In December, we launched Epic Youth – a charitable project to help disadvantaged young people with business and entrepreneurial success. Fast forward to today, and we’re delighted to have launched CoLab – a creative incubation centre to mentor and support entrepreneurial talent across the Midlands.

As a network, we strongly believe in supporting young people who have experienced adversity. We work to transform the social and emotional health and wellbeing of disempowered and underserved communities so they have access to equal opportunities within society and can flourish, prosper, and realise their dreams.

We do this by providing pathways to employment and personal development aimed at business and entrepreneurial success. CoLab will play a huge part in helping us to achieve this. But on top of that, it will provide a dedicated safe space to cultivate entrepreneurial mindsets within the Martin James Network too.

CoLab is equipped with all the tools and inspiration people need to get creative and turn ideas into opportunities. It’s a space for people to work collaboratively on projects, express themselves candidly, and pursue new ideas. We’ll also soon be introducing Creative Bites – a series of taster workshops to help people develop skills in disciplines ranging from photography and cinematography to coding and virtual reality .

We’re hugely excited about the potential of CoLab and we can’t wait to see the impact it has. Not only will it serve as an incubation centre for budding entrepreneurs through our Epic Youth programme, it will boost internal wellbeing by giving our people opportunities to get creative, learn new skills and express themselves.

Take a look at the video below to see what CoLAB looks like.

Martin James Network – connecting minds, shaping futures