People from Wolverhampton have collectively volunteered over 5,745 hours of their time to The Way Youth Zone since it opened in January – that’s enough time to walk around planet Earth 3 times. Over 200 people from the West Midlands have donated their time to help over 3,000 young people in Wolverhampton. 

Cellist Julian Lloyd-Webber told patrons of Greater Birmingham Chambers of Commerce (GBCC) that the Birmingham Conservatoire has the opportunity to become the “best in the world” but needed private support. Julian, appointed principal of the Conservatoire last year, was speaking at a patrons’ lunch hosted by Birmingham City University (BCU).

City of Wolverhampton Council has secured £600,000 to create a safer walking and cycling route for students between the city’s transport Interchange and the University of Wolverhampton’s new Springfield Campus. The money has come through the Black Country Consortium from the Access to Growth fund. Currently the streets around what is the former Springfield Brewery site have poor pedestrian and cyclist provision and suffer from traffic passing between Cannock Road and Wednesfield Road, often at inappropriate speeds.

Former Walsall College Construction student, Claire Brittain, now an assistant site manager for BAM Construction returned to the college to help celebrate the success of current students at its annual Adult Students’ Awards Ceremony on Tuesday 24th May. Claire completed an apprenticeship in Brickwork following her GCSEs and after taking time out to have her first child, she decided to build on her skills and enrolled on to a Level 3 BTEC in Construction and the Built Environment course at Walsall College as an adult student.

The thriller has been named Birmingham’s favourite genre of book according to new research from tuition provider, Explore Learning, which has a number of centres across the city. In a survey to mark the final week to enter the National Young Writers’ Awards, a third of people in Birmingham (32%) said it was their favourite type of novel, closely followed by Detective and Comedy.

Business leaders from Walsall-based home assistance company, HomeServe, have been working with a group of Black Country students to help them learn the ropes about succeeding in the world of business. An eight-strong team of HomeServe volunteers was on hand to judge a host of “inspirational” business ideas, put forward by pupils from a number of Black Country schools as part of the area finals of the Young Enterprise Company Programme, held recently at Wolverhampton University.