Creating Entrepreneurship: entrepreneurship education for the creative industries

Enterprise and entrepreneurship has grown as a focus for national policy across the UK. Policymakers have urged education at all levels to address the entrepreneurial capacity of learners through enhancing learning environments, the curriculum and through building stronger links with industry. There is a pressing need to address entrepreneurship in the Creative Industries. Recent studies have identified a lack of effective entrepreneurship as a barrier to the future development of a world-class creative industries sector. The Higher Education Academy has worked closely with the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts and others including the National Council for Graduate Entrepreneurship to find ways in which the learning environment and curriculum can be shaped to deliver more effective entrepreneurship education across the Higher Education sector and for specific subjects. The Creating Entrepreneurship project brought together a range of agencies to focus the debate on what can and needs to be done to develop effective entrepreneurship education in art, design and media subjects across the UK Higher Education sector. Creating Entrepreneurship is informed by extensive reviews of policy relating to enterprise and entrepreneurship education from Governments and government agencies across the UK and reviews of contemporary literature on entrepreneurship education. A survey of over 80 art, design and media courses determined the type and range of existing entrepreneurship education. Student and graduate focus groups in over 15 HEIs, involving around 150 students provided a Student Voice in the research. Finally, the recommendations in Creating Entrepreneurship were shaped in seminars with senior academics and Creative Industry practitioners assisted in shaping the recommendations.