WorcsLitFest Launches With the Young Writer Award At The Worcester Guildhall

Source: worcslitfest.co.uk

The evening of Friday, 20^th of June, will see the launch of the much awaited Worcestershire Literary Festival. Hosted at the Guildhall, Worcester City Centre, the night will conclude with the competition to determine the Worcestershire Poet Laureate for 2014 /2015.

The panel of judges includes Poet Laureate Emeritus Maggie Doyle, Poet Laureate Tim Cranmore, County Arts Officer Steve Wilson,  Young Poet Laureate Holly Perrett and Secretary of LitFest Polly Robinson. Last year’s winner Tim Cranmore will hand over his title to one of 6 finalists: Bronwyn Durand, Louise Jones, Damon Lord, Fergus McGonigal, Claire Walker and Suz Winspear.

As part of the WorcsLitFest supporters, Titania’s team will be there from 18.30, ready to open the evening with the Young Writer competition. The judges are looking for youngsters between the ages 13 and 19 with a unique talent. As sponsors of this event Titania will then present prizes to the young winners.  Later, winners of the Flash Fiction awards, an internationally recognised short-story competition, will be announced by the judge and founder of the contest, Lindsay Stanberry-Flynn.

Tickets for the first part of evening can be purchased from the WorcsLitFest website.

The night is set to end with a gentle Midnight Moonlight walk around what was once known as the hunting grounds of Malvern Chase.

This however is only the beginning. Over the next 10 days, the organisers, volunteers and WorcsLitFest advocates have worked very hard to bring new, fun, vibrant and dramatic moments to Worcester. There will be a Romantic Novelists Panel with four award winning authors, writing workshops, stand-up poetry, a live cooking demonstration, children story-telling and an evening with house hold name and radio personality Mike Harding, plus many other surprises.

Along with Titania, the Worcester business community has enthusiastically committed to support the Worcestershire Literary Festival. Among the organisations that have joined forces are: The University of Worcester, Sanctuary Group, The Hive, Worcester Whitehouse Hotel, SME Solicitors, Andrew Grant, King’s Worcester, Tudor House, Severn Valley Railway, Pure Risks, Simply Lets, The Old Rectifying House, Drummonds Bar, Avoncroft Museum, eRotary and others.

Tickets are still available online. For enquiries contact secretary@worcslitfest.co.uk

For updates follow @WorcsLitFest and tweet at #worcslitfest

National Apprenticeship Week in Worcester: Apprentices in Cyber Security

Source: apprenticeships.org.uk

National Apprenticeship Week 2014 sets the spotlight on apprentices all over UK. Last year’s events and media exposure have increased apprenticeship vacancies by 20% in the West Midlands, over August to October 2013.

Here, at Titania, we are aware of how important it is to offer young people an opportunity at the beginning of their career. As an expanding cyber security company, we want people to grow and develop alongside us.

Apprenticeships in Worcester have increased considerably as well. This week, we featured in the news, next to Hewett Recruitment, Worcester College of Technology, Mazak and Sanctuary Group, The Community Housing Group. The wide range of apprentice positions varies from social media, to engineering, HR, plumbing and cyber security.

Cyber security is still a new industry for school-leavers. As it stands, only 7% of infosec professionals are under the age of 29, and a mere 17% of the total IT workforce is female. An initiative called e-skills was launched to address these problems. Through strategic partnerships with the Malvern Cyber Security Cluster and a consortium of key employers, their efforts are starting to make a difference to the world of cyber security.

Despite being a young business, we recognised the need for new talent in the industry and took on a bright apprentice with no previous experience in cyber security. Three years later, Edwin Bentley is one of the key developers of Titania’s Nipper Studio security auditing software which is supplied to 60 countries worldwide, and has become an invaluable member of the team. Certainly for us, apprenticeships have proven to be a great success, for both the company and for Edwin in his career.

As the company matured, we continued to take on people that can grow alongside the business and now we have two more apprentices; Max MacFarlane in the development team and Luke Willmore learning the administrative side of the business. We would like to thank them for their hard work and also acknowledge the dedication of our more experienced staff for doing an excellent job at training our apprentices. 

Why not join us and the rest of the country, this week, in celebrating all the young people who decided to give it a go and learn something new. Well done, apprentices!

If you are an employer, or an apprentice in cyber security we would like to hear from you, in the comment section below.