Businesses are being invited to a two-day conference at Newcastle College University Centre exploring how AI can accelerate growth in the North East economy and fuel its workforce.
Generation North East: Building Tomorrow’s AI Workforce Today will be held at the College’s Rye Hill campus on Thursday 22 January and Friday 23 January 2026. The event will bring together business leaders, AI experts and policy makers to hear how organisations can collectively harness the opportunities of AI for the benefit of the region and examine how businesses can equip their teams with the skills and confidence to thrive in an AI-powered economy.
Day one will focus on The Opportunity: AI, Business and the Region, and the second day will look at Skills, Education and Future Workforce.
The conference brings together some of the leading voices in AI from the North East. As well as keynote speeches and panel discussions, there will be masterclasses and case studies from some of the region’s leading companies and experts in the field of AI.
Headline sponsors of the conference are Lenovo and NVIDIA, with event sponsors Enigma, Hedgehog Lab, HTG and Sage.
Tony Lewin, Executive Principal at NCG, will kick off the conference with a speech on National Vision: AI, productivity and future skills, and there will be keynote speeches from Tim Flagg, CEO and founder at UKAI, on AI and the Augmented Human: the changing face of work and play.
Lee Rorison, CEO and founder of Seriös Group, will give a talk on Responsible AI: Managing the opportunity, mitigating the risk. Richard Dawson, Economic Advisor at Newcastle City Council will discuss why Newcastle offers more than Cambridge or London when it comes to AI.
There will also be case studies from Opencast founder, Charlie Hoult, and Lisa Ewens, SVP at Sage, as well as a fireside chat with Ruth Harrison, Global Industry Lead – Retail and Consumer Goods at Avanade.
Day two brings a series of masterclasses on: Leading with Intelligence: Building AI into Digital Strategy; Attacking and Defending LLMs – Risks, Exploits and Countermeasures; Career Futures Lab; Education and Skills Development; AI in Immersive Technology and Making AI Work for Your Business: How to Start and Scale AI Transformation.
Dame Chi Onwurah, MP for Newcastle East, will speak about why the North East is winning in AI and data, and a closing panel of experts including Paul Wealls, Principal Consultant AI
Growth Zone Task Force, Lenovo will discuss what the future holds for our region over the next decade.
Jon Ridley, Principal of Newcastle College University Centre, said: “As the North East takes forward its designation as an AI Growth Zone, we wanted to showcase how industry, education and regional leaders are working together to build a workforce that is skilled and ready for the opportunities of an AI driven economy.
“Working alongside employers and industry leaders, Newcastle College is embedding cutting-edge technology and AI into training, equipping students with industry-led skills to fuel business expansion and regional competitiveness. This is key to the development of a skilled workforce and this event will enable us to collectively harness the opportunities of AI for the benefit of our region and develop a workforce that is truly ready to power the North East into the future.”