Nurture Support for Emerging Creatives

Nurture Creative Incubation Program

An 8-month program to help 4 emerging creatives in Belfast establish their creative practice. Providing bespoke business support and free shared creative workspace in our new South Belfast studios. Each program participant will have 24/7 access to their own dedicated deskspace as well as use of shared communal facilities throughout the program. In addition they will benefit from the following support:

• Monthly one-on-one mentoring sessions – for accountability with Blick founder Christine James
• Monthly peer-mentoring group sessions with the other program participants – for peer support, learning, inspiration, community and accountability.
• Quarterly finance mentoring sessions – to help with financial planning and advice with Blick and freelance finance manager Rosy James
• Monthly industry specific skillshare training workshops for program participants – with current and past Blick residents and team members, sharing their skills and experiences with the program participants
• Monthly online business resources, worksheets and exercises – to help you refine your idea, improve your skills and knowledge and for accountability and to establish your creative practice
• Quarterly creative talks – by local creatives sharing their creative journey for inspiration and peer learning
• Quarterly industry specific skillshare workshops – by local creatives sharing their expertise to improve skills and knowledge
• Showcasing and promotional opportunities – on our website and social media and through presenting your work at a showcase event at the end of the project

Program dates:

1st October 2024 – 31st May 2025

Application criteria:

This program is aimed at emerging creatives who aren’t yet generating a full-time income from their creative practice. To be eligible to apply for the program you must have an idea for a creative business or be a self-employed creative, or creative freelancer generating your full income from your creative idea or practice for less than 6 months. Your creative idea or practice must be in one of the following creative industries sectors

• Art
• Design
• Photography
• Illustration
• Crafts
• Fashion

You need to be passionate and committed to making your creative idea a reality, whether that is running your own small creative business, working full-time as an artist or creative freelancer, or a combination of these. You need to be able to demonstrate you have a plan for how you will work on your creative idea over the course of the program to make the most of the facilities, resources and support provided.

Please note that due to the nature of the funding, screen and technology based businesses, including video games, film and tv, software, advertising etc are not eligible to apply. If you aren’t sure whether your creative idea or practice is eligible please get in touch.

Program commitment details:

We understand that when starting out you may have a number or different work commitments, so don’t expect you to necessarily be working on your creative practice full-time, but to contribute to the program and benefit from the facilities and support available we do expect all program participants to be in the position and willing to commit for the full duration of the program to:

• Working on your creative practice in the studios a minimum of 3 days per week
• Attending all mentoring sessions, workshops and talks, except in exceptional circumstances which must be agreed with the Blick team in advance.
• Complete all program exercises and worksheets
• Complete monthly progress reports and end of program evaluations and feedback reports

In addition we want to create a nurturing, supportive and welcoming environment within the program and our studios and we expect all participants to be willing to do their best to work hard, be kind and supportive to each other and all our studio members and visitors.

Application deadline:

Friday 27th September