Bristol-based creative business collective Istoria Group has launched a competition to find a regional, women-owned Micro Business to support as part of its Incubator Hub programme, whereby Istoria Group houses and helps guide fledgling businesses during their initial period of development. The winner will be selected from applications received online, with the launch of the initiative timed to coincide with International Women’s Day 2023.
The lucky winning business will receive rent-free office space for up to four people for a 6-month period at Istoria Group’s Bristol Paintworks HQ, starting 1 June 2023, as well as a free website design and build, a brand critique/refresh and mentorship from the Group’s Chairwoman and Heads of Finance, Marketing and PR.
Lindie Kramers, Chief Marketing Officer for Istoria Group, commented: ‘As a women-owned SME, we’re actively seeking to support another female-founded business in our region. We want to be as inclusive as possible in our search for the right Micro Business and would particularly welcome applications from traditionally under-represented communities in business, whether by age, class or ethnicity, to help promote social mobility and counter current imbalances in opportunity and representation.’
To help target its search, Istoria Group is working with the support two established local organisations – Black South West Network (BSWN) and Babbasa – to help spread the word and make sure new of the competition offer reaches as diverse and inclusive an audience as possible in the region.
Sibusiso Tshabalala, Business Support Coordinator, Black South West Network, commented ‘If the Creative Industries were as socio-economically diverse as the wider economy, the sector could provide employment opportunities to an additional 263,200 working-class individuals. However, the lack of diversity in the industry remains a challenge. Fortunately, creative agencies like Istoria Group are working selflessly and consciously to diversify the industry. Initiatives like theirs are particularly crucial in areas like the South West, which lack representation in the creative sector. By supporting minority-led agencies, we can foster the growth of diverse creative content that is relevant and engaging to both the local community and beyond.’
Matt Rogers, Head of Development at Babbasa, added: ‘Many of the young people Babbasa supports are interested in entrepreneurship, and starting their own business is a key way for many young people to access an income that enables them to thrive. We’re pleased to support this fantastic opportunity.’
The winning applicant / business will be selected by a team of five judges:
Sam Rowe, CEO, Istoria Group
Lindie Kramers, CMO, Istoria Group
Sibusiso Tshabalala, Business Support Coordinator, BSWN
Matt Rogers, Head of Development, Babbasa
Cecilia Thirlway, Senior Lecturer in Entrepreneurship,
Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, University of Bristol
About The Incubator Hub:
The Incubator Hub idea arises out of Istoria Group’s dedication to start-up entrepreneurialism and business mentorship. The Incubator Hub was set up to house and help guide small businesses until they mature and, to date, Istoria Group has successfully helped to grow and ‘hatch’ two Incubator Hub companies: children’s book publishers i am a bookworm – https://www.iamabookworm.co.uk/ and innovation platform Solverboard, which was purchased in Summer 22 by AIM-listed technology and innovation experts Sopheon (and now rebranded as ‘Acclaim Ideas’) – https://www.sopheon.com/products/acclaimideas
The focus on micro-businesses this time around was inspired by an article on the International Women’s Day’s 2022 website, which noted how often women have a particular gift for spotting opportunity-based gaps in the market for products and services, but how, through lack of capital – which is often generationally-available, gender-biased and slow to adapt to contemporary needs – women often start small, which makes micro-businesses a great area to focus on to aid and encourage new business growth.
Details of Offer:
Istoria Group is offering the competition-winning business free and self-contained office space on the mezzanine level of its Bristol Paintworks HQ for 1-4 people, with dedicated toilets and access to all shared office facilities, from a kitchen to bookable meeting rooms, as well as free electricity and WiFi, for a six-month period from 1 June – 30 November 2023.
Istoria Group is additionally offering mentorship and in-house creative services as follows:
How to Apply:
Applicants can be a business in any market and at any stage of early growth, as long as female-founded and based in Bristol or the South-West region.
