About Us
Nottingham Creative Network launched in October 2006 and is a project designed to provide smart-targeted professional and business support for Nottingham’s creative industries. We will do this by:
- Getting big name speakers to come to our city, so we can all hear their advice and maybe get to know them.
- Providing 1-to-1 sessions with our creative ‘scouts’ who will direct you to the right place or person.
- Working with the city council, business link and other agencies to shape the future for creative industries in the region.
- Drawing a map of the multiple networks, contacts, support agencies, workspaces and venues that you can connect with to get things going…
...we will also be doing lots of other things, so come and find out more!
A bit of history
We have grown Nottingham Creative Network by forming a happy marriage between Broadway’s Creative Collaborations, Nottingham Trent University’s School of Art and Design, School of Arts and Humanities and the Business, Innovation and Creation team. Together we think we can do it bigger and better!
We have over 150 members to date, and invite you to join us as a member, to help us inform what we can and should be doing, and grow together. As well as organising specific events that will bring together people of international fame and local creative producers, we will also be organising more informal networking events and will carry on offering a ‘dating agency’ to help creative people be introduced to each other during social events.
So whether you are an established business, a free-lancer or sole-trader, have just started something up or are just looking to get connected… come and join us.
Your membership will allow you to come to all the Nottingham Creative Network events as well as receiving membership of Broadway and 10% discount on film tickets – and best of all it will be free!
So there are lots of reasons to get involved – for business, for creative inspiration, to meet other potential collaborators and for getting your work out there.
We have organised our thinking and our on-going series of seminars and workshops around 6 themes, which we think strike the right balance between offering a focused, structured discussion on the one hand, and an open-endedness that allows for tangential discussion on the other.
Our 6 themes are as follows
- Selling Your Soul? – What are the tensions between pursuing your creative inspiration and making compromises to make your business work? Are there any? If so, how do you negotiate them?
- How to Make Friends and Influence People – The importance of networks and network development. How do you get good at networking and why?
- Who Do I Get Into Bed With – Having recognised the value of networks and collaborations for creative business, how do you use these relationship to their best advantage?
- Don’t Get Ripped Off – What do you need to know and do protect yourself and get paid properly?
- More Than Just Beer Money? – What are the opportunities, issues and added pressures associated with going from creative business as a ‘lifestyle’ choice, to growing your business into something bigger?
- Soul Food – How do you ‘refresh’ the creativity bit of your business to prevent stagnation?
Visit our events page to find out more about these 6 themes.
Nottingham Creative Network aims to address all these issues in a way that connects tangible advice for business growth and development with discussions of these issues that are relevant for the specific of the creative industries. We realise that sometimes the creative industries operate in quite distinctive ways. We come from the creative industries ourselves. We will be holding regular expert seminars and workshops, offering 1-to-1 surgeries and responding to the needs of the creative community in other flexible ways when opportunities arise.