The Carnival of Colours returned in September to brighten up Derry city centre with acrobatics, circus performers, graffiti art, live music and much more.
Check out the highlights:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p–gCDpsHWE
Derry’s Walled City Brewery has beat hundreds of other taprooms to be crowned the best in the UK.
The Ebrington Square business, which has created more than 200 beers and received multiple accolades since it opened in 2015, was named Taproom of the Year at the nationwide Pub and Bar Awards.
WCB fought off competition from an estimated 600 other UK taprooms to win the top prize, with organisers called it “a cracking operation”.
The brewery, run by James and Louise Huey, is also planning a major expansion which will see it open a standalone Taproom and Experience Centre in 2022.
LegenDerry Food has given its seal of approval to 17 more eateries and local producers this year, bringing the total number of members to 70.
The network was established to celebrate high-quality produce and the food heritage of the city and region, from street food trucks and award-winning fine dining, to craft brewers and artisan producers.
Last year saw the development and launch of the LegenDerry brand, complete with a new website providing a central hub for accessing unique food, drink and taste experiences in Derry, Strabane and the surrounding area.
As a certified LegenDerry provider, businesses are showcased on the LegenDerry website and receive a suite of marketing material to signpost their venues or produce with the ‘LegenDerry – Great Place, Great Taste’ stamp of approval.
LegenDerry Food was the result of a Food and Drink Strategy launched in February 2019 by Derry City and Strabane District Council, as part of its wider plan to drive tourism and place the region on the map as Ireland’s top food location by 2025.
Selina Horshi, new Chair of the LegenDerry Food and Drink Network, said: “We are always happy to welcome new businesses onboard this exciting and innovative project and we look forward with anticipation to continued development in the weeks and months ahead.”
To find out more, visit www.legenderryfood.com
One of Ireland’s leading diaspora initiatives has launched a new network of regional partners to connect people of Irish heritage abroad with their places of origin.
Ireland Reaching Out is a volunteer-driven, non-profit organisation connecting people of Irish heritage with the local community in their place of origin in Ireland and online through its platform, www.IrelandXO.com.
It has established an Irish Partner Network to improve the service offered to diaspora as they visit Ireland, north and south. One of the first organisations to join the network is the Tower Museum, which will cover Derry, Tyrone, Fermanagh, Down, Armagh and Antrim.
Ireland Reaching Out plans to build on the increase in people tracing their Irish roots during the lockdowns, and who wish to travel to Ireland as the country begins to reopen. As well as the Tower Museum, Visit Castlebar and Ballyhoura Development CLG, Ireland Reaching Out is now seeking other interested regional heritage and tourism groups to join.
Derry has been named “a perfect base for road tripping”, and praised for its fantastic festivals and historic walls, in a list of the UK’s most hidden gem cities.
Travel writer Monica Stott, of The Travel Hack blog, included Derry as one of 10 ‘underrated’ cities she believes do not get the attention they deserve.
Stott said: “Derry is one of the finest examples of a walled city in Europe and is the only intact walled city in Ireland. Derry’s Craft Village is a small but perfect ‘village’ within the walls with a quaint charm and boutique stores and creative crafters selling their wares.
“Keep an eye out for an array of festivals in the city, particularly the Halloween festival which was voted the best in the world by USA Today! Derry is also a perfect base for road tripping and from here you can explore the Wild Atlantic Way and the Causeway Coastal Route.”
Ulster University’s Pro Vice Chancellor of Research Liam Maguire was joined by colleagues from the Derry-based Clinical Translational Research and Innovation Centre (C-TRIC) at a Northern Ireland Business and Innovation Showcase in London.
Representatives from the university’s Engineering Composites Research Centre and Research and Impact Directorate also attended the event, which featured the best of Northern Ireland’s innovative businesses, start-ups and universities, showcasing what the region offers as an inward investment location and as a trade partner.
The Northern Ireland Office, the Department for International Trade and Invest NI partnered to host the September showcase, which Dr Alexander Chacko, UU’s head of Innovation and Impact, said “spread the message that Northern Ireland’s innovators, tech start-ups, and universities are leading the way in post-pandemic recovery.”
The Allstate NI and Ulster University partnership has continued to flourish, with planning now underway for a second joint ‘Learnathon’.
The partnership spans from Allstate NI’s representation on Ulster’s industrial advisory boards, to involvement in reviewing curricula for undergrad and postgrad courses, student scholarships and prizes, running student hackathons, providing industry guest lectures and in turn, University academics presenting in Allstate.
