The 2021 Leicester Business Festival kicked off with a launch event at one of the new attractions helping to bring life back into the city post-Covid.
Members of the business community attended the launch of the two-week festival at the new Ninja Warrior 海角视频 Adventure Park.
Guest speakers included the venue’s general manager Dean Sayer, British Paralympic gold medal winner Laura Sugar, and Kate Walker, founder of Loughborough-based.
Leicester Mayor Sir Peter Soulsby said the festival was a way to get businesses working together and to promote the city and county on a regional, national and global stage.
The 90 business events taking place over the next fortnight cover everything from sports entrepreneurship to future-proofing Leicester’s fashion industry and sustainable business travel.
Sir Peter said: “These festivals have got bigger and bigger and are an opportunity to remind ourselves and everyone else just what we have got here.
“Despite the challenges we have had over the last 18 months our city has bounced back. We continue to move forward and the interest of investors is as high as ever.”
Examples of recent investment, he said, include the new Gresham aparthotel, which opens this week, and apartments in the city’s former Debenhams store, along with the University of Leicester’s news Freemans Common development, the expansion of Space Park Leicester, a new Hotel Brooklyn at the Tigers rugby ground and the transformation of the city’s derelict waterside area into a thriving place to live and work.
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Alister de Ternant, managing director of Leicester’s Associate events, which helps run the annual festival, said the city and county were bouncing back more strongly than ever from the pandemic.
He said: “A year ago – which seems like a lifetime ago – we were all back in lockdown, and I want to say thank you to everyone who supported Leicester Business Festival through that period.
“This festival is run by the business community for the business community and despite the lockdown last year we still managed to put a festival on.
“The reason for that is that Leicester is probably the most resilient, determined and innovative place that I have ever had the fortune of working in.”
He said the past six festivals had included almost 700 events with more than 39,000 attendees.
Dean Sayer, who invested more than £1 million building the Ninja Warrior 海角视频 franchise on the St George’s Retail Park, said it was a prime example of how shopping parks, shopping centres and high streets were fighting back from the slowdown in traditional retail by coming up with new leisure ideas.
He said: “I really think this is the future.
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“In the last week a senior figure at our landlords phoned to say “well done”, saying what we’ve done is amazing, and footfall on the retail park has gone up because of it.
“And the manager of Currys pulled me to one side and said the volume of customers that nip in because they are round the corner from Ninja Warrior has been amazing.”
Helen Donnellan, director of public engagement at festival headline sponsor De Montfort University, said the university was more involved in supporting local business than ever before.
She said she had seen an amazing transformation in the city over the six years that she had been here.
She said the university had recently created a “toolkit” to help business “recruit, retain and promote” a more diverse workforce.
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Other speakers included Richard Osborn, business festival community interest group director and Midlands regional director at Excello Law, and Penny Coates, who chairs the East midlands Freeport.
She said they hoped to hear next spring if the plans were being formally backed by the Government.
Nearly all events are free to attend, but have to be booked in advance on the festival website at leicesterbusinessfestival.com.