The deadline for applications is midnight on Wednesday 19 April 2023 and the simple application form can be found at: www.istoriagroup.com/micro-business-competition-2023
Istoria Group, which last year became a B Corp, says applicants should ideally share at least some of its corporate values, which include the EPIC values (entrepreneurial, personable, intelligent and collaborative), as well as standing for the inclusive and ethical treatment of staff; innovation in business; a strong commitment to sustainability and creative re-use and a commitment to the local Bristol region and economy.
What is a Micro Business?
In the UK, a micro business is defined by Companies House as a business of 1-9 employees, with turnover of less than £632,000 and £316,000 or less on its balance sheet.
Creative Youth Network is redeveloping the old magistrates courts on Bridewell street in Bristol into a creative enterprise hub for creative organisations, individuals and diverse young talent.
With a range of office, meeting, incubator and co-working spaces available, interested parties are invited to show an interest in becoming tenants in this innovative, heritage space.
The Courts is set to open in late 2023/early 2024. It will be an enterprise hub, offering creative industries space and opportunity for development, networking and collaboration as well as professional office space.
There are a variety of offices available from as little as £26 per sq ft. Tenants also benefit from reception support, on-site catering and good quality spaces for hire.
Register your interest and outline your requirements using the form here.
Courtroom 2 on the ground floor of The Courts will be offered as co-working space for creative SMEs, individuals and freelancers who don’t require an office.
Desks will be £150 per month plus VAT** with an initial minimum contract of three months preferred.
Creative Youth Network would love to hear more about how this co-working space will be of benefit to you and what you might need. Register your interest using the form here.
** The rental charge has been set to ensure the space is affordable, but Creative Youth Network recognises that this may still be a barrier for some. Please get in touch if you’d like to talk about support. Email [email protected]
Last month the team worked on several exciting projects making updates to the product pages for Effect Doctors, finalising a project they have been working on with DAZN, and creating a new and improved website for them. Stathis and Ian also visited the Somerset and London venues for Artfarm, taking time to walk around their lovely Piet Oudolf-designed garden and re-visit Mount St Resturant.
After a productive brand presentation for a new seafood restaurant, we enjoyed a lovely cocktail with our clients from Aqua Shard, Micah and Marie. We also welcomed Mary to our Digital Marketing team this month! You can see how she’s getting on further down!
This month one of our largest website projects has gone live. The website is for DAZN, a market-leading sports broadcaster in Italy, Spain, Germany, Portugal, Belgium, Japan and Taiwan but is known largely for its boxing proposition in the UK.
We built the new corporate site for the DAZN, which communicates how they have brought a new way of watching live sports such as boxing, formula one and football to viewers.
It was important that this website communicates the multi-threaded nature of today’s viewers, who want to simultaneously consume sports across multiple devices. They view and interact with the platform through multi-game/sports views or in-game bets. This is a fast-moving space, and the corporate site is there to communicate how DAZN are changing the face of sports streaming.
It was great to work closely with the in-house brand team, as well as the DAZN management, to bring together a website design that not only hits the right message but in the right tone and with the right energy for this fast-paced brand.
Naturally, the site uses a lot of videos and features a lot of movement as the visitor scrolls down the page. The site has also been challenging for our developers, who love something new to challenge them to bring a more conceptual design to all browsers and devices.
In January, we made some improvements to the product pages on a long-standing client’s website, Effectdoctors.com. The product pages were several years old and had been updated many times as A|B tests and UX updates mean a busy eCommerce site is consistently being evolved. There’s only so far a page that can be modified both in terms of keeping a clean UX and for the cleanliness of code behind the scenes, so a fresh build is required occasionally. After using the previous product pages for a few years, they were overwhelmed with many added features and content over time, affecting their user experience.
We reevaluated which features were essential and created a plan to simplify the content of these products while maintaining depth and detailed descriptions of each product. These changes and adaptations to the product pages resulted in a much simpler-to-use WooCommerce management experience and a much clearer User Experience for their customers.
