A lasting legacy

Founding father’ s vision for A MR C

WHEN THE time comes to write the history of Yorkshire in the early part of this Millennium, the name Professor Keith Ridgway will merit the most prominent of mentions. He’s the founder of Sheffield’s Advanced Manufacturing and Research Centre – the world-leading facility now supplying cutting-edge technology, and knowhow, to iconic engineering firms like McLaren and Boeing.

Built on the site of the former Orgreave coking plant synonymous with the industrial strife, and civil unrest, witnessed during the 1984-85 Miners’ Strike, it is now established as a great Yorkshire success story and integral to the future of manufacturing, engineering and skills.

And that is why Professor Ridgway’s intervention in The Yorkshire Post is so significant. Not content with past successes, he, like all great innovators, is also looking to the future and how the AMRC can become even more impactful as the North receives the level of Government – and political – attention it has long needed “Made in Britain, made in the North” is a compelling mantra.

Allied to the University of Sheffield, he says the AMRC will be able to access more research funds – and so on – if it is given the flexibility and freedom to come under the auspices of other equally esteemed academic institutions. And this, in turn, could pave the way for a “spider’s web” of hubs in neglected towns that become the catalysts for regeneration. “Cities look after themselves. Towns are really where the problem is right now,” he says. It is a debate that should be held if the lasting legacy of Professor Ridgway, and other like-minded visionaries, is to be historic, economic and geographical.