University of Warwick receives esports grant worth £135,000

University of Warwick receives esports grant worth £135,000

16 February 2022

The good news just keeps piling up for esports in the UK with yet another considerable investment in the industry announced last week. In the recent past, we reported on several investment deals and new partnerships in British esports, like the UK esports start-up SwiftSkill raising £150,000 and the British Esports Association opening a state-of-the-art Esports Performance Campus in Sunderland, and now the University of Warwich has announced that it will receive a government grant worth £135,000 for its own esports mentoring programme.

Support through esports in the UK

The University of Warwick is a three-time winner of the British Esports University of the Year Award because of its leading role in promoting and improving esports in the UK over the past decade. In May 2021, after a £275,000 investment, the university opened its own brand-new Esports Centre where it provides coaching, training, and development activities for aspiring esports professionals. That has helped the institute in securing £135,000 in funding from the government’s UK Community Renewal Fund (CRF), which is aimed at people and communities in need.

With the grant money, the University of Warwick will create a programme, called Esports Futures, with the goal of providing opportunities and experiences in the field of esports to young people between the ages of 16 and 24 who are not engaged in education, employment, or training. This group is also referred to as NEET’s. With their own Esports Centre as basis, the school provides these young people with a two-day experience focused on the discovery and nurture of various soft and transferable skills. This way, esports can play a role as a conduit for digital skills in a more general sense, which will benefit participants in the programme not just in the world of esports, but in the modern professional world as a whole.

Focus on practical skills

Over a two-day stretch, Esports Futures participants will take part in a range of activities, including the organisation of an esports tournament in which they will also be players themselves. There will also be courses on key media and content creation skills, such as graphic design, video editing, and social media management, and there will be a specialised career focus group on hand to provide the participants with advice for the future. A showcase will be organised at a later point to present their achievement to a panel of industry experts.

“I am delighted that the University of Warwick’s Esports programme is continuing to help bring fresh skills, investment, and job opportunities to our local community”, says the Vice Chancellor of the University of Warwick, Stuart Croft, when the grant was announced, “Through the generous support of the Community Renewal Fund and working closely with our regional partners, Warwick is proud to further our commitment to esports by welcoming young people from across our region to our campus so that they can learn about and acquire practical knowledge of this exciting sector”.

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