STEM future Archives - Millennium Point

As we head into the festive holidays and approach the end of another year, Millennium Point has achieved some great things in 2021. Here is five key events that have happened at our award-winning venue this year.

Mass Vaccination Centre

Millennium Point made history as we were announced as a mass vaccination centre for Covid-19 in January 2021. It was one of eight centres to be opened across the UK, and the first mass vaccination site in the West Midlands region. Our venue opened it’s doors as a vaccination centre on 11^th January 2021. This announcement was welcomed by the general public and top media organisations alike.

The first day saw Sky News, BBC, ITV, LBC and Birmingham Mail at Millennium Point to capture the first vaccinations, and mark the historic moment that the UK could start the road to recovery. Below shows a video capturing the excitement and relief that accompanied it.

Across the whole time we were a mass vaccination centre, approximately 180,000 vaccinations took place at Millennium Point during this time.

Asima Adnan wins a fully funded degree

In 2021 our Scholarship program crowned it’s 8^th winner, with Asima Adnan from Dudley being named the winner of this year’s life-changing Millennium Point Charitable Trust Scholarship, earning a fully-funded degree at Birmingham City University (BCU).

Asima along with the other finalists, attended an assessment day at Millennium Point, where they each presented to a panel of five judges. Asima impressed the panel the most and was selected as the lucky winner.

The 37-year-old mum of five studied Social Science and Humanities at Dudley College, and began her Planning degree at Birmingham City University in September.

Applications open for the 2022 Scholarship on Monday 3^rd January. For more information please click here.

Millennium Point hosts first ever hybrid event

As part of our Hybrid and Virtual event packaging, we hosted our first ever hybrid event in May, Talking Point: The Future of Events. The conference included many discussion points from across the events sector, as well as provide valuable insights and a platform to debate the road to recovery, current trends, sustainability, and the impact of Covid-19 on customers’ relationships to events and hospitality.

The event welcomed two panels of industry experts and was hosted by events industry veteran Neil Thompson, Founder of popular event professionals network The Delegate Wranglers. You can watch the replay of the event below:

This follows on from a transformation of our Auditorium with a £350,000 investment, installing a new 10m x 3m participant stage area beneath the 16 m x 10 m giant screen to provide greater space and flexibility for panel events, presentations, and live performances.

With the launch of our Hybrid and Virtual Events package, we also upgraded our AV equipment to support that which includes an M32R digital mixing desk, intelligent LED lighting system, mounted Panasonic PTC-280 cameras and a Kramer 8×8 Matrix switcher which allows switching of screen content seamlessly.

Fans get time of their lives at movie and drinks nights

The well received Millennium Point Presents movie and drinks nights have continued to be a big success throughout 2021. Our partnership with the movie geeks, The Wine Events Company has offered more blockbuster showings including Back to the Future, Top Gun, Dirty Dancing, Rocketman and Love Actually.

With more exciting events on the way in 2022, want to get a feeling of what to expect? Check out our screening of the eighties classic Dirty Dancing below. Guests had the time of their lives with a live band, themed cocktails and movie trivia.

Millennium Point Charitable Trust reaches a £30m landmark in STEM support

In 2021 our Charitable Trust announced that it had reached a landmark £30m in STEM support to organisations across the West Midlands over the last seven years – including £4.98m in the last financial year alone.

For those that are not aware, our commercial activity that takes place in the Millennium Point building feeds back into the Millennium Point Charitable Trust. This enables the charity to donate to, invest in, and facilitate STEM-related projects, events and initiatives in the West Midlands. This has included over £2.7m in STEM grants to schools, not-for-profits and charities in Greater Birmingham and the Wider West Midlands.

To coincide with our grant programme , the trust funds £16,650 in STEM degree scholarships annually, in partnership with Birmingham City University. To date, scholarships have totalled over £83,000.

An example of the type of STEM projects we fund is showcased below.

Find more interesting content from Millennium Point over at our news section, or follow us for daily updates on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn with @MillenniumPoint. Millennium Point is a landmark public building and multi-award-winning events venue in the Eastside of Birmingham City centre. Profits from our commercial activity are invested by the Millennium Point Charitable Trust into projects, events and initiatives which support the growth of science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) and education in the West Midlands.

Applications for our Charitable Trust STEM Grants programme close this Friday so don’t miss out on funding for your next STEM project.

Have a STEM project plan that needs funding? Our small grants are available from £1,000 to £20,000 to individual applicants to support science, technology, engineering & maths (STEM) education in Birmingham and the wider West Midlands. Applications close at 5pm this Friday, meaning you don’t have long to get your application submitted!

An example of the type of projects we fund is detailed in the video below.

You can start your application by clicking here.

Endless possibilities with STEM

Over the past five years, the Millennium Point Charitable Trust has awarded over £2 million to charities, not-for-profits, community groups and schools to further STEM education. Millennium Point Charitable Trust has previously seen the rewarding outcome of past projects such as the science area at Ark Tindal Primary and Sensational Science at Birmingham Botanical Gardens. The latest round of funding in 2021 saw a wide range of successful applications – from a proposal to build a fully operational light aircraft, STEM training toolkits for schools and a car engineering workshop for girls.

Last year Millennium Point saw 70 applications from not-for-profit organisations in aim of receiving a share of the grant money.

Applications for Millennium Point Charitable Trust STEM Grant Programme is now open

Abbie Vlahakis, CEO of Millennium Point said. “Along with our hugely popular degree scholarship, the Small Grants Programme is why we do what we do. To promote STEM education across the region and increase the opportunities for the next generation via some of the most exciting career paths available.

“Every year the quality and volume of applications that the Millennium Point Charitable Trust receives is fantastic. I have no doubt that will be the case again – I can’t wait to see them.”

Read more about our fantastic case studies here.

Top tips for writing your application

We understand writing an application can be tricky, but we don’t want you to feel overwhelmed. We’ve created a blog that lays out some of our most useful tips and advice using our many years of experience with the grants programme, making your application as easy and quickly as possible.

To read more please click here.

Book with Millennium Point and help support the future of STEM

Everything Millennium Point Charitable Trust achieves is made possible by the commercial activity that takes place in our landmark building. It all feeds back into the charitable trust, enabling it to donate and invest in STEM-related organisations, projects, and initiatives.

When booking events with Millennium Point you are widening your CSR and supporting the local region. Find out how and more about our 17 unique event spaces here.