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Monday 9am - 5pm Tuesday 9am - 5pm Wednesday 9am - 5pm Thursday 9am - 5pm Friday 9am - 5pm

Shaping Portsmouth

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Shaping Portsmouth

Transforming Portsmouth Together - through sustainable collaborations and innovative programmes.

Shaping Portsmouth is a community interest company that delivers both a strategic and operational partnership between Portsmouth City Council, Portsmouth businesses, and educational institutions at all levels in the City. Our aim is to run valuable and relevant programmes that support the needs of the City, and the objectives of our partners.

16/06/2026

🎙️We are Pompey!

💬In this episode, Charla Grant talks to Joe Weston-McDowell, Head of Fundraising & Marketing at Motiv8, about supporting Portsmouth's City of Culture bid, the latest updates from the campaign, how businesses can support the bid by taking the Proper Pompey Pledge, and how it will impact the whole city WHEN we win!

👉Listen to episode 94 of the Shaping Portsmouth Podcast at the link in the comments or wherever you get your podcasts!

12/06/2026

✨ Shaping Portsmouth Weekly Roundup ✨

Another week of collaboration, celebration, and community impact across Portsmouth! Here's what we've been up to:

💃 The team attended the fantastic City of Portsmouth College Centenary flashmob in the Guildhall Square, where some of the stars of the Shaping Portsmouth conference performed in the main event. It was great to see the Lord Mayor joining in and Shaping partners Michael & Sara Woods of Solent Sky Services filming and the amazing Hampshire Flag Company sponsoring the event.

📚 Our new Education Pillar Lead, Sarah, got straight into meeting our partners, with an introduction to Jess from the PCC Enterprise & Skills team to talk about our recent ‘Explore Your Future’ pilot programme.

🎤 Charla interviewed Joe Weston-McDowell, Fundraising Lead for City of Culture bid, about how businesses can support the bid.

🤝 Dave and CP were visited by Sam Singleton, one of Shaping Portsmouth's wonderful Non-Executive Directors, for a mid-year budget review. Dave also enjoyed valuable partner catch-ups with Stuart Radcliffe of Wintercomms, our communications provider, and Katy Quinn at City of Portsmouth College. There are some exciting college innovation developments coming soon - watch this space!

🎖️ On Wednesday, our Armed Forces Community leads Kate Mizon and Charlie Keane delivered a fantastic Shaping Forces event. We are extremely grateful to Kate Mizon who is stepping down as volunteer programme lead but also pleased to welcome Lee Madigan and Jade Parrett-Harris to the team. Thank you to Portsmouth Football Club for hosting and sponsors Citrus Facilites Management, Portico: Logistics & Cargo Terminal and City of Portsmouth College.

🍻 After our amazing Shaping Forces Conference, our team headed to an amazing local taproom The Southsea Brewing Company to say goodbye to not only one of our brilliant Volunteers, Kate, but also our devoted Pillar Lead, Suzan, who we are very happy to see go on to an incredible new opportunity.

Thank you to everyone who continues to make Portsmouth thrive.

11/06/2026

What an incredible day at Fratton Park for the second annual Shaping Forces event, celebrating the strength of our Armed Forces community and the power of collaboration across Portsmouth and the wider region.

It was fantastic to bring together businesses, education providers, charities, reservists, cadet organisations and support services, all working towards a stronger network of support for serving personnel, veterans and military families.

A huge thank you to everyone who attended, exhibited, spoke and shared their experiences, and to Kate Mizon and Charlie Keane for their outstanding work in bringing the event together.

We’re also very grateful to our headline sponsor Citrus Facilites Management, and event sponsors City of Portsmouth College, and Portico: Logistics & Cargo Terminal.

Congratulations to Inspire Futures, winners of this year’s Business of the Year Award, and thank you to all who helped raise over £650 for Veterans Outreach Support.

We’re already looking ahead to future events and look forward to working with our partners and members to make an even bigger impact for Portsmouth.

09/06/2026

🎙️Meet Andrew Starr, Co-Lead of the Portsmouth Ambassadors!

💬Recorded during National Volunteers Week, Dave Humphries talks to Andrew about his various roles around the city, speaking and teaching multiple languages, Portsmouth's twin cities and other links around the world, the Portsmouth Ambassador programme, what the role of Ambassador entails and opportunities available to Ambassadors, and the new online Portsmouth Ambassador induction course which will be launching soon, and other volunteering opportunities available in the city.

👉Listen to episode 93 of the Shaping Portsmouth Podcast at the link in the comments or wherever you get your podcasts!

08/06/2026

We're pleased to be exhibiting at the Portsmouth International Port Open Day on Saturday 13 June.

As part of the port's 50th anniversary, visitors can enjoy a free, family-friendly day exploring ships, behind-the-scenes port operations, and more.

⚓ Explore ships and vessels
🚢 Behind-the-scenes access
💼 Maritime careers
🌱 Sustainability and innovation

We’ll be at the Shaping Portsmouth stand throughout the day and look forward to welcoming visitors.

