Keeping Bristol weird (Marty Reid from Engine Shed)

To mark the re-opening of Engine Shed this week we’re releasing our Tough Cookies episode featuring Marty Reid, recorded before Covid-19 restrictions were put in place.

Marty had only recently taken on the role as Head of Engine Shed the time of recording, and chats through his decision to leave the corporate world behind after 10 years at Rolls Royce. His previous work and studies had taken him all around the world from Munich to Canada to Japan — but he found his focus shifting moving towards working with smaller companies, within the tech sector and on a more regional basis. He landed a role leading Future Space, the innovation centre at UWE, before joining Engine Shed.

Nic and Marty talk about what drives Engine Shed, its core functions and its place in the thriving Bristol ecosystem. Marty runs through the ways Engine Shed contributes to the community, hi lighting its core values: innovation, growth and diversity & inclusion. It functions as an incubator that supports growth and a physical hub to bring people together - but any surplus money made from this goes towards civic programmes that aim to incubate the business community and the city itself. In 2019 they ran a programme to support generating investment in the city and the entrepreneurial outreach programme takes business support services to disadvantaged communities in the city

They chat about how, as a well connected establishment within Bristol, Engine Shed bears some responsibility in trying to build trust and support growth within communities outside of the city centre. To support individuals who may not have access to the same business resources, and remove cultural barriers to encourage those communities to engage in existing projects that white-middle class people within the centre may take for granted. While Bristol is often lauded as a highly diverse city, Marty acknowledges that there is still plenty of work to be done in addressing inequality in a business context and is looking to deepen these existing engagements and grow the programme to include other areas.

Marty also shares how he feels stepping into the shoes of Nick Sturge who received an MBE for his work and helped form Engine Shed - talk about imposter syndrome! They finish by going over what they love about Bristol as a city and as a business community and Marty shares what his dream job was as a child.

Join the conversation on the CookiesHQ Twitter. If you want to find out more about Marty Reid, you can find him on LinkedIn.