Press Ahead scoops business award

North East PR and marketing agency Press Ahead has proven it's 'the business', after winning a prestigious regional award.

The Sunderland based agency scooped the Small Business of the Year Award, at the Sunderland Echo Portfolio Business Awards 2009. The award was presented at a glittering ceremony, held at the Stadium of Light.

Press Ahead managing director and If we can, you can member, Russell Borthwick, said: "We felt that as a business, we had made great progress in a difficult trading environment, but that we were still perhaps a little way short of achieving an accolade like this - given the number of excellent small businesses in the area.

"The award is genuinely a team one - reflecting the input of staff and the confidence shown in us by our clients and partners. Just over five years after the business started, this feels like a coming of age - onwards and upwards."

The Small Business of the Year Award is the Portfolio Awards' most hotly contested accolade. Press Ahead beat off competition from a large number of entrants, and was chosen over four other shortlisted companies.

The judges commended Press Ahead on establishing itself as "a leading player in its field, both in the city and on a wider stage", adding that "it has grown its reputation by continually exceeding the expectations of its many clients, from Wearside and beyond".

NORTH-EAST DIGITAL MINDS SET SAIL FOR SWEDEN

Entrepreneurs and business leaders forge new links at conference

Some of the north-east’s most creative business minds are heading off to Sweden next week, with their sights set on forging new links with Scandinavia.

Their destination is the ‘Digital Minds: The Nordic Light’ conference in Gävle, a historic city two hours north of Stockholm.

Speakers at the event include Codeworks CEO Herb Kim, James TerKeurst from the University of Teesside’s Institute of Digital Innovation, and Steve Blanks of Newcastle-based Fat Frog Media.

A number of the region’s digital creative businesses are also making the trip, hoping to encounter new ideas and global business contacts.

Georgia Rakusen, of digital arts production company Haus Projects, is one of those attending the conference.

“Digital Minds: The Nordic Light is a conference all about cross-pollination and creative people sharing ideas,“ she explains. “I was at the Thinking Digital conference in Gateshead earlier this year, so I know what a huge impact this sort of cross-genre event can have. I’m very excited to see what new opportunities we can develop collaboratively with our Swedish digital counterparts.”

Other digital creative entrepreneurs attending the conference include:

Rob Colling of Gateshead-based internetsubtitling.com, which produces subtitles and captions for web video

Frances Calvey of Middlesbrough-based video production firm Kirkwood Media

Adam Green of Assyria Game Studio in Middlesbrough.

"It's an amazing opportunity and I'm looking forward to representing the north-east internationally,” says Frances. “Spreading the word about what digital industries have to offer in the region is an exciting prospect."

“In difficult times like these, there's more reason than ever to establish relationships outside the UK, with an eye to trading globally rather than just regionally or nationally,” says Rob. “The region’s business community is going to be very well represented in Gavle, and it’s great to see that north-eastern firms and organisations are so far ahead of the game when it comes to thinking internationally.”

Grand Designs star to launch period homes business

Two local business women launch their online homes restoration service next month with the help of a special guest – and they are giving away free tickets to the launch.

Restoration & Beyond, which helps period home owners and self builders to source specialist products and services for their homes, is being launched at the Home Building & Renovating Show in Harrogate on 6th November.

Christine Pearce from Hartlepool, and Paula Smith from Peterlee, have spent the last year developing their business and creating a service that is currently not available anywhere else.

And they will be joined for the launch ceremony by Francis Shaw of Peel Castle, whose inspirational transformation of the 14th century Yorkshire ruin was a favourite of viewers of the Channel 4 Grand Designs series.

Mr Shaw will be at Restoration & Beyond’s exhibition stand (number 335, in Hall B) at 3pm on the 6th November to cut the ribbon and officially launch the new web site.


Restoration & Beyond are giving away free tickets to the show with visitors to their stand also having the opportunity to win a two nights stay at Peel Castle. To claim your free tickets simply follow the link at http://www.restorationandbeyond.co.uk/ and sign up for their e-newsletter.


Looking forward to the launch, Christine Pearce says: “Restoration & Beyond is an exciting new concept that will revolutionise Period Home and Self-Build shopping. It is not a directory but a time-efficient way of sourcing and purchasing everything from reclaimed stone to works of art, as well as the people with the expertise to restore period homes sympathetically and help self-builders to create new homes to the highest of design and eco standards.

“It is the only website where products for this market can be purchased from many different companies through one simple checkout and where service providers can be found through 'mini-sites' within the site, rather than directory listings, making it much easier to use”.

Christine is herself a period home owner and for the past 17 years has been frustrated by the difficulty in finding the right products and services for the restoration of her home. Restoration & Beyond aims to save others that frustration while at the same time promoting a wide range of independent home-related businesses.