We have been steadily expanding our work with Artfarm’s Somerset venues over the last year or so. Last month, during a visit to the venues, we took time to slow down and walk around their on-site, including the pleasure of taking in the artwork in the Hauser and Wirth gallery, a walk in their Piet Oudolf-designed garden featuring artworks such as the sculpture by Smiljan Radić, that was previously located at the Serpentine in Hyde Park.
We then had our regular meeting with our Artfarm clients over lunch in their Roth Bar and Grill, looking at design work for various projects before visiting their farm shop, for which we run eCommerce marketing campaigns.
We were also able to indulge in a fondue hat! YUM!
It was an excellent way for us here at Fanatic to become more immersed in how all the venues fit together within the Artfarm location, an essential element when creating content and expressing the brand through our multiple marketing campaigns.
We also re-visited the Mount St. restaurant in Mayfair, which we visited in the summer of 2022 as a building site. The finished Audley Pub, Mount St. Restaurant and connected private dining rooms are one of the finest examples of exquisite dining venues we have seen in over 20 years worth promoting F&B venues, with the Art engrained in the very fabric of everything we see and touch!
We currently run and manage multiple digital channels to drive bookings for the venue and love working on projects for Mount St. restaurant.
Bristol-based web design and brand agency, Squarebird, have evolved a new look for the biggest player in space sector recruitment, EVONA, to better echo their established impact and vision.
EVONA is disrupting the recruitment scene, a consultancy team of space sector specialists with strong beliefs in the progression of knowledge and unlocking the potential of humankind. As they say, it’s in the name: EVO – to evolve, ONA – people.
Telling the true story of space sector recruitment was vital. As all of us use space every day – to navigate, use our phones, and even watch TV – an optical style was needed to rewrite the narrative and open the industry to all.
Working with their existing branding, Squarebird explored the visual limits they wanted to push through style tiles, helping them move towards a clean, dark, space-inspired look. A tone of voice workshop allowed the team to discover the personality of the brand, bringing the notion to existence. The developed visual style was rolled out across the website using a cinematic, aspirational style – perfectly reflective of their vision and ambitions.
“Developing a strong online presence is central to our Marketing strategy as a space company on the forefront of innovation, so there was a lot riding on getting this right. Predictably, Squarebird have delivered an exceptional website that not only stands out amongst the competition, but functions far better than previous versions. The team got our vision very quickly and worked with us to develop a website to be proud of that was close to the brand direction we wanted to move in.
Working with Squarebird has been a great experience; the team are knowledgeable and their skills diverse enough to handle any of the issues developing websites could throw up.” – Adele Fox, Marketing Director at EVONA
From extensive image manipulation, to editing and icon creation, every aspect of the website worked holistically for a cohesive brand experience. The website was brought to life in a collaborative way, ensuring the visuals, and ever-evolving message, aligned with the technical functionalities of the site. Integrating with multiple recruitment and marketing platforms, the website plays a functional role in streamlining their operations and ensuring a platform that better aligns with EVONA’s growth and maturity.
“Having known and followed the EVONA crew since inception, it’s been amazing to grow alongside them, and be a part of their next stage of expansion. From the USA, UK and beyond, EVONA is – and will continue to be – a driving force within the space sector.
It was a pleasure to take their objectives and messaging and create a visual masterpiece to do it justice.” – Nick Bird, Managing Partner at Squarebird
View the full case study here.
By Natalie Howells, Lead Copywriter at Armadillo
I recently wrote about how data and creativity work together. When I shared that post on LinkedIn, one of the comments from someone in my network really struck me.
I shared the post with a quote from towards the end, “Data isn’t just the remit of the analysts and accountants. If we leave it with them because ‘it’s just numbers’, we give away the opportunity to analyse that data through a creative lens.”
In response, a contact shared his favourite quote, “”Data is just people in disguise”.
What does that even mean?
