MIDDLESBROUGH College’s annual Christmas market was a triumph of entrepreneurial spirit as students from across the college joined forces to make and sell a variety of festive goodies.

The college’s street was filled with stalls selling tasty treats, beautiful handmade arts and crafts and traditional wares such as mince pies and chutney.

Lynne Alderson, Director of Programmes for Service Industries & Retail Skills, said: “The students study enterprise alongside their course and we’ve got around 340 students involved across all the college.

“They set-up the businesses themselves, name them, source or make the products and record the profits, it’s all their responsibility as part of their enterprise qualification.

“The students gain experience of running their own business and it’s a fantastic event for the college.”

Each course was well represented with hair and beauty students selling sweets and construction students creating personalised Santa hats to get everybody in the Christmas spirit.

Catering students sold hand piped doughnuts, while the A Level students sold unique retro vinyl bowls made from recycled records.

Social enterprise was on display too with the catering and hospitality students selling traditional Christmas foods from a cart to raise money for the Holistic Cancer Care unit at James Cook hospital in Middlesbrough. 

African jewellery was also sold as part of the on-going Meserani project where jewellery is made in Africa and sent to the college who sell it and send the proceeds back to fund education in some of Africa’s poorest communities.        

Larchfield, a residential community in Hemlington, where people with learning disabilities live and work, creating hand crafted items such as woven scarves and felt crafts, had also been invited to sell their wares.

Sarah Fishburn of Larchfield said: “It’s wonderful to have been invited and be involved with Middlesbrough College. It’s fantastic for the residents to be able to showcase their work and the social enterprise element of the college’s market is perfectly in keeping with the festive spirit.”