Gov.uk: Membership of new Creative Industries Taskforce announced
// Caroline Norbury // creative industries // UK Government
We are thrilled to announce the Scaling Up 2024 Cohort! This cohort comprises 11 dynamic and visionary entrepreneurs who are charting new frontiers in film, TV, games and immersive productions. Spanning across five months, the programme is designed as a transformative journey, comprising six intensive workshops and four personalized business coaching sessions. This comprehensive blend of learning opportunities ensures participants are equipped with the skills, insights, and strategies necessary to navigate the intricate landscape of scaling up a creative enterprise.
Broad topics covered in the Scaling Up programme include planning for growth, finance & investment, product and market reach, pitching, sales and marketing, leadership and culture, and cross-sector collaboration. These workshops offer tailored insights into scaling creative businesses, covering crucial topics like marketing strategies and operational efficiency. Additionally, participants benefit from 1-2-1 mentoring sessions with mentors, providing personalised guidance and support.
This year, we are delighted to have three new exceptional mentors Rebecca Robinson, Mark Hill and Benn Wiebe who will play a pivotal role in coaching and guiding our founders. Each mentor brings a wealth of experience and expertise in diverse aspects of the industry and we are excited to have them as a part of our Creative Enterprise network.
As the programme unfolds, participants embark on a transformative journey, armed with the skills and strategies needed for sustainable growth. With a vibrant community of fellow entrepreneurs and expert mentors, the Creative Enterprise Scaling Up programme promises to be a catalyst for innovation and success in the creative industries.
Now, let’s meet our new cohort!
The 2024 Scaling Up Cohort:
Applehead Media Ltd – Nicola Sands
Applehead Media is a pioneering company that offers quality TV and video services for brands and businesses. Based in Altrincham, Manchester, the company has established a cutting-edge studio space to facilitate captivating content creation.
Applehead’s new studio is a busy hub of creativity and innovation. It provides a dynamic backdrop for content creation featuring high tech facilities such as its own video podcast studio, a green-screen backdrop and a livestream shopping set.
The company is known for its client-centric approach working closely with brands and businesses to understand their unique needs and vision.
Bertz Associates LTD – Iris Bertz
Bertz Associates was set up in January 2020 as an organisation that worked inter-culturally, with emerging talent, to produce high quality projects.
The pandemic proved to be our crucible, we pivoted to go digital. From there our unique approach was born, collaborative super diverse teams producing projects that work with history and communities to dream futures. Since 2021 we have produced 4 short documentary films and a fifth one being commissioned, telling the stories of and with communities. We want to build on this to make the organisation sustainable and take it national and international.
Dan Prince Productions Limited – Dan Prince
Dan Prince is a filmmaker and photographer who has a passion for story.
Born and raised in the North East of England with a passion for TV and film, this clearly influenced the vision and story telling of Dan’s work.
Starting with a great love of photojournalism from the likes of Tom Stoddart and James Nachtwey to portraiture photographer Anton Corbijn, Dan cut his teeth assisting in London.
Seeking out his own path Dan has now worked in advertising photography for clients such as NHS, Ladbrokes, Greggs, Carpetright, Manchester United, BBC and Channel 4. A natural transition into film has given Dan the opportunity to show work clients his passion for directing tv and creating commercial films.
“I find filmmaking really is the best way to tell any story with such depth. Building the narrative, creating structure and finding the story. You are involved in every part of the puzzle from music, pacing and emotion. I love the challenge.”
Working on personal short stories has ignited Dan’s curiosity to expand into longer form films which has lead Dan to create his first feature length documentary, Don Don Strong.
Having won awards in the photography world, Dan is now proud to have added accolades for his film and documentary work.
Fayju – Gaz Bushell
We are an independent game studio, working on Amazing Frog? A Kind of Grand Frog Auto set in Swindon with crazy ragdoll physics and days and days of gameplay.
Megaverse – John Ingle
Megaverse, founded by John Ingle, is an award-winning studio specialising in digital immersive experiences. Working at the intersection of theatre, film, gaming, and the visual arts, we utilise the latest XR technologies to transform passive viewers into active participants. Our real-time, responsive creations continuously explore new dimensions of technology, blending animation, interactivity, and storytelling. Megaverse blurs the boundaries of reality, innovating to enhance live experiences and deepen immersion.
Northern Heart Films – Scott Bradley
Northern Heart are award-winning storytellers and documentary filmmakers, championing inspirational stories and authentic voices.
We partner with charities, NGOs and purpose-led brands who believe in the power of emotive storytelling to change hearts and minds.
Propulsion Games – Matt Javanshir
Propulsion Games is an indie game studio that develops space-themed indie games that have some kind of transmedial or genre-mashing twist.
Our released titles include Rockets are Super Hard – a co-operative rocket launching game with a 100+ page PDF guide book, as well as a similar streamlined solo title The Mars Agenda, and sci-fi horror narrative game Close Contact. Our latest title Orbitect, a construction/roguelite mashup in space, was released November 2023.
ReadGraves – Samuel Read-Graves
ReadGraves is a video games company based in Suffolk, known for creating irreverent and thought-provoking games. We released “Trolley Problem, Inc,” a philosophical puzzle game which challenges players to make difficult ethical decisions as they are responsible for testing the famous “trolley problem”. Currently, the team is hard at work on “Task Time,” which promises to be just as witty and satirical as its predecessor, with a focus on infinite replayability, local and online multiplayer, for a wider audience. Currently our games are on sale on Steam and Epic store, we plan on console releases in the future.www.littlejadeproductions.com
Rekindled – Rob Moody & Siobhan Maracle
We are a small team, based in the UK, who have been working together since 2016. We formed REKiNDLED at the start of 2022 with the aim of making a studio that’s friendly and fun. We love what we do and are keen to share that passion and enable others.
Shout Loud Creative – Simon Marriott
Over the last few years, Shout Loud Creative has been involved in an array of captivating projects, from thought-provoking feature films, theatre and award winning short films.
Shout Loud Creative is led by Simon Marriott, an experienced producer with an unyielding commitment to bringing fresh and exciting narratives to the screen.
With a diverse background working in film and media and a strong varied production background honed working for companies such as Sony Television, Sony Interactive, 20th Century Fox, New Regency, The BBC, Magical Elves, Big Deal Films, ITV, Element Pictures, Netflix, STV, Apple, Blackwater and Stigma Films.
Simon is proud to be developing Shout Loud Creatives current slate of film and television projects that will be presented at market places in both Europe and the US during 2024.
Static Flow Productions – Lewis Coates
Static Flow Productions is an award-winning independent film & TV company based between London and Sheffield. Specialising in narrative fiction, documentary and commercial, they have had films screen at festivals around the world, been commissioned by Channel 4 and the British Film Institute and been finalists for Bloomberg’s Green Doc awards.
They are currently in post-production on their first feature documentary ‘All That Lives’ and their first narrative feature films, ‘Knaves’ and ‘Undercurrent’. They hope this year will see paid development to push these projects forward and gain feature film success.