Find more information and book your place here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/port-community-open-day-2026-tickets-1986078360841?aff=oddtdtcreator&_gl=1*d0aivy*_up*MQ..*_ga*NTQ0MjE3NDY3LjE3NzczMDEyNzI.*_ga_TQVES5V6SH*czE3NzczMDEyNzEkbzEkZzAkdDE3NzczMDEyNzEkajYwJGwwJGgw

05/06/2026

✨Shaping Portsmouth Weekly Roundup✨

Another busy week supporting our city!

🏛️ Monday, CP attended the reopening of the Society of St James an amazing service offering training and real-work opportunities for service users in the city.

🎓 Ahead of the launch of our new Portsmouth Ambassador training platform, Dave caught up with programme lead Andrew Starr for a podcast recording.

🤝 On the sofa this week, CP and Marian met Action COACH Portsmouth & Chichester Matt Mullins to talk business support workshops, and Dave caught up with Rachel Stone from University of Portsmouth to develop student volunteer roles within the team.

🚢 Cruise Ambassadors had a busy week at the port with two ships over the weekend, Deutschland of Phoenix Reisen GmbH Bonn and Europa of Hapag-Lloyd Cruises, plus a surprise visit today from Viking Vela of Viking. The team also received glowing feedback from the Europa 2 for their work.

💼 Dave also had a patron catch up with Carrington West and a 6-month review with Portico: Logistics & Cargo Terminal. Great to see Portico already so involved across the Apprenticeship Bus, Digital Enablement, Shaping Forces, and future plans including PSA testing and MHFA.

🍦 Ice Cream of the week: Dave met Anna and Mykola of Da Nonna Lucia for gelato tasting at their new Gunwharf Quays pitch, with Hannah following up on Tuesday to onboard them as a Marketing Agency client.

🎉 Two celebrations this week - a belated happy birthday to Steff, and we celebrated Matt’s 13-year workiversary as our longest-serving team member.

📣 Looking ahead - join us at Portsmouth Pride tomorrow from 11am at The Canteen in Old Portsmouth, and there are still a few spaces left for Shaping Forces on Wednesday. Drop us a DM for details.

02/06/2026

🎙️Meet CP Robinson, COO of Shaping Portsmouth!

💬In this episode Charla Grant talks to CP about his first few weeks in the Chief Operations Officer role, why he joined the team, his management and leadership style, some of his other roles across the city, and his plans for Shaping Portsmouth.

👉Listen to episode 92 of the Shaping Portsmouth Podcast at the link in the comments or wherever you get your podcasts!

01/06/2026

Shaping Portsmouth is proudly powered by so many amazing volunteers, our directors, programme leads, mentors, ambassadors, and so many more.

This week is Volunteers Week, and we're going to be celebrating and shining a spotlight on so many of our volunteers this week, but we also want to hear from you about all of the other amazing volunteers who make this city the best place in the UK to invest, live, learn, work, and visit.

Tag them and tell us why they make Portsmouth proud!

HIVE Portsmouth Portsmouth City Council

29/05/2026

✨ Shaping Portsmouth Weekly Roundup ✨

🚌 Busses in the wild! This week we’ve spotted our Apprenticeship Bus and the Fair Ways Fostering Bus across the city. We love seeing all the tags and shares when you spot them too!

👥 CP caught up with Andrew, our Volunteer Programme Lead for the Portsmouth Ambassadors Programme, to discuss the upcoming relaunch, training and future plans.

🌐 We welcomed several Cruise Ambassadors into the office last week to support development of our new Portsmouth Ambassador e-learning platform, alongside those testing remotely. Huge thanks to Vanessa Busfield, Karl Brinkley, John Grant, Brian Basford, Beverly Hancock, Rex Norman, Russ Boyd and Dave Clark for their invaluable feedback.

🎓 On Wednesday, we delivered our second Personal Business Branding Masterclass as part of the Portsmouth Business Support Service, led by Jodie Goodchild of Known For. Thanks also to Lisa Gibbs and all the businesses who attended.

📈 Thursday saw the launch of Cohort 1 of our Launch, Sell & Scale series, delivered by Paul Sims of Negotia. A brilliant first session and strong foundation for what’s ahead. Thanks to PBSS Programme Lead Anne Stevens, all the businesses who joined us, and Innovation Connect for hosting us at the Future Technology Centre.

🤝 Jo Morgan from Engendering Change Ltd joined us for a catch up around embedding EDI culture within businesses, alongside exciting future plans for sexual health workshops 👀

💼 Dave caught up with James Ford from Shaw Trust to discuss how we might work together on Choose Employability.

🎭 Dave and CP were both part of this week's City of Culture 2029 Steering Group Meeting. Dave paired with Dominic Jones on the programme ideas exercise - so that should be the years events pretty much sorted!

☀️ These updates are not just about our work, but also our team, a small group of people behind the enormous amount of work that Shaping Portsmouth achieves. And with it a being Bank Holiday this week, we had Steff celebrating his birthday, CP out enjoying the sun and some pride planning over ice cream!

Address

Upper 2nd Floor, Portsmouth Guildhall, Guildhall Walk
Portsmouth
PO12AB

Opening Hours

Monday	9am - 5pm
Tuesday	9am - 5pm
Wednesday	9am - 5pm
Thursday	9am - 5pm
Friday	9am - 5pm

Website

http://shapingportsmouth.co.uk/, http://linktr.ee/shapingportsmouth

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