GREAT Yarmouth’s status as a centre of excellence for wind energy will be further bolstered next week with a new event celebrating the borough’s past, present and future links in the field.

The week of activities, starting on Global Wind Day, Monday, June 15, will be the only public event along the east coast taking place to mark Wind Week 2015, a celebration of wind energy, which runs until Monday, June 22.

Among the activities will be the launch of a new wind energy-themed educational challenge for schools, at the Wind Energy Museum, in Repps with Bastwick, a children’s windmill colouring-in competition, and a drive to attract further people to E.on’s Scroby Sands Windfarm Visitor Centre, on the seafront.

enterpriseGY, Great Yarmouth Borough Council’s business support service, is co-ordinating the event as part of a two-year programme of enhanced activities, funded through the Government’s Coastal Communities Fund, to create jobs and support the local economy.

In addition to continuing its successful business start-up programme, and introducing support for existing businesses, enterpriseGY is now focusing on additional activities to support key sectors, including energy, and also providing outreach support, including in schools and rural areas.

The event, which is the only Global Wind Day event to be endorsed in England by the European Wind Energy Association and RenewableUK, will focus around a main activity on Monday, at the Wind Energy Museum.

The museum charts the history of wind power in Norfolk over its 200 year history and houses a unique collection of ten working exhibits, dating back to 1820. Here, there will be a day of special educational activities for school groups, focusing on wind power, with a free cream tea and a guided tour for adults.

At the museum, enterpriseGY will also launch an exciting new wind energy-themed educational challenge for schools – dubbed Generation Generators: 24 Hour Power People – aiming to help pupils explore the history and future of wind energy, whilst raising awareness of its importance to the area and of the local career opportunities in the field.

In partnership with energy experts, students will research, design, experiment and explore ideas that seek to broaden their understanding and change perceptions of wind energy, creating their own wind-energy solutions, with the most effective winning a prize. It is hoped that the challenge will become an annual national event, with the final held in Great Yarmouth.

Offshore wind businesses have been invited to set up a stand at the museum to showcase the sector.

Also on Monday, there will be a pop-up shop at Barclay’s, in the Market Place, from 10am to 2pm. On Monday, and again on Tuesday, the enterpriseGY business advisors will be in the town centre, distributing flyers promoting the event, encouraging people to visit the windfarm visitor centre and handing out children’s windmills, including some unbranded windmill kits, which young people can put together and colour-in as part of a competition. The competition winners will feature with their windmills in the Great Yarmouth Mercury.

As part of the week, on Friday, June 19, enterpriseGY will hold its monthly Enterprise Club in the Supper Room at the Town Hall, from noon to 2pm – the same time as the Jobs Fair in the Assembly Room.

Cllr Graham Plant, the council leader, said: “This exciting new celebration will start relatively small, but with the support of the energy sector has the potential to expand into an annual national event, further raising awareness of the borough’s status as a centre of wind energy and as an enterprise town for business and job creation.

“From historic wind pumps on the Broads to Scroby Sands – one of the UK’s first commercial offshore windfarms – wind energy has long been important to the local economy, and the burgeoning offshore wind sector is expected to create many more job opportunities in the coming years, initially through the Dudgeon Offshore Wind Farm and the East Anglia ONE Windfarm.”

Debra Nicholson, curator of the Wind Energy Museum, said: ‘We know how important wind energy is to our future, but few realise the important role wind energy played in our past. As well as Thurne Mill, we have wind pumps that once helped drain the Broads, and others that raised water from wells. We also have one of the earliest wind-powered generators.”

Notes:

• The Wind Energy Museum sits on the bank of the River Thurne at Repps with Bastwick. For directions or to book in a group, call Debra Nicholson on 07796 407864.

• enterpriseGY, based in the Novus Centre, at The Conge, Great Yarmouth, is a joint borough council- and CCF-funded programme for businesses in Great Yarmouth offering business support, business advice and training for start-up businesses and existing businesses.

• In January 2015, enterpriseGY secured £650,000 from the Coastal Communities Fund which is being used to expand the scope of its work.

• The Coastal Communities Fund (CCF) aims to encourage the economic development of UK coastal communities by awarding funding to create sustainable economic growth and jobs. Since the start of the CCF in 2012, grants have been awarded to 145 organisations across the UK to the value of £71million. This funding is forecast to deliver 9,184 jobs and help attract around £115million of additional funds to coastal areas. The Big Lottery Fund is delivering the CCF on behalf of UK Government and the Devolved Administrations in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.

• Global Wind Day is a worldwide event that occurs annually on June 15. It is a coordinated action between the European Wind Energy Association, the Global Wind Energy Council and the national associations to introduce the general public to wind energy through a series of activities. For more information, visit www.ewea.org/globalwindday

• RenewableUK, a not-for-profit renewable energy trade association in the UK, has started Wind Week as an opportunity to continue events throughout the week.

– – – 

advert

To find out more about Lowestoft College ring 0800 854695