Exciting Opportunities for Businesses to have specialist support in Growth and Product Development!

A contactor has now been appointed and work is commencing on building the new ‘state of the art’ R&D Innovation Hub now branded as XPLOR. The hub is a partnership between Wakefield Council and Backstage Academy at Production Park and is part funded by European Regional Development Fund (ERDF.) The building will be completed in November 2021.

Whilst the building work is in progress SME business engagement has already begun using the newly appointed expert team and existing resources and spaces at Backstage Academy and Production Park whilst they are less in demand due to the affects that COVID 19 has had on the live events industry. The Innovation Centre will be able to support SME’s from the region not only with live events solutions but can also support imaginative projects for advanced manufacturing and technology sectors who have development ideas that would benefit from the very unique and specialist equipment available at Backstage. A new development to this unique project is the installation of TV and film studio production equipment currently not available in the district and massive interest

 Some of the specialist knowledge and equipment is not available anywhere else in the district and in some cases in the UK creating some very exciting inward investment opportunities.

In December the Innovation Hub team worked with a South Kirkby based company with an LED lighting project illuminating All Saints church which was a spectacular vision and a new product for the company.

For more information visit HERE.