Creative North

Artists, makers, performers – all need to people who will pay for their work if they are to sustain their practice.

The market for creative work is diverse and so trying to sell to everybody is bad business practice: some customers are more valuable than others and, in this workshop, you’ll develop strategies to find them, including those that you may not have recognised before.

Meeting customer needs is the key to generating sales and we’ll put you into their shoes to help you see the benefits you offer from their perspective. We’ll look at:

• the dos and don’ts of selling
• defining your unique selling proposition
• developing your advertising campaign
• product and service placement
• the principles and techniques of visual merchandising
• pricing your work
• routes to market
• what people are really buying when they make a purchase!

This workshop is FREE but places are limited so book early to avoid disappointment.

In conjunction with Lucy Jenkins, Visual Arts Manager for County Durham, Durham Creatives is delighted to host a professional development workshop specifically designed for visual artists wishing to develop their understanding of how to curate shows and make the most of exhibition opportunities.

Lucy has over twenty years’ experience as an art curator who has worked in a range of settings including Hatton Gallery at Newcastle University, Leicestershire Museums and Art Galleries, the National Portrait Gallery, and Bolton Museum and Art Gallery. In her role as curator of the Hatton Gallery, Lucy led strategic change in developing the exhibition programme and the education and learning programme. This work saw an increase in gallery visitors from 32,000 to 50,000.

Lucy will share her curatorial experience to help you to:

• Conceptualise your exhibition with different audiences in mind
• Make the most of exhibition spaces and the resources available to you
• Identify potential technical issues that you might encounter
• Consider a variety of approaches to interpreting your work
• Plan your private view
• Devise a range of measures to help you gauge the impact that your exhibition has had on your audience.

If a friend came to you with a bright idea for a creative business and asked you to invest your time, money and energy into it, what questions would you ask before getting involved?

In this workshop we will identify the various elements of the business planning process that will clarify our ideas and prove invaluable in taking them forward.

We’ll take a look at contents and structure of a range of model business plans and explore how creative entrepreneurs use the process to make the most of their talents, exploit opportunities and achieve commercial success. Using self-assessment profiling tools, you will explore your own potential to be enterprising and at look at how your existing skills can be harnessed and developed to put your ideas into action.

By the end of this session you will have drafted your own business progression plan.

This workshop will be delivered by Jane Shaw, a former dancer and a business starter with an MA in Entrepreneurship, who has been helping creative people start businesses for many years. Jane regards developing a business as being a creative process in its own right, where fresh ideas are at the heart of every successful enterprise and a little ‘sideways thinking’ can make fantastic things can happen.

This workshop is FREE but places are limited so book early to avoid disappointment.

The gateway to a little bit of paradise: great landscapes, rich in wildlife, fascinating industrial heritage… Weardale is a great place to live and work.

To help make the most of the area’s assets, we at Create North, in partnership with the staff at the Dales Centre and DCC’s Community Arts Officer for South and West Durham, have planned this networking session for creative and artisan businesses to get together with organisations rooted in Weardale to explore how you might collaborate to create something new that you can’t do – perhaps wouldn’t even imagine doing – alone.

It’s anyone’s guess what you might get if you put, say, the ice cream van together with a performance artist and a felt maker. Except for one thing: you’ll definitely get ideas.

There are communities across the land pooling their imaginations and skills, sometimes to build an identity around a theme – like, say Scotland’s National Book Town, Wigtown, a similarly isolated spot – sometimes to spark business collaborations.

This workshop will create space to get away from the all-consuming routine of keeping your business running and you think afresh about new ideas for products and services, and new routes to markets.

We’ll conclude with activities designed to get your ideas moving.

Create North has been invited by Culture Bridge North East and the Special Educational Needs Teaching Schools in the region to support the organisation of a conference for educational leaders, governors, creative practitioners and teachers.

The aim of the conference is to animate new thinking and inspire classroom practice, utilising creativity to improve outcomes for pupils with additional needs within the context of a changing educational climate.
This conference will be of interest to artists and creative practitioners working in education or looking for opportunities within the sector.
Keynote speakers will provide a strategic analysis of the educational landscape and innovative solutions. Confirmed speakers include Simon Marshall, (Together 4 Children), Mike Parker, (Schools NE), Diane Fisher-Naylor, (Creativity Culture Education) and Professor Simon James, (Durham University).

Interactive workshops will be facilitated by a host of leading creative and educational practitioners to provide practical examples of how creativity can enable children with special educational needs to fully engage in the learning process and improve their performance.

