Be Ambitious Awards 2026
Towards the end of the 2025–26 academic year, A1 students took part in our flagship employability programme, Be Ambitious Week. For the third year running, the programme enabled over 1,000 students to develop their employability and transferable skills by completing either a work placement in a range of sectors, an employer-led project where organisations set real-world briefs for students to complete and present at the end of the week, or an employability workshop.
All students worked extremely hard throughout the week and the standard of work they delivered was highly commended by employers. To celebrate their hard work and participation, our Careers and Employability Team hosted the annual awards event this week.
The event opened with a warm welcome from our Principal, Lisa Richards, who spoke about the significance of the Be Ambitious Programme and its role in helping students achieve their goals. Lisa was followed by guest speaker, Tim Lowther, who returned to speak to students after opening Be Ambitious Week back in July. Tim spoke about the importance of taking advantage of opportunities and gaining meaningful work experience. Tim also gave tips and advice to students on using the transferable skills they've gained through Be Ambitious throughout their post college plans.
Numerous students received nominations by employers and members of staff that supported Be Ambitious Week.
The categories and winners are:
Vocational Awards
Education - Emily Carr
"Emily has had excellent feedback and comments from staff at placement, saying how they could not work without her. Emily has shown real resilience working tirelessly alongside the staff when the school building was damaged. The children had to be bused daily to another school, Emily worked maintaining health and safety and providing structure and guidance for the children throughout a very unsettled few months."
Sports Coaching - Harry Priest
"Harry has been nominated for exceptional consistency and work with CITC within his disability coaching sessions.
Well done!"
Be Ambitious Week Awards
Creative - Jack Finnigan
"Jack is described as having a natural eye for creative work and media production, completing multiple projects to a standard the employer called impressive for his age. (Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust)"
Design - Ben Dale
"Clearly designed an excellent landing page for the under-18s section of the website; reduced wording and increased imagery made it easy to navigate; the video he recorded to showcase it was well designed and excellently delivered.(Locala)"
Leadership - Isla Jewitt
"Isla is nominated as they were a stand out student during Be Ambitious Week. The Dance students put so much time and effort in before the week started to ensure they’d created promo and marketing materials, made contact with schools and completed the dances/lessons they were delivering. In their school sessions and teaching younger students, they lead by example, not only supporting each other but the classes they were working with. Isla actively contributed to creating an inclusive and encouraging environment for the younger students to learn in. Isla has also been a dance captain throughout the year, impressing Tam, demonstrating excellent leadership qualities towards her peers."
Motivation - Ella Murray
"Throughout the week, Ella demonstrated an exceptional level of enthusiasm, curiosity and commitment. From day one, she approached every opportunity with a positive attitude and a genuine desire to learn. She consistently engaged with the activities and discussions around her, asking thoughtful questions and showing a keen interest not only in what we do, but why we do it.
(L&Q CleanStart)"
Project Management - Nathan Dunn
"Nathan has demonstrated exceptional organisation skills and commitment in delivering a promotional video for Be Ambitious Week. In particular, he played a leading role in creating and coordinating the filming of content and engaging with staff/emplyers. Nathan supported his team well, managing multiple elements of the project from planning through to delivery. His hard work, attention to detail, and ability to keep the project on track was noticed by many and also was highlighted for further work experience outside of the week by Balfour Beatty, taking headshots. (ASFC, Film & Media)"
Research - Faye Vita
"After learning how and why we do menu costings, Faye now has a good understanding of margins, staffing costs and supplier costs and why it is essential as business to have these. (Tumbles Play Place Ltd)"
Teamwork - Aidan Taylor, Lillian Li, Luca Ovenden-Edwards, Lucie Haynes, Riaz Islam, Tabraiz Naveed
"Entering all of my students collectively as 1 team, despite all presenting individually their ideas, collectively they had some brilliant thoughts and recommendations for the direction of the launch, some of which I will certainly use when I next launch a brand in the uk. Lucie, Lillian, Aiden, Abdullah, Tabrei
(Tim Lowther Consultant)"
Outstanding Achievement - Reece Stelfox
"Reece has been punctual, polite & well dressed, but what has stood out is how he really got involved and has real aspirations to do well in his future career. The whole team have been impressed with the attention he has paid to learning about the centre, follow up questions and his energy! Aside from spending time with the AOB team, we arranged for him to spend time with some of the businesses at AOB; this included sbcgaming which is linked to his interest in Sport Business, which he said he really enjoyed."
Outstanding Achievement - Olivia Wells
"Olivia has been punctual, polite & well dressed, but what has stood out is how she really got involved and has real aspirations to do well in her future career. The whole team have been impressed with the attention she has paid to learning about the centre, follow up questions and her energy! Aside from spending time with the AOB team, we arranged for her to spend time with some of the businesses at AOB; this included Digital Flamingo which is linked to his interest in the fashion industry, looking at social media and marketing strategies."
Outstanding Achievement - Evie Chapman
"Student completed the presentation without her team member. Even though, the student was nervous and did not want to present she overcame this challenge. Presenting with a clear voice and confidence."
Outstanding Achievement (Team Award) - Ava Lindley, Amiyah Warburton, Eren Avci, Harriet Kemp, Jasmine Davies, Jay Mawson, Lyana Manuel
"What a Fantastic team! Each of the 7 students has received a £20 Amazon voucher from the Casey Group as a reward."
Outstanding Presentation (Team Award) - Amina Dini, Anas Dahiru, Belle Steele, Claude Suarez, Harriet Sice, Chloe Ma
"The output from the students was 1st class, the work they had put into get to the presentation was evident. The stand out piece for me was seeing them come from a shy almost uninterested group to a high performing team by the end of the week.
(Kellanova)"
