This workshop is aimed at new as well as more established creatives who want to make improvements to their creative business in 2018. This session might be especially useful if you feel overwhelmed and don’t know what to focus on, feel stuck and need a boost, or make a better living from your creative work and skills.

Do you want to get more clarity about your creative business and career and how to take it to the next level? Do you feel you are working very hard but not achieving what you really want to do? Or do you often run out of time to work on the things that really matter? Do you feel stuck or want to make some major changes in 2018? Or are you very new to business and frankly don’t know what to do first? Have you realised that you need a clear plan that will help you to prioritise your work? Or maybe you want to raise some finance or funding for your new or established creative business?

January is the perfect time to work on your creative career and business! And we are very pleased to have partnered up with The Design Trust to offer you this new workshop. In this strategic but very practical and hands-on one day workshop you will learn:

Why is planning useful? What type of planner are you? And what kind of business plans are there, and which one do you need?
What’s your business dream? Set some juicy goals for yourself and your business this year.
Wheel of Business and SWOT analysis are two creative exercises to help you identify what’s working and what needs more work in your business. What are you avoiding even?
You will set financial goals and create a budget for the next two years too.
Then you will get started to create your own one-page internal business plan that you can take home.
In the afternoon we will look at how to write a formal business plan to get finance or funding, with top tips to create a successful business plan, and an overview of the exact structure and format of the plan. All your hard work from the morning will come into use now.
And we finish the day with a session on how to keep your business plan alive and help you to take action on your ideas, rather than letting your plan get dusty in a drawer.
Patricia van den Akker, the Director of The Design Trust, an online business school for
designers and makers will be hosting this creative business planning workshop. She is a wellknown
creative business adviser, trainer and coach who has worked with 1,000s of creatives for
more than 20 years. She regularly writes for Crafts Magazine, the Etsy UK blog, and The Design
Trust, and works with universities, trade shows and craft fairs to help creatives improve their
business and marketing skills. She is known for her inspiring, thought-provoking and actionorientated
workshops, so be prepared to turn your ideas into a do-able plan in this one day
workshop.