Digital Trailblazers, a new app, has been launched by UWE’s Digital Engineering Technology and Innovation (DETI) Skills programme.
Digital Trailblazers highlights the West’s best engineering inventions of the past, present, and future. It showcases the organisations and people that create them.
Bristol & Bath has a rich engineering heritage and is home to businesses pioneering the latest in digital technologies. With the new Digital Trailblazers app, you can explore engineering landmarks via a series of trails digitally or on foot.
The app features an interactive map, with key engineering locations highlighted, each with its own information page. Users can easily explore what is on offer in their locality as well as discovering engineering landmarks further afield.
Trails include the Bristol Harbourside Trail, a 5km family-friendly walk around the floating harbour. Or the Bristol Brunel Loop, a longer and more challenging trail. It weaves through the city centre from Temple Meads station up to the iconic Clifton Suspension Bridge.
Digital Trailblazers is a hub for all things engineering in the region
Designed to be a hub for all things engineering in the region, Digital Trailblazers links to other successful projects led by UWE Bristol’s EDM department, as part of the West of England Combined Authority’s DETI programme, including Curiosity Connections, Diversity Demonstrator, and Women Like Me, and hosts locally relevant educational resources, including the new school resource packs from UWE Bristol: The West in Minecraft, WeCount Schools and Engineering Curiosity.
These educational packs link curriculum learning to real-world projects and people in the West of England, engaging children with local engineering career opportunities. The DETI Inspire team at UWE Bristol have developed the toolkits to inspire the next generation of digital engineers.
Through positive role modelling experiences like these, that more children, particularly those from underrepresented groups within engineering, will choose to study and pursue a career in the field.
Ben Shorrock
Ben has been working to help grow tech and digital business for the last decade. He is currently the MD of TechSPARK the Southwest’s network for tech startups and scale ups working with 25,000 people a month to help them recruit, network and raise capital in the UK’s most productive Tech cluster (TechNation 2019). He sits on the boards of the UK Tech Cluster Group, Bristol’s ONce City Economy Board, Tech Swindon, Tech Southwest and is a co-founder of Bristol Tech Festival.
Prior to working for TechSPARK, Ben worked in consultancy with businesses opening new sites internationally. In this role, he helped set up Invest Bristol & Bath and the Netherlands consulate for the north of England.
