Empowering artists through entrepreneurship and business skills

Researchers at LJMU with expertise in small business, cultural entrepreneurship, art history and creativity have supported more than 20 local creatives through a series of workshops to develop their business acumen.

Regional artists and designers signed up from a wide range of disciplines including illustration, architecture, fashion and fine art, honing their entrepreneurship and business skills to more effectively promote and support their creative practices

Professor Ian Fillis, Dr Emma Roberts and Dr Kim Lehman delivered the series of four workshops at the Bluecoat in conjunction with a host of expert guest speakers, using a unique Creative-Entrepreneurship Framework across the workshops to enable participants to delve deep into their own creative practice, engaging with the marketplace and critically reflecting on their future career development.

Professor Fillis led on entrepreneurial skills and advice as a Professor of Entrepreneurship, Dr Roberts provided insight from the creative industries perspective as Head of Art History, and Dr Lehman provided expertise in workshop planning and business theory.

A core feature of the workshops was the reframing of formal business language to suit the needs and values of the creative participants in developing new ideas, pricing strategies, development of networks and audiences, in turn helping them achieve more sustainable approaches to the development of their creative practice.

It finally feels like I have been seen and heard. I am so overwhelmingly grateful. I found it really insightful, encouraging, and at one moment, emotional, because for what feels like most of my life people and systems have spoken over me and said that I would never amount to anything, achieve anything, or be successful.

Workshop participant

The workshops were supported through LJMU’s S+C SHAPE - Faculty of Society and Culture Social Science, Humanities and the Arts for People and the Economy/Environment - Innovation Fund, funded from the UKRI’s Higher Education Innovation Fund dedicated to the Creative Industries priority growth cluster in the Liverpool City Region.