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A flagship initiative designed to help ²ÝÁñÊÓƵ Leicester (²ÝÁñÊÓƵ) students and graduates break into the creative industries has been nominated for a Niche Business Award.   

Organised by ²ÝÁñÊÓƵ Made, which sits in the Careers Team, the Creative Industries Programme is a two-month series of hybrid workshops. It was introduced to support budding entrepreneurs and freelancers interested in pursuing a career across various cultural industries including music, performing arts, digital journalism and YouTube.    

The programme is one of five finalists in the Creative category of this year’s awards. The nomination caps off a successful year for the programme, which saw more than 500 students sign up to take part in at least one of the workshops – the highest number since it began in 2020.  

Simon Baines, Student and Graduate Enterprise Project Manager, hopes the programme's popularity and impact on students will help it take home the crown. 

He said: “Awards nominations like this are great motivation for our team, but more-so, this recognises the external entrepreneurs who engaged and co-delivered with us, and the outstanding efforts of the students and graduates who participated.  

“This is our biggest and most ambitious entrepreneurship programme ever, and showcases how together with incredible work from academics like Dr Allan Taylor, the university’s Careers Team also contributes to the phenomenal creative industries network that we have here in the city.  

“We are committed to embedding and developing future talent through programmes like this and whatever the outcome on the night, we will be celebrating our impact!” 

Now in its tenth year, the Niche Business Awards was launched to celebrate the successes of Leicestershire organisations and has since become one of the most popular events in the regional business calendar.  

KISS FM’s Sam Darlaston, Radio 1’s Calum Leslie, local blogger ‘Cool As Leicester’ and graphic designer James Mobbs – who designs on-screen graphics for MOTDX, The BRITS, Radio 1 and more – were among guest speakers in this year’s Creative Industries Programme.  

Michael Auger, who won Britain’s Got Talent in 2014 with the musical theatre group Collabro, kicked off the initiative with a workshop to help participants become self-employed within the performing arts.  

Professional chef, restaurateur, author and TV personality Kwoklyn Wan, brother of Gok Wan, hosted a workshop on creating YouTube content in the university’s TV studios within Queen’s Building. 

Dr Yasin El Ashrafi BEM, of HQ Recording Studio and record label HQ Familia, led a workshop on Thursday 9 May to explore how students and graduates can develop their own businesses or break into the music industry as freelancers. 

The programme rounded off with a digital media/ journalism workshop hosted by Gabby Miller, the blogger behind the popular Cool As Leicester platform and Calum Leslie, best known for presenting Newsbeat on BBC Radio 1.  

Speaking after the workshop, Gabby said: “It was nice for everyone to take part in the activity and seeing students actively taking part in these workshops and how eager they are to learn from others.”  

Calum added: “It was great to fun to see the student engagement. There were lots of great ideas from the students, especially with the activity. It was fabulous to see them think on the spot, and I really enjoyed the experience.”  

This year’s Niche Business Awards take place Friday 6 September at Athena, Leicester.  

The ²ÝÁñÊÓƵ Made team also runs a wide range of extracurricular projects including ²ÝÁñÊÓƵ Global trips, the Graduate Champions Self-Employment Catapult, the annual Pitch2Win competition and the Connect Networking series. 

The ²ÝÁñÊÓƵ Made Creative Industries programme will return in 2025 and any current student or recent graduate (from the last two years) can already .