Shaped By Solent partners with the Mary Rose Museum

Shaped By Solent returns for 2024 and this year we are thrilled to announce the programme is being delivered in partnership with The Mary Rose Museum and Solent Academies Trust.

This popular programme is an opportunity for our Business community to give back to our local SEND schools allowing participating students an opportunity to engage with Portsmouth business mentors. This year students are competing to create an item which will be sold at The Mary Rose Museum. We have been extremely lucky to work closely with the team at the museum Sally Tyrrell and Jason Sexton to create a brief that will encourage the students to explore and learn more about the history of the Mary Rose as well as create a souvenir that visitors can purchase at the gift shop to remind them of their visit to the museum.

The Shaped By Solent shop will return to our Shaping Portsmouth Conference taking place in January 2025 providing the students with the opportunity to share their ideas and manufactured items for lucky Shaping shoppers to purchase and take home. After a successful 2024 programme Kirsty Hill, Education & Community Lead, and Georgina Shepherd, Volunteer Lead, were keen to bring back the programme and look for ways to grow Shaped By Solent so when an opportunity arose to work alongside our partners at The Mary Rose Museum it seemed the perfect way to celebrate Portsmouth and promote the museum.

If your organisation would still like to support the 2024 programme and would be interested in sponsoring the Shaped By Solent Shop at the Conference, then please contact Steff Jones at steff.jones@shapingportsmouth.co.uk to express your interest. This is a wonderful way to continue to get involved and bring further value and support to this year’s programme. Sponsorship of the shop is £500 + VAT and in return you will receive branding on screen at the event, a banner on display at the event, be featured on the sponsor page in the event delegates pack, and receive recognition in all Shaped By Solent promotion.

This year we are pleased to welcome our Business Mentors Ruby Thompson from Vespasian, Jason Sexton from The Mary Rose Museum, Dan Carlin and Autumn Keeping from Mountjoy, Janet Martin and Nick Gibson from Ferryspeed, Andy Arnold from Portsmouth Water and Joe Taffurelli from Liquid Friday. All of our mentors bring a wealth of knowledge and experience, and we hope that the students utilise the mentors working collaboratively to create something both exciting and fun. We would be unable to deliver this programme without the commitment from the organisations who support us so a huge thank you to all of those who give us their time and work alongside us to bring opportunities to these students who we know truly value the engagement with Shaped By Solent.

Shaping Portsmouth can’t wait to share the students and mentors’ journey with you all, so please keep an eye out for our Social Media updates and we look forward to seeing you at the Shaped By Solent Shop at Conference. If you or someone you know would be interested in becoming a Shaped By Solent mentor for next year’s programme, please do let us know.