Following a competitive process in 2022, the South East was one of only six regions across the UK to secure partnerships to deliver the Create Growth Programme, which is funded by the Department for Culture Media and Sport (DCMS) to support creative businesses in planning for growth and exploring and securing commercial investment opportunities. Creative UK works with partners in the South East to deliver the programme, which is tailored to the region’s creative sub-sectors.
We interviewed Amelia De-Felice, Mentor Engagement Manager at Creative UK, to learn more about Create South East, homing in on stage one of the programme, Prepare for Investment. This phase of the delivery is specifically targeted at early-stage, registered creative companies who are not yet investment-ready to support them on this part of their journey.
Can you tell us more about how Create South East was set up and what were the main goals?
Create South East was pulled together by a consortium of councils, local authorities and organisations. They put in the bid and it was their desire for the counties of Essex, Sussex and Kent to work together with one another. This is a brand new thing for the area - they've never done this before and they've never worked like this before.
One facet of this was our EDI steering group, it was very important to us that this was embedded from the start. The group helped us steer our ideas and gave us a sounding board to help expand and better understand the area in which we're working in terms of EDI.
We had three sets of balancing criteria for the participants on the programme itself so that we had a starting point to go from. We had a regional balancing criteria, which was trying to get Kent, Essex and Sussex businesses onto the programme. The second balancing criteria was sub-sector equality because it had to be spread right across the whole Creative Industries. We also wanted a male-female balance as well because that was a parity we were looking at.
Can you tell us more about the Prepare for Investment phase of the programme?
Originally, we were commissioned to deliver an investment readiness programme for creative industry businesses that were close to or preparing for some kind of investment. When we started this, we had a nine-month programme that included mentoring, some online workshops and some in-person workshops. The idea is that each business comes away understanding where they're at with investment and their company as well as knowing what they need now and in the future.
What we found when we were recruiting for this programme was a huge diversity gap emerging between those few creative industry businesses who were in a place to consider investment and the much smaller ones who still needed help forming their business vision, ideas and questions. In response to this, we created a new six-month programme called Prepare for Investment aimed at those younger businesses specifically.
What were the essential elements of the Prepare for Investment part of Create South East?
The cohort attended six in-person sessions, each one led by a different practitioner in a different area of business support. We covered exploring IP, crowdfunding, networking, brand story, personal values ascribed to their businesses, and finance. That was also accompanied by some hours of one-to-one coaching.
The cohort also got a free six-month membership to Creative UK to connect them to the wider Creative Industry ecology. They also got six months of free access to the Ethical Equity simulator, including the AI simulator where AI stands for angel investors. It's an e-learning module about understanding investment and is a low-cost educational tool that was started by the entrepreneur Ali Kazmi, to address the lack of diversity and understanding in the investment world. It allows participants to very much learn at their own pace and it's got lots of different learning levels, and an AI Mentor called Angelica. It's a really good knowledge tool and it's very much needed.
What would you say it takes to run an early-stage business support programme like Create South East?
Finding the right practitioners is really important. We've got six sessions, but we've got seven practitioners across those sessions, plus coaching, so there's a lot of resources there in terms of briefing and trying to make sure we've got resources at the correct level for the cohort. The practitioners are exceptional - they spend a lot of time going through each cohort and trying to tailor as much as they can to the businesses they think will be attending.
Initially, finding that one place that services everybody's needs was quite a lot of work because the South East is such a huge region. We had to be London based because that was the only way everyone could get there, so there was a lot of logistical thought involved as well. The other thing is that it takes a lot of time because the cohorts are very individual and we speak to each of the companies on an individual basis. If they want to be engaged, we do really engage with them. We spend a lot of time amplifying and assisting what they're doing through the programme. It's quite an intensive process because you're dealing with people's lives and the uncertainty of being a founder, which is a challenging place to be.
How do you know this activity works to improve diversity and inclusion, and how are you measuring impact?