To find out more, visit http://www.restorationandbeyond.co.uk/

From Flying Start to Exciting Growth: Richard Mairs Update

When Richard Mairs first shared his If we can, you can story a year ago, it was also a bit of a fond farewell to this side of the pond as he had just been awarded a place on the prestigious NCGE Kauffman Scholarship as a ‘Flying Start Global Entrepreneur”. It included training with NESTA here in the UK, before heading to America for 6 months to study at Harvard, Stanford and MIT, and visit innovative companies such as Google, Cisco and Adobe. We asked Richard if he would mind keeping in touch and letting us know how he got on.

And keep in touch he did. We received a great email from Richard once he returned from his adventures and things certainly have moved on from the last time we spoke.

Before jetting away, Richard was running Gizmo Visual Studios in Middlesbrough, a multimedia studio and consultancy all about inspiring creativity. Richard set out to do this by combining cutting edge technology and visual media to both inspire and educate people about the creative thinking process.

During Richard’s time in America, he met his new business partner, Jonathan Lloyd, a fellow Global Scholar. They decided to combine forces and are together now running Falling Pixel Ltd (http://www.fallingpixel.com/). Falling Pixel is a high quality 3D asset marketplace and proudly sits as the leading marketplace in Europe.

They supply their services to a range of industries that demand high quality content from architectural visualisation to interactive education and even military simulation.

Richard says, “Supplying these resources saves companies time in the development process, development costs and allows smaller companies to actively compete on a higher level, enabling them to create bigger and better projects through outsource of content .”

At the moment Richard and Jonathan are both working hard to continue to growth of both the marketplace and newer arms such as 3D Request ™ and FPLabs which they will be working on in the coming months. Labs focuses on research and development of new technology in areas such as augmented reality, real time rendering and stereoscopics. They are also looking to work with Universities and strategic partnerships to strengthen their offering.

Richard commented, “It’s still early days having only been trading three years but we are excited about the future and the new direction of the company.”

If we can, you can Unplugged events are launched!

We always said that this was all about building a virtual community, but there’s nothing quite like getting together with your colleagues to share ideas and experiences in person, face-to-face.

‘If We Can You Can’ is hitting the road and coming to a venue near you!

The Unplugged events are an un-missable opportunity for you to meet likeminded entrepreneurs from the IWCYC community in a relaxed and informal environment.

We have two fantastic speakers from the community who will share their entrepreneurial highs and lows with our guests, and there will be a Q&A and a chance to discuss common challenges and aspirations, followed by a delicious supper and time for you to mingle and chat.
Date: Wednesday, October 21st

Venue: The Sporting Lodge Inn, Middlesbrough

Time: 6.30pm - 7:00pm arrival
9.30pm event close

Our first Unplugged event is coming to the Tees Valley. Our speakers will be Mark Easby, Managing Director of Better Brand Agency and Claire Mitchell, of http://www.astonmitchell.com/.

Mark Easby, born and bred in the Tees Valley, started Better Brand Agency in September 2008 with two friends. Better specialises in brand, design, marketing and social media campaigns, already has more than 20 clients and recently scooped the Best Social Media Campaign at the North East Digital Awards.

Claire Mitchell left her job to set up and run her own marketing consultancy, ‘Claire Mitchell Consultancy’, which she has done for the past three years. As well as this, she also runs http://www.astonmitchell.com/, an online men's make-up retail business with her business partner Kate Jones, and counts Barack Obama’s personal make-up artist as one of her key suppliers.

Tickets are free to attend, but places are limited, so book early to avoid disappointment! We would also encourage you to bring along a friend and welcome them along to the If We Can, You Can community!

To book your place or for any more information about our Unplugged events, please email will@entrepreneursforum.net or call 0191 2267488, and let us know if you would like to bring along a friend or a colleague.

“If you’re thinking about starting a business yourself, I believe the most important thing to do is to seek the right support- business support, partners, colleagues, and making sure that your family and friends are right behind you. I can’t recommend this enough.” Mark Easby

“We love what we do, we enjoy our work, we have a great knowledge of the market and it’s felt effortless because we believe in what we do and we have fun.”
Claire Mitchell

As we live in this multi-media age, each event will also have its own PLUGGED section on the website – and we’ll use the blog and twitter to get the discussions started and help us to identify what you want to hear about and talk about.

WIN Get 'Art For Art's Sake' Funding

Networking organisation WIN is celebrating securing £100,000 from the Government to engage North-East businesswomen in the arts, as part of a ‘learning for pleasure’ innovation spearheaded by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS).

WIN’s ‘Art For Art’s Sake’ project will offer the arts as a platform for women in business across the region to explore their own creativity, learn about themselves, and enhance their skills and confidence to develop new networks and re-engage in learning.

Set in inspiring arts venues across the region, women will be offered opportunities to get involved in Art for Art’s Sake through joining book clubs, following creative writing courses, learning about the performing arts or trying out play-writing.

They will also learn the art of networking and presentation skills, as well as the art of self-discovery.

WIN board member Di Gates said: “Winning £100,000 to deliver this innovative project is a real achievement for WIN, its members and the North-East region, particularly having faced such stiff competition - the project emerged as one of the top 15% across the country.

