Creative Bridge Cohort Nine is an accelerator for creatives with early stage ideas, or who are just at the beginning of their ideation process. It has been designed specifically for creatives who want to learn about startup thinking, innovation and digital product development.
Run by CodeBase and funded via Creative Informatics, Creative Bridge is free for successful applicants. It takes place one afternoon per week for 10 consecutive weeks. The next cohort of Creative Bridge takes place weekly on Wednesdays between 28 September to 30 November 2022, from 1pm to 4pm.
Applications are open now until Monday 22nd August at 5pm.
The course focuses on three key things:
- helping to turn a creative idea into a sustainable business
- breaking down barriers to the startup world by demystifying the jargon around tech entrepreneurship
- sharing toolkits and processes to give creatives the power to respond to fast change and cultivate resilience in a turbulent world
Sessions and Speakers
Each course takes place over an afternoon a week for 10 weeks. The makeup of the course changes from cohort to cohort – but broadly, it covers core topics including:
- Markets
- Understanding Your Customers
- The Build-Measure-Learn cycle
- Pitch Decks
- Funding & Investment
- Alongside those core sessions, we also invite speakers from around the world to share their stories of entrepreneurial success and failure. So you’ll get to hear the warts and all journeys that real entrepreneurs have been on, and talk to them openly about success and mistakes.
Experts and Expertise
Speakers include a range of creatives from across Scotland and the UK, as well as global entrepreneurs. Past guests include: Sahil Lavignia, founder, Gumroad; Danae Shell, co-founder & CEO, Valla; Narie Foster, co-founder, M.M.LaFleur; Amy Williams, founder, Good-Loop; Abhishek Lahoti, DropBox; Didier Sibellas, Design Lead, Canva; Sarah Stenhouse, founder, Oodls; Neil Mackintosh, 25+ Design; and Ivana McConnell, Senior Product Designer, HashiCorp.
The speaker schedule is designed specifically for every cohort, and new people are always being added to this list. If you’d like to know more, or you’re interested in being a speaker, get in touch. In the meantime, you can watch Sahil Lavignia’s talk on YouTube.
The course is run by Kath Warren (Creative Bridge Programme Lead), Yasmin Sulaiman (Head of Partnerships), Jim Newbery (Director of Product Innovation), and other members of the CodeBase team. By taking part in the course you will also get to meet other CodeBase team members, as well as the organisation’s amazing Scotland-wide community.
Creative Bridge Cohort Nine – Community & Ecosystem
Creative Bridge Cohort Nine participants are considered an active part of an ecosystem, not just temporary students – so if you take the course, rest assured you will receive the help you need, or be shown you where to find it.
Creative Bridge is part of Creative Informatics, a partnership between the University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh Napier University, Creative Edinburgh and CodeBase. Through six research and development initiatives, Creative Informatics will enable creatives and cultural organisations to explore and better understand how data-driven technologies can be used to enhance their work. These initiatives will develop local talent, placing creatives in the driving seat of data-driven innovation and ensuring that Edinburgh’s creative and cultural industries continue to thrive.
Want to know more? Attend one of the drop in sessions or get in touch via kath@thisiscodebase.com or creativeinformatics@ed.ac.uk to arrange a chat.