I think it helps to look at it slightly backwards - if it wasn't there, we wouldn't have had those diverse companies on any programme. It means the fact that the programme exists means something and that those diverse companies are actually going to get some help, because before, if we'd stuck to the original criteria, they wouldn't have done. The access has to exist in the first place so we can move forward.
There's an evaluation survey carried out by the programme evaluators when people reach the end of their cohort time. It's an ongoing evaluation strategy to try and track what is a very long-term thing. We pick up information as we go, including things like who's been winning grants, who's been pitching for investment, and who's decided to consolidate and do other stuff within the programme. It's a long game but we'll be putting end-of-programme evaluation frameworks together to try and track that going forward.
What do you believe makes this approach successful?
It's because we really focus on giving young businesses the time, space and permission to take a day or a month out of what they're trying to do to look at how they could do it better or differently through the lens of each one of those business areas.
There's also the cohort element as well. There are 10-25 companies in each Create Growth cohort, depending on which region you're in and it's really important for founders to feel that they're not alone, particularly young company founders. It's nice for them to know that everyone is in exactly the same boat, even if the problems are slightly different. I think that's really helpful and there have been some cross collaborations and friendships made through that.
What limitations, challenges or barriers have you experienced in delivering this activity?
The South East is such a vast region, and it has been a real shame that we haven't been able to deliver in-region, and we've had to deliver in London. It restricts how often we can meet and how much the cohort can interact with one another, I'd also be super interested in more sandbox activity and subsector get togethers. I think there's a real value to doing that.
Time is also a limitation. So, we put a big ad in Black Business UK and we also put several ads out to the disability arts community and the disability community at large; we also did female founders as well. The barrier we had was that it's very hard to connect into those groups and we didn't have enough lead time as a programme to be able to do that in a really effective way. Building those relationships can take years and we had a matter of months. We would have liked to have done so much more, but advertising was the fastest way we could approach it.
What advice or key learning would you share with other organisations considering delivering similar initiatives?
I think it's to maintain an openness of thought. We didn't know who we were going to get through the door when we first started these programmes and we've always remained open to iterating based on what is presented to us. That has presented its own opportunities in itself. For example, we didn't get a load of applications from games, fashion, or music when we first started, so we tried desperately to understand why that was. That led us to find three different things. We found that games companies don't see themselves as part of the Creative Industries, so none of our messaging was getting to them. So, we had to iterate and meet them on their terms.
Fashion sees itself as part of the Creative Industries, so that wasn't a problem, but the issue is the fashion supply chain that is broken. This is causing real struggles and disparity for people in fashion, so it's really hard for them to get their businesses off the ground. There's a lot of stuff you don't realise until you start prodding into it. In terms of music, we thought we had a really strong music scene in the South East—and we do—but what turns out is that the music scene in the South East heavily exists in the charity and subsidised sector. So, only one company we met was eligible for the programme as they were set up as a limited company.
It's all about being open to understanding all of the different nuances and all of the different factors in order to be able to knit something bigger together. So, my advice would be to be open, be patient and really try to understand your region. Not everything is quite as you think it is. Also, founders are tough and they've got a lot going on - you really have to nurture them. If you're going to run a programme like this, you need people with compassion and people who care to run it. It takes a lot of time and it takes a lot of emotional energy.
What do you believe are the risks of not addressing EDI?
You're just missing out. You're missing out on people, you're missing out on potential, you're missing out on stories and that's one of the most depressing and distressing things that can happen. Without variance and without a group conversation where there are lots of different people in the conversation, you can't move forward. There's no point in having programmes that are about fundamental access or education and knowledge transfer from one sector to another without having all of the people who could possibly be players being represented.
Also, if you're only focusing your business development on already-founded, growing businesses, what you're likely to get in the South East (outside of London) is going to be is mostly white, and majority male-led businesses. If you want to get any kind of diversity in the demographic of those business leaders, you've got to come back further in the business development journey. You've got to come back startups at very early stages and then follow that journey through with them.
Learn more about the Create Growth South East programme and the partnerships behind making it an impactful success here.
Explore other case studies today at diversity.wearecreative.uk/case-studies.
