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Over the last few months, Teesside Park and MFC Foundation continued their partnership with “Raise Your Game” – a nine-week programme, giving local young people a fantastic opportunity to gain first hand business experience and to consider an exciting career in retail and hospitality.

This year, sixteen Year 9 students from North Shore Academy in Stockton-on-Tees participated in the programme.

The topics covered included exciting and informative employability skills, CV building sessions, behind the scenes view of retail and leisure environments and lots of opportunity to hear about other professional’s career journeys.

They also took part in scavenger hunts, creating a SWOT analysis and had the opportunity to come up with a business plan for their own store at Teesside Park.

Closing the programme, the students took part in a “Dragon’s Den” style session where the students presented their business findings to a panel of Teesside Park judges.

A special thank you to all the retailers that took part, welcomed the young people into their stores and truly inspired them for a potential future career in the retail, hospitality, and leisure business.

We are hosting a free employability training programme throughout September designed to help young people take their first step onto the retail career ladder.

The five-week ‘Bright Lights’ programme, which is run in partnership with the Middlesborough Football Club (MFC) Foundation, aims to give people aged 18-24 high quality retail training, advice from industry experts and support with interviews and CV writing.

Those on the scheme will also gain valuable on-the-job experience through work placements with some of our biggest brands, such as Nando’s, Boots, M&S and Asda. During these placements, individuals will learn how the business operates as well as build customer service skills, and they may also be offered interviews for permanent employment.

Anyone aged between 18-24 can take part in the scheme, which starts on Tuesday 12th September, with no interview or formal application required.

Catherine Furlong, centre director at Teesside Park, said:

“We know it can be difficult to get your first step on the career ladder, so we’re proud that Bright Lights has helped to kick-start many young people’s employment journey over the years. Not only does it provide a fantastic opportunity to seek advice and learn more about the retail industry, but it also gives people the opportunity to gain invaluable real life experience.”

Amy Campbell, secondary education coordinator at MFC Foundation, said:

“We’re looking forward to getting underway with the Bright Lights programme again and have a host of experts ready to share advice, training and job opportunities with young Teessiders.

The Bright Lights initiative is a free five-week scheme starting on Tuesday 12th of September. If you are interested in joining the full scheme, please email [email protected].

To help support local families in need during the coronavirus pandemic, we’ve gifted bundles of popular children’s books to Little Sprouts Health and Wellbeing.

The charity has shared 300 books with local families along with free activity booklets filled with fun and educational worksheets based on familiar fictional characters such as Alex Rider, Judy Moody and Maisy Mouse.

With many children not attending school due to Covid-19, and the school holidays on the horizon, we worked with our long-term partners the National Literacy Trust to provide local families with the brand-new books and educational materials.

This project follows our long-running campaign in all the local communities of our shopping centres across the country to help encourage children to enjoy reading outside of the classroom and to provide them with the resources to do so.

Free virtual storytelling videos
Working with the National Literacy Trust, we’ve also created a series of virtual storytelling sessions designed to support children’s listening and creative skills and to help spark a love for stories. Visit that National Literacy Trust website to watch.

Our Young Readers Story Club will feature videos from brilliant authors and poets each week, so don’t forget to check back on a regular basis.

Free access to fun educational activities
For more free and fun educational activities for children up to 12-years-old, take a look at the National Literacy Trust’s Family Zone website which has got plenty of exciting tasks to keep kids busy and entertained. There is also a separate section for over 13s to help boost their reading and writing outside of the classroom.

Customer Service is essential to us here at Teesside and we aim to provide our customers with the best experience possible.

In particular, we take pride in our staff’s participation in the WorldHost Training programme which ensures excellent customer service standards throughout the entire shopping centre.

All members of the site cleaning, security and management teams were trained to precise World Host standards and to maintain customer service levels. Our output is regularly assessed by mystery shoppers, and we often conduct customer surveys to ensure we’re continually progressing our services.

We believe that the pride we have in our team, and dedication we have to our customers, is what drives Teesside to be the family friendly establishment it is known as today.

Part of our strategy is to ensure we are well established within the community, providing a place for local people to spend their time. So far, over 150 million shoppers have visited Teesside over the past 25 years – that’s a lot of feedback at our disposal. Now that improvement works are underway, we look forward to welcoming customers, new and existing, to a further-enhanced Teesside.

We like to connect with local partners to strengthen our understanding of local community needs, as well as helping people in the neighbourhood to progress by supporting local jobs, goods and services.

Promoting wellbeing and enjoyment at Teesside is paramount, both for our staff and customers. We relish the place-making initiatives, curated by British Land, that make our space the kind that can be offered to local community projects and support educational initiatives for the people of Stockton-on-Tees.