“WIN prides itself on being a current, honest and ambitious network for female entrepreneurs and women in business. The Art for Art’s Sake project provides us a platform to work with over 400 women across the North East and to add even more tangible value to our members, both as participants in the project and through direct involvement in its development and delivery.”

Other projects in the North-East include using the Tyneside Cinema’s new spaces and facilities to deliver digital technology, moving image, communications and IT learning to a wide range of people from different social backgrounds and developing online learning tools for others to share.

WIN is proud to also be teaming up with some of its new members to deliver the Art for Art’s Sake project. Newcastle’s Live Theatre, writing and reading development agency New Writing North and Northumberland-based Butterfly training are also involved, supported by Arts Council England North East.

Participants will be empowered, motivated and more capable of making changes in their personal or business lives through becoming involved in a range of arts-based activities.

WIN Ltd - http://www.womenintothenetwork.co.uk/3 - is a brand new membership organisation dedicated to supporting, connecting and promoting women in business.

Arts for Art's Sake is one of over 213 winning projects nationally. Across the country, a diverse array of informal adult learning projects will be getting underway, ranging from creative music master classes for people out of work or education, learning adventures for isolated older people and reading opportunities for the over 60s.

The grant is from the £20 million Transformation Fund, launched by Government to offer funding for innovative, informal adult learning projects in England. This brings to life The Learning Revolution, a White Paper presented to Parliament in March 2009.

The projects, many spearheaded by partnerships between public, private and third sector organisations, will help improve mental health, physical well-being, active citizenship and community cohesion, as well as providing a stepping stone towards further learning, qualifications and employment for many people.

Kevin Brennan, Minister for Further Education, Skills and Consumer Affairs, said: “We’re happy to announce 213 successful recipients of our Transformation Fund grants, awarded in the face of stiff competition from a field of 1,400 applications. With projects ranging from creative writing and music to reading and art, it’s encouraging to see so many imaginative ideas for giving adults more opportunities to learn for the love of it.

“The benefits of learning for pleasure in an informal setting are wide-ranging, and they benefit the community as well as the individual. I hope that many people will develop the confidence and the local connections to take a big step towards a brighter future.”

The announcement about the latest Transformation Fund grants follows the award of £1 million worth of ‘early bird’ funding in July.

Alan Tuckett, Chief Executive of NIACE, added: “NIACE is proud to have the role of supporting the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills in managing the Transformation Fund. We argued in our response to the Informal Adult Learning consultation that there is no better stimulus for local adult learning providers than the creation of a fund to trigger innovation and new partnerships.

“There’s already evidence from the ‘early bird’ bids of how creative and imaginative community-based adult learning can be when given the funding to put ideas into practice.”
Informal adult learning encompasses a wide variety of activities and can range from a self-organised reading group in a village hall to a guided visit to nature reserve or stately home.

Other Learning Revolution activities include The Learning Revolution Festival: a month-long celebration of informal adult learning that kicks off in October 2009.

To find out more about the Art for Art’s Sake project visit www.womenintothenetwork.co.uk and for more on The Learning Revolution, visit: www.bis.gov.uk/learningrevolution

Fruit and veg at your service

Brand new If we can, you can member Barbara Chrisp has shared her truly inspirational story online. Here’s a recent article that was featured on her and her business The Cabbage Patch in the Hartlepool Mail, which delves into the impact Barbara is making in the Easington District, as reported by Tracy Walker.

A mum dubbed the "Jamie Oliver of the North East" is helping to give hundreds of schoolchildren a healthy start by launching a fruit and vegetable delivery service.

Barbara Chrisp has started up a business, The Cabbage Patch, which supplies fresh produce and healthy eating advice to SureStart children's centres and other community groups.

The 41-year-old was forced into a change of career when she was made redundant after eight years working for Sunderland-based finance firm CitiGroup.

Barbara, who is mum to 13-year-old Lucy Parkin, grows a lot of her produce in gardens at her home in Stewart Drive, Wingate, and also orders stock from suppliers.

She said: "Finance was all I really knew for the past 20 years and it was a real shock when I lost my job."I've been growing my own produce for a few years and it was something I really enjoyed.

"You hear a lot of things about people in the Easington area not eating a great deal of fruit and vegetables. Easington is generally a low income area, fresh produce isn't perceived as being cheap and I want people to see it as something affordable. "

Barbara launched her business with the help of business advisors Be Enterprising and now works with 10 Peterlee SureStart centres. She also supplies Peterlee's Rosemary Lane nursery with produce for school lunches.

Be Enterprising coach Chris Churms said: "Barbara is incredibly focused and keen to work with everyone. She's the Jamie Oliver of the North-East!"

Barbara also visits Horden Social Welfare Centre every Thursday afternoon to sell fresh produce. She also runs a weekly market stall at Horns Garden Centre, in Shotton Colliery.

Barbara provides weekly deliveries to customers in small, medium and large bags. All contain potatoes, onions, carrots and apples, with customers selecting additional fresh fruit and vegetables on delivery. Barbara also accepts Healthy Start vouchers as part-payment.

Read more about Barbara's inspirational journey by clicking here