Resources

Attending SHIFT is a valuable opportunity to strengthen your graduate entrepreneurial skills and attributes. The programme is designed to help you reflect on your current strengths, creative practice, and professional behaviours, and understand how to apply them within a sustainable freelance career. We have developed five core SHIFT attributes that capture the key learning and development the programme supports.

  • Self‑Leadership: Demonstrates self‑belief and a values‑led approach, taking responsibility for actions while using critical reflection, initiative and resilience to navigate challenges, manage priorities and drive ideas forward.
  • Creativity & Innovation: Approaches work with curiosity and a growth mindset, applying creative problem‑solving, critical thinking and experimentation to develop innovative, ethical and sustainable solutions informed by cultural, disciplinary and industry contexts.
  • Communication: Listens actively and communicates with clarity and empathy, using storytelling, adaptability and purposeful dissemination to reach and effectively engage diverse audiences.
  • Founder / Entrepreneurial Mindset: Applies entrepreneurial and strategic thinking to identify opportunities, shape concepts and advance ideas and projects into viable, impactful outcomes through proactive planning, adaptability, responsiveness and accountability.
  • Community: Builds positive, ethical, respectful and inclusive relationships, valuing diverse perspectives and working collaboratively with cultural and social awareness and emotional intelligence.

Did you know that self‑employment makes up around a third of the UK’s creative industries?¹ Building your entrepreneurial skills, knowledge, and professional practice is an important part of launching and sustaining a successful freelance or self-employed career, and it’s a journey you don’t have to take alone. SHIFT supports you to develop the mindset and approaches creative practitioners use every day. You’ll gain insights into best practice, explore what works for you, and build confidence in your own creative direction.

By joining SHIFT, you become part of a supportive creative entrepreneurial community that champions emerging practitioners and helps you take your next steps with clarity and momentum. Below is a list of creative support organisations and networks who can also offer further advice and support. 

¹National Statistics on the Creative Industries (June 2023), Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre (PEC)