StART Entrepreneurship Project

Find all of our resources on the StART Enterprise area of Brightspace. These include:

• Recordings of all the ‘toolkit’ workshops
• Lots of ‘how to’ guides
• Links to practical resources

Music, leadership and entrepreneurship in creative organisations with Michael Fuller,  Double Bass and Chief Executive at Philharmonia Orchestra
28 February 17:30 - 19:00

• Explore how performing, entrepreneurship and leadership intersect as key skills required to succeed in today’s music industry.
• Building a career in music is about mastering your craft as a player and developing emotional/social intelligence. We need both.
• The days of getting a position in an orchestra or ensemble and relying on others to do the work of entrepreneurship are over. Those who are able to pro-actively understand all sides of the business and promote what they do will be the most successful, especially in the post-Covid world.

Michael Fuller has a unique experience and profile during a career encompassing roles as Double Bass player, Chief Executive and Board Chair. Michael has enjoyed performing, recording and touring the world with many of the world’s great conductors and musicians, holding positions with orchestras in the UK, USA and Europe. Michael joined the Philharmonia Orchestra in London in 2010 and in addition to playing has served as Chair of the Orchestra and Interim Chief Executive. As Acting CEO he stepped in to lead artistic and business operations during a 15-month period from June 2019 to September 2020, a time which saw the appointment of Principal Conductor Santtu-Matias Rouvali, a reorganisation of the orchestra’s governance, and the creation of the acclaimed digital concerts after the Covid-19 pandemic struck.

Communications skills for creative freelancers with Paul Boross, motivational speaker and inspirational business psychologist
1 March 17:00 - 18:30

• Understand how to present/pitch your business powerfully
• How to get instant rapport with anyone
• Improve client relationships
• Develop a greater degree of ethical influence
• Increase personal impact and effectiveness
• Learn how to ‘listen off the top’ to understand intent.

Paul Boross — aka The Pitch Doctor — specialises in the “art and science” of corporate communication. Drawing on a career that has taken him from primetime TV, music and stand-up comedy to production, development, consultancy and motivational psychology, Boross works regularly with such power players as the BBC, Google and Nestlé, training executives in communication, presentation and pitching. His frontline experience of performance — his credits include a 10-year stint at London’s legendary Comedy Store — coupled with a strong commercial grounding enable him to deliver effective and focused skills to clients from a range of industries, from media to medicine. Paul is a much in demand international keynote speaker and his four bestselling books, continue to sit high in the Amazon charts. Paul is the host of The Humourology Podcast which interviews star guests from the worlds of business, sport and entertainment to show leaders how to drive success through the scientific application of humour.

Breaking the mould: my journey as a creative entrepreneur with Alexandra Deriescu, internationally acclaimed pianist and performer | 7 March 11:00 - 12:30

• Life after College and getting an agent
• The process of creating as a freelancer
• The journey of fundraising and producing ‘The Nutcracker and I’
• The role of social media

Pianist and creator of “The Nutcracker and I”, Alexandra Dariescu stands out as an original voice whose fundamental values are shining a light on gender equality in both her concerto and recital programmes as well as championing lesser-known works, advocating for diversity and inclusion. In 2017, Dariescu took the world by storm with her incredibly successful piano recital production “The Nutcracker and I”, an original ground-breaking multimedia performance for piano solo with dance and digital animation, which has since enjoyed international acclaim and has drawn thousands of young audiences into concert halls across Europe, Australia, China, the Emirates and the US, realising Dariescu’s vision of building bridges and making classical music more accessible to the wider public.

Strange Fruits: How a 25 year old gathered billions of streams with Mark Furman, Senior Director of Business Affairs at Virgin EMI Records, and Stef van Vugt, musician and founder of Strange Fruit records
10 March 12:00 - 13:30

How to move from start-up to successful business in a 5 year period.

