STEM Workshops in Cheltenham

Cheltenham grew up around a discovery: mineral springs found in 1716 turned a market town into a fashionable spa once Captain Henry Skillicorne began developing the site from 1738. A royal visit by George III in 1788 set the seal on its reputation, and the Pittville Pump Room, completed in 1830, still stands in a town that claims to be the most complete Regency town in Britain. An engineering history runs alongside the spa one. In 1939 the Smiths instrument-making company opened a large factory at Bishop's Cleeve, just north of the town, which made watches and instruments for aircraft. GCHQ, the government's signals intelligence agency, moved its headquarters to Cheltenham in 1951.

Edward Adrian Wilson, born in Cheltenham in 1872, trained in natural sciences at Cambridge and in medicine in London before serving as zoologist and artist on Scott's Discovery expedition of 1901 to 1904 and as chief of scientific staff on the Terra Nova expedition, dying on the return from the South Pole in 1912. George Dowty, who set up his aircraft equipment firm in Cheltenham in 1931, invented the first internally sprung aircraft wheel, and his equipment was later used on Concorde. John Mercer, born in Cheltenham in 1922, spent decades studying Antarctic ice at Ohio State University and warned in a 1978 Nature paper that greenhouse warming could destabilise the West Antarctic ice sheet, a prediction later studies confirmed.

GCHQ still has its head office in Cheltenham, one of its main UK sites. Alongside it, CyNam, Gloucestershire's cyber cluster, began as a meetup group in 2015 and now counts more than 5,000 members. On the former Smiths Industries site at Bishop's Cleeve, GE Aerospace designs, develops and manufactures aircraft power distribution and avionics systems. The University of Gloucestershire teaches its Cyber Security degree at The Park, its main campus in Cheltenham.

Cybersecurity is the clearest route into work that Cheltenham offers, with GCHQ taking on apprentices as well as people joining on the strength of their degrees. CyNam runs talent and development work and welcomes students interested in Gloucestershire's cyber and technology businesses. The University of Gloucestershire's Cyber Security degree is taught in the town. On the aerospace side, GE Aerospace runs apprenticeships in Cheltenham in advanced manufacturing, manufacturing engineering and test technician work, at a site whose aircraft work traces back to the instrument factory Smiths opened at Bishop's Cleeve in 1939.