Workshops will be led by:

• Creativity Culture Education, an international foundation dedicated to transforming the learning experience of children and young people from disadvantaged backgrounds globally
• Tin Arts, a dance company utilising the arts to deliver inspirational science learning
• Tyne and Wear Archives and Museums, programmes to engage SEND pupils with its collections
• Mortal Fools Theatre Company, an award-winning theatre company specialising in linking drama and performance to personal growth, transferable skills and social responsibility
• Baltic Stars develop bespoke and creative learning journeys that compliment curriculum learning and encourage aspirational thinking amongst pupils with profound and multiple learning disabilities
• Trilby Cat Theatre Company, uses ‘Speech Bubbles’, an evidence-based drama intervention to support communication and wellbeing for pupils with speech, language & communication needs
• Bare Toed Dance Company, uses observation allied to research about wellbeing, self-esteem, creativity and relaxation to enable anyone to value and benefit from their movement
• Durham University, in collaboration with Arts Council England, is working to identify ways in which creative thinking can play a larger part in the lives of young people within and beyond the education
• Josephine and Jack Shack Project uses two life-size, anatomically correct puppets to explore issues about sexuality and relationships with young people with learning difficulties

The Conference will host a Market Place led by experienced practitioners demonstrating a wide range of innovative classroom resources to inspire teaching back at school.

This subsidised full day event costs £30 for artists and creative practitioners and includes lunch and refreshments.
Places are limited and early booking is advised.

Some entrepreneurs are more successful than others. What makes the difference? This workshop will highlight research which identifies key factors which enable the most successful creative entrepreneurs to make the most of the opportunities around them.

Through the use of self-assessment profiling tools, you will explore own potential to be enterprising and we look at how your existing skills can be harnessed and developed to put your ideas into action. You will also be introduced to analytical frameworks which will enable you to design your businesses to maximise its entrepreneurial potential.

For many people, the notion of networking fills them with dread. However, no business is an island: success is ultimately a reflection of how well you develop and manage relationships with people and organisations who can make a difference.

In this session, you’ll learn how to use your time effectively to build stronger, broader and more useful networks, and will examine the strategies successful creative entrepreneurs use get people on board with their plans.

We will:

• address what puts us off networking
• examine why we network in the first place and its importance to our business
• identify how can we network more effectively and efficiently
• identify new networks
• explore how we can get buy-in from others
• create an action plan for effective networking

This Free workshop is designed to help you plan for growth and identify the digital tools and techniques that will help you realise your commercial aspirations.

Investing time, energy and money on ‘must have’ digital platforms that don’t actually support you in realising your business aspirations can be frustrating. This workshop is designed to help you identify which digital tools will bring the greatest benefit.

Stephen Fenwick from Digital Drive will be bringing his experience and expertise to the party and will tell us about a fully funded business support programme and grant funding available to Durham based business who want to do more with digital technology.

Everyone’s needs are different but by the end of this workshop you will have a clear idea of the digital know-how you’ll need to acquire and what support might be available to you.

Creative North has teamed up with Debra Fidler, Durham University’s Retail Officer, for an informal Q&A session to explore how artists and designer-makers might develop products for sale in the University’s shops at:

• Botanic Garden
• Oriental Museum
• Palace Green Library Shop
• World Heritage Site Visitor Centre

Debra will provide an overview of the products required for each of the sites based on their distinctive identities and their customer groups.

Enterprise animator, Jane Shaw, will follow up with some lively ideas generation activities designed to trigger original thinking and new product concepts. We’ll also consider the dos and don’ts of pitching ideas to buyers, and participants will be able to book individual appointments with Debra at appropriate times.

The workshop will include visits to Palace Green Library Shop and the World Heritage Site Visitor Centre.

From dates of national importance to quirky local celebrations, the calendar rolls round and every year reminds us who we are. Identity is precious – as anyone adding up the cost of the latest celebration will know. But someone’s expenditure is somebody else’s income so why not get on the right side of the exchange?

The possibilities are limited only by our imaginations and to help us on our way this workshop will introduce you to examples of businesses that generate trade by keeping a close eye on what’s coming up. Festivals, exhibitions, souvenir gifts and hands-on workshops make for a great starting point in making the most of the calendar as we know it but we can think about what’s missing too. Time is money? On this occasion we’re taking this literally so why join us and learn how to make the calendar work for your business?

This Free workshop is designed to help you plan for growth and identify the digital tools and techniques that will help you realise your commercial aspirations.

Investing time, energy and money on ‘must have’ digital platforms that don’t actually support you in realising your business aspirations can be frustrating. This workshop is designed to help you identify which digital tools will bring the greatest benefit.

Stephen Fenwick from Digital Drive will be bringing his experience and expertise to the party and will tell us about a fully funded business support programme and grant funding available to Durham based business who want to do more with digital technology.

Everyone’s needs are different but by the end of this workshop you will have a clear idea of the digital know-how you’ll need to acquire and what support might be available to you.