The two ‘super projects’ funded by Bristol innovation hub Engine Shed to help create a more diverse tech workforce in the city were launched this week as part of its fourth birthday celebrations.
Engine Shed’s Diverse Workforce for the Future project is supporting Boomsatsuma, Eidos and Babassa, DigiLocal, and Cognitive Paths as they create and deliver programmes for young people who might otherwise not have access to careers in the tech and digital sectors. 
Boomsatsuma’s Engine Shed on Tour, pictured, will visit schools and youth groups to encourage young people to follow creative career paths, while DigiLocal’s community participation project will work with culturally diverse young people to stage workshops and develop games which reflect their ideas, stories, and traditions.
The projects were unveiled at Engine Shed’s fourth birthday celebrations this week, when it opened its doors to more than 100 supporters from across Bristol’s tech, creative and advisory communities, pictured below.
The event also served as a reflection on its successes so far.
The event celebrated some of Engine Shed’s major achievements, including staging more than 100 third-party events, hosting 2,587 school students, creating 784 jobs and helping raise £231m in investment by members of its hosted incubators as well as greeting on average 30,000 visitors a year.
In a series of speeches, the Engine Shed’s West of England scale-up enabler Briony Phillips said: “Engine Shed takes an innovative approach – we broker connections, convene people, gather and share intelligence, drive collaboration, and seed and cultivate projects to deliver long-term impact for our economy and for our region. 
“Whilst we might support short-term initiatives, we have the luxury of prioritising projects with no specific targets – that’s where our ‘fearlessness’ comes to life.”
DigiLocal’s John Bradford said his organisation wanted young people in our communities to see hi-tech products that they recognise from their culture, and to see that hi-tech is a viable option for them.
“We also want young people to see other communities from the West of England and understand more about them. One of the greatest outcomes from an event we held last July was watching young people come together from all over, sharing ideas, sharing their projects, and seeing what one another had been working on,” he said.
Supporting sustainable and inclusive economic growth in the West of England is a primary focus for Engine Shed. As well as looking to the future and the generations who will be key to the continued success of the region, the forthcoming expansion into Engine Shed 2 will offer wider opportunities to support local businesses on their scale-up journeys.
Operations director Karen Drake said Engine Shed’s values and vision were to help create a growing, inclusive and sustainable economy in the Bristol & Bath city region that benefitted everyone and was recognised internationally as innovative and dynamic.
“We are a future-facing organisation. We like learning, and finding out new ways to do things. We like to think we have a healthy impatience and we have a generosity of spirit towards economic development in the region that creates financial value, which in turn creates social value. We like action,” she said.
Over the past four years, Engine Shed has expanded its event spaces, room hire opportunities, desk spaces for employees, tenants, and members, and increased its sponsorship deals.
