchester area.

For many years, Jenny has written bespoke poetry for others helping them voice their feelings through her writing. Through creating words for speeches, funerals and many other events she has seen first-hand how poetry can help people to heal by expressing their emotions.

Your Own Words is a creative poetry programme which has been run in the Salford-based prison, HMP Forest Bank. Jenny’s philosophy is to encourage prisoners to express themselves through a creative release, rather than a physical one.

Last year, Jenny submitted a business proposal for the programme to Manchester Enterprise Centre’s annual Venture Further competition. Your Own Words impressed the judges and she won a £10,000 prize to develop her idea further. Jenny now hopes to adapt the sessions for other prisons across the country, as she believes it will help towards tackling problems such as drug and alcohol addiction. Furthermore, these sessions can be used in schools and the corporate sector to enable effective communication.

“I’m really passionate about helping people, particularly in relation to rehabilitation. There’s no point in letting a prisoner out if they go on to reoffend. If I can help people to help themselves, I will,” Jenny explained.

Jenny hopes to use her seed funding to introduce community classes for released prisoners and wants to introduce her concept to the Ministry of Defence and other settings to help with communication and well-being.

“In a typical hour and a half session, we work with eight to ten inmates. We talk through published poems, rap and song lyrics and what they mean to them. Then encourage them to write raw poems of their own.

“I’m really grateful to the Manchester Enterprise Centre because in a very short time I’ve had a lot of support from them to refine my business plan. Over the last year I’ve been on many training courses offered and have managed to link my dissertation to business development. Both Alliance Manchester Business School and Manchester University have been extremely supportive.

“I believe Your Own Words is an idea that can live on in various formats and I’m delighted to have been given the opportunity to develop it through Venture Further.”

Jenny has also worked with primary and high school pupils, delivering master classes in poetry and inspiring youngsters to write their own poems.

 

Photo: Manchester Enterprise Centre / Weber Shandwick

Mayor, Joy & Joe creator

Entrepreneur Mayor Osundeko created his award-winning manufacturing business Joy & Joe when he identified a gap in the baby carrier market following the births of his two children.

Mayor Osundeko and his wife Bisi spent a lot of time in neonatal intensive care in 2007 when their daughter Joy was born with Down’s syndrome. During this time, the couple observed how important physical contact and affection was to help children develop.

They used their knowledge of kangaroo care—a technique where babies are bound skin-to-skin to their parents, helping to facilitate infant development and happiness – to create their own product.

The inspiration for Joy & Joe baby carriers was born, but it wasn’t until 2009 that the couple would pursue their business dream, following the birth of their son Joseph, the “Joe” in Joy & Joe.

The couple recognised that there were very few kangaroo care carriers available on the market and of those that existed, none were manufactured in the UK. The Bolton-based couple set up Joy & Joe Ltd. in 2013, where they design baby carriers and work with weavers and tailors in the North West to create the products, ensuring the whole manufacturing process remains 100% British.

Joy & Joe’s proposition is clearly one that worked. In its first year, the company turned over £47,500 and made a £10,000 profit. The carriers are currently used in the NHS and sold in the UK as well as through retail channels globally.

In 2015 Mayor put a business plan together to expand his current offering further. He entered the plan into Manchester Enterprise Centre’s Venture Further competition, where his proposal won an investment of £10,000 to further his business.

Upon winning the competition Mayor said: “We are investing £10,000 into developing our packaging, which is at the moment only really suitable for online customers. We intend to launch the product on the high street this year and expand our accessory range.

“We’ve gained a lot from entering Venture Further and the team at Manchester Enterprise Centre has taught us a lot about how to present our product and how to build our brand. We’ve also gathered useful tips and trends from them which will help our business grow.”

 

Enter Venture Further before the 29th of March.

Manchester Students’ Union calls upon university to reverse its plans to cut bursaries

Written by Charlie Spargo on . Posted in News.

In a petition to the University of Manchester, the Students’ Union has directly called for Higher Education to be made accessible to all.

The petition ‘Make Higher Education accessible to all, and reverse plans to cut bursaries!’ was launched at 12pm on the 23rd of March, and calls on students to add their voices to the campaign to stop the cuts.

