The world-class program helps creative entrepreneurs develop business models and identify funding

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Drafting off its first, highly successful business accelerator program, the second annual Creative Startups Winston-Salem is now accepting applications. The world-class program helps creative entrepreneurs develop business models and identify funding. Hosted by the Center for Creative Economy in Winston-Salem, NC, this year’s participants will compete for venture and angel funding up to $75,000 from a range of companies and organizations.

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Report on the Creative Economy in the UK, Canada and US.

This report measures employment in the creative economies of the US, Canada and the UK.

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Key elements to the Creative Economy is that it A.) addresses an entirely new sector of the labor force.  This group of creatives B.) is build new companies and C.) create jobs.  It is an D.) export industry selling digital products on the Internet.  It is a E.) new form manufacturing, especially 3-D Printing, that engages the Knowledge economy.  And, it is a F.) growing sector of global trade.  The Creative Economy is an important sector of local economic development. 

As creative economies continue to grow across the globe, many cities and states are realizing the value of dedicating time to researching and evaluating the health of their own creative economies and comparing them to cities of similar sizes and demographics.

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The concept of “creative economy” has drawn much attention in recent times, but what is it?

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Camel City Dispatch recently released an article on a study completed by Wallethub naming Winston-Salem, NC as a great place to open up shop.

” Winston-Salem came in 11th overall out of 150 cities, and came in 3rd for the highest average growth of number of small businesses.” 

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Christine Lee, an alumnus of Creative Startups, the nation’s leading startup accelerator for creative entrepreneurs, shares her experience during the 2015 accelerator program in Albuquerque.

The dust has settled after the whirlwind Creative Startups (CS) accelerator, and when I look back on that time, I think of it as a warm, big hug.

About

CS is an accelerator for — you guessed it — creative startups (think art, social good, media, retail, etc.) in Albuquerque, New Mexico that debuted last year for the first time (a startup helping other startups accelerate… meta!). It consists of six weeks of remote classes with mentors/instructors, weekly small group discussions, and then a final deep dive week in ABQ that continued classwork but starts to focus more on next steps — legal, investment, pitch decks, network building, connecting mentors and mentees. We had the opportunity to demo our product, “The Right Margin,”  to the ABQ startup community and the final day of the accelerator was spent pitching to investors. This year we were joined by eight other startups.

Going in

I forget how we first found out about the CS accelerator, but our first reaction to the description was that it sounded perfect for us — if we’d be able to get in. I think the application deadline was earlier than we thought we were ready for (we had considered looking into accelerators around the end of 2015, not mid-2015), but our CEO, Shivani, is hands down amazing at taking (and making) opportunities regardless of how ‘ready’ we feel, which keeps up our team’s momentum. Then, when we were accepted… read the full article here!

Creative Startups

Albuquerque-based Creative Startups won a $190,000 grant from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation to help expand the business accelerator nationally and internationally. “The grant will help us evaluate what we do well, how we can improve, and what we can offer in terms of resources and support to new sites that want to do Creative Startup accelerators,” said Creative Startups co-founder Alice Loy.

Unlike Albuquerque’s five other accelerators, Creative Startups focuses specifically on the creative industries. That includes everything from design, games, film, music, visual arts, and more. Creative Startups is now working to expand its program to North Carolina, the Washington, D.C. area, Los Angeles, Portugal and Spain.

The Center for Creative Economy in North Carolina is working with Creative Startups to launch an accelerator in Winston-Salem. The center’s executive director, Margaret H. Collins, said the Kauffman assistance will boost those efforts while building the Creative Startups program into a “gold standard.”

“The new resources will help Creative Startups maintain and grow the program at the highest level,” Collins said.

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A new scheme has been launched to boost Britain’s creative industries which, according to Prime Minister David Cameron, have become a driving force of the UK economy.

 

 

 

There is a new website in Britain, aimed at helping creative startups. This tool will give advice on writing business plans, raising money, information on key organizations and networks, and much more. It will be a way to help creatives get their business off the ground.

Britain’s creative economy has been growing three times faster than any other sector and now generates £80 billion a year. “Britain has a huge creative clout around the world. I want to build on that!” – Prime Minister, David Cameron

For more details, check out the full article in Relocate Global!