Creative Spark: Higher Education Enterprise Programme is a five-year initiative to support the international university and institutional partnerships to develop enterprise skills and creative economy across seven countries in Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan), South Caucasus (Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia) and Ukraine through UK support.
The programme has been developed in response to an underdeveloped creative sector and a demand for entrepreneurship training in the programme countries, supporting wealth and job creation.
Creative Spark has three key elements:
Development of the funded partnerships between universities and creative institutions in the UK and those in programme countries
Delivering enterprise skills training packages to students and creative entrepreneurs, ranging from pitching ideas and starting a business, to protecting intellectual property and securing financial support – this will be further developed through a ‘video pitch’ competition, open to 100,000s of students across the programme countries next summer, with UK based professional development courses as prizes
Delivering an English Learning Programme with a range of new digital language learning content. This will include online learning packs on the English Channel platform, online courses and new Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) focused on English for entrepreneurship
Creative Spark Partnership Fund
Creative Spark Partnership Fund is developed for building partnerships between universities and creative institutions in the UK and those in programme countries in order to support enterprise education and establish enterprise centres/hubs.
The grant is designed to enhance existing partnerships or foster new ones between UK Higher Education Institutions, related national bodies in the creative sector and the equivalent institutions in the participating countries.
In the first year (2018-19), 38 partnership projects were awarded a maximum of £50,000 funding for new creative economy partnerships. Now in its second year, the programme will fund 12 new international partnerships – bringing the grand total to 50.
These partnerships have been formed between higher education and creative institutions in the UK and: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan. Each partnership will be awared a grant of up to £40,000 to develop projects that will provide thousands of young people with enterprise skills and build cultural ties.
Partnerships aim to support the following areas:
Skills development for students and young creative entrepreneurs
Supporting new business activation and incubation
Knowledge exchange
Download the list of partnerships at the bottom of this page.
For your enquiries, please contact creative.spark@britishcouncil.org and British Council country offices.