Beautiful Canoe

Beautiful Canoe is a student-led software enterprise attached to Aston University. Set up as a not-for-profit social enterprise, it builds digital tools and solves technical problems for outside organisations while giving its staff, many of them students and recent graduates, real project experience. It draws on the technical and management knowledge of the university's academics.

What Beautiful Canoe offers

• Software development — custom digital tools and applications built by a team of developers and designers.
• Problem solving for clients — working through a client's technical challenge and developing a solution to it.
• Skills development — training and support for client staff who work in digital roles.
• Placement and apprentice management — overseeing placement students and apprentices.

Who it works with

Its clients include businesses, charities, public sector bodies and industry, as well as academics within the university. Past projects have ranged from forensics to pharmacy.

The team involves clients throughout development and delivery, relies on established methods and technologies for reliability, and values openness, including contributing to open source software where it can.

Key facts

• Structure: Not-for-profit social enterprise
• Affiliation: Aston University
• Team: Many staff are students and recent graduates