Eastern Promise - The Podcast

This Week: We find out how, for dementia patients and their families, the hits of their youth have now become a critical bridge, especially when communication falters.  We'll meet Music for My Mind's Dimana Georgieva at Cambridge Consultant's HQ on Cambridge Science Park, along with CC's AI experts Joseph Corrigan and Ali Shafti, to discover how the deeptech dynamos of CapGemini Invent helped Hert...

This Week: On 21st November 2025, Eastern Promise held a live event at Mills & Reeve's Cambridge office, focussed around skills, careers and creating better policy on both. However, this recording, in front of a live audience set out to do something different: to talk to a group of young people about their hopes, dreams and future plans, and get a panel of educators and skills professionals co...

This Week: Mike Rigby joins the fun and frolics (there were frolics, weren't there?) to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the opening of Haverhill's very own innovation hub, the EpiCentre!   Eastern Promise's own Grand Fromage, Mike Rigby, joins the jamboree and, at the invitation of Centre Manager Helen Earl and Innovation Director Gary Jennings, hosts four special panels for the galaxy of guest...

This Week: High Streets Matter! They matter across our region and they matter in North Walsham, where your host, Mike Rigby, finds himself this week. In the company of Alexandra Hemen of New Anglia Growth Hub, visits the magnificent Black Swan Pub and Theatre to chat with landlord, actor and all-round human dynamo Joseph Ballard, along with social entrepreneur Selina of Best In Broads.   Alex then...

This Week: 'Ahead of the Curve' could well be Cambridge Consultant's business address.  Indeed, these global professional problem solvers, part of Capgemini Invent, thrive on getting out in front and staying there. After an illuminating press day, host Mike Rigby is joined by Head of Biotechnology Frances Metcalfe and New Frontiers Board Member Richard Traherne, to find out more about this organis...

This Week: We start a new 6-week run of the Eastern Promise podcast at the Earlham Institute on Norwich Research Park! This event looks at the latest developments in genomics and brings together industry, academia, and Knowledge Transfer Partnership experts from Innovate UK.   Your host, Mike Rigby, chats to all these fine folk, including Director of the Earlham Institute, Professor Neil Hall and...

This Week: We welcome the two leading lights of the Cambridge Tech Podcast, all-round ecosystem lynchpin Faye Holland and MD of the iconic Bradfield Centre and NFL fan, James Parton!  We'll discuss how they do what they do, the importance of Faye's rolodex and what drives their pod forward!  Host Mike Rigby has been itching to interview Faye and James since day one of Eastern Promise so please lis...

This Week: You didn't think we'd forgotten about Cambridge Tech Week, did you?  Certainly not!  In fact your own (and you're welcome to him) Mike Rigby hits the anything-but-mean streets of the Cambridge Guildhall for 'Innovation Alley', and what an incredible experience it is... We chat to some of the hottest names in new tech, some of the sharpest spin-outs, the most brilliant innovators and we...

This Week: We peek behind the scenes at one of the most consequential research institutes in the world, let alone the UK or the East of England!   Nestling at the heart of the Norwich Research Park, the John Innes Centre is home to the UK's greatest concentration of plant and microbial science and scientists - but that's not all!  No siree... My co-host for our Royal Norfolk Show episodes joins re...

This Week: When Innovate Cambridge call and say "we'd like to talk about the HUGE week ahead for the city and both the tech and life science ecosystems", you drop EVERYTHING!  And so, dear listener, we did... So it was that your host, Mike Rigby, dropped in on The Glasshouse - home of Innovate Cambridge - to find out how the fun, inclusive and enigmatic branding unveiled last year is launching now...

This Week: We are at one of the most important locations in the East of England for furthering, supporting and unleashing our region's innovative and entrepreneurial spirits in all manners health-related.  Yes!  Mike Rigby is heading to Health Innovation East!   The key reason Health Innovation East exists is to translate early-stage scientific discover and research into actual medicines, processe...

This Week: Eastern Promise roars back from our Summer hiatus, with a trip to the new King's Lynn Enterprise Park! Your host (with, if not the most, then at least a bit), Mike Rigby, headed over to the Enterprise Park to meet Cllr Simon Ring, Deputy Leader of the Borough Council of King's Lynn and West Norfolk, Regenerations Programme Manager Jemma Curtis, also of BCKLWN; Norfolk County Council's E...

This Week:  We pay a visit to the Cambridge Independent Business Awards' Start-Up of the Year 2024 - oral wellbeing experts Well:O!   We sent our own Mike Rigby to meet co-founder Felix von Nathusius and Clinical Director Shelley Belgrove to chat about the Well:O story, the beautiful and decidedly non-clinical feel of their studio and how their model could do great things for a service economy suc...

This Week: Dr Laura Reeves of the University of Suffolk takes us through her research on hybrid (AKA agile) working and its emphasis on belonging.  Laura takes us through her findings and conclusions of the research, before asking 'what next'?   But that's not all by ANY means!   Still on the hybrid working trail, Mary-Jo Hill tells us all about YakBit app, which helps managers analyse online meet...

This Week: We chat to Cambridge Wireless CEO Michaela Eschbach about her career path to the top of this global connections community.  We ask her what exactly IS Cambridge Wireless - aka CW - and how does it leverage the world-famous name in its title?   We'll also look at what's to come during Cambridge Tech Week 2025, which kicks off on 15th September.   For more information on all of the above,...

This week: It's the Royal Norfolk Show 2025!  What more needs be said?   Only that regular host Mike Rigby is again joined by show co-host Dr Penny Hundleby of the John Innes Centre to tour the avenues and boulevards and winkle out the best bits for our Eastern Promise podcast audience!  Thank you Penny and everyone who gave a clip for this show. We'll talk education, tech, business, food, renewab...

This Week: It's arts and culture a-go-go, as first we travel to King's Lynn to chat with Anna Pool, Festival Manager for the King's Lynn Festival, about the exciting programme of classical music concerts, talks and tours! Then, we go behind the camera and 'on set' of the new Norfolk-set comedy crime caper 'Chicken Town' with Producer Tom Wood and Director Richard Bracewell! The East of England is...

This Week: You can now hear Mike Rigby's unabridged, unedited and unplugged talk at Cambridge Wide Open Week, delivered beside the beautiful River Cam at Cambridge Wide Open Week!  For more on Cambridge Wide Open Week click here . To listen to the FULL Eastern Promise back catalog, or to contact the show, click here . E astern Promise is proud to be sponsored by Mills & Reeve.  

This Week: Does the investor make the ecosystem, or does the ecosystem shape the investor?  That's the question our expert guests will be answering, amongst others, as we dive headlong into the swirling waters of venture capital,with two of our region's foremost experts as our guides! Cambridge Innovation Capital is a trusted brand; the University of Cambridge's preferred partner when it comes to...

This Week: We talk to Executive Director of the Norwich Business Improvement District (BID), Stefan Gurney, and Norwich BID board member, Joe Faulkner, about the BID's City Centre Manifesto for the ancient and venerable city of Norwich.   We'll learn what prompted this document; what is its intent, and how it seeks to marry the desirable with the achievable.   Norwich is unlike any city in the UK;...

This week: It's our second slice of UKREiiF 2025 and this time, we've got AN HOUR of highlights from Team Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, from the Oxford-Cambridge Supercluster pavilion, the Invest Suffolk stand and an exclusive chat with newly elected Mayor of the Cambridgeshire & Peterborough Combined Authority, Paul Bristow.   This show has everything: Cross-country coll.aboration between...

Today: Mike Rigby brings you the happenings and highlights from the East of England's events at the UK Real Estate, Investment & Infrastructure Forum (UKREiiF) recorded at the Royal Arnouries and put together overnight to make sure YOU can find out what's occuring.  Mike talks to Rebecca Britton of Urban & Civic, Beth Dugdale of the Cambridge Growth Company, Steve Beel of Freeport East, Em...

This week: We're on the world-famous Cambridge Biomedical Campus to find out more about plans for the new, multi-million pound Cancer research hospital there.   Mike Rigby talks to Dr Hugo Ford, clinical lead for the project and Director of Cancer Services at the Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, and Shelly Thake, CEO of the Addenbrookes Charitable Trust, ACT4Addenbrookes! Toget...

This Week: We join two conferences in the heart of Norwich; first, the Norwich Financial Industry Group (FIG) met in Aviva's iconic Marble Hall to discuss the ramifications of AI for FinTech and the financial sector. Speakers Ash Black and Nathan Punter of Coder explain how AI can boost the Norwich Financial Cluster. Then!  Oh, but then, your host Mike Rigby is joined on the streets of Norwich by...

This Week: Direct from  the James Hehir Building of the University of Suffolk, Mike Rigby chats with Jack Abbott MP, Member of Parliament for Ipswich and the Government's Missions Champion for the East of England.   Jack shares what that role means in practice, his road to Parliament, his maiden speech, why all the policemen and doorkeepers already knew his name, and his hopes for the future of Ip...