OUAN602 - Business: Do You Have an Idea For One?

To make the most of third year both in terms of my own practice but also to ensure I am as equipped as I could be to begin a career post graduation I made sure to attend several of the 'Start up Wednesday' sessions, which provided industry insight and invited guest speakers to talk about their area of expertise within the creative industry. I focused more on the freelance/starting a business side of the sessions because I believed these would be the sessions I would get the most out of. The speakers that were invites covered a broad range of information and the insight they had involved setting up on your own, as well as how to pitch ideas and market a business or yourself. Furthermore, content such as protecting your intellectual and legal property, how to budget and manage your money, and how to go freelance are all covered in the sessions.

The first session was run by Anamaria Wills, Anamaria was a Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts, and an award-winning practitioner who has worked in over 40 countries. What I found most encouraging is that she also specialises in creative entrepreneurship, strategy, organisational development and innovation. The information she discussed with us over the course of the session focused around the actual creation of a business, and the topics that naturally branched off from this such as how to obtain funding and simpler aspects such as registering a business.

The session was around an hour and a half, and during that time a lot of different tasks were undertaken. By the end of the session I felt quite drained [in a good way] from all of the information we had received, and it left me thinking about what to do next. Equally, the insight that had been provided was inspiring and pushed me even further towards something I had been contemplating at the early stages of third year which was going freelance and perhaps starting a business in the process. This appealed to me because of the scarcity of stable jobs that were coming up when I was looking around, that isn't to say that there is a lack of full time positions but the ones that are available either weren't a role I felt I could fill or had requirements that were too high for me to satisfy. [e.g 5 years experience]

Some of the tasks we did included working in a group to pitch a business idea, that we had to come up with in around thirty minutes and present to the rest of the people at the session, also, we had to do several problem solving tasks. Something I liked about this in hindsight was the quick turnaround that she made us do, because it was unexpected and challenging, so although stressful during the session it was a useful exercise to have to do.