The Aston Centre for Growth is marking its fifth anniversary today with an invitation-only event which will see alumni businesses, partners and stakeholders joined by small business leaders and experts to discuss growth in the region.
The centre, which is part of Aston Business School at Aston University in Birmingham, has offered leading growth programmes and other business support for SME owners since it was established in 2014. Paula Whitehouse, Director of the Centre for Growth, said: “The decision to set up the Centre was in response to an increasing demand from small business leaders to support their growth ambition, and national stakeholders seeking to partner with Aston. The Centre has enabled Aston to develop a clear brand around SME support aligned to the University’s strategy, and become firmly embedded in business support provision for the region”.
Over the past five years, the Centre for Growth has provided specialist growth support to over 1,000 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and delivered over 23,000 hours of peer-to-peer learning through courses such as the national Productivity through People programme, the Aston Programme for Small Business Growth, the national BEIS Growth Vouchers initiative and the Midlands regional Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses programme. Over 100 entrepreneurs have been put in front of investors by the centre through the Pitchfest West Midlands programme, helping them to secure over £3million of angel investment.
One of the many businesses to have benefitted from the expertise offered by the centre is ‘Tan Rosie’, a Caribbean food business founded in 2010 by mother and daughter combo Monica Cudjoe and Lee Sylvester.
The duo started from their kitchen in Birmingham before completing the Aston Programme for Small Business Growth in 2018. Since then, they’ve relocated to a new commercial premises in Witton, allowing them to expand the business from the increasing demand from their customer base and by targeting other market sectors.
Lee Sylvester, Owner of Tan Rosie, said: “The course I completed at the Aston Centre for Growth gave me access to great resources, contacts and tools which all helped my business to grow. The lecturers and professors were not only highly engaging but the assignment of a mentor has helped me to keep focused while allowing my ideas to grow.”
Professor Mark Hart, Associate Director of Aston Centre for Growth, said: “Our range of small business growth activities at the Centre for Growth has been instrumental in deepening an entrepreneurial culture across the West Midlands. The network of individual entrepreneurs and businesses we have created around the university is making a very positive contribution to the economy of the city region and its range of diverse communities and neighbourhoods. It is indeed an exemplar in the UK of what successful business engagement looks like for the university sector and is rooted in the entrepreneurship and small business research excellence among our Faculty”.
