Gravity Programme Director, Paul Lowndes, was in attendance at the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) South West Awards 2023, hosted on March 1st in Western-Super-Mare.
The awards recognise and celebrate the best and brightest businesses within the region, for the second year running Gravity Smart Campus has sponsored, judged, and awarded the region’s FSB ‘Sustainability Award’.
Paul Lowndes was tasked with judging for the ‘Sustainability Award’, this year he decided to award it to ‘Feritech Limited, a Cornwall-based engineering and technology company for their holistic approach to the development of their £3m purpose-built Innovation Center.
Paul Lowdnes, Gravity Progarmme Director comments:
The entries received for the FSB Sustainability Award were all of a high standard. However, the Feritech entry was the most comprehensive. They have taken a radical approach to environmental sustainability in their new £3m purpose-built facility including rainwater harvesting, solar roof and battery storage, air source heat pumps, tree planting and many other initiatives.
They have also started to create a woodland area for their local community. In addition, they have seen significant business growth and expanded their team, including an apprentice scheme to “grow their own” engineers.Also, their commitment to sharing .25% of turnover to help fund local community and school projects is exemplary.
Feritech will proceed to represent the South West in the national final of these awards.
Claire Pearce, Director of Planning & Economic Development at Gravity, chaired the Regeneration and Investment showcase session at the recent Western Gateway Development Conference hybrid event.
Claire was joined by a diverse panel:
Cllr Tom Renhard, Cabinet Member for Housing Delivery and Homes, Bristol City Council;
Wendy Maden, Principal Urban Designer, Bath & North East Somerset Council; and
Michael Coe, Commercial Director, Bristol Zoological Society.
The session outlined large scale regeneration projects across the Western Gateway and wider region, drawing on the challenges, opportunities and lessons learnt from the progress so far including creating the conditions for investment, the importance of leadership, creating solutions as well as embedding culture and community considerations.
Claire reflected on the session and the wider conference, “It’s fantastic to be back in person talking about these important aspects of key transformational developments and learning from each other’s experiences. Strategic projects such as the Gravity Smart Campus near Bridgwater fall into a unique category, where its success in securing a world class advanced manufacturing facility will deliver a huge economic uplift to the region.
Gravity Smart Campus is proud to have partnered with Bridgwater United FC and Community Sports Trust in launching the Gravity Sphero provision using Sphero Sports Robots, an innovative STEM education tool.
The launch event which was well attended by local schools, learning trusts, local and county councillors, charitable organisations, and local media who heard on the significant importance of this project from guest speakers Martin Bellamy (Chairman and CEO of Gravity), Andy Berry (Principal of Bridgwater & Taunton College), Adam Murry (CEO of BUFC) and Matt Mead (Sphero Sports).
Gravity Sphero launch attendees getting to grips with the technology
Gravity’s commitment to our Clean & Inclusive Growth, stimulating transformational change and enabling a new era of clean growth to create opportunities for local communities and business, is core to the success of the development.
Through implementing our Environmental and Social Governance policy, the Gravity team are focused on creating social value locally. The Gravity Sphero project launch marks the next step in our work, offering an innovative way for children and young people in the local area to learn coding and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) skills, supporting the delivery of the national curriculum
Uniting Football, Robotics and Educational STEM activities, inspires hands-on fun learning through practical football-based coding games with interactive and engaging programming activities, to teach key transferable and digital skills, already enjoyed by 40,000 educators and 3.5 million users worldwide.
Gravity and Bridgwater United Community Sports Trust have formed a partnership to give schools and young people the chance to join this fantastic and engaging movement.
Claire Pearce, Director for Planning and Economic Development at Gravity commented “The Gravity team is focused on generating genuine social value to make a real difference localy, supporting young people to strengthen personal resilience and inspiring them about future careers.
Looking ahead, the campus will host high-tech companies and new jobs so we must look ahead to how we can build a local talent pipeline to access those opportunities. We therefore need to promote STEM to help prepare students for the opportunities ahead and to provide them with the tools and skills to thrive and succeed.
We are delighted to support the Gravity sphero project and launch a new learning through play initiative with Bridgwater United Community Sports Trust. This is an important step towards growing a local workforce at Gravity – with our young people at its heart”
Commenting on this partnership Sarah Murry, Bridgwater United CST added “Since our first meeting with Gravity they have been a great supporter of the Trust as our visions for community partnership completely align. The synergy between the two organisations is very strong and we are delighted that with their support we can revolutionise the STEM education and play offering to children and young people in Bridgwater.”
Gravity is proud to enable Bridgwater United FC to become the only UK Non-League football club and the only club in the South-West Region to offer this innovative STEM programme.
This exciting new project, combines innovative technologies and sport to combat the recognised international shortage of STEM skills and young people going into STEM Careers – the STEM Gap.
Gravity Programme Director, Paul Lowndes, was in attendance at the Somerset Business Awards 2022 finale organised by the Somerset Chamber of Commerce. The awards sought to recognise and celebrate the best of business within Somerset.