“From 2017-18, The University of Manchester are planning to cut bursaries for their poorest students by £500 pounds per year. This cut of 20% for the students most in need will bring down the yearly amount from £2500 to £2000; a significant amount which equates to nearly two months’ rent.

“Currently negotiating their next Access Agreement with OFFA (Office for Fair Access), the University are responding to increasing government cuts in Higher Education by reducing the amount of financial support that it offers to undergraduate students who come from a household with an income of £25,000 or under.

“We recognise the strains that the government are placing on educational institutions, but the Students’ Union vehemently opposes the University’s plans.

“This decision unfairly punishes and burdens worse off students, and does nothing to ease the injustice of the attainment gap that currently afflicts students from poorer backgrounds.”

According to the petition, 23.9 per cent of the university’s students are from widening participation backgrounds, that is, young people from lower socio-economic backgrounds, low-participation schools, families with no prior entrants into HE, those with a disability, and a number of other disadvantaged groups.

The SU asks that the university do “not just play lip service [sic]” to making Higher Education accessible, and that they do not reduce the financial support to underprivileged students.

A University of Manchester spokesperson said: “When reviewing the University’s Access Agreement, any changes are done in the context of government funding and policy changes. Over the past few years the University has had to respond to significant cuts to government funding in this area, whilst maintaining its commitment to providing one of the most generous student financial support packages in the Russell Group.

:A third of new students receive financial support each year and we have the highest numbers of students from low participation neighbourhoods and lower-socio economic groups of any Russell Group University. Any decision about changes to bursary support for new students joining the University in 2017 will not be taken lightly and the University is in regular discussion with Students’ Union representatives to find the best possible solution.”

Is hype everything?

Written by Stephen Lewis on . Posted in Games.

Last November was a busy month for the gaming industry, with numerous big releases coming to all platforms. Fallout 4 was perhaps the most hyped of all of these releases and I, like many others, was caught up in it. I wasn’t a big fan of Oblivion and even though I liked Fallout 3, I just never got hooked—however Skyrim was a different story. The atmosphere was much more inviting with the mountainous visuals and masterful soundtrack keeping me occupied for many hours, and I even bought the expansions. It was perhaps a bit of an issue for Bethesda that this was their first big release since Skyrim—not including Elder Scrolls online. Skyrim had made quite an impact on the games that have come out since. Metal Gear Solid V and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt were two of the best games to come out last year and they were the first in their respective franchises to go fully open world.

I bought Fallout 4 within a week of its release hoping that the change from Oblivion to Skyrim would be recreated in the jump from Fallout 3 to to Fallout 4, going so far as to even buy the season pass as—from what I had seen of the game—it would take up a lot of time and be a thoroughly enjoyable experience. But this hasn’t turned out as I expected, not through lack of enjoyment, but perhaps it was due to an exhaustion of open world games for the time being.

A week or two later, Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition was on sale on Xbox Live for £4 and I knew the sequel had come out, but it had gotten lost in the pile of November games. As a much more linear, story-driven game with one primary goal, I spent more time on this and once I got to the end of the story I stopped playing, but I did not go back to Fallout… I decided to finally finish off Witcher and Metal Gear first, and once that was done, and I wanted another break from open world games. Rise of the Tomb Raider was offered at half price over Christmas, so I picked that up and got back into a more plot-driven game, already equaling my playtime with Fallout.

Fallout 4, Photo: Bethesda Softworks

I still haven’t gone back to Bethesda’s newest creation but I’m sure that I will at some point, hopefully before the DLC comes out. But this raises the question, can hype sometimes be bad, even if the game itself is good? Hype is obviously bad if a game doesn’t reach the expectations that have been built around it, but perhaps it shifts the spotlight away from more deserving games, and not just indie games compared to AAA releases. I have seen Rise of the Tomb Raider on more ‘Best Games of 2015’ lists than Fallout 4, and when they are both in the running, Tomb Raider usually seems to be higher.

I’m not saying Fallout 4 is a bad game when compared to Tomb Raider as they are very different games, but surely they are both deserving of high praise. This has not been reflected in the sales numbers, but Rise of the Tomb Raider was initially available on Xbox One and 360 only—with a PC release that happened in the January just gone, and the PS4 version is due to a release for next Christmas. If you haven’t tried it already, I recommend this series, and if you can’t currently play it as you only have a PS4, then it should be worth the wait.