The process of co-creation and dealing with success and failure with Omar Shahryar, award-winning composer and researcher
15 March 15:00 - 16:30

• Join in a practical example of co-creation
• Consider “what is co-creation/collaboration” and what it is NOT
• Explore the political implications of participation and community art
• Hear how to navigate ethical considerations of cross-cultural work
• Discover business opportunities of outreach competence

Omar Shahryar is an award-winning composer, facilitator, researcher and peace-maker working for opera companies and arts festivals around the world. He is the composer of the digital mini-opera Finish This (English National Opera) and the opera for young adults with special needs, The Extraordinary Adventures of You and Me (English Touring Opera). His internationally acclaimed opera about young people’s reactions to violent extremism, A Shoe Full of Stars, won the YAMAward Prize for Best Opera for Young People 2018. Omar has led participatory music projects for some of the world’s leading opera companies and concert halls, including the Royal Opera House, the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, Glyndebourne, the Barbican Centre, the Wigmore Hall and Streetwise Opera. He has led artist and teacher trainings for the Norwegian National Opera & Ballet, the Royal Opera House of Oman, the Associazione Lirica e Concertistica Italiana and the Teatro Colón in Colombia. Omar is the Artistic Director of Opera Schmopera, an opera company for young people, and a board member for Tête-à-tête Opera Company and the European Network of Opera, Music and Dance Education (RESEO). In 2020, Omar finished his PhD thesis in the Composition of Opera for Young People at the University of York, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

Artistic routes, creative reinvention and crowdfunding with Cindy Claes, theatre maker, moving director and choreographer
16 March 18:30 - 20:00

• Explore the options for stepping outside the conventional route to build your artistic career
• Dare to dream, dare to start over, dare to reinvent yourself as an artist along the way
• Plus, a practical A-Z strategy for creating a successful crowdfunding campaign

Cindy’s journey is eclectic, international and unconventional. She is a theatre maker, movement director, choreographer, playwright, slam poetry artist, screen actress, performer and dancer. She studied at the International School of Theatre of Jacques Lecoq in Paris (France). She also obtained a Master of Arts degree in Sociology and Anthropology from the University of Brussels (Belgium), which gave her the framework to research all the dance cultures she is a part of, and engage in critical thinking with regard to cultural appropriation and artistic responsibilities we have towards the industry. She also trained Improv at The PIT in New York City. After a very competitive auditioning process, she was selected to train with the renowned physical theatre company DV8 (Lloyd Newson) and Hannes Langolf) on their first Professional Development Program. Her work has been recognised as trailblazing and has been programmed both nationally and internationally. Born in Belgium, she worked as an artist for 13 years in London. While the UK was her base for many years, she had the opportunity to either teach and/or perform her work in Jamaica, Venezuela, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Howard University / Washington DC, and all across Europe (Germany, Portugal, Spain, etc.). Her mentors Gbemisola Ikumelo (BAFTA Award winning actress and director) and Benji Reid (UK Hiphop Theatre pioneer and choreophotolist) contributed abundantly to the creative being and leader she is today. 

Collaboration as a Force for Change with Ned Glasier
17 March 13.00-14.30

Join Ned Glasier for a discussion on the role of collaboration in theatre making and performing, particularly in the role of community work.

Creative IP for students across the Arts with Roxanne Peters, Creative and Cultural IP Rights Specialist
22 March 17:00 - 18:30

• How to recognise the potential value of IP to help develop your creative identity
• What to consider when creating and collaborating
• What to consider when representing and showcasing your work

Roxanne is a Creative and Cultural IP Rights Specialist, based at UAL, working internationally at the intersection of IP, creative education, enterprise and cultural heritage. She connects with creatives, encouraging self-led approaches to value IP as creative agency, as part of their business strategy and as a tool to activate positive change. She specialises in copyright law and related rights in digital culture.

The role of technology in creative businesses: why it has become a business necessity with Muchaneta Kapfunde, fashion tech contributor and founder of FashNerd
30 March 10:00 - 11:30

Founding editor-in-chief of FashNerd.com, Muchaneta is currently one of the leading influencers writing about the merger of fashion with technology and wearable technology. She has also given talks at Premiere Vision, Munich Fabric Start and Pure London, to name a few. Besides working as a fashion innovation consultant for various fashion companies like LVMH Atelier, Muchaneta has also contributed to Vogue Business, is a senior contributor at The Interline and an associate lecturer at London College of Fashion, UAL.