We may look at our data as a collection of information, an amalgamation of data points, a huge mass of stuff. But when you zoom in, every single data point represents an element of an individual person. Basically, data is just people – well, data about people is, and that’s what we’re talking about here.
We can think of that data in different ways – it might be demographic data that tells us about an individual, or behavioural data that tells us about decisions they’ve made, for example their purchases or shows they’ve watched.
We don’t tend to look at individual data – partly because it’s too granular for what we do as a business, and more importantly because it starts to feel a little intrusive. We look at cohorts of people who have either got the same demographics or have made the same decisions.
But when we look at big groups of data, it’s easy to forget the fact that we’re looking at people. Lots of people.
Why does it matter?
The idea that data is just people in disguise is a nice sentiment, but does it really matter? Especially if we’re not looking at information on an individual basis.
Well, when any brand makes decisions based on data, it’s important to recognise that individual people will be affected.
When a bus company drops a route, for example, because the data doesn’t support keeping it running, there are people who will be affected. If the comms announcing the closure don’t recognise that there are individual humans at the other end, the message may not be as sensitive as it needs to be.
When communicating with any large group of people, we need to recognise that they’re not a monolith. They may be in the same data segment, but they’re still different. Take this example:
This is data that describes both King Charles and Ozzy Osbourne. If we forget that data is just people, we can expect our segments to be too homogenic and not recognise how wildly different the people within them could be.
How does this all work in practice?
No one wants an email that’s so hyper-personalised that they feel stalked. Equally, no one who’s a vegan wants to receive emails about beef burgers. There’s always a balance to be found when segmenting and personalising emails.
When we craft copy, for example, we have to think about how different individuals will receive it. A little while ago I wrote a headline for an email that I really liked. It linked back to the origins of a beloved character and had a nice nod to the past.
When a couple of younger colleagues read it, they didn’t know that history, so the headline didn’t land with them. Once I explained, they thought it was great – but we can’t go and explain the context of an email to everyone who receives it!
That’s not to say that every piece of creative has to be universal, but if the copy relies on knowledge not included in the email, it’s important to think about whether or not it will still work for the people who don’t have that prior knowledge. Clever copy can reference something while still working on its own merits.
Bearing in mind that every data point is a person reminds us that they don’t all have the same knowledge or experience. They may be in the same segment because of demographics or behaviours, but they’re still unique individuals. We can’t lose sight of that just because we’re looking at them through cohorts of data.
There are lots of brilliant events and other opportunities for creative businesses this February and March. See the full list below.
Events are either free or discounted for Bristol Creative Industries members. Some other opportunities are exclusive to members. Not a member? Join today.
However big or small your business, nothing has more commercial impact than fame. Join us in Bristol to hear Pete Bracegirdle share the incredible story of ‘Fearless Girl’ and what she can teach us about how to make your brand more famous. Book your ticket here.
Join Inkwell founder Chris Goodfellow for advice on how to create your own high-quality videos.
Wake Up Call is an online event exclusive to BCI members. Book your ticket here.
Join Rebecca Steer, Steer & Co’s award-winning lawyer, for this talk at Watershed in Bristol on data privacy laws in the UK and Europe and how they affect creative, digital and tech businesses. Book your ticket here.
Join Mette Davis for top tips on how to deliver a great workshop experience for your team and clients.
Wake Up Call is an online event exclusive to BCI members. Book your ticket here.
BCI members can book a free 30 minute call with Rebecca Steer, an award winning business lawyer. Book your call here.
The free BCI members’ lunch at The Square Club in Bristol is an opportunity for members to build connections while enjoy a delicious buffet lunch. Book your ticket here.
A networking event with a difference! A great opportunity for BCI members to make some new creative industry connections whilst exploring the countryside. Book your ticket here.
Come along to our freelancer networking drinks at The Square Club in Bristol to widen your networks, make new connections, discuss common problems, and discover potential opportunities for collaboration. Free for BCI members. Book your ticket here.
Ruth Clarke discusses six new big trends and ideas for how we look after our people.
