Nesta’s Creative Enterprise Programme (CEP) is a three-day workshop designed specifically to provide creative start-up entrepreneurs with practical business skills.

To date, each workshop has been led by an experienced facilitator from the UK with expertise in the creative industries and entrepreneurship. For more than 10 years we’ve partnered with the British Council to deliver the programme across the globe, and this year we’ve adapted it to new programmes as we continue to evolve its reach and impact.

Throughout September and October, the CEP slotted into wider British Council programmes with ease, connecting creative people in Jordan and condensing to suit social entrepreneur students in Hong Kong. In Russia, the CEP was used to bring together their most remote creative hubs and foster dialogue between hubs and wider Europe.

Looking ahead, the CEP will continue to evolve with new models focused on training local facilitators being piloted in Egypt, Nigeria, Uganda and Ukraine.

Artisans meet entrepreneurs in Jordan

We worked with the British Council and GIZ, contributing to their Design for Impact programme to foster the creative economy in Jordan. This three-month programme aimed to support the cultural heritage of skilled artisans by connecting them with entrepreneurial product designers and encouraging the use of design-led processes.

The CEP was delivered within Design for Impact’s wider programme of activities. Our workshop gave the designers the opportunity explore business ideas, develop a compelling business plan, and create a business model that reflected their motivations and developing product ideas.

The artisans and product designers continued to work together until their final showcases at Amman Design Week last month.

Entrepreneurial students in Hong Kong

Hong Kong is nurturing its young entrepreneurs to help alleviate the social and economic challenges it is facing. The Hong Kong government’s efficiency unit recently supported a competition aimed at students run by the SIE Fund and Youth.gov.hk. Students were invited to pitch ideas for social enterprises around the theme ‘Tackling Poverty Problems with Social Innovation’. An expert panel chose three winners, and the CEP was used to encourage them to take their ideas to the next level.

This presented an exciting opportunity for us to develop programme content with a more social enterprise focus, considering useful case studies and examples both from other Nesta programmes, such as Good Gym, and Cocktails in Care homes, and from previous CEP participants and the wider creative social landscape here in the UK.

Russian creative hubs

The creative economy in Russia faces the challenge of land mass, with many creative hubs in Russia working remotely and in isolation from one another.

In a bid to foster more dialogue between Russian, European and UK based creative hubs, the British Council team in Russia hosted a residential programme focused specifically on creative hubs. Treating the hub managers as entrepreneurs, the CEP gave participants the opportunity to pause, take stock, consider the anatomy of their enterprise and what is next to ensure sustainable growth for both them and the creative communities they serve.

What’s coming up

In the next month, the CEP will expand further and enter into the next phase of delivery. This will involve launching our new ‘embedded’ model, where we’ll be working with and training local facilitators to scale the programme in Egypt, Nigeria, Uganda and Ukraine.

Photo credit: Pavel Poboruev, Creative Enterprise Programme workshop in Russia, September 2017.