The Rise of the West Midlands
If you’re a long-term reader of our blog (and we hope you are!) you may recall that back in April 2017 we penned an article about the positive developments taking place in our home city of Wolverhampton.
Entitled ‘Regeneration of Wolverhampton’, our blog post took a stand against the negativity that can sometimes swirl around the beating heart of the Black Country.
It was a genuine pleasure to write, and to see it go down well on social media sites really warmed our cockles too. If you did miss it first time around, here’s a handy link to what we’re wittering on about!
Since writing that blog however, we’ve been pondering some questions:
1) Were we being too insular in just talking about Wolverhampton?
2) Shouldn’t we write a follow up blog post about the region as a whole?
3) What’s the largest animal we could single-handedly clingfilm to a lamppost?
Questions usually bring answers, so here’s ours: Yes. Yes. Possibly a goat?
All of that is a convoluted way of saying that in this blog entry we want to widen our horizons a little and list as many positive things going on in the West Midlands (at the time of writing) that we can think of.
So, without any further ado…
• 2018 marked Telford’s 50th birthday, which Telford & Wrekin Council highlighted with the ‘Telford50’ yearlong celebration
• The Midlands is the centre of the UK automotive sector – a sector worth £8bn per year
• The 2022 Commonwealth Games will be held in Birmingham – the third time England will have hosted the Games
• The Midlands’ creative sector is worth more than £5.5bn (a figure which is estimated to rise to £11.2bn in 2030)
• Coventry will be the UK’s City of Culture in 2021 – the first Midlands city to scoop the accolade
• Figures obtained from HMRC show that the value of exports from the West Midlands to Australia and New Zealand tops £1bn
• 17,000 jobs are expected to be created in the construction sector in the West Midlands in the next five years
• Wolverhampton Wanderers FC are gracing the Premier League, with West Brom, Aston Villa, Birmingham City, and Stoke City fighting to join them in the top tier
• The West Midlands conurbation (Birmingham, the Black Country, Coventry) will be the UK’s first multi-city test bed for 5G
• The Midlands contributes £14bn every year to the energy sector
• Birmingham is the home of HS2 Ltd – the company behind HS2 – with the city scheduled to benefit from two HS2 stations in 2026
• The Midlands Engine (a coalition of Councils, Combined Authorities, Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs), Universities, and businesses across the region) contributes £220bn to the UK economy and accounts for 19% of all UK exports
• Birmingham Airport registered its highest ever recorded passenger figures for the month of October in 2018 (1.1m passengers, a 6% increase on 2017)
• In 2018 Telford College became the first in the country to offer students a “7th Form” programme of courses linked to employers
• HSBC UK is investing over £200m in Birmingham before 1st January 2019
• Three of the region’s universities feature in the UK Top 50 of the World University Rankings 2019
Since our formation in 2011, we’ve been privileged to create video productions for some of the finest institutions and organisations with a presence in West Midlands, such as…
• Jaguar Land Rover
• Wolverhampton Wanderers FC
• Collins Aerospace
• University of Warwick
• Worcestershire LEP
• Lyreco
• Compton Care
• University of Wolverhampton
• Leukaemia CARE
• University College Birmingham
• Briggs Equipment
…and others, with our efforts helping these organisations promote themselves and, as a result, the region as a whole.
So there we have it! A list of just some of the great things currently going on in our region – all of which show why we’re proud to be based here and wouldn’t want to be anywhere else!
Know something we’ve missed? If so, why not let us know either via our social media platforms (buttons below!) or through our contact page!
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