The final two reports in the 12 Clusters of Tech series, focusing on the South East and London, have now been published.

Over the past twelve months, the UK Tech Cluster Group has worked in collaboration with London Tech Week to create a series of reports that explore the unique ecosystems and tech trends in every region of the UK. The objective of the campaign was to map the UK tech scene and provide a detailed overview of the specialisms, business success stories and emerging innovators that make the UK’s technology sector such an economic powerhouse.

The 12 reports cover the North East, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Yorkshire & the Humber, the North West, Wales, the West Midlands, East Midlands, East of England, the South West, South East and finally London. View and download the reports here.

London Tech Week 2021 takes place from the 20th to the 24th of September and promises to gather the world’s most inspirational founders, global leaders, senior investors and rising stars to collaborate and discuss the vital role of technology in society. The festival’s purpose is to showcase how tech is transforming both business and society by driving important conversations around transformation, diversity and innovation.

Wired Sussex is collaborating with the University of Chichester and Coastal West Sussex to develop a strategy for the creative digital sector along the coastal corridor between Brighton and Chichester.

The strategy will focus on multiple ways to enhance and connect the existing creative digital growth activity, helping businesses and others benefit from regional collaboration. The aim is to provide an ambitious and coherent plan backed up with strong evidence in order to support applications by regional authorities for funding to support the sector.

Wired Sussex has a strong track record in strategic work that has delivered significant infrastructure investment in their region. In 2016, they conducted a project in Bognor Regis, identifying and supporting digital creative companies in the area, and working out their needs. The result of this work not only helped people come together, build stronger networks and accelerate the creative industries, but also led to the renovation of the Victorian waiting rooms at Bognor Regis station into a new co-working space called The Track.

Visit the Wired Sussex website to find out more about the Coastal West Sussex project.

Manchester Digital will be working in partnership with The Prince’s Trust to deliver an innovative digital skills project as part of the Sustainable Futures Fund.

They will be working with Wigan Council and employer partners such as Auto Trader, BJSS and Zuhlke to design and deliver an exciting new digital skills training programme that will provide mentoring and training in some of the future-focused, non-coding related job roles and skillsets that businesses report as growing in importance for them in the next 3-5 years within the industry.

Young people taking part will learn about a variety of roles such as Digital Project Management, User Experience Design and Research, and Digital Marketing for business, and will be able to put their learning into practice through a live project brief from employers whilst gaining vital work experience.

The strength of this programme lies within its integrated collaboration model, ensuring the young people are holistically supported through the programme and beyond.

The leader of Wigan Council, Councillor David Molyneux said: “Equipping our young people with the skill they need to grow as future leaders is a key priority for the council.

“This programme will provide vital expertise and advice to the next generation, helping them to grow in confidence and excel in their careers. It will also complement the opportunities we created in 2019 through the Apprenticeships for Young People scheme, which helped our young people get onto the career ladder in specific fields, including digital.

“The importance of this sector has risen in recent years but we have seen the value of digital capabilities even more-so throughout the pandemic. We look forward to working with Manchester Digital and The Princes Trust to watch more of our young people flourish and we can’t wait to see their creativity come to the fore.”

Employer partners said: “This project will really start to create pathways for a more diverse group of young people to access opportunities within our industry. We strongly believe that training programmes co-designed and delivered by expertise from within the industry have the most impact. We’re looking forward to helping to elevate awareness of and connection to diverse real role models for young people in Wigan to be inspired. “

The South West is the latest region to be covered in the “12 Clusters of Tech” series produced by the UK Tech Cluster Group in collaboration with London Tech Week.

The report, which is the tenth in the series, covers:

• An overview of the tech landscape in South West of England
• Profiles on the Established Tech Leaders ( including Dyson, IMDb and Future Publishing)
• Scaleup Stories (the tech companies spearheading growth)
• Ones to Watch (uncover the rising stars…)
• Deep dive into the region’s cluster hotspots including Telecoms, CreaTech and Data/AI

The final two reports, to be published over the summer, will cover the South East and London. All of the reports published so far are available from the London Tech Week website.

Bristol Technology Festival (BTF) is back for its third edition from October 10th to October 15th 2021. The city will host over 50 events with themes spanning the breadth and depth of Bristol’s growing tech and digital sector. The current plans are to hold the events in a hybrid model with a selection of online talks and others at limited capacity venues.

BTF was born in 2019 with a mission to showcase the sheer scale of technology that had been developed in the local ecosystem, whilst sharing the stories of those entrepreneurs, engineers and creatives behind the tech with the people of the city and further afield. Last year’s festival hosted 53 events, attracting over 5,000 attendees dialling in from places as far flung as Singapore and San Francisco. The target for 2021 to reach an even greater audience.

Bristol has a long-standing history of tech innovation and the ecosystem is booming, with the most productive tech talent in the UK (TechNation 2019). It feeds industries all over the world with breakthrough engineering and digital innovation. The region is famed for its creative approach to technological challenges, and was recently recognised as the best city for startups in the UK outside of London, with notable companies including IMDb, Graphcore, Ovo and Dyson.

Whilst 2020 was undoubtedly a challenging year for everyone, it has underlined the importance of technology in our lives and demonstrated how it can help connect us. BTF 2021 will seek to capture people’s hopes and predictions for the next decade, exploring the prevalent questions such as: in what ways will technology influence how we live and work? What impact will the tech cluster have locally, and globally?

