Hear what Alex has been working on behind-the-scenes to make Tastebuds the success it is!
I am not one to talk up what I do on LinkedIn, or on blog posts. I tend to keep my talking for people, connections and making things happen, oh and ideas, way too many ideas.
However, and because our award-nominated marketing wiz has pestered me enough, I have caved and will now attempt to convey how great the last few months and weeks have been, where they may be taking Tastebuds, and what we have planned in the next few weeks. I think the last time I did this was in January, looking ahead to 2025. So yeah, maybe Charlotte is right (of course she is).
I will not go too far back, because Charlotte has done a brilliant job of covering the results from the conference and other events we held in the spring. So, I’ll start by mentioning some more behind the scenes activities I am working on, strategic ideas I think will kick Tastebuds, our members, and the region onto greater things.
1. Building strong foundations on the Norwich Research Park, our wonderful sponsors and partners
We have been working with Quadram Institute, the UEA, AIP (NRP management team) and John Innes Centre to submit a bid to BBSRC. If successful, we could be hosting over 20 funded PhDs working in food research, microbial research and healthy diets. Each PhD will have industrial placements and partnerships built in – with partners we assembled a partnership of over 40 industrial partners, nationally and internationally to support this. Putting the innovation back into the home of food and drink innovators.
2. NRP's Enterprise Tuesday
Further to the above, I attended the NRP’s Enterprise Tuesday event on 3rd June. An awesome power walk through activities on the park. At a guess, over 200 people attended. From SMEs, public sector, investors and academics. Brilliant buzz in the room and great to network with people from different sectors. Was great to catch up with news from the National Centre for Yeast Cultures, the NRP team, John Innes and Quadram too. Also enabled me to have a great chat with Career Central at UEA about partnering to enable more student placements across all degrees and in particular creative and digital.
3. Breeders Day at John Innes Farm
On Wednesday, I attended Breeders Day at the John Innes farm – think of it as field trials for breeding plants. Met some really interesting people, some working on drones to potentially prevent disease in crops. Earlham Institute analysing the air in fields to find pathogens in the air. But the most impressive was hearing from Dr Noam Chayut and Dr Nicola Cook of the John Innes Centre who both had articles published in Nature for their research. An incredible resource of knowledge and brains in Norwich, that we definitely do not shout about enough!
Amongst other projects we have going on, without giving it all away – think skills, think furthering opportunities for our members and the business owners and staff, think commercial opportunities and thinking outside the box.
We have been meeting with people from printing, banking, insurance, football, hospitality and restauration, tourism and even engineering. We’re raking networks to put together ideas that will at the end of it all, benefit our members, the food and drink sector, consumers by working with academia, the public sector, and you, Tastebuds members.
COMING UP!
HQ launch on Monday. Wow, that came around faster than we thought, but yet, somehow it feels like we’ve been talking about it for ages. I think we are on the cusp of something amazing. Meeting mentors and experts in the industry, bringing in academics, workshops, training. Connecting members together for opportunities to collaborate and grow, but also to other tenants of our building in the voluntary sector, opening up new commercial opportunities. We’re really excited by what’s to come and think it will bring with it some momentum for all our our members.
Awards night: if you haven’t yet, please do nominate yourselves for our awards. We’d love to hear from your work, how great it’s been for you and the impact it will continue to have, having worked on a collaboration.
Let’s celebrate working together, improving our sector in unison, not in silos. Reaching out for help or for advice is, for us, a sure sign of sanity in a crazy business world. You deserve credit for going the extra mile to make things like this happen.
Plus, sneaky info in this blog on what to expect: amazing Norfolk wines on arrival alongside outstanding alcohol free kombucha, brilliant African canapés, Caribbean fusion food, vegan donuts, local vegan and gluten free craft beer fuelling the night. A food market for your senses and no black tie needed (although I may have to wear one, having avoided that at the conference this year – is the bow tie comeback on the cards?).
As ever, check our events and news pages for up-to-date information, and to see these ideas come to life.
