LSBU’s Clarence Centre celebrates five years supporting university and industry collaboration
LSBU's Clarence Centre for Enterprise and Innovation is five years-old and the University has marked the occasion with a one-day celebrationLondon South Bank University’s (LSBU) Clarence Centre for Enterprise and Innovation is five years-old this year and the University marked the occasion with a one-day celebration on Thursday 27 September, recognising the Centre’s achievements since it opened in 2013.
Since opening, the Clarence Centre’s community has:
- Generated a combined income of £317m (£197m in charitable funding and £120m by trading companies);
- raised £13.6million through the collective enterprise activity of its tenants;
- Awarded £64million charitable spending to 3.2m beneficiaries of charitable activities.
The Clarence Centre is also home to the Business Solutions Centre which has offered free guidance and support to 60 entrepreneurs.
As a result, The Clarence Centre was benchmarked in 15th place worldwide for ‘Business Incubators – Managed by a University’, in the UBI Global World Rankings 2017/18.
The day-long celebration kicked off with the Dr Rami Ranger CBE Enterprise lecture delivered by Richard Harrington MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS).
Guests heard about the work undertaken over the last 12 months by the Dr Rami Ranger CBE Centre for Graduate Entrepreneurship.
LSBU’s Honorary Doctor of Letters, distinguished graphic designer and local historian, Malcolm Garrett followed up with an engaging public talk about the creative history and development future of the Elephant & Castle district.
Adrian Tindall, Manager of the Clarence Centre said: “Over the last five years, The Clarence Centre has made a major contribution to shaping student and business life at LSBU, while strengthening the University’s links with our local community and businesses in London. It’s great to be able to mark the occasion and take time out to celebrate the achievements of our tenants with this anniversary event.”
Will Akerman, Founder and Managing Director of ‘My Kinda Future’, one of the Clarence Centre tenants, said: “As a business, we pride ourselves on being thought leaders within the emerging talent space. LSBU helps us with that by offering us a great event space. It’s allowed us to run roundtables, conferences, briefings, assessment days and training days.”
The afternoon included an event for LSBU students and graduate entrepreneurs to pitch their ideas and for businesses to share the progress they have made with the support of LSBU.
Read more about the Clarence Centre.