Is this the West’s new creative capital?

Talk in Gloucestershire can seem all about cyber, even in Gloucester with its £107m Forum Digital, but something else is happening. Is the city becoming a new creative business capital of the West?

Dear Reader, 

We hope you’ve had a great week.

Welcome to our Friday members’ edition, in which we deliver something only our paying subscribers will be able to read in full.

But we feature some short stories for everyone, one celebrating success at one of the county’s most incredible engineering firms, Ontic, and another singing the praises of a partnership between Two Rivers Housing and Mike Etheridge Construction. That partnership seemingly managing to achieve that Holy Grail of housebuilding - affordable, energy efficient homes in a lovely location!

And we also give you another Top 100 story from out growing series following the financial fortunes of the county’s biggest firms by turnover. This one is about Commercial Group.

But the main story, which we drop the paywall over, is about something rather special and unsung happening in Gloucester which we think is making it a creative capital of the West - and we think it’s worth celebrating too.

Have agreat weekend.

Please do send us your story ideas to andrew.merrell@raikesjournal.co.uk. Or telephone 07956 926061.

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* Everything you read on The Raikes Journal is made possible by our incredible Founding Partners: QuoLux, Willans LLP, Gloucestershire College, Merrell People and Randall & Payne; our sponsors Hartpury University and Hartpury College; our Founding Members and all our wonderful paying subscribers. If you upgrade to paid too, you’ll be able to see beyond the paywalls we place on many of our second and third email editions of the week and that lock our archive after two weeks. You will be able to view our rolling Top 100 Businesses in Gloucestershire series, comment on our stories and you’ll be helping to make possible this community interest company dedicated to supporting the county, its businesses, charities and education and training providers — all for just £2.30 per week!! For commercial opportunities visit our About us page or email andrew.merrell@raikesjournal.co.uk.

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Apprenticeship champions

Ontic has walked away with Best Apprenticeship in Engineering/Manufacturing at the UK-Wide The Apprenticeship Guide Awards. The aerospace firm, which employs an estimated 650 across Cheltenham and Gloucester, is over the moon with the win - as you can see from the picture. It was also a finalist for Best Employer (medium-sized business) category and one of its apprentices, Joshua Netherton, was a finalist in the Apprentice of the Year category. Ontic received the highest number of applications ever for its September 2024 intake of apprentices. Recruitment starts for September 2025 later this year. 

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Your Friday roundup

🔊 While we’re on the subject of apprentices, we thought we would flag this series of events. This is the Apprenticeship Roadshow, which sees the Gloucestershire Careers Hub arrive at Gloucestershire College, on Monday 1 July, the University of Gloucestershire, on Tuesday, 2 July, AccXel Construction School in Cinderford on Monday, July 8 and Cirencester College on Thursday, 11 July. A panel of apprentices and employers will be on hand to answer all your questions at what are described as ideal oportunities for students interested in the career route to learn more. Find out more here.

📈🔋 We’re playing catch-up with a few of the Top 100 Businesses in Gloucestershire stories, the series we put together tracking the financial fortunes of the county’s biggest firms by turnover.  And as we add them to our Reports & Deals channel, sponsored by Randall & Payne, we wanted to flag this story about Commercial Group. This is a business that put its ambitions for a zero carbon footprint front and centre some considerable time ago and continues to grow year on year. Read the story here.

🏗️ Good, affordable homes with clever technology to settle anxiety around energy bills, and that might even be fit for a family, often seem out of reach. So what on earth appears to have gone so right in Berry Hill in the Forest of Dean? Seventeen such homes with an EPC A rating, air source heat pumps, solar panels and mechanical heat recovery units are being built in the village. It’s all being made possible by a partnership between two Gloucestershire businesses - Newent-headquartered housing association Two Rivers Housing and Forest of Dean-based Mike Etheridge Construction, which turned over £16 million at last count. Two Rivers already provides ‘affordable housing’ for more than 4,400 families in Gloucestershire, has build 500-plus homes since 2018 and pledged to deliver 500 more by 2028. Worth celebrating, we thought.

🚜👨🏽‍🏫 Hartpury University and Hartpury College is calling all agricultural or land-based engineering providers to its Innovation Centre on Monday, 3 June, for an introducion to the new agriculture T Level qualfiication. You’ll also get a tour of the farm campus and networking. You can find out more here. Or contact event organiser Fern Heryet at fern.heryet@hartpury.ac.uk or call her on 07904 419065.

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Is Gloucestershire home to the West’s new creative capital?

Talk in Gloucestershire can seem all about cyber, even in Gloucester with its £107m Forum Digital, but something else is happening. Is the city becoming a new creative business capital of the West?

By Andrew Merrell

Nich Angell and Jon Lock, of Big Punch Studios.

Earlier this month you may have spotted a post on social media about a rowing machine that turned your exercise effort into electrical energy; the suggestion being a flotilla of them could power your gym. Hey presto, one carbon neutral workout space. 

You may have seen a beautiful sculpture of a horse’s head on social media, bowed, like it is kissing the ground – the work of Gloucestershire artist, Deborah Harrison, who made the full-size piece and needed to work out how to produce a limited-edition number of smaller replicas for general sale.  

Or perhaps, if you have ever needed to give blood, and the doctor of nurse managed the delicate procedure with just one hand, it is possible they were using a patented Medica Instrumental single-hand syringe adaptor.

What this eclectic trio have in common is they are all ideas and projects developed by a single product design and development agency born, bred and based in Gloucestershire, called Phoenix Consultants.  

In other news, if you were in the right place at the right time in late April you would have seen two creative types travelling back from London and overheard them celebrating a four-book deal they had landed with a major publishing house.  

This was part of the team from the business Big Punch Studios, whose deal will see them write, draw and create a series of graphic novels we aren’t yet allowed to tell you about.

If that doesn’t seem very exciting because it’s ‘not a proper novel’, think about this – the UK graphic novel market was worth £53.2 million annually and rising, at last count.  

These are just two of the examples plucked from a cluster of businesses gathering in the same building in Gloucester, and by sheer number daring to make it a creative capital for the West.