Dragons’ Den star Sara Davies and Repair Shop presenter Jay Blades are among the guests appearing at an innovation festival in the North East next month.
Ms Davies, founder of County Durham firm Crafters’ Companion, will join Mr Blades at Northumbrian Water’s Innovation Festival.
She will open the festival at Newcastle Racecourse with a talk about how she has needed to innovate to become a successful businesswomen.
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Mr Blades will reveal how he used innovation to drive his career despite facing significant struggles.
Also appearing will be Foxdog Studios, a double act of IT professionals-turned-comedians Lloyd Henning and Peter Sutton, a gospel choir and slam poets Harry and Chris.
Angela MacOscar, head of innovation at Northumbrian Water, said: “As anyone who has ever attended our festivals knows, there is a lot of hard work which goes into coming up with the solutions to these big problems, which is why it’s important for us to attract some inspirational people and motivating voices to help us along.
“We’re really excited about this year’s guests - they have all experienced first hand the ups and downs of innovation and will all have fantastic insights and advice to share with festivalgoers.
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“The lightening talks by our guests are often one of the highlights of the festival and really bring the event to life. It’s going to be fantastic.”
The event – the sixth in the region – marks the return to physical sessions after the pandemic.
It will be staged at Newcastle Racecourse from July 12 to 14 and will include a mixture of sprints, hacks and dashes aimed at solving social challenges linked to climate change, cyber security, water scarcity and future ways of working.
Topics innovators at the festival will be tackling include how to create a more carbon-friendly culture, how to build better community relationships and how to make innovation more inclusive.
All of the sessions are free to attend. Anyone wanting to register for the festival should go to www.innovationfestival.org.