Building Brum partner Solus has become a Foundation Community Partner of Birmingham City FC, lending its support to the work of the Birmingham City FC Foundation and, in turn, helping to invest in the future of the city.
Birmingham is in the middle of one of the most significant periods of change in its modern history. Regeneration is reshaping the built environment right across the city, from new transport links to the landmark Sports Quarter taking shape in the east of Birmingham. It is an extraordinary opportunity. It also carries a challenge that is easy to overlook amid the cranes and the headlines: the need to make sure the people of Birmingham are equipped to build it, and to benefit from it.
As a Birmingham born and based business, that challenge is what drew Solus to the Foundation. The city has a young, diverse and fast-growing population, yet too many local people lack access to the construction skills that the coming decade of development will demand. Without a deliberate effort to close that gap, the work, and the rewards that come with it, risk passing the city by. The Foundation's plans for a new skills hub, connected to the Sports Quarter development, are designed to meet that need: giving local people the training and the opportunities to take part in the transformation of their own city.
For Solus, supporting that ambition was a natural decision. Solus has long believed that regeneration is at its best when it is additive rather than extractive; when it leaves communities stronger, more skilled and better connected than it found them. Recent investments of its own, in a new showroom in Tyseley and the Digbeth Design Centre, demonstrate this commitment. Backing the Foundation's community and skills work is a further expression of that belief.
"At Solus we are very supportive of the significant regeneration of the built environment that is taking place across Birmingham, including the BCFC Sports Quarter project," said Ryan Bennett, Managing Director of Solus. "This regeneration faces several challenges, including a shortage of the necessary construction industry skills in the local community. When we read about the commitment of the BCFC Foundation Community Partnership to build a new skills hub as part of the Sports Quarter development we knew that this was a project that we wanted to support; a project that is fully aligned with the values of Solus and the shared ambitions of Solus and of Birmingham."
The Birmingham City FC Foundation is the club's charitable arm, delivering education, community and skills programmes across Birmingham and Solihull. Its Community Partner programme brings together local businesses that share the Foundation's commitment to the city, building a network of support around its long-term goals and its work in local communities.
For Solus, the partnership marks the beginning of a sustained involvement rather than a single moment. Over the coming seasons, the company looks forward to following the progress of the skills hub and the wider Sports Quarter, supporting the Foundation's work and playing its part in a project that promises to leave a lasting mark on the city.
It is, above all, an investment in Birmingham's future: in the skills of its people, the strength of its communities and the promise of a regeneration that belongs to everyone who calls the city home.
