Enterprise on the campus

The University of Teesside will be hosting a business breakfast for members of the local branch of the North East Chamber of Commerce on Thursday 17 November to coincide with Enterprise Week.

The event will take place in the University’s Centre for Enterprise, Victoria Road, Middlesbrough, at 7.45 am and will be hosted by Laura Woods, Director of Academic Enterprise at the University. The breakfast will be attended by two of the University’s newly appointed business development managers, Geoff Archer and Judith Brown, who will give some examples of how the University is directly working with companies in the region and take part in a question and answer session. For more information e-mail cfe@tees.ac.uk.

Enterprise Week runs from 14-20th November and is a national celebration highlighting the importance of enterprise, especially to young people.

The University of Teesside has helped to establish 70 new companies in Middlesbrough since launching its pioneering scheme to help graduates set up their own businesses on campus.

The Upgrade² Graduate Enterprise initiative is managed by Maurice Tinkler from the Victoria Building - renovated at a cost of £1.2m with support from the European Regional Development Fund and One NorthEast.

The building is now the hub for 20 start-up businesses being incubated on campus at any one time.

And it is not just office space that is provided, but also advice and support to students thinking of taking the entrepreneurial plunge.

Just as important are the links to other university initiatives, such as DigitalCity, and the access to the pool of talented students who are always eager for part-time freelance work in fields like animation and computer graphics.

In June, the initiative got the Royal seal of approval when the Duke of York met some of graduates who have set up their own companies in the Victoria Building.

Among those meeting Prince Andrew were Sara Waters, 24, from Middlesbrough, Matt Sibley, 22, from Stockton and Richard Himsworth, 24, from East Cleveland.

They are unique because they actually formed their company, Fake Believe, while still students after getting to know each-other on their degree courses with the University’s highly-rated School of Computing. Sara and Richard studied Creative Visualisation while Matt studied Computer Animation.

Their company creates computer-generated 3D visualisations for sales promotions, television broadcast companies and educational CD-Rom packages. Projects created so far include a 3D representation of Middlesbrough Football Club’s Riverside Stadium to show its inner-workings, a virtual ‘fly-over’ of Beijing for a cable TV channel and a virtual tour of a new conferencing facility in the Middle East.

“We launched Fake Believe at the start of our ‘sandwich’ year in September 2003. Usually your sandwich year is a work placement out in industry; but we decided to have a go at establishing our own business with the help of the University’s Graduate Enterprise scheme,” explained Sara.

The trio will be receiving their degrees at the University’s graduation ceremony in Middlesbrough Town Hall later this month.

And this month also sees them ‘flying the business incubation nest’ by relocating to Aurora Court at Middlesbrough’s Riverside Park, where they will be alongside other new digital businesses such as Nisai, Onyx and Amazing Interactives.

“Our turnover has gone up five-fold to £100,000 since our first year of trading and we need more space to expand,” said Matt.

Richard added: “We are very grateful for all the help we received from the University, especially in the early days when we needed assistance with things like a business plan. The creative mentoring and contacts made through the DigitalCity network have also proved invaluable,” said Richard.

He says being based in Middlesbrough has great advantages. “There’s a pool of talented young people coming out of the University who we can hire on a freelance basis for particular contracts and rents are so much cheaper here. In an industry like ours we do everything by email or over the Internet, so it doesn’t really matter whether you are in Bristol, London or Middlesbrough. And of course, we can draw on the support of the people involved with the DigitalCity project whenever we need to.”

Maurice Tinkler, Upgrade² Graduate Enterprise manager, said: “Fake Believe is the latest company to graduate from the Teesside business incubator centre. They have grown rapidly and have a strong track record in the field of animation and digital media and I am sure they will go from strength to strength.”

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