Creative Entrepreneurship and Sustainability

I chaired a workshop on sustainability for the British Council today in London. The audience was 23 Creative Entrepreneurs from 19 different countries (Ghana, Nigeria, India, Latvia, Poland, Taiwan, Turkey etc.). These entrepreneurs were from various disciplines e.g. fashion, product, architecture and advertising.

I was lucky to have three good speakers Guy Robinson from Sprout, Tamsin Lejeune from the Ethical Fashion Forum and Chris Sherwin from Dragon Rouge (formerly Forum for the Future).

It was inspiring to be in a group of driven creative people running their own labels, businesses and trying to learn and improve how they do it. There were too many inspirational conversations to reflect on them all straight away but some of my take home points were’

- The commercial context is changing
- Big business is accelerating that change
- The cultural context is changing and the creative hubs of the future are not in Europe or the US
- Context is everything
- Creating connections is essential
- There is a need to balance commercial with self-directed sustainability projects
- Sustainability is a journey

Let’s see what comes next.