Wake Up Call is an online event exclusive to BCI members. Book your ticket here.
The free BCI members’ lunch at The Square Club in Bristol is an opportunity for members to build connections while enjoy a delicious buffet lunch. Book your ticket here.
BCI members can book a free 30 minute call with Rebecca Steer, an award winning business lawyer. Book your call here.
Forward Space is offering BCI members with turnover below £150,000 the chance to win a free office for three months in Bristol’s Boxworks. Find out more.
Our friends at The Wow Company have launched BenchPress 2023, the largest survey of independent agency owners in the UK.
It’s the perfect opportunity for Bristol Creative Industries members to benchmark themselves against their peers and build a picture of the latest trends impacting agencies across the country. Find out more.
Just 4 months on from the launch of AgencyUK’s awareness campaign, Our Future Health has surpassed the significant milestone of 150,000 volunteer sign-ups.
Our Future Health aims to become the UK’s largest ever health programme, creating a 5 million strong database of adults to enable new ways to prevent, detect and treat human diseases.
Information will be collected from millions of volunteers across the UK to create one of the most detailed pictures of public health we’ve ever had.
By analysing this data, researchers hope to unlock new ways to detect diseases at an earlier stage and identify demographics that are most at risk.
Volunteers are asked to complete a consent form and a health and lifestyle questionnaire before arranging an appointment to collect a small blood sample, where they can receive feedback on aspects of their health, including blood pressure and cholesterol levels.
AgencyUK have been working with Our Future Health since their public launch, planning and executing targeted marketing campaigns in Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, Huddersfield and London aimed at raising brand awareness among the general public. The campaigns leverage creative and messaging that references specific health challenges most commonly faced by the population in each region.
They have been activated across multiple digital channels including social and advertising, as well as out of home with the aim of reaching a broad audience across a range of demographics. Out of home placements have included public transport, print and digital posters.
“We are really pleased with early results of the AgencyUK campaign, and we are seeing great levels of engagement across the various formats and platforms. The out of home executions have been high-impact and well targeted in support of our regional hubs. All of this has been delivered at pace and always with an eye on our next location. AgencyUK has added a lot of value to our communications activity as well as being a really decent bunch of people to work with,” says Peter Wilson, Strategic Communications Lead, Our Future Health UK.
“We are delighted to have been part of hitting the first milestone and that the programme is on track for building one of the largest health databases in the world, but we are just at the beginning and there remains a lot to do. Maintaining a high level of national exposure over the period and using creativity to maintain the public interest will be the challenge, but it’s one we’re prepared for,” says Amy Mansourpour, Director, AgencyUK.
The impressive milestone comes just 6 months on from the programme piloting in four Boots pharmacies, and two months since the first regional hub was opened in Leeds.
Since then, hubs have opened in Birmingham, Bradford, Huddersfield, London and Manchester, with national expansion into more areas in local Boots pharmacies planned this year.
For more information on the programme, including how you can volunteer to take part yourself, go to www.ourfuturehealth.org.uk.
Read the full article here…
If creative businesses and organisations are not made central to the government’s economic plans, the UK’s creative industries risk falling behind international competitors.
That’s the conclusion of a report by the House of Lords Communications and Digital Committee.
Following an inquiry into the future of the UK’s creative sector amid increasing global competition and technology-related disruption, the committee said the government’s approach can be categorised as complacent, missing opportunities and failing to recognise the sector’s commercial potential.
All this, the report said, is despite the following statistics:
The UK is world leading in many specialisms within the creative industries, the committee said, but rapid technological advances are changing the nature of the sector, and international competition is rising.
“We heard mounting concern that the UK’s success was being taken for granted, and increasingly at risk,” the report warned.
Among the committee’s key concerns were the government allowing other countries to create more competitive tax incentives, proposals to relax intellectual property law which threaten creative sector business models and a “perception in government that DCMS [Department for Culture, Media and Sport] is the ‘ministry of fun’ rather than a key driver of economic growth”.
