MEaP at Ingeus’ Find Your Future Fest 2026 (EIA)

Quick Summary of Ingeus’ Find Your Future Fest 2026

Event: Find Your Future Fest 2026
Event type: Employability festival
Audience: 16-24 years old, unemployed
Date: 20 May 2026
Time: 11am to 3pm
Location: Ingeus Manchester, St Ann’s House, St Ann’s Place, Manchester M2 7LP

Connecting Greater Manchester’s Youth with Big Opportunities: Ingeus’ Find Your Future Fest 2026

On 20 May 2026, the MEaP team headed over to St Ann’s House in the heart of Manchester for the brilliant Find Your Future Fest 2026, hosted by our long-time employability partner, Ingeus. Our presence there was made possible once more by our partnership with Young Futures Foundations (YFF) in our bid to help young people get suitable employment.

Rather than a traditional, rigid careers fair, Ingeus wanted to do things a little differently this year. They invited partners, including corporate, educational and community organisations like MEaP to run interactive stalls and activities designed to engage, guide, and inspire young people seeking employment, training, or further education. What made the four-hour exhibition an absolute triumph was the driving force behind it: the day was completely organised by the young people themselves, creating an approachable and encouraging space for attendees to explore their next steps.

Ingeus’ Find Your Future Fest 2026: A Festival Vibe with Serious Opportunities

The energy at St Ann’s Place was electric, feeling much more like a summer festival than a standard corporate networking event. Complete with colourful decorations and a lively, head-banging night-club style background beat, the atmosphere was genuinely infectious. Our team fully immersed themselves in the festival spirit—Reeba and Satisha proudly embraced the glitter makeup, whilst Manuella couldn’t resist dancing along to the music!

Our MEaP stand was packed with posters and information about what we can offer young people transitioning into work or study. Our 4 posters faced each side of the room attracting a great crowd with the team gladly introducing attendees to our many initiatives, including our TECHWELL programmes.

We were particularly delighted to see some familiar faces, including Matthew from ta

ble 1 who we just met at Ingeus Rise Build your future during our successful MEaP interactive session only a few days prior.

Expression of interests at Ingeus’ Find Your Future Fest 2026

We are quite proud of the many expression of interests that we will be linking up to and hope to be welcoming soon in the MEaP community. There was a large interest in Digital Marketing, followed by CyberSecurity and then Data Analytics. We also had someone interested in strengthening their professional communication skills as part of honing allround communication abilities for their Teaching ambitions.

Every young person we meet refines our understanding of the barriers that young people face in job seeking and we made sure to notes those. We are particularly always proud to see a sense of relief once we have had a talk with the participants and they have been reassured about our methods and processes, from individual learning plan to progression support and their relief to be afforded the opportunity to tell their unique story, their goals or difficulty forming them and the obstacles that stand in their way.

Inspiring Next Steps – After Ingeus’ Find Your Future Fest 2026

The goal of the exhibition was to show young people what is possible and give them the tools to build their careers, and the response was phenomenal. By the time the event wrapped up at 3pm, MEaP had secured 14 expressions of interest from young people eager to enrol on our programmes and partner with us on their educational and employment journeys.

The following morning, we received a wonderful thank-you message from the organisers at Ingeus (GM), highlighting the collaborative effort to support local youth:

“Just wanted to reach out and say a massive thank you for your time yesterday! We hope you had a great day and were able to connect with many of our participants and help them plan the next steps for their future… we had hundreds of attendees who left energised and enlightened and we hope you did too. We feel like the day was a massive success and a big part of that is down to you offering your time, resources and even linking with each other on the day to fully maximise the support available for the youth of Greater Manchester.”

We are incredibly proud to collaborate with Ingeus, local employers, and universities to help bridge the gap between ambition and opportunity. A huge thank you to everyone who stopped by the MEaP stand, chatted with our team, and took a positive step towards their future. We look forward to welcoming new participants into the MEaP community very soon!