Blog: Discovering Entrepreneurial Spirit with Venture Crawl 2023

Lisa Burbidge-Brown, Lecturer in Innovation, Enterprise and Entrepreneurship, blogs about unlocking student entrepreneurship and creativity with Venture Crawl 2023.

March 15 2023 saw students studying Enterprise modules across BA(Hons) Business Management, BA (Hons) Business Management (Enterprise) and MSc Innovation and Entrepreneurship join together for a Venture Crawl across the city to explore the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Wolverhampton.

Kings College London have organised the event for the last few years and last year opened it up to universities outside of the capital in a virtual capacity, which we took part in as a Business School. This year, they extended the invite once again to previous and new partners but asked us to replicate the London crawl in a physical capacity in our own cities.

Our University of Wolverhampton Business School students got to start their day at the Business School Breakfast Club with a guest speaker from DLA Piper (a multinational law firm), the guest speaker Tim Lake is a partner at the firm and spoke to our students about his inspirational journey to his current position. Tim studied a Business and Law degree in a post-92 university and spoke to our students about cultural capital, being enterprising, being relentless and focussed when met by setbacks. Students then moved on to our next stop on the crawl – Ignite Hub – a start-up support hub in Wolverhampton city centre, which is supported by the local Black Country Chamber of Commerce, the City of Wolverhampton Council and the University of Wolverhampton and a talk from the manager there – Jaspal Raju about the options for support for new business start-ups in the city.

Our next stop on the crawl was to Newhampton Arts Centre where students were given a tour and shown how the business model works for this social enterprise, along with the support they provide for freelance and start-up creative and digital artists, in terms of premises, studio space and community links. They were shown around by the CEO Trevelyan Wright and he took time to answer questions and pose thought-provoking questions to the group. Our final stop on the crawl was back to base at the Business School for photos, feedback and a gift courtesy of DLA Piper. Student feedback was very positive with students already asking when we can have our next Venture Crawl.

Thank you to all the collaborators on the day for taking your time to support this initiative with our students, my colleagues in the Business School for their support on the day and Kings College London for the inspiration and support in the planning and promotion.

#VentureCrawl #NewhamptonArts #IgniteHub #careers #dlapipercareers