UEL Hosts Summer Spectacular for All
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Published
25 June 2024
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It was a day of dazzling variety. On 12 June, the University of East London hosted its annual Innovation and Enterprise Summer Festival, with thousands of attendees enjoying dozens of events and attractions at the Stratford Campus on Water Lane. Activities ranged from a mobile planetarium to dance and music performances to a gaming van with programmes created by UEL students to a luminary-filled launch of the University’s pioneering Health Campus.
University Vice-Chancellor and President, Professor Amanda Broderick, said,
The festival is always a wonderful opportunity to share with our Newham communities, a snapshot of the ingenuity and vision of our students, staff, alumni and partners. This year the power of partnership and the importance of community engagement in driving forward innovation and tackling inequalities were very much on display.
The festival serves as a reminder of our University’s promise to our communities that, in an ever-changing world, we remain committed to advancing careers-first education and creating solutions for a greener, healthier and fairer planet.
This year’s festival focused on how science is part of everyone’s lives and can be accessible to all, as part of the University’s Year of Science. From 11 to 15 September, the University will host the prestigious British Science Festival, also free and open to the entire community.
UEL alumnus and science TikTok star Big Manny was a major draw. He wowed a crowd of all ages, performing experiments such as how jelly babies can show the principles of heat transfer – an important science designed to engage.
The very youngest members of the community attended a special storytelling session hosted by UEL Visiting Ambassador and Olympic, World and Commonwealth 400m Champion Christine Ohuruogu MBE.
The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, and the Mayor of Newham, Rokhsana Fiaz OBE, joined University and anchor organisation leaders from across east London to celebrate the launch of a dedicated Health Campus which will train inter-professional health and social care workers and become a hub for ground-breaking research into community health care, preventive care, and overall wellbeing.
Attendees also celebrated the creation of the One East London Network, a new collaboration bringing together east London’s anchor organisations for the first time in the shared aim of tackling health inequalities and improving health outcomes for millions of people.
Robert Waterson, UEL’s Dean of Health, Sport and Bioscience, said: “Through both the new campus and the collective expertise and resources of fellow anchor institutions, we can tackle the social determinants of health that currently stop people from having a really healthy life. Also, critically, we can continue to provide high-quality training and education for existing and future health professionals, both widening access to health careers with far greater access to placement, training, and mentoring opportunities and helping to address local and national health and care workforce gaps.”
At the Great Hall, more than 150 people attended UEL’s Student and Partner Celebration, showcasing the achievements of students who have prospered with the support of UEL’s industry partners. The event reflected one of UEL’s core missions - promoting social mobility and the creation of inclusive career opportunities for students.
A number of industry partners took out stalls at the festival. Representatives from Neilcott, a construction firm with an annual turnover of £150 million, discussed jobs, apprenticeships and work placements with students.
Darren Warner, Director of Special Works at Neilcott, said, “UEL is very engaging. We’ve held workshops with students, and we provide work experience opportunities. The students show a keen interest and we have taken on permanent staff through the work experience process.”
The festival also provided an opportunity for the University to promote the services it provides to the local community. At a table hosted by the Royal Docks School for Business and Law’s Legal Advice Centre, which provides legal aid to the community, Tania Morgan, a Newham resident and recent UEL law graduate, helped with inquiries.
She said “It is rewarding that people from Newham or local areas can come to a place that is local to them to get advice which is not accessible elsewhere, especially when they don’t know where to turn. This is like a one-stop shop for free legal advice, through which we can usually support anyone who needs it.”
Elsewhere on campus, visitors had the opportunity to explore the University’s flagship research projects and cutting-edge facilities, with tours of the groundbreaking BabyDevLab and the Hospital and Primary Care Training Hub, among others.
At a stall for the Sustainability Research Institute (SRI), Richard Lindsay, the Institute’s Head of Environmental and Conservation Research, said the festival was helping facilitate new opportunities and collaborations.
He said, “We bring in people who may never have thought of using the SRI or thought of UEL before. It opens up opportunities for communication, with totally new vistas of possibility. I’ve just finished a long conversation with someone from the Eden Project in Cornwall, so you never know who you’re going to end up speaking to. and that’s part of the excitement of this sort of event.”