STEM Workshops in Preston & Lancashire

Lancashire was the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, with Preston's cotton mills and engineering workshops powering Britain's transformation into the world's first industrial economy. The county's aerospace heritage began during the First World War when aircraft production took root at sites that would evolve into the BAE Systems facilities at Warton and Samlesbury. Preston was also home to pioneering work in nuclear fuel production, with the Springfields site processing uranium since the 1940s for Britain's civil and military nuclear programmes.

Sir Richard Arkwright, born in Preston in 1732, invented the water frame spinning machine and established the factory system that industrialised textile production worldwide. Sir James Chadwick, educated at the University of Manchester, discovered the neutron in 1932 at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, a breakthrough that transformed nuclear physics. Eric Laithwaite from Atherton in Lancashire pioneered the linear induction motor and maglev transport concepts. Alexia Lopez, a cosmologist at the University of Central Lancashire in Preston, made international headlines by discovering the Giant Arc, a cosmic structure spanning approximately 3.3 billion light-years that challenges fundamental assumptions about the large-scale structure of the universe.

BAE Systems operates two major defence manufacturing sites in Lancashire: Warton, where the Typhoon and Tempest combat aircraft programmes are based, and Samlesbury, which produces advanced composite and metallic aircraft structures. The Springfields nuclear fuel fabrication facility, operated by Westinghouse, remains a major site producing nuclear fuel assemblies in the UK. EDF Energy's Heysham power stations generate electricity for the north-west. UCLan in Preston runs degree programmes in aerospace engineering, cybersecurity and forensic science.

Lancashire offers a concentration of aerospace careers, with BAE Systems employing engineers, technicians and apprentices at its Warton and Samlesbury sites. The nuclear sector provides pathways into fuel manufacturing, reactor operations and decommissioning engineering through employers including Westinghouse and EDF Energy. UCLan's engineering and technology programmes, combined with BAE Systems' apprenticeship schemes, create structured routes from school into advanced manufacturing careers.