STEM Workshops in Loughborough

Loughborough has been shaped by two engineering trades. John Taylor & Co, whose Taylor family became involved in an older bellfounding business in 1784, opened a foundry in the town in 1839 and moved to its current Freehold Street site in 1859; in 1881 it cast Great Paul for St Paul's Cathedral, which the cathedral describes as the largest bell in the UK in current use, and today it describes itself as Britain's last bellfoundry. A woodyard on the Loughborough Navigation grew into the Falcon Works, home from 1889 to the Brush Electrical Engineering Company, which built dynamos, tramcars and locomotives. The inventor John Heathcoat moved to Loughborough before patenting his bobbin-net lace machine in 1809, only for former Luddites to destroy his 55 frames in 1816, after which he rebuilt the business in Tiverton, Devon.

Robert Bakewell (1725 to 1795) was born at Dishley Grange near Loughborough and pioneered selective livestock breeding for chosen traits. He developed Dishley Longhorn cattle and New (or Dishley) Leicester sheep, and Charles Darwin later cited his work in On the Origin of Species. John Heathcoat (1783 to 1861) patented his lace-making machine in 1809 and ran it from a Loughborough mill until former Luddites wrecked it in 1816; he rebuilt in Tiverton, Devon, where he continued manufacturing successfully.

Loughborough University's Science and Enterprise Park is home to more than 90 organisations with a workforce of more than 2,500 people. On the former AstraZeneca site at Charnwood Campus, tenants include Almac Group, Kindeva Drug Delivery and Solventum, the healthcare spin-off from 3M, which chose the campus for its UK headquarters in 2024; the campus says it has safeguarded or created over 800 science jobs since it was formed in 2014. The historic Falcon Works, home to Brush's electrical engineering business since 1889, faced closure of its locomotive-building operation when owner Wabtec announced in April 2021 that the site was unsustainable, putting around 300 jobs at risk.

Loughborough College Group, which includes Loughborough College, Stephenson College and Brooksby College, teaches engineering from BTEC to HNC and BEng degree level and runs T Levels in maintenance, installation and repair for mechanical and electrical engineering, alongside an enhanced A Level in Space Engineering developed with the National Space Centre. Loughborough University's Wolfson School of Mechanical, Electrical and Manufacturing Engineering offers undergraduate engineering degrees on campus.