Interview: Shirah Bamber, Preston’s new Innovation Ambassador
Last month, Preston City Council announced the appointment of Shirah Bamber as its new Innovation Ambassador, tasked with raising the profile of the city as a place for all things tech. We asked her to tell us more about this intriguing new role…
Hello Shirah. What is an Innovation Ambassador and what are you setting out to do?
My job is to be a single point of contact for the city, someone who can represent, amplify and push the agenda forward in terms of innovation, tech, digital and cyber in Preston. It’s about having a visible presence for business, communities and individuals to connect with. I’m here to advise the council but also to build and share a narrative about what’s happening in the city.
Shirah Bamber, Innovation Ambassador for Preston, image courtesy Shirah Bamber
To do that, I spend a lot of my time attending events and meeting people. I also work closely with managed offices and co-working spaces in the city, and key partners including the university here, the city council and Lancashire County Council — because we have a two-tier system of local government.
What experience do you bring to the role?
I’m a communication specialist with 15 years’ experience working across the public, private and third sectors. Although I’m Canadian, I’ve lived and worked around Preston for my whole career. I was Head of Policy and External Relations at Preston City Council where, through a very collaborative, external-facing approach, I developed an extensive network of contacts across the city and region. In that role, I also took responsibility for different types of project that didn’t naturally fit anywhere else within the council.
Having that kind of wide-ranging experience and established network means I’ve been able to hit the ground running in this new role. I already have a good reputation with our partners — I’m a known quantity. But I also have a clear understanding of the council’s political ambitions and more complex pipeline projects. For example, there’s the proposed digital cooperative, focused on digital exclusion, and how that will be linked to the community wealth-building agenda. Plus, I’m a Preston-based business owner so I understand the economic climate, and the benefits and challenges of running a business here.
The job description of the Innovation Ambassador is to ‘raise the profile of Preston as a hub for innovation, cyber, tech and digital businesses.’ What’s going on in Preston already that more people should know about?
The first thing is that Preston is a great place to do business. That’s for lots of different reasons. You can afford to run a business here. Then there’s the fact that the average age of an SME in Preston is about 18 years, which demonstrates that we’ve got a viable, long-term ecosystem for business. We have the facilities, too. Whether you need your own dedicated workspace or want co-working spaces or managed offices, there are a lot of affordable options.
Besides that, Preston is a small enough city that there’s enough room to make some noise and influence things that are happening. We don’t have a saturated market in any sector here, so there’s plenty of opportunity for movement, depending on your appetite.
We also have a massive talent pool, with the University of Central Lancashire — UCLan — right in the city and Lancaster University just up the road. Cardinal Newman is one of the top colleges in the country, also based in the city centre. Plus you can afford to live well here, with a good quality of life. And it’s a great location: 45 minutes from Manchester, an hour from Liverpool and two hours from London.
As for what’s going on here, there are a lot of really exciting things. I’ve been speaking to a grandma who’s building her own tech platform for business coaching. There’s someone who was working in London but came to Preston to set up a fintech business offering cybersecurity to banks and now has big-name clients. There are people building platforms used by the Premier League. These people, these companies, are all getting on with their work; my role is to gather their stories about the amazing things they’re doing and share them more widely.
How will the arrival of the National Cyber Force HQ in Salmesbury next year affect what you’re doing?
I think it’s a big part of why my new role was created. Salmesbury is a couple of miles outside Preston city centre, so the new NCF HQ is a key focal point for the groundswell of activity we’re seeing in tech across the city, such as the series of events bringing tech founders together with venture capitalists and angel networks.
Obviously, there’s a lot of security around what is involved with NCF, limiting what we can know or say about what’s going on. But it will have a big impact on supply-chain opportunities in everything from local tech companies, and office and meeting spaces, to caterers and cleaners. In that sense, it’ll have an impact right across the city.
But there’s also the way the city will affect NCF and the story we can tell about why it chose a base near Preston. We already have a long history of innovation, with strong links to the industrial revolution and we were the first place outside London to install gas lighting. I think our links to the suffragette movement are part of the same pioneering spirit. We can tie that into the examples I gave of the kinds of things going on here right now, to show we have a long-established expertise in tech and manufacturing.