Paul Lowdnes was tasked with judging for the ‘Environmental Achievement Award’ for the second consecutive year, this year he decided to award it to ‘Talick Group’ for their holistic impact towards net-zero efforts. Paul was impressed by all the finalists.
Images from the Somerset Business Awards 2022 Grand Finale
It was a tough task to judge – three very competent and hugely impressive finalists. Talick Group was a first amongst equals! Huge respect for New Leaf Design and Somerlap, both worthy finalists and most unfortunate to come up against Talick who “won by a short nose” on the strength of their all round impact in driving progress in the green economy as a whole.
I’m already looking forward to see what the region can do next year. .
Paul Lowndes, Gravity Programme Director
I am extremely proud of our county’s businesses; we were all blown away by the quality of the entries and what Somerset’s businesses are achieving and producing.
“It was fantastic to be able to honour winners and finalists from all corners of the county and from a wide range of sectors and industries. Thank you to everyone who entered the awards and thank you to our judges and sponsors who continue to make these the biggest and best business awards in Somerset.”
Emma Rawlings, Executive Director of Somerset Chamber of Commerce
On September 29th, Gravity’s Director of Planning & Economic Development, Claire Pearce, joined the Built Environment Networks ‘Western Economic Growth and Development’ conference, hosted in Cardiff.
The wider conference focused on the influential projects across the region that would accelerate the Western Gateway’s short-term priorities including becoming a gateway to global markets, uplifting housing growth, developing world-class physical and digital infrastructure all the while underpinning the ambition with zero carbon credentials.
Claire talked about the future plans of our transformational development and what Gravity’s key drivers for investment will be heading into 2022.
Gravity and Alun Griffiths are continuing to host the Link Road Q&A sessions virtually. The next sessions will be held on Wednesday 20th Jnaury. If you want to understand more about work happening at Gravity? Be sure to join us online for those virtual Q&A community drop-in sessions.
The location may have changed, but the opportunity to ask any question on the Link Road has not.
Paul Lowndes, Gravity Programme Director runs these informative sessions with the help of Alun Griffiths and Stantec. They will be on hand to answer any questions you may have about the progress of the link road.
Gravity and Alun Griffiths will be hosting the next Link Road Q&A session virtually if you want to understand more about work happening at Gravity? Be sure to join us online for those virtual Q&A community drop-in sessions.
The location may have changed, but the opportunity to ask any question on the Link Road has not.
Paul Lowndes, Gravity Programme Director runs these informative sessions with the help of Alun Griffiths and Stantec. They will be on hand to answer any questions you may have about the progress of the link road.
Traditionally our Q&A drop-in sessions have been held at the 37 Club, due to changing government guidelines, Gravity and Alun Griffiths will be hosting the next Link Road Q&A session virtually, if you want to understand more about work happening at Gravity? Be sure to join us online for those virtual Q&A community drop-in sessions.
The location may have changed, but the opportunity to ask any question on the Link Road has not.
Paul Lowndes, Gravity Programme Director runs these informative sessions with the help of Alun Griffiths. They will be on hand to answer any questions you may have about the progress of the link road.
These sessions are open to all, so if you have any questions or want to know more about our project, just click on the link below at a time most suited to yourself.
London, May 19, 2020 – Gravity, the UK’s first commercial smart campus, welcomes the invitation to be part of the upcoming webinar ‘Developing the Western Gateway‘ hosted by the Built Environment Network.
The webinar will focus on the development activity in the Western Gateway – the new proposed powerhouse forming a collaborative approach between the West of England and South Wales.
Our Director – Planning & Economic Development, Claire Pearce, will be presenting Gravity’s development programme and future pipelines as well as providing her insight on what the industry needs to do to survive during these challenging times.
Developing the Western Gateway
June 1st, 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm
Tickets to the webinar available here
To find out more about the Built Environment Network click here.
Gravity, the UK’s first commercial smart campus, is the blueprint for a smarter, cleaner future – faster. It will deliver a new era of possibility by supporting companies making a difference socially, economically and environmentally, driving the UK’s shift to growing through a cleaner economy.
With direct access to the M5 and accessible by rail, air and sea, the site offers over 635 acres for the creation of millions of sq ft of scalable, flexible and shared working space.
Multinationals and start-ups will benefit from the excellent connectivity and speed of build out Gravity offers. By attracting today’s giants and tomorrow’s unicorns, there will be significant opportunities for collaboration.
With its on-site water provision, renewable and low carbon energy infrastructure and building energy management, dark fibre, excellent transport links, accessible talent pool and knowledge economy including four top-tier universities close by, Gravity provides occupiers with the ability to build, expand, and develop faster and efficiently.
Want to understand more about work happening at Gravity? Be sure to join us for our Q&A community drop-in session.
Gravity and our appointed contractors, Alun Griffiths are hosting an informative drop-in session on the latest developments of the Link Road and on hand to answer your questions.
