Sustainable Enterprise London Festival (SELF)

Sustainable Enterprise London Festival (SELF) was a cross-disciplinary investigation built on existing research by Adrian De La Court and Siân Prime. The outcomes were an online three week Festival, a short film made available on gold.ac.uk with foundations created for this to  become an annual event and a new tool for working with individuals and enterprise.   SELF was designed, developed and curated to understand how to build and support the capacity of the creative, social and cultural sectors to withstand the impact of a global pandemic and likely economic downturn. It built on Adrian De La Court and Siân Prime’s expertise and existing research, participatory methods, workshops and other enquiries into sustainability and resilience in cultural entrepreneurship. It interrogated issues of equity and inclusion as well wellbeing and financial sustainability.    Using a participatory design research approach, SELF consisted of workshops, talks, structured conversations and creative offers. The intention was to create a space for people to come together and be open about the difficulties, honesty and potential that is there. In so doing the project engaged participants from Lewisham, across the UK and East Africa as well as other regions and cities. We were able to reflect together through the creative lenses provided and input equally into the re-creation of a new tool. The skill of improvisation became consistently referenced. The final tool is inspired by Taleb, Eno as well as Cage and Cunningham. Bringing artistic improvisation to notions of enterprise.    SELF was online from 13 July 2020 – 31 July 2020, the programme included 39 creative and cultural sector presenters and the final documentation of the project is here.  SELF used a participatory design research approach to the development of a new framework for “antifragility” for cultural entrepreneurs and a sustainable enterprise ecosystem

Inspiring Start Ups

A toolkit to support people to gain confidence in creating an enterprise. This has been designed to support people traditionally on the margins of the creative economy, particularly people who are working class, or with other protected characteristics

Good Innovation Lab Tools (GILT)

Good Innovation Lab Tools (GILT) was a research project conducted by Prime with De La Court. The starting point was the hypothesis presented by Good Innovation that bringing charities together could lead to innovation in fundraising. In turn the research led to the creation of new revenue models and collaborative approaches for Third Sector organisations. Prime with De La Court researched to uncover common design principles needed for innovation in revenue generation for the Third Sector. Through participatory design research they were able to develop a series of tools and processes that are the GILT.   The research was initially framed in relation to a three-year project initiated by Good Innovation in 2016. Good Innovation created GoodLab to bring together a collaboration of leading charities to design new ways for charities to fund their work and bring new sources of income in to the sector. The groundwork, delivery and outcomes of the project led to the creation of new ventures by charities and alternative ways of thinking about fundraising. Prime and De La Court developed the enquiry with a review of practices of financial modelling and governance in the Third Sector and prototyped new tools to support the thinking and activities needed to develop alternative revenues.   Built on a notion that it was possible to repurpose capitalist tools that had been developed to commercialise Intellectual Property and innovation more broadly. GILT reviewed ways to transition charities in to new revenue and business models without replicating social enterprises or corporate models. GILT built on design thinking and co-design practices of Good Innovation and GoodLab; Prime and De La Court’s research synthesised practice and learning to find new insights that could be applied more broadly across the Third Sector and questioned existing notions of appropriate business models in the Third Sector

Employability Toolkit

This kit has been created by SYNAPSE, a programme that runs out of the Institute for Cultural and Creative Entrepreneurship (ICCE), Goldsmiths, University of London. The approach in this kit is to engage you with energy and creative curiosity to develop opportunities for your employment. Searching for your first job, your next job, or even a change of position can be daunting. This toolkit will help break the process down into a series of manageable and hopefully enjoyable tasks

A toolkit of exercises for mentors

A toolkit of exercises for mentors in the CONNECT Programme By Adrian De La Court, Sian Prime in collaboration with Melting Pro July 29, 2019 Building and nurturing relationships is an essential part of an audience development strategy. One can learn a lot by being in a mentoring relationship, learn more about oneself and about the way you relate yourself to your audiences. Mentoring, as a process of both formal and informal transmission not only of knowledge but also of values, represents a learning method relevant to work, career and professional development in many sectors. Mentoring is a one to one relationship built upon trust and mutual respect

Start-Up Toolkit

A toolkit to support people to gain confidence in creating an enterprise. This has been designed to support people traditionally on the margins of the creative economy, particularly people who are working class, or with other protected characteristics