Business South helps Solent University students create website to promote Central South

Students at Solent University have created a new website to promote the Central South, with sponsorship from Business South.

With recruiters and HR teams struggling to counter the pull of London, Business South set out to provide paid work experience to students at Solent University and create an asset that would be of benefit to the business community. The result is succeedinthesouth.com.

The site captures the reasons to live, work and remain in the Central South. It will be of particular use to SMEs who do not have the resources to create their own employee information pack but can simply signpost potential employees to the site.

The five design, communications and marketing students who drove the project were Georgia Pullen, Arne Schliebener, Michael Allen, Florian Fentzahn and Despina Venizelou.

Leigh-Sara Timberlake, executive director of Business South said: “The pandemic hit just as the brief was submitted to Solent University so we take great pride in the fact that our champions were agile and committed enough to mentor five students remotely who did not previously have business experience. I’d like to thank web-design agency Nettl and 360 integrated PR for the support they provided to the students.”

Mike Toy, stakeholder engagement manager at Solent University said: “Initiatives like this will play a crucial role in helping the Central South recover from Covid-19 and thrive in the future. Working on the project with businesses has provided our students with an opportunity to put their theory-based learning into practice. This is a great example of a two-way knowledge exchange with our students having the opportunity to work on a high-profile project and employers gaining insights from their future workforce.”

The website takes a graphic approach to the challenge of keeping people in the south and contains sections of studying, employment, environment, lifestyle and connectivity; all factors on which the Central South scores highly. It illustrates the range of high-quality employers in the region, which is known as a hotspot for innovative sectors such as aerospace, defence, digital, finance, marine and maritime industries.

Daniel Wood, managing director of Nettl in Fareham, said: “It was a genuine pleasure to work with and mentor such an incredibly talented and enthusiastic group of young designers and developers and the team here are all very proud of the outcome, despite a challenging brief and a tight deadline.”

The Central South region runs through Dorset, Hampshire, West Sussex and the Isle of Wight. On the fringes, it reaches into the important towns of Brighton and Guildford. Recent developments, such as Freeport status for the Solent, will be added to the site and provide yet more opportunities for people to succeed in the south.