Creative Lab

The Creative Lab is a design-led facility, a hub for new ideas for business creation, product and service development and business growth.

The Creative Lab is a platform for ideas and business model generation, scaling up and new product or process design. It is a workspace that provides access to specialist and collaborative facilities where students, innovative thinkers, start-ups and SMEs can benefit from a digitally enhanced environment and university expertise.

Encompassing the ‘Design’ studio where new ideas can be translated and materialised, The Creative Lab uses interactive screens with audio-visual capabilities, enabling high-resolution visualisation of products, designs and solutions simultaneously.

The Creative Lab offers:

  • dedicated and technology-enabled innovation workspace
  • RD&I equipment in areas of design and prototyping
  • access to a broad range of university expertise
  • a variety of CPD short courses through our Enterprise Academy

Cost

The Creative Lab is free to use, however, individuals or businesses will be expected to cover the cost of any consumables.

Specialist Equipment

  • Metal laser cutter
  • Colour 3D printer
  • Ceramic 3D printer
  • Mac Pro + Pro Display
  • High-spec PCs
  • Wacom Cintiqs
  • Collaborative visualisation screens

You can also access other innovative facilities and equipment such as Virtual and Augmented Reality suites, 3D scanning, rapid prototyping and many more, through our Innovation Enterprise Zone (subject to availability).

Business benefits

The Creative Lab will inspire and enable you to:

  • Generate ideas and initiatives with the support of our university experts and state-of-the-art technologies
  • Convert ideas into commercial products or services
  • Gain new skills through fully funded Enterprise Academy short courses or workshops
  • Access to specialist innovation equipment to design and prototype products
  • Use our high-spec visualisation and design suites
  • Host your own innovation challenges events or workshops
  • Connect with entrepreneurs, businesses, students, graduates, researchers and academics across various disciplines and fields

Who can apply?

This facility is available to all individuals and groups from the Staffordshire Local Enterprise Partnership area.

It is an enabler for a range of design disciplines in a variety of sectors, including industrial design, product design, UX design, graphic design as well as service design, social design and computational design.

Facilities

Staff

Laura Knight

Employer Partnership Development Manager

I am a Business Development Manager in Knowledge Exchange and Enterprise. I support businesses, identifying training needs and academic pathways as part of our CPD offer.

Laura's profile
in the UK for Quality Education

Sustainable Development Goal 4, Times Higher Education Impact Rankings 2024

for Career Prospects

Whatuni Student Choice Awards 2023

for Facilities

Whatuni Student Choice Awards 2023

for Social Inclusion

The Times and The Sunday Times Good University Guide 2023

of Research Impact is ‘Outstanding’ or ‘Very Considerable’

Research Excellence Framework 2021

of Research is “Internationally Excellent” or “World Leading”

Research Excellence Framework 2021

Four Star Rating

QS Star Ratings 2021