Handmade crafts, gifts and homemade delicacies were the order of the day at Altrincham’s first ever Student Market held during one of the town’s busiest market days – the monthly Vintage, Crafts& Food producers Market. Over thirty enterprising students took part in the event which attracted hundreds of visitors and was organised by Altrincham Forward as part of the ‘Love Your Local Market’ campaign.
Altrincham Forward is aiming to launch a regular Student Market later this year and talked to Trafford College about the idea. The College were already planning a ‘Market Challenge’, a competition open to all their students, with the aim of enhancing entrepreneurial and employability skills. The national ‘Love Your Local Market’ campaign provided the ideal opportunity to link both projects.
Students from across the College including Hospitality, Creative Arts and Media, Business and IT, and Hair and Beauty were tasked with the challenge of creating an idea for a stall with a £100 budget, with which they had to buy their products or service, and design their stall. The winning team would be the team with the most profit on the day. Project ideas included cupcake and pancake stalls, best of Britain, t-shirt printing, and homemade hair and beauty products.
Winners ‘Best of Britain’
Family entertainment was provided at the event with children’s activities such as design your own cupcakes, face painting, plant your own pots and babybib designs. The College’s music base students were also on hand to entertain shoppers with some classic hits to celebrate the official launch of Altrincham Forward.
To close the event, a panel of judges including Entrepreneur Naomi Timperely, Jackie Campbell, who owns a local business and is on the board of ‘Altrincham Forward’, Paul Mirage, Membership and Business Development Manager at Altrincham & Sale Chamber, Councillor Michael Hyman and Susan Aldridge, President of Altrincham & Sale Chamber of Commerce, were tasked with the difficult decision of choosing an overall winner.
Making a comfortable profit and impressing all the judges with their original ideas, the overall winners of the challenge were ‘The Best of Britain’ team, with their delicacies stall of smoked salmon, homemade chutneys, pies and quiches. The students were Rachel Baker, 17, Joe Reuben,18, and Markey Thomas,18, all from the College’s Hospitality department.
Judge, Jackie Campbell, commented, “Today’s challenge has been the most fantastic display of enterprise by young people that I have seen. It makes me love my local market. We cannot praise the students enough and as a Chamber, we’d love to see more of them.”
Winning student Rachel Baker, commented, “It feels good to accomplish this today and it is a really proud moment for us. Our hard work has paid off and it’s great to see such healthy competition in our community. Everyone’s stalls looked amazing and the challenge showcased a lot of our skills. It has given us more confidence and it is something that will look great on our CVs.”
Trafford College is inviting students who are interested in enterprise, business and innovation to find out more about their BTEC Level 3 Diploma in Enterprise & Entrepreneurship. This specialised course helps young entrepreneurial students learn more about how to start up and run their own business or social enterprise, and has been designed and developed with the National Enterprise Academy (NEA) to give learners a qualification that will enable them to start-up and run a fully functioning business to develop their entrepreneurial skills, as well as interact with entrepreneurs and business people.
