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Overwhelming success
2008-11-24
Overwhelming success for the UK?s biggest careers event
54,000 visitors attended Skills London last week, exceeding expectations and making it the UK’s largest skills and careers event. Prospects Events, the exhibition division of Prospects Services Limited, ran the event on behalf of London First. ExCeL’s northern exhibition halls hosted over 180 exhibitors ready to help young people, parents and teachers with their career decisions. Skills London 2008 buzzed with success.
Visitors were thrilled by interactive features including a tube train, plastering, bricklaying, fashion design, a football pitch, massive rowing competition, climbing wall, instant advice pods and much more.
Skills London 2008 successfully brought together young people with employers, training organisations and educational institutions. Visitors had expertly targeted advice and guidance and the real opportunity to try out new skills and find out about jobs they might never have considered.
Visitors included the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, who tried lots of the hands-on activities and quizzed exhibitors and young people. He was particularly admiring of the opportunities showcased in building and construction skills.
In his speech to open the event, Boris Johnson stole from Barak Obama’s oratory. He said:
“I think Skills London 2008 is a wonderful event and it shows that it is vital to get out there and get the skills you need to get into a job. “
“Can we build a better skills base for our city? Can we build a London that will be competitive in the future? Can we build it? Yes we can.”
The Minister for Schools, Sarah McCarthy-Fry also paid tribute to the effectiveness of the event. She said:
“This opens up young people’s eyes; there is not just one route they can go down, there are lots of different routes and lots of different skills. Hopefully, Skills London 2008 will fire their imaginations.”
Visitors were able to try different beauty therapy treatments with several colleges including centre of vocational excellence, the London College of Beauty Therapy, who were launching a new range of courses for 14-18 year olds. Visitors were also able to have a go at driving a Honda Formula 1 racing car or changing the wheel and refuelling with UK Skills.
During Skills London 2008 UK Skills ran a number of squad selection competitions for WorldSkills Calgary. Competitors for the cooking competition were thrilled when top chef, Brian Turner, from Ready Steady Cook joined the judges. Brian is member of the UK Skills Board and a big supporter of their work.
Visitors to Skills London 2008 were also able to enjoy a bit of Reggae Reggae Sauce with Levi Roots. The dragon slaying, singing cook spoke to young people about his passion for music, food and business. Levi’s presentation inspired many young visitors to get up on the stage themselves and present their ideas to him and a panel of successful young entrepreneurs and ambassadors in Make Your Mark’s Dragon’s Den presentation.
Levi was impressed with many of the ideas. He said:
“Young people are the future. Events like Skills London are a great way to show them what they can do.”
Katy Neuston from Barnet visited Skills London. She commented:
“It’s fantastic, I don’t know what I want to do, but Skills London has given me lots of ideas and ways to find out more!”
Karla Hitching visited with her son, Jack. Commenting on-line, she said:
“We have just returned from Skills London 2008. It was very useful to us and our son who, until today had no idea what he wanted to do. It was well organised and easy to navigate around the exhibition hall. We found the Fire Brigade and HSBC stands especially interesting and The Careers At Sea stand was brilliant, the guys on there were full of useful information and able to answer all our questions. I have already contacted one of their colleges for more information and we intend to travel down to their open day in January.
Without attending this exhibition we would know nothing about many careers on offer to youngsters today, even after surfing the net for many hours with no interest from our son. So thank you to you and your team for opening my son's eyes to what’s out there in the big wide world. Maybe one day he'll be a captain of a cruise liner travelling the world. I'll let you know!!”
Following the success of Skills London 2008 in supporting thousands of young people from London and the South East in making decisions about their futures, the event will be repeated in 2010, leading up to WorldSkills London in 2011.
Prospects Events also organise the Regional Skills Events series throughout the year in the West Midlands, North East, North West, Yorkshire & Humber. A new national event, Skills Scotland will take place in November 2009. These interactive events are aimed at young people aged 14-19 and are not your typical careers fairs. Each event aims to inspire, inform and educate young people and their parents, carers and teachers about the options available to them. The events are innovative and exhibitors run hands-on demonstrations and activities in a fun and vibrant atmosphere.
Prospects Events also organise and run Adult Skills, a specialist training, skills and recruitment event taking place in October 2009, the Jobs & Careers Events series in London and the South East and the Graduate Recruitment Fairs held at Earl’s Court and Old Billingsgate.
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