Students dare to enter the Dragons’ Den

Nearly 300 year 9 students from the Arthur Terry School in Sutton Coldfield took part in a business pitch challenge last week called, ‘RGWM’ – Regenerate West Midlands.

West Midlands Combined Authority Mayor, Andy Street, launched the event via remote video, with dragons representing Toyota GB, BBC, Careers Enterprise Company, NHS, Pathway CTM and Birmingham City Council all supporting the event.

The students’ ‘brief’ was to design a concept and pitch for an urban regeneration project which had to be fresh and innovative, financially viable, underpinned by green sustainable credentials and had to benefit the majority of demographics, with mitigations in place, for those who might be negatively impacted by the dreamed up initiatives.

The top two pitches were: (i) ‘Spray My City’, which sought to engage local citizens with regionally-recognised artists to turn vandalised graffiti into living art exhibitions & (ii) ‘Sensory Spaces’, aimed to afford citizens pop up spaces to seek solace or vent their rage in sound-proofed converted telephone boxes.

Students were both mentored and appraised by the external business mentors, affording students the opportunity to engage with the world of work and develop their presentation and collaborative skills, providing our young people with a genuine ‘experience of the workplace’ and contributing to Gatsby careers benchmarks 5 and 6.

Alexander Zarifeh, director of careers at Arthur Terry School, part of the Arthur Terry Learning Partnership (ATLP), said:

“I was thrilled to see the year 9 students engage with RGWM challenge in such an enthusiastic way. What with all the disruption of lock down and need to cram content upon their return, this collapsed timetable event, gave the students something, fun, challenging, creative and competitive to thrown themselves into – they certainly did that, and some! Thanks to all the dragons and Andy Street for generously volunteering their time to be part of this exciting event.”

The dragons will be back again next year to present new challenges to both year nine and year 12 sixth formers.

Please reach out to Arthur Terry’s, Director of Careers at azarifeh@arthurterry.bham.sch.uk if your business would like to partner with Arthur Terry students in next year’s dragons den or other careers events, such as fortnightly, ‘careers live’ webinars, which have been delivered remotely throughout this pandemic-hit academic year.