Scores of innovators flocked to Newcastle Racecourse as Northumbrian Water’s Innovation Festival returned for its most successful event yet.
The festival, which has been running since 2017, took place earlier this week, and saw huge guests including business ‘Dragon’ Sara Davies MBE and TV Repair Shop’s Jay Blades delivering talks on creativity, passion and innovation.
Over 2,000 innovators from across the globe, including Australia, Belgium, South Africa, Spain, Nigeria and Poland, took part in the event and got involved with sprints, hacks and dashes aimed at solving huge problems such as water scarcity and cyber security.
Other attendees included representatives from every water company in the country, MPs and senior officials from the utility and environmental sectors as well as over 100 pupils from schools across the region.
The three-day event, which started on Tuesday 12th July, took place both physically and online – with the majority of people being reunited for the first time in two years at the Racecourse festival site.
Angela MacOscar, Head of Innovation at Northumbrian Water Group, said: “This is the sixth time that we have held this incredible event, and the energy we were met with this week was absolutely incomparable.
“It was amazing to be reunited with festival friends old and new, and you could feel the excitement across the racecourse and the atmosphere was absolutely electric.
“Our innovators were having some great ideas and I know that they will be turned into some fantastic concepts that will help to make our services even better for our customers – because they are at the heart of why we run this brilliant event after all.
“Now that the festival is over, the hard work is about to begin, but for now I would just like to thank all of the innovators, sprint leads and teams who helped to make our sixth Innovation Festival as brilliant as it was.”