Liverpool - a year on

Sher Galer, Ecosystem Manager, Eagle Labs

A year ago we opened our doors to the Barclays Eagle Lab in Avenue HQ Liverpool and invited ambitious entrepreneurs from this beautiful city to join us and grow their businesses and create new opportunities.

Here are some of my personal highlights of the journey so far…

Relationships

Relationships and events are a key part of our success and we have been able to host a wealth of events over the last 12 months. One of my personal highlights is through the partnership we have with Liverpool City Region (LCR) and Liverpool LEP to deliver one of our most successful our nationwide AI Frenzy events. We were delighted to welcome over 80 guests to the Lab and hear from AI experts with wealth of knowledge, including Jonathon Clarke, Business Technology Manager from Liverpool John Moores University, Andy Kent CEO Angel Solutions and chair of BIMA and our very own Paul Wilshaw, Head of Innovation at Barclays UK Ventures. This was a great opportunity to educate our city, showcase our digital fabrication capabilities and connect with our residents and the wider entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Liverpool Pride

I was delighted to host the Liverpool Pride press launch, something that is close to my and Barclays’ heart. We brought together 180 people to celebrate how far Liverpool Pride has come and how we believe love goes the distance and were able to 3D-print keepsakes for our guests to take away.

Our Residents

We’re lucky to have some fantastic residents based at the Lab who have turned their ideas into reality. Alongside residents we have also supported students and helped them to turn their designs into real-life projects. I am especially proud to support Terry Nelson, founder of Aqua Running who won the illustrious Insiders Made in the UK Awards at the international business festival for ‘Digital Engineering/Technology’. We were able to support Terry with developing a specific adjustment he had for the buoyancy suit to enhance its capability further to provide more data to the user. With the time Terry invested into the suit he is now linked to Real Madrid FC and other major sporting names and working towards relationships within the US, very well deserved!

Our Space

We started the space on one floor, but as our presence grew, the business space had to follow. We have extended the space by offering multiple offices ranging from 12-person offices to 2-person offices as well as providing meeting rooms and studios. We’ve also had the great opportunity to welcome new businesses like Health at Work and seen teams like Open Media UK and Syft expand into bigger teams and spaces, which is delightful to witness!

Supporting Liverpool

We have great space to work within Avenue HQ however, we also support other great events happening in the City. This year we supported UK LEP conference in the Exhibition Centre Liverpool. With over 300 people attending and speeches from the Liverpool city Mayor and others, it was hugely successful. We had a stall to showcase our Eagle Lab and were able to connect with the International Business Festival and other organisations like all about STEM.

Our Awards

For a new space like ours, we were pleasantly surprised that we had been shortlisted and then delighted when we won IPSE Award for the ‘Co Working space of the year’. Avenue HQ were up against some of the more established co-working spaces in the UK.

As you can see, it’s been a busy first year and I can’t wait to see where our second year and beyond takes us and I do hope that you will join me on this exciting rollercoaster that is Barclays Eagle Labs, a work life without limits...