St Mary’s Hosts Ideas and Funding Workshop

St Mary’s University College, Twickenham recently held a workshop for staff and partner organisations to discuss and consider the many ways in which they could develop collaborative projects. Over 60 delegates attended the workshop, including representatives from large and small local businesses, public sector organisations and charities with an interest in health, wellbeing and community issues. With talks and group discussions, it gave delegates the opportunity to identify key areas of interest, shared priorities and ideas for collaborative projects. Throughout the morning speakers including St Mary’s Centre for Workplace and Community Health, and the Centre for Workplace Learning, gave talks about how they have successfully developed collaborative projects with local partners. There was also lots of advice on hand about the various funding schemes available for joint projects between universities and non-academic partner organisations. St Mary’s Director for Enterprise and Business Development Catherine Sheppard commented, “We were delighted to welcome so many varied organisations to St Mary’s to talk about how we might work together – and we discovered a lot of common ground. The feedback from the day has been excellent, and it already looks like some really interesting projects will happen as a result of the event.”