September 2022 Newsletter

DMU shortlisted for Outstanding Entrepreneurial University at Times Higher Education Awards

De Montfort University has been shortlisted for a Times Higher Award in the Outstanding Entrepreneurial University category.

DMU is one of six university’s shortlisted for the award, which will be announced on the night of 17 November at an event in London.

Supporting evidence for the application included detail on our 1-2-1 support, the Enterprise Placement Year, TEDxDemontfortU, our DMU Entrepreneurship Day conference, Pitch2win and our DMUmade initiative.

Outside of our team, the HEIF-funded crucible project, Fox’s Lair, Brighter Futures and the appointment of DMU’s first Professor for Knowledge Exchange were all included in the submission.

We’ll be celebrating at our DMU Entrepreneurship Day conference on 6 December.

1,500 Listens to our Podcast

Our successful Entrepreneurship podcast series has been listened to more than 1,500 times!

Guests in the last series included Lucy Womack, the first female Chair of The Sir Thomas White Loan Charity and Pitch2Win finalist Ben Hancock.

Each episode sees our guest choose a number of songs which mean something to them, and we discuss how the guest’s work relates to our student and graduates.

Graduate Champions Enterprise Catapult kicks off

More than 25 Graduates are participating in this year’s Graduate Champions Enterprise Catapult.

The 'bootcamp-style initiative supports recent graduates, spring-boarding them into self employment and freelancing with an intensive course on start-up and entrepreneurship skills. Like most of our initiatives, this contributes to the University’s Graduate Outcomes survey.

Congratulations to a rising star

Our team would like to congratulate Melvin Riley. Melvin is a student who won one of our Entrepreneurship Awards earlier this year, and was also a Pitch2Win finalist. He went on to participate in our Leicester Future BAME Entrepreneurs programme and HSBC BAME Entrepreneurs programme. Melvin has been shortlisted in this year’s Leicestershire Live Business Awards and we wish him the very best of luck.

First new Connect event confirmed

Our long-running networking event series ‘Connect’ returns on 13 October. Taking place at Leicester’s newest hotel, Hotel Brooklyn the event will once again bring together entrepreneurial students and graduates with the Leicester business community.

Connect will see guest speakers and informal networking, with 40 free places available.

Look out for registration details coming soon.

Supersized DMUmade programme gets unprecedented response

Following a successful pilot programme in 2021, DMUmade - our creative entrepreneurship programme - returns this October.

This time, the programme has received a huge response, with 60+ 3rd years, PGT students and graduates already having applied to take part. Due to demand, we’ll be running separate programmes for first and second years, plus an online version will run in early 2023.

Students and graduates can still apply, via this website.

DMUmade Fair confirmed

After more than 500 visitors attended our Christmas DMUmade fair on campus last year, we’ve added an extra fair to our calendar.

Taking place in The Gallery on 4 October between 11am - 3pm, creative students, graduates and staff will be selling their own work.

Please help us to spread the work and make our first ever Autumn DMUmade fair a big success!

DMU Entrepreneurship Day

DMU Entrepreneurship Day is an event which features inspirational guest speakers and Q&A’s.

This year’s theme is “Find Your Voice”. If you would like to give a talk or would like to recommend somebody else to do so, please email enterprise@dmu.ac.uk