Empowering Futures: Myerscough’s 2030 Vision unveiled

Under the promise of ‘Empowering Futures’, our 2030 Vision aims to position Myerscough College and University Centre as a dedicated land based and sports college, empowering communities with ambitious and inclusive education, creating a workforce for the future.

We pledge that:

By 2030, Myerscough College will be a vibrant community of empowered individuals, offering ambitious land based and sport education.

We will cultivate the workforce of the future who excel through their industry-relevant knowledge, skills, and behaviours.

We will continuously invest in our talented team, state-of-the-art facilities, and the latest technology to be the employer and education provider of choice. We are committed to fostering a safe, happy, and healthy community. Our influence and impact will be recognised locally, nationally, and internationally.

We will drive sustainable productivity, maintain resilient finances, and make impactful investments.

Through partnerships and curriculum co-creation, driven by innovation and meaningful industry engagement, we will positively influence local and national economies.

This will be underpinned by a number of key Strategic Objectives. These are:

 EMPOWERED PEOPLE

• Ambitious, high-quality land based and sport education
• Employer of choice
• Graduates with sought after knowledge, skills and behaviours
• Safe, inclusive & healthy communities

 UNIQUE PLACE

• Industry standard facilities and leading-edge technology
• A centre for demonstration and knowledge exchange
• Local to international recognition
• Destination of choice for learners and employers

 SUSTAINABLE PRODUCTIVITY

• Applied research, innovation and knowledge transfer
• An effective co-created curriculum with high quality work experience
• Economic, environmental and social sustainability
• Resilient finances with high impact investment

The 2030 Vision, which has been formulated with direct input from every Myerscough department, both academic and support, was officially unveiled at a special Fellows Dinner, held at Myerscough’s main centre in Bilsborrow, near Preston, and attended by dozens of Honorary College Fellows, along with a host of invited guests, partners and stakeholders.

Unveiling the 2030 Vision Strategic Plan, Wes Johnson, Chief Executive and Principal, said:

‘’Every member of staff at Myerscough across all of our centres, has had that opportunity to contribute to this plan on more than one occasion, which is why, I can stand here with certainty and say it’s owned by everybody, and we're all committed to deliver it across the wider college community.

‘’There are only ten independent land based colleges left in the country, so it's really important that we’re really clear about why we exist, why we're here, and what our purpose is.

‘’The vision needs to resonate not only within the college, but with our key partners, because again, I spend a lot of time outside of college with various organisations, and we want to make our purpose absolutely crystal clear, and that it ties into our relationships nationally, and our relationships as part of Lancashire colleges locally.

‘’The culture of FREDIE – Fairness, Respect, Equality, Diversity, Inclusion and Engagement - is embedded in our DNA, and our values are encompassed by three key words - passionate, professional, collaborative.

‘’This is the culture that's going to make Myerscough a fantastic place to work and a fantastic place to meet all of the needs of our partners, and ultimately serve the wider needs of Lancashire, the north of England, and beyond.

‘’One thing I think that that was lacking was that ability for our staff, teams, for our departments, for us as a college to really maximise our ambition. So we want to be an incredibly ambitious organisation, and that's ambitious about being the best, doing the right thing, making that connection between our community and great jobs.

‘’But the other word that is hugely important, is inclusive. We’re absolutely committed to being completely inclusive. If you want careers in sport, in land based subjects, there should be a starting point for you here, and again, the diversity of that college community really represents the inclusive nature of what we do.

‘’Ultimately, for us as a college, our job is to produce that workforce for the future. That's clear. And as a custodian of public funding, it's really important to me that I can stand in any forum and tell you how we make good use of public funding, and fundamentally, that job is giving those inclusive opportunities.

‘’But to do that, we've got to invest. We've got to continue to move forward. To continue to invest in our fantastic team, and we need to make sure that our facilities meet the needs of industry.

‘’On our main campus alone we have 100 buildings and 1000 acres, two farms and it's fantastic specialist resources, but we need to keep moving forward. We need to make sure that's absolutely fit for purpose, to deliver the vision.

‘’A safe, happy and healthy community is really important too. It's worth saying that any land based college is a 24 hour day, seven day a week place, which operates for 365 days of the year. Myerscough never closes. So what we want to do to make sure that all of our stakeholders, whether they be our fantastic students, our wonderful staff, partners we work with, experience that safe, happy and healthy community.  

‘’We've got a really clear vision. We've got masses of ambition here at Myerscough, we take our public role really seriously. We value every penny of public money that we spend and we've committed to delivering best value for the people that will benefit from it.

And we want our partners and stakeholders to help us on that journey to 2030 and beyond. We’ve been around for a long time and we’re not going anywhere. We can do something special here, but we'll never do something special in glorious isolation. So whether that's partnership with other colleges, whether that's partnership with our university partners, whether it's our employees.

‘’We can deliver something fantastically special here.

‘’We want to empower our students. We want to have empower our staff to be bold, to be ambitious, to be motivated, to drive us forward. We want us to have to be confident that they are our industry experts and actually, as part of my experience being a college, it's real privilege, pace to be we make a positive difference to people's lives every day.

‘’And that's a real privilege.’’