Member Article

Funding boost for digital sector

A £2.66m project to help attract talent to the North East’s digital sector has just been given the green light.

Sunderland-based Codeworks, the region’s centre for digital innovation, has secured new funding to continue with a programme that brings together small and medium sized companies with digital knowledge and creativity from local universities.

The ‘Digital placement and knowledge transfer’ project aims to support 120 more SMEs thanks in part to a £733,000 investment from the European Regional Development Fund and a renewed effort to utilise the cream of graduate expertise in the region.

Since 2004, the initiative has placed more than 350 students and graduates, with an impressive 85% kept on by their host company or securing permanent work elsewhere in the region’s digital sector.

The new investment will allow Codeworks to tap into graduate knowledge and research to help SMEs collaborate with the region’s five universities and further develop the region’s digital industry.

Herb Kim, the CEO of Codeworks, said: “For the past four years, our placement schemes have helped the region’s digital sector to grow by giving businesses access to the fresh new talent they need to develop and compete.

“The fact that so many students and graduates have gone on to work permanently in the sector is testament both to the effectiveness of initiatives like this, and to the high quality of the graduates coming out of our region’s universities.

“Thanks to the funding, this project will be able to continue helping digital businesses to identify where they’re lacking expertise, and to improve their efficiency and technological development.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .