Constructing Excellence Midlands is preparing to commence the latest edition of its Diploma in Collaboration in Construction, set to be delivered through a unique partnership with industry teaching platform the Supply Chain Sustainability School.

Ten course tutors from the likes of Bowmer + Kirkland, Freeths and the NHS will be imparting their knowledge through the course, which will cover topics including the Value Toolkit, designing for the environment and collaborative forms of contract.

The PURE Project together with two of its providers, Midland Mencap and Birmingham Rathbone, are celebrating the hard work and success of their participants with learning difficulties and disabilities at an event in Weoley Castle.

Participants will be helping to run the event, there’s a graduation ceremony in the morning as well as sessions with employers and partners in the afternoon. These include Nuffield Health, MedeQuip and Birmingham Adult Education Service.

Birmingham City University (BCU) has partnered with The Guardian Foundation to offer a fully funded bursary to an aspiring postgraduate journalist from an African and/or Caribbean background, as part of a drive to ensure news organisations are representative of a diverse range of experiences and perspectives. 

The inclusion of a place on BCU’s data journalism course through The Guardian Foundation’s expansion of its prestigious Scott Trust bursary scheme is being funded as part of a response to independent research revealing the Guardian’s historic links to the slave trade.

A Birmingham artist and academic who was enlisted in the Iranian military at 14 and later fled to the West Midlands to escape conflict has been named as the winner of a Coventry gallery’s public art competition. 

Dr Mohsen Keiany, a Visiting Lecturer at Birmingham School of Art and Birmingham City University architecture alumnus, whose work responds to ongoing violence in Iran and his own experiences as a soldier, made first place at the 2023 Coventry Open at the Herbert Art Gallery & Museum for his painting ‘The Motherland’. 

University of Wolverhampton students got the opportunity to shadow a sign language interpreter working on the lunchtime news at BBC Cymru Wales in Cardiff recently.

Final year students studying for the British Sign Language (BSL)/English Interpreting degree, shadowed Tony Evans, sign language interpreter, as he prepared for the news bulletin, learning about the preparatory and behind-the-scenes processes involved. 

Commenting on the announcement by the Department of Education of investment in school buildings in England, Alex Green, Project Lead for the Let’s Go Zero campaign, said: “We welcome any new funding that supports desperately-needed improvements across the school estate but we can’t just be replacing like for like. We need to see robust plans from DfE in regard to future proofing schools and action that will lead all schools to be zero carbon.”