Teesside University

decided to become a sole trader about I think it was eight years ago.

I was working at Teesside Uni at the time and I seen like a natural progression path whilst I was there doing HNC and building services engineering.

didn't get the job so i just decided that was it i go as a sole trader i started working away and started listening to like audio books which changed my mindset and like i was listening to successful people and i related to a few few of them So, yeah, I was working away, but I had a couple of, what, two daughters.

COVID hit, ended up spending a lot more time at home, and I thought, this is where I need to be, really.

And I remember going home that day, my mum was a teacher, my dad, and telling them that I was coming back from school for the last time was a really tough thing to do.

Luckily, I dropped back a year, went to another college, and really, it was a different culture, it was a different type of college, a little bit more vocational, I think.

And for the first time, I kind of really started to think about what I wanted to do, and then I went to Teesside University, did a multimedia enterprise degree.

Back in that day, it was a little bit of radio or TV.

So, yeah, I went off a right ramp there, didn't I? But, yeah, so the journey for me was...

I started making shorts, obviously, when I was at, I graduated from Middlesbrough University, and the first short that I made was an animation, and that did well at festivals.

At that time, festivals was kind of the only way or one of the only ways you could kind of break into the industry.

Now, if you think about Curry Barker and Obsession and Backrooms, then maybe YouTube is opening up other ways and other channels into the film industry.

But just on Middlesbrough, I grew up in this town.

I'm still part of it through the various schools and colleges and charities and community groups, and also the women in engineering scholarship I do with Teesside University and Ingenuity.

But Middlesbrough is a town that's been woefully neglected by successive governments and politicians of all flavors for decades.

you know, some of them past and present.

Yeah.

It's like, you know, stuff like that comes back to that humor point, doesn't it? You know, there's, and there's, and we have got this incredible stuff going on with like renewables and, you know, the energy transition and lots of areas like that, which we have a great history in.

So, and even at Teesside University, working with them now, we've had.

being part with the charity Ingenuity who runs this podcast with me.

Your first year, you learn everything from 3D modeling, animation, a little bit of coding, and level design, and then you pick where to specialize.

Now, my university was Teesside University.

At the time of my research, it was Teesside, Bournemouth, and Abertay, which were the big three ones there, mate.

And I...

So just a quick one.

There was a small competition called Dare to be Digital, right, up in Scotland.

It was at Abertay University, right, where a team of five of us would go try in eight weeks, build like a proper prototype, right? And we made this augmented reality kind of like quote unquote tower defense game, but it was all about bringing your imaginary friend to life.

It was called like Pygmy Panic.

However, it is also the seventh fastest growing economy in the country and has the fastest growing red line on the East Coast mainline.

It has a University of Teesside campus, an outstanding college, an outstanding technical college.

It is 20 minutes to Durham, 30 minutes to York and 30 minutes to Newcastle, as well as about 40 minutes to Teesside and Sunderland.

So on a narrow definition of does it have a technical higher education space? No, it doesn't have its own.