Siân Prime
Staff details
Siân is Deputy Director for Goldsmiths’ Institute for Creative and Cultural Entrepreneurship (ICCE), and Academic Lead: Enterprise. She has worked with Adrian De La Court to develop Synapse, a service that is available to all students (and staff) at Goldsmiths, and develops entrepreneurial thinking and potential. She also teaches on the MA Social Entrepreneurship programme - and has developed a module that supports any Masters student in Goldsmiths to develop their understanding of the practicalities of cultural enterprise. She has been Co-Investigator in to new digital business models and online audience development approaches with Coney and the Department of Computing. She is currently researching and writing collaboratively on the sustainability of creative practice. She was elected to be a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts 17 years ago, and is Chair of National Ugly Mugs. She has a background in funding and investment.
Teaching and Supervision
Research interests
Siân worked with the original Creative Pioneer Team at Nesta (then the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts) and was responsible for the content and delivery of The Academy – Nesta’s residential enterprise development programme for highly talented creative graduates to move their creative thinking to founding an innovative business. Through running this programme she understood the difficulties that recent graduates experienced in developing their creative and critical thinking in to entrepreneurial action. She also co-ran a £15million seed fund for Nesta to support the Creative Industries.
She developed the material for Insight Out and Starter for Six which now is delivered without her by Regional and National Development Agencies (Cultural Enterprise Office delivers Starter for Six), and supports the creation of new creative and social enterprises. Siân developed the material with the rest of the Creative Pioneer team for Nesta’s Creative Business toolkit and trained a number of trainers who continue to develop and deliver the work under a Creative Commons licence, for clients including the British Council. She has co-designed kits for Creative Hub Leaders and also continues to develop cultural enterprise approaches globally. She has worked with a range of cultural, creative and social enterprises to find new financial models to ensure strong impact and value creation. As a practitioner academic she is researching in to the culture of business, and how businesses can be formed to reflect and enable people's cultural contexts.
In 2021 Siân won the National Enterprise Educators Award as having the most Inclusive approach to enterprise education.
Publications and research outputs
Conference or Workshop Item
Hoette, Ruby and Prime, Sian. 2017. 'Workshop – Unpicking the Fashion System'. In: Moda Desobediente: First international meeting on critical fashion practices. Santiago Museum of Contemporary Art, Chile 13-16 June 2017.
Professional Activity
Musgrave, George; Dinardi, Cecilia; Franklin, Michael; Murphy, Oonagh and Prime, Sian. 2022. Submission of evidence to the UK Parliament House of Lords ‘A Creative Future’ Inquiry.
Waller, Michael; Fairfax, Duncan; Prime, Sian and Sheridan, Aidan. 2010. Innovation catalyst- 6 London Development Agency/ European Research & Development Fund Grants and one SELLLN Grant..
Project
De La Court, Adrian and Prime, Sian. 13 – 31 July 2020 Sustainable Enterprise London Festival (SELF).
De La Court, Adrian and Prime, Sian. 2016. Good Innovation Lab Tools (GILT).
Report
Prime, Sian; Thelwall, S; Musgrave, S; Dexter, R; Kane, D and Newbigin, J. 2020. Devising a Resilience Rating System For Charities & The Non-Profit Sector. Working Paper. Goldsmiths, University of London, Lingfield.
Mees, Annettte; Wright, Tim; Donald, Nicky; Gillies, Marco; Milne, Austin and Prime, Sian. 2015. Coney: Better Than Life. Project Report. NESTA, LONDON.
Further profile content
Professional Activities
Siân has developed skills as a trainer, facilitator, coach and consultant. Siân has worked for Natverkstan and Globalverkstan in Goteborg, IIMB in Bangalore, ITB Indonesia, the GoDown, Nairobi and East Africa region and nationally for the Arts Council England, the Cultural Enterprise Office, Scotland and Comic Rellief’s Tech for Good programme She’s also worked within a number of sub-regions to deliver business advice, training and coaching for social innovation start-ups, creative individuals and organisations, including members of the UK’s Combined Arts Venue Network (including Tyneside Cinema, Watershed and 6 other combined arts/media venues; Metropolis, Beirut and the National Review of Live Art).
Siân has developed and implemented approaches to business advice for creative and social enterprises. She has developed appropriate strategies for value creation, to support the development of entrepreneurial activity.
She has over 20 years experience in working with start-up and mid-stage creatives and social, cultural and creative organisationsShe has developed new programmes and research in to new models of leadership in a socially networked era, and new paradigms of leadership in social enterprises, creative and cultural industries.
She, with Adrian De La Court, developed a blended learning approach to training mentors and curriculum/approaches to mentoring people wishing to develop careers in the creative industries and develop an online support network and learning space. They worked together to train trainers from the Istituto Luigi Sturzo, Italy, ENCATC, Belgium, Denizli Provincial Special Administration, Turkey, the Finnish Museums Association, Finland, RPIC_VIP, Czech Republic , Romatre University, Italy and the Leisure Studies Institute of University of Deusto, Spain.Funded by the European Commission’s Life Long Learning Fund.
