Siân Prime

Siân is Deputy Director for Goldsmiths’ Institute for Creative and Cultural Entrepreneurship (ICCE). She is Director of the MA Creative and Cultural Entrepreneurship and 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 - as well as on Goldsmiths’ MSc Digital Entrepreneurship, MSc Management of Innovation and MA Prospects of Innovation courses, the MA Fashion and MA Design & Innovation based in Design. Co-Investigator in to new digital business models and online audience development approaches with Coney and the Department of Computing, and has just accepted a contract from Routledge to write a book on Cultural and Creative projects and sustainability.

Siân worked with the original Creative Pioneer Team at Nesta (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 worked with a range of cultural, creative and social enterprises to find new financial models to ensure strong impact and value creation.

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.