Community and social entrepreneurship with Lynette Alcántara, freelance mezzo-soprano and vocal consultant
31 March 14:00 - 15:30

Self Authoring with Mike Omoniyi, award-winning social entrepreneur and activist
11 May 18:30-20.00

Instead of depending on external values, beliefs, and interpersonal loyalties, Self Authoring with Mike Omoniyi helps people navigate internal generation and coordination of one’s beliefs, values and internal loyalties. In essence, if we can learn how to think as authors; then we can exert more control and start to live more fulfilling and joy-giving lives.

Producing Theatre and Live Events: Flexibility is the way forward with Ashley Evenson, founder of Oval Productions and co-host of Curious About Creativity podcast 

12 May 14.00-15.30

• Focus on the Audience first: an interactive exercise to know your audience  
• Planning events in and out of the pandemic, how to pivot when issues arise: a lecture/ activity recounting events that go wrong and how to adjust 
• Creating YOUR events- From Idea to marketing, getting people involved from the very beginning. 

Ashley Evenson is the Founder of Oval Productions, a storytelling agency. She has over twenty years of experience in writing, directing and producing, theatre, film and live events. Ashley currently lectures on Creative and Cultural Entrepreneurship with Goldsmiths College. She works across many platforms that seek to engage local communities to build entrepreneurial skills and tell their story. These works include, Inspire Lewisham, Stride, London Borough of Culture. Additionally, she is Producer and co-host of the Curious About Creativity Podcast. 

Collaboration and Care - Wiser Ways to Work Together with Emma Frankland (she/xyr), an award winning writer, theatre maker and performer, passionate about centring principles of care in her work, which is often described as playfully destructive, and gloriously irreverent.

18 May 18:30-20:00

When you hire people to be themselves, bring their own lived experiences, and represent their communities, additional care is required. 

• what care may look like 
• what tools are useful in achieving this 
• why is this important now and for the future of our industry

Does Teamwork Make the Dream Work? Creative leadership and working with your team with Sonya Barlow, award-winning entrepreneur and founder of LMFNETWORK.

19 May 16:30-18:00

• The future of work - flexible or functional? 
• 7 ways to grow your team 
• What type of leader are you and do your team know?

Integrating Accessibility in your Creative Work with Koko Brown, a multidisciplinary artist who blends theatre, spoken word and live vocal looping. Join her for a discussion on access in live art.

25 May 18:30-20:00

In this session we’ll work towards understanding what ‘Accessibility’ means in a fuller, more expanded sense keeping creativity at the forefront of our minds. Koko will share ideas on how to integrate access into your work (using real world examples from her own work and stuff she’s experienced) plus you’ll begin to explore how you can integrate access into your artistic practice right now.

KickStART Creative Lab: 5 – 7 November 2021

The KickStART Creative Lab is an opportunity for students across the arts to join together in a weekend of collaborative workshops, skills development and learning for future creative industry leaders.

This is a unique opportunity to meet and work with fellow students from Royal Northern College of Music, University of the Arts London and Royal Central School of Speech and Drama to explore and develop innovative and creative ideas and projects. The schedule will feature interactive sessions, talks and Q&A sessions with exciting guests from a variety of creative practices who have established their unique space and position within the creative industries in the UK.

At the KickStART Creative Lab, you will:

• Develop ideas for your artistic projects
• Explore ways to build a sustainable livelihood in the arts
• Make contacts for future collaborations
• Build on and extend your current skills in business planning, leadership and team working
• Get feedback and guidance from experienced professionals from across the creative industries

#KickStARTCreativeLab

Have a question? Email Ava at start@rncm.ac.uk with any questions you have!

Places for the core timetabled sessions are available on a ‘first come, first served’ basis, but we will operate a reserves list. We aim to engage and accommodate as many students as possible for this weekend of activity.

Please note: some sessions within the schedule will be open access, meaning students and the wider public can access them (for example, the keynote speaker sessions will be streamed).

Established in 2020 following a significant grant from the Office for Students and Research England, StART will enrich the entrepreneurial training provided at the three world-leading institutions via new and enhanced tuition and a range of knowledge exchange activities. These include student workshops, professional placements, mentorships and networking opportunities with partner organisations across the creative industries sector.

The ambition of the StART Entrepreneurship Project is to help students to develop the necessary skills and real-world experience to build successful and sustainable careers, while researching and sharing best practice with the Arts Education sector.

For more information on the project please contact StART@rncm.ac.uk or call 0161 907 5466.