You mentioned your links to Cardinal Newman College and UCLan. Does your remit include education at school and university level?
Not explicitly but a big part of my role is connecting the dots. I work closely with key partners in education, such as the digital arm of the Lancashire skills hub, which is run by Lancashire County Council. I’m working with UCLan and with Cardinal Newman, which was the first college in the country to achieve CyberFirst gold standard. My job is to connect with what they’re doing, amplifying where I can and pulling out best practice. I can also help if schools aren’t engaging with a particular event or initiative, or where employers want to make a connection.
The Plexal report published in August, Nurturing Preston’s Innovative Ecosystem, makes seven recommendations. What’s being done to deliver on them and what would you like to see?
Those recommendations are a golden thread woven right through what I’m doing. Given the two-tier system, there are elements that Lancashire County Council has to be in charge of, such as transport connectivity between Preston city centre and Salmesbury. I can make recommendations to both councils, and I’m working closely with Lancashire’s innovation team. But I’m already helping with what the report says about alignment of goals, building up partnerships, creating an ecosystem and helping with access to funding and support. As I said, I’ve been attending lots of events focused on bringing funders to founders.
Of those seven recommendations, which has top priority?
The transport link is really important — which the councils are very aware of. I think the main thing is to take advantage of the current groundswell of support and use it to keep up the momentum. There’s a big appetite for this. I’ve been welcomed with open arms when I go to see partners and SMEs about what we’re doing.
What else would you like to see in the list of recommendations?
I don’t think we need to add anything to the list. It’s more about pushing this all forward so that it’s more than just talk and we deliver something real on the ground. I think there’s also the way in which we talk about what’s going on here. Preston is already punching above its weight but I don’t think it always makes that clear. As a northern city, we love to be self-deprecating. As we push forward with this initiative, I hope we’ll see more confidence in what is being done here. We should hold up our shoulders a bit. We’ve got a great system and great people, and we’re doing great things.
Who would you like to engage with that you’re not already talking to?
More businesses and more individuals. I want to ensure that this isn’t any kind of echo chamber by speaking to a wider and more diverse range of people doing interesting things. I’ve tried to be up front about the fact that I’m not just looking to speak to typical tech companies. Recently, I’ve been speaking to Plumbs, a firm of upholsterers who’ve been based in Preston for more than 70 years. They’re a family-run business based in an old mill, as traditional as you can get. Yet they’re doing really interesting things with apps built in-house which are used by their network of consultants all across the country. They bring the work in, but the fabric-making is all done in Preston. Now they’ve got big plans for what they do next, such as using AI. It’s really interesting and not what you think of at all as a ‘tech company’. But I got talking to them at a networking event and they’re exactly who we’re trying to involve.
What else would help — is this something that needs particular backing or a change of mindset?
If I had a magic wand, I’d make the two-tier local government set-up here a bit less complicated. That said, we absolutely have the support of both the city and county councils, and I have no complaints about how well they’re working together. I think everyone understands that a successful Preston means a successful Lancashire. The will is definitely there.
Beyond that, there’s the role of central government. I know everyone wants more funding but there’s also the way that centrally made decisions impact on how businesses operate and their motivations for doing things.
And more businesses need to consider their own cybersecurity. People outside the tech world tend to think that this is a problem for the big fish. But more and more frequently we’re seeing that the big companies get hit because someone down the supply chain didn’t have the right security in place. A caterer or distributor — anyone can be a target. We need to find ways to normalise this conversation and take away some of the mystery around words like ‘cyber’.
You’ve told us what you want to achieve and what you want to see. What does success look like?
I guess that would be unlocked opportunities for Preston’s residents and businesses, whether in the tech sector itself or through the supply chain to caterers and cleaners. I hope to see a higher percentage of local businesses with cyber essentials accreditation who can deliver things on behalf of NCF. I want to see our managed workspaces and venues for events hired by partners working with NCF. And I want to see more confidence in telling stories about the great work being done in Preston — where we can all sing from the same hymn sheet with specific examples of successful local business. As I keep saying, there’s a lot of great work already being done. Our aim is to harness that wave and make the most of it for the city.
Shirah Bamber, thank you very much.
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