Allstate has also been invited to develop a vision for the new CARL initiative (Cognitive Analytics Research Lab), to be based on the Magee Campus. This vision was developed through design thinking workshops with a small number of industry partners, including Allstate NI. November 2019 saw the opening of a new-state-of-the-art Allstate NI computing lab, also at the Magee campus.
Meanwhile, a recent research collaborative effort with Professor Damien Coyle, Dr Magda Bucholc and their PhD student Salman Ahmed used advanced multi-modal analytics approach to help predict major incidents in Allstate’s infrastructure at the earliest opportunity, allowing them to put preventative measures in place.
Jonathan Wallace, Professor of Innovation within the Faculty of Computing, Engineering and the Built Environment and Chair of the Faculty’s Computing Employer Advisory Board (CEAB), said the Computing Schools at Ulster University recognised the strategic importance of developing professional, educational and collaborative research links.
He added: “As well as the computing lab sponsored by Allstate NI, we launched a research partnership linking academics and PhD students from both Computing Schools with Allstate’s AI Centre of Excellence team to explore how AI and ML techniques developed at Ulster can be applied to the next generation of Allstate products and services, indeed planning for a second joint ‘Learnathon’/Mini-Conference to showcase how Ulster’s leading edge research can potentially address the short mid and long-term strategic goals of Allstate NI is currently underway.”
Kieran Kennedy, former Managing Director of O’Neills Irish International Sports Company, is set to share his innovation insights in an upcoming webinar.
The October 14 ‘Playing the Innovation Game’ event is the second in the Innovation Stories webinar series, which follow the signing of the historic Derry & Strabane City Deal in February, and also come as Northern Ireland embarks on a Decade of Innovation, set out in the recent publication of the Department for the Economy’s 10X Economy paper.
Londonderry Chamber of Commerce, Derry City and Strabane District Council and Ulster University are collaborating on the series in which City Deal partners select case studies from the region, discuss what innovation means within a business, offer and general advice on embracing digital technologies.
Rosalind Young, Council’s investment manager, said: “Through the visionary Derry and Strabane City Deal, a whole new innovation eco-system will develop here in the region. The people behind the City Deal are inviting businesses to hear best practice and to leave with an idea of how they will play their part in the Decade of Innovation that is ahead.”
For further information and to book go to https://londonderrychamber.co.uk/events/innovation-for-growth-playing-the-innovation-game-14-october/
The region’s first ever BSc Hons Paramedic Sciences programme is now underway, with Ulster University welcoming 40 students to the Magee campus.
With funding support from the Department of Health, the new three-year course will be based within the university’s multi-award-winning School of Nursing.
This course will support the development of the paramedic profession in Northern Ireland and further afield. Until now, local students wishing to become paramedics had to travel to the south of Ireland or across the Irish Sea to complete a BSc Hons programme in Paramedic Science.
The first cohort ranges in age from school leavers to people in their forties and a wide range of backgrounds – from those embarking on a change of career from accountancy to insurance, to people working in similar fields: ambulance care assistant, lifeguard, emergency medical dispatcher and humanitarian.
They will learn a wide range of skills through frequent experience and learning inside an exact replica of an ambulance – the only one of its kind in the region – coupled with 60 weeks of practice-based learning with the Northern Ireland Ambulance Service and a range of other hospital and community-based experience in the other Health and Social Care Trusts and independent sector partners.
The students will also have access to a wealth of specially designed training spaces from a hospital ward, simulated bedrooms and living room recreated on campus, to clinical skills rooms and the latest equipment.
Ulster University’s new School of Medicine at Magee has welcomed its very first intake of 70 students.
The first cohort to enter the first graduate entry medical school in Northern Ireland is made up of students with a wide range of related and non-scientific/healthcare backgrounds from politics to investment banking, radiography, management consultancy, optometry, forensic science, nursing and even a previous lecturer in Irish at Magee.
The opening of the School of Medicine, in a newly refurbished building with state-of-the-art facilities, comes just six months after the signing of the City Deal’s Heads of Terms, as the region prepares itself to capitalise on further growth in the burgeoning Life Sciences sector in Northern Ireland.
Professor Louise Dubras, Foundation Dean at the School of Medicine, Ulster University said: “I am very proud of our new School of Medicine which in itself marks the continued transformation of the Magee campus into a hub for Health and Innovation, as a pre-emptive part of the Derry and Strabane City Deal.
“Medical schools are sometimes located in a hospital setting but I want our students to learn near the city’s GPs and the population they will go on to care for. The School of Medicine will act as their home, a welcoming place, for the future doctors who are embarking on a challenging yet hugely rewarding journey with us.”