Julia Lopez MP, media and data minister within DCMS, referenced the “ministry of fun” description during the inquiry. She said:
“I want it to be understood as the ministry of a major economic growth area, future technologies … it is incredibly important that we do not try to diminish the public perception of what are fundamentally important industries and ones where the UK has a real competitive advantage.”
📢Out now: our report on the UK’s creative industries, covering
👉How technology is disrupting the sector
👉How the UK’s world-leading position is at risk
👉How Government policy can harness the sector’s potential to turn it into an engine of growth📰:https://t.co/14Z8PfkQzO pic.twitter.com/S5GZu9CSdj
— Lords Communications and Digital Committee (@LordsCommsCom) January 17, 2023
The committee made several recommendations including:
The recommendations mirror a report released last September by Bristol Creative Industries which also called for action on R&D tax relief and skills.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston, chair of the Communications and Digital Committee, said:
“The UK’s creative industries are an economic powerhouse and have been a huge success story. But the fundamentals that underpin our success are changing, and rivals are catching up. The government’s failure to grasp both the opportunities and risks is baffling.
“International competitors are championing their creative industries and seizing the opportunities of new technology. But in the UK we’re seeing muddled policies, barriers to success, and indifference to the sector’s potential. We acknowledge the government has introduced important programmes in recent years, but we are concerned past success has bred complacency.
“Our report sets out some immediate challenges that the government can address now.
“These include improving R&D tax policy to stop excluding innovation in the creative sector; abandoning plans to relax intellectual property rules which would undercut our creative businesses; making the Department for Education wake up to the reality that the future lies in blending creative and digital skills rather than perpetuating silos; and urging senior figures across government to take the creative sector’s economic potential more seriously.”
A creative force: Unleashing the power of Bristol’s creative industries
What the government should do to support the creative industries
A guide to funding for creative businesses
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
2022 was a pretty transformative year for Keep Art It.
Special thanks to:
Director Douglas Karson highlights:
We’re thrilled to bits about what’s coming next!
Building communities of global thinkers and explorers around the world, Bayswater combines two of life’s greatest adventures: education and travel. Bayswater is an international educational provider on a mission to educate and inspire the next generation through a life-changing educational experience.
Following their acquisition of Eurocentres – a renowned language school, and opening new campuses in locations around the world, Bayswater approached Fiasco Design with the brief to capture their progressive outlook on education; to challenge the status quo; and design a visual brand that is fit for the expansion of the business.
“We were tasked with developing an identity that is dynamic, progressive and optimistic, a fresh take for an educational brand. Harnessing the spirit of adventure, the brand idea celebrates travel and Bayswater’s global community.” – Ben Steers, Co-founder and Creative Director, Fiasco Design.
A suite of bold, colourful patterns are the backbone of the visual identity, reflecting the vibrant and diverse community taking a bold leap into new experiences. Whilst the brand palette and typographic system works to capture the aspirational and energetic tone of the brand.
The logo with its coloured pathways represents students of different backgrounds following their own unique pathway; uniting in the Bayswater community to be a part of something greater.
Typeface Fann Grotesque helps to ground the playful visual identity, giving the brand name a characterful, yet trustworthy feel. A reassuring nod to parents.
Meanwhile, photography is intended to feel active and optimistic. Celebrating individual personalities, the imagery is inclusive of a diverse global community of students.
The end result is a spirited brand that inspires the next generation to embark on the educational adventure of a life-time.
“We established Bayswater in 2017, but after rapid expansion and the integration of a variety of legacy industry brands, we wanted a reset and to double down on the Bayswater name with an exciting new brand canvas. It’s been great working with Fiasco on our full rebrand. We have appreciated the process, it’s been very collaborative and it’s very exciting to see the new look come to life across so many different platforms and formats.” – Stephan Roussounis, Founder and Managing Director, Bayswater.
You can read the full case study here.
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