Paradise Birmingham welcomes students for Future Skills Unlocked highlight
The £1.2 billion mixed use redevelopment at the heart of the city, Paradise Birmingham, has welcomed students to the estate as part of its growing community partnerships with local secondary schools.
With work experience workshops at several of the estate’s office and leisure occupiers, this year’s Paradise Future Skills Unlocked event is the largest collaborative event between the estate, its occupiers, and local schools to date.
Four Birmingham schools are now involved in the year-round programme at Paradise, which engages with local school students as they begin to think about their future career choices, while exposing them to the world of work and the modern workplace.
The schools involved are Aston Manor Academy, Bordesley Green Girls School, King Edward VI Balaam Wood Academy and Tile Cross Academy.
The range of activities on the day included sessions on Speed Networking, Careers Insights, Life Skills, Future of Work, a Design Sprint and Wellbeing in the Workplace.
Social Value specialist, Ahead Partnership, works to strengthen the talent pipeline and improve diversity, inclusion and social mobility and has worked with Paradise for more than a year, delivering expert input to the estate’s educational and community engagement programme.
With an expanded programme and more schools, students and occupiers involved this year, the workshops were delivered by Paradise office occupiers DLA Piper, Dains, JLL and Quilter Cheviot, as well as leisure operator F1® Arcade, and hosted by One Centenary Way-based law firm Mills & Reeve.
Volunteers from a further range of Paradise occupiers also took part, including individuals from Albert’s Schloss, Arup, AtkinsRéalis, Goldman Sachs, MEPC, Mills & Reeve and Cow & Sow.
As well as talks and presentations, there were also a range of structured visits to different parts of the estate for the students, as well as an orienteering challenge.
Ross Fittall, Commercial Development Director at Paradise asset manager and developer MEPC, said: “It was inspiring to welcome another diverse group of local students from different parts of the city to Paradise to share our knowledge and experience with the city’s future young professionals.
“With a wide range of office and leisure operators present and sharing their experiences with the students, we all hope we can help to influence the next generation and help them to think about what careers may be open to them, as well as the different routes into those careers.
“Everyone contributing from Paradise has their own unique story of their own career development, which is worth sharing, as are the many different roles available at different organisations across the estate.
“This isn’t all about desk jobs but takes in the full range of roles available in a very wide – and different – range of employers.”
The development and its partners have already contributed more than £88 million of social and economic value locally, created thousands of new jobs and is working with the city council’s Employment Access Team (EAT) to match job opportunities with hard to reach groups from across every part of Birmingham.
“We firmly support initiatives that help drive change and promote social inclusion, which is exactly what the Future Skills Unlocked programme is all about.”
