Last week Leeds City Council and Leeds City Region hosted a visiting delegation from our Chinese partner city, Hangzhou, to showcase Leeds’ fantastic digital and tech capabilities.
The delegation, which included business leaders and senior government officials from Hangzhou, met with a range of key public and private stakeholders from the tech and digital sector in Leeds.
The delegation was provided with an overview of Leeds’ digital and tech sector by Leeds City Council’s Director of City Development, Martin Farrington and Chief Officer for Economic Development, Eve Roodhouse, before meeting local businesses and colleagues from the Leeds City Region Local Enterprise Partnership.
A key interest for the delegation was Leeds Digital Festival – the largest digital event outside of London. Leeds Digital Festival Director, Stuart Clarke, presented an overview of the 200 plus digital events taking place across the city this month.
The two day visit included a tour of the University of Leeds’ Institute for Data Analytics (LIDA) and Nexus, the University’s new business innovation centre.
This was followed by a lunch hosted by the Lord Mayor and the Lady Mayoress and the Pro-Vice-Chancellor: International, Professor Hai-Sui Yu which provided an opportunity to network with relevant academics and build on the University of Leeds’ strong relationship with Hangzhou’s University of Zhejiang.
The cities of Leeds and Hangzhou share a strong relationship which celebrated 30 years of partnership in 2018. The occasion was marked with the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding.