The latest final of Umbro Industies is closing in on us fast, and we’re delighted to reveal the four entrants that will be presenting to our team of panelists this Saturday in the hope of winning £10,000. We’ve also got a sparkly new website for the scheme to show off!

First of all though, the four ideas that our panel have picked out from the pack as their finalists. In no particular order, they are…

Bangers And Fash: A music, fashion and designer showcase. Organisers want to support Manchester’s independent fashion designers, bring top musical performers to the city and gives the city’s best illustrators a space to perform and display. It would provide a platform for up-and-coming artists and designers, with all profits going to charity.

Cheers Ta Poetry: A poet with 15 years experience of working in schools, prisons and young offenders units, Mike Garry has a project which he will inspire young working class lads of Manchester with tuitions which will impact on their lives and hopefully develop a lifelong love of reading. He’s aiming to go into schools promoting reading and writing to young lads using the 2018 World Cup bid as the theme to create an anthology of poems.

Salford City Radio: The award-winning community radio station wants to train local Salford children in radio skills to give them the chance to be able to access future job opportunities at Media City. They would use the funding directly for production kits and a radio trainer.

The Waiting Room: The Waiting Room would use the funds to develop a space to enable an array of sections including a gallery, book shop, record store and independent cinema. They would like to make this a permanent space which will open the doors to other ventures such as creative space, studios with additional features such as a shop and gallery.

This quartet will now present their ideas during our tense finale, while the rest of our entrants can go back to the drawing board and re-submit their ideas for the next round of voting. Our new website, which we hope will make the whole Umbro Industries process a little easier to manage, is now up and running, so to take a look or to upload your ideas for consideration, please go to www.umbroindustries.com.

Finally, we thought you might be interested in the guest panelist we’ve got at this weekend’s final. Every quarter we invite a fresh voice onto the panel to offer their expertise alongside our regular team, and for the Autumn Umbro Industries our guest is Kathryn Dale, a Textile Designer / Developer at Alexander McQueen.

Kathryn graduated from Saint Martins and the RCA in textile design and started working on various projects from designing accessories for Japanese Department store United Arrows, to working in the Costume department of Harry Potter. Her talents were soon spotted by Vivienne Westwood where she became an integral part of the team. She worked across the design house from bone china to rugs to textiles for accessories and clothing, alongside traveling across the globe to install and style the Vivienne Westwood retrospective exhibition working with each venue on merchandise and exhibition design.

Soon after Liberty recruited Kathryn as the designer to re-launch the store’s own capsule Men’s collection. The aim was to respect the heritage of the archives whilst giving the range a new freshness. It worked, with the collections winning Wallpaper magazine’s “best textile/print” award.

Kathryn’s most recent position is as Textile Designer/Developer for the Men’s Ready to Wear collection for Alexander McQueen. She works alongside the Head of Men’s Wear and the Creative director on selecting, developing and designing fabrics and trims for clothes and accessories which are shown each Men’s season in Milan.