Portsmouth Innovation Awards returns to celebrate ten ground-breaking and world-leading organisations across the city

The event was organised by The News at the University of Portsmouth’s state-of-the art Centre for Creative and Immersive Extended Reality (CCIXR) and saw winners walking away with awards in 10 different categories.

And it was the £5.2m university centre - opened in May this year - which walked away with the top award of Innovative Business of the Year.

The centre’s business director, Pippa Bostock, said the awards was a fantastic way to recognise the team’s hard work over the last five months.

Looking to the future, she said: ‘We have lots of projects in development. We have just done a piece of work for the BBC and a piece of work for Sky.

‘We want to be embedded in the city – we are passionate about the city.’

This aim has led CCIXR to develop cutting-edge exhibitions for fellow-award winner, The Mary Rose Trust, which won Digital Innovation of the Year.

The Trust has been using projectors and virtual reality displays to recreate the Tudor warship in all her former glory in the Historic Dockyard.

Hannah Matthews, curator of the Mary Rose, said: ‘We are currently working to have VR headsets throughout the half-term.’

But a common refrain among the award-winning organisations and businesses was the call for more funding to be directed into the city, as the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic still looms large on budget sheets.

Hannah added: ‘We need the funding, the centre needs the funding – being closed during furlough was very challenging.’

But innovation is helping to plug this gap, with award winners like community interest company Work Better Innovations providing early grants to grassroots community projects, like bicycle repairs for vulnerable and car-less people across the city.

And community projects have also shown their flair for new ideas and growth, with award winner Package Free Larder set to expand with a shop inside the University of Portsmouth Student Union.

Awards’ sponsor BAE Systems said the business hoped to show the very best of Portsmouth across a wide range of fields.

Ben White, head of communications for the defence specialists, said: ‘The important thing is that innovation isn’t just about technology. It can be in the environment space, it can be in the community space.’

The awards’ host, editor of The News, Mark Waldron, said the timing of the event could not have been more perfect, coming the day after the 40th anniversary of the raising of the Mary Rose - a true feat of human achievement and endurance.

‘Out in the Solent yesterday I spoke to Pat Rule, whose mother Margaret Rule was archaeological director of the Mary Rose Trust at the time of its raising. When I asked him what he thought about returning to the site, he said - completely unprompted - the key message of the 40th anniversary was innovation,’ said Mr Waldron.

‘The innovation was in the very blood of those people who made the mission a success. But it shows, here we are 40 years on, and the innovative spirit lives on.’

The full list of winners includes:

- Defence: STS Defence

- Manufacturing: Designs Alike

- Community: Work Better Innovations

- Environmental: Package Free Larder

- Education – Centre of Creative and Immersive Extended Reality

- Digital: Mary Rose Trust

- Health: Home Instead Portsmouth

- Young Innovator: Alfie Mills of Vertical Leap

- Data/Science: Silver Lining Convergence

- Innovative Business of the Year: Centre of Creative and Immersive Extended Reality