Teesside Park hosted local schools from the Thornaby, Stockton and Middlesbrough area for the annual National Literacy Trust event. As always the children had a fantastic time as did the team here at Teesside. Our retailers, as ever, entertained the little ones with bookmark making in Hobbycraft, life of a book in WHSmith, pizza making in Pizza Express and story teller Miles in M&S.

The events evolved from the relationship between Teesside and the National Literacy Trust, and is designed to inspire children under the age of 11 to read in their spare time, and to see reading as a fun and creative activity. This program stems from a study that showed that reading outside of the classroom instigates higher reading levels within the classroom.

We hope our young visitors have kept up the good work at home and in the classroom.

The Reward and Recognition allows us to recognize the individual contributions our team members make. At the end of each month, management make time to discuss which employees have especially stood out – this can be anything from an overall positive attitude to an achievement of something out of the ordinary.

We also have installed new back of house facilities, have equipped the staff room with mobile and tablet chargers and carried out team building days to ensure we continue to be a close-knit and happy team.

In making Teesside Park a pleasant place to work, we ensure our centre exudes a positive atmosphere for everyone who spends time here.

The aim of sustainability within our business is to operate safely and more efficiently – using the energy we have wisely, producing less waste, and, most importantly, to engage with the community and the surrounding landscape in a progressive and encouraging way.

·                 We have 31% less energy uses since 2009, cutting carbon by 860 tonnes and saving occupiers on their energy bills.

·                 We operate a zero waste to landfill, with 250 tonnes recycled over the last five years – as much as the weight of 17 double decker buses.

·                 We have 860,000 litres of rainwater sourced through our rainwater tanks over seven years and re-used for watering plants and cleaning, saving mains water and reducing stormwater runoff.

It is important to us that we encourage local charities and businesses to make the most of our facilities. Within the last 12 months, Teesside Park has hosted a range of charitable events and has supported numerous good causes, such as Zoe’s Place, British Heart Foundation, Alzheimer Society, Cancer Research, Barnardo’s Project Night Watch and Middlesbrough Football Club Foundation.

In numbers, recent years have been a huge success. We spent £234,000 on community programmes over five years, benefiting local people, charities and community groups through cash contributions, time volunteering, in-kind donations and fundraising.

We host Young Readers Program too, which so far has seen 1,290 schoolchildren choose free books and take part in fun, educational literacy events at Teesside Park over five years, thanks to British Land’s long term partnership with the National Literacy Trust.

Our customers have been invaluable in donating time, money and unwanted items. Your work for the British Heart Foundation has been especially appreciated. Some 1,500 bags of goodies were handed in by generous shoppers and retail staff for the charity over five years, helping fund vital research and support for people living with heart conditions.

Members of Stockton-On-Tees’ Halcyon Centre and LiveWell Dementia Hub have recorded memories they can treasure forever through a partnership with Teesside shopping park.

Ahead of Dementia Action Week (21st – 27th May), people from the Halcyon Centre and LiveWell Dementia Hub and their carers, together with staff from Teesside, spent a morning recording soundbites about their lives.

Each participant had the opportunity to talk about their hobbies, families and experiences living in Teesside. At the end of the session, they received a CD of their memories as a keepsake for their family and friends.

Teesside is one of ten shopping centres to take part in this project in partnership with Bauer Academy – a national training provider which provides innovative, bespoke training programmes delivered by media industry experts.

The partnership forms part of a wider initiative to give the team at Teesside the chance to become Dementia Friends. To date, eleven members of staff at Teesside have attended Dementia Friends information sessions which aim to provide a greater understanding of the impact of living with dementia.

Mike Clarke, centre director at Teesside, said: “Dementia is a condition that affects many people across the community. Here at Teesside, we want all our shoppers to have an enjoyable experience, which is why we are committed to supporting the Dementia Friends programme.

“We’re proud that many of our colleagues wear a forget-me-not flower badge which means that they’re equipped with the skills they need to support our shoppers with dementia and make sure that they –  and their carers, family and friends – have an enjoyable experience at our centre.”

Claire Jenkins, Head of Community Engagement at Alzheimer’s Society, said: “It’s fantastic that the team from Teesside and the Halcyon Centre and LiveWell Dementia Hub have united against dementia by documenting memories of people affected by the condition. It is a fantastic way to engage with the local community and it’s a perfect way to mark Dementia Action Week.

“In the UK, one person develops dementia every three minutes and almost everyone knows someone whose life has been affected. Yet too many people face the condition alone, without adequate support. At Alzheimer’s Society we are determined to change this, as it is vital that people living with dementia feel included in their local community and able to live the lives they want.

“This Dementia Action Week, Alzheimer’s Society is calling on everyone to unite and take actions, big or small, to improve the everyday lives of people affected by dementia.”