BTF is coordinated by a group of volunteers from across the ecosystem including representatives from Hargreaves Lansdown, Newicon, TechSPARK, and Engine Shed. Events throughout the festival are crowdsourced from organisations across the city. These include tech companies, public bodies, schools, community interest groups and charities. Events are open to people in the tech sector, business leaders from across sectors, visitors wanting to know more about the region, and anyone wanting to know more about the city’s digital industries. Some of events include:

Engine Shed will host a launch of the festival alongside Deloitte Digital to bring together key people in the sector to understand how tech will support the growth of the city in the future.

For the 9th consecutive year, TechSPARK will host their annual SPARKies awards. The awards will gather 500 people to shine a light on the very best people, products and companies that make up the tech sector in Bristol, Bath and the broader West of England region.

FinTech West will host their annual fintech Summit to deep dive into the latest innovations, connect business in one of the UK’s key fintech communities.

2021 will also see the launch of the Festival Community Partner initiative where businesses across the city show their support by becoming one of 50 community partners, with all money invested into giving the festival a long term sustainable future.

Softcat has become the headline sponsor of the festival in 2021. Rob Parkinson, CIO at SoftCat says “We are delighted to be involved in the 2021 Bristol Technology Festival. Bringing together local technology communities and shining a light on all the innovation the region has to showcase is an important way to drive collaboration and industry growth.

“The last 18 months have been tough for many industries but technology has come through as an enabler and has made many re-think how they interact and do business. As the impact of technology continues to grow forums like the Bristol Technology Festival have never been more important and we are pleased to be supporting it.”

Visit the Bristol Technology Festival website.

£2m programme will help drive digital transformation in the North East.

Manchester Digital has announced its plans for the next 12 months of the ground-breaking Digital Her programme.

Since its inception, Digital Her has aimed to encourage more women into the digital and tech industry by offering support, guidance and opportunities. Despite the challenges of the pandemic, the programme reached over 2000 young women in the past year.

To coincide with International Women in Engineering Day, Manchester Digital announced their supporters for the year ahead, including returning sponsor Auto Trader, new sponsors BAE Systems Applied Intelligence, Bruntwood SciTech and KPMG.

Their plans for the next 12 months include more interactive employer designed and delivered digital skills and career insights workshops, real role model engagement, as well as Women Talk events and meetups. They will also be introducing the Digital Her mentor programme (Mentor Her).

Read more about Digital Her.

The Queen’s Speech set out a series of Bills due before Parliament in support of Government’s efforts to underpin recovery from COVID-19 and drive forward the levelling-up agenda. 

This legislative programme accompanies policy direction set out in March’s ‘Build Back Better’ budget and precedes an expected Autumn Spending Review. 

The UK Tech Cluster Group notes Government’s commitment to a lifetime skills guarantee; enabling flexible access to high quality education and training throughout people’s lives; the fastest ever increase in public funding for research and development; and proposed legislation to deliver the Advanced Research & Invention Agency. 

Launching the UK Digital Strategy at our Annual Conference in June last year, Secretary of State Oliver Dowden underlined the critical importance of building a highly-skilled digital workforce across every region of the UK, so that people can shift into the digital or tech sectors or digitise their own businesses; driving growth in both the tech sector and traditional industries in order to adapt, survive and thrive in the recovery.

We wholeheartedly agree that Digital Skills and Collaborative Innovation are vital in harnessing the potential of businesses and communities across the nations and regions of the United Kingdom. 

Through our work in connecting and supporting businesses large and small and driving skills provision and innovation in our regional ecosystems, we understand the critical importance of local coordination to ensure Government’s policy objectives deliver a recovery that works for businesses, learners and communities at the very grassroots of UK tech. 

The group looks forward to continuing to work with the Secretary of State and his Officials to ensure we continue to drive Covid recovery and allow technology ecosystems to flourish UK-wide.

Birmingham Tech CIC, the organisation responsible for promoting and coordinating the West Midlands Tech ecosystem, has joined the UK Tech Cluster Group (UKTCG), a group of organisations that work with and have a deep insight into geographical clusters of technology and digital businesses across the UK.

Birmingham Tech will now share knowledge from the West Midlands tech ecosystem, joining other regional tech clusters across the UK.

Yiannis Maos, CEO of Birmingham Tech commented:

“It’s great to be working with the UK Tech Cluster Group and we are very proud to be feeding in understanding of the West Midlands region. Through this new appointment, we will continue to work closely with our partners to ensure newfound insight and opportunities are shared – enabling an ecosystem built on collaboration and knowledge. This comes at an exciting time for the West Midlands tech cluster with EA’s recent acquisition of Codemasters for $1.2 billion and Goldman Sachs announcing they are to open a Tech Hub in Birmingham. Working with the UKTCG will also ensure we collectively make the case for more investment in our tech clusters.”

The organisations that make up the UKTCG are all focused on growing tech businesses, championing innovation and building stronger regional economies. Together, they work with thousands of companies and organisations, delivering regional programmes and events and connecting businesses with collaborators, funders and talent.

David Dunn, Chair of the UK Tech Cluster Group and CEO of Sunderland Software City, commented:

“It’s great to have Birmingham Tech join the UKTCG and have Yiannis join our team. We already have a wealth of insight from across the UK and having the West Midlands represented will only strengthen our knowledge and capability – making our voice even stronger at national level. Working alongside Birmingham Tech and our other representatives, we will continue to ensure that our regional tech clusters get the support they need to drive forward our regional economies.”

The UKTCG, in collaboration with London Tech Week, recently published the 12 Clusters of Tech report into the West Midlands which highlights some of the 13,000 tech firms employing over 100,000 people across the region. You can read the report here.