Universities

The Newcastle University Creative Fuse team are based in Newcastle University Business School. The team are supported by academic staff specialising in Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Digital Marketing, and Management, and wider creative practice, driving a broad range of workshops, challenge programmes and internships to support the region’s creative economy in these areas. Through the extensive knowledge and skills of the team, the project supports organisations and practitioners to innovate, learn and collaborate enabling them to access new market, develop their innovation capacity, and support the development of new products and services. The delivery programme from the team at Newcastle includes the following key opportunities:

Internships
This programme is focused on matching businesses and organisations with skilled interns. Funded for short-term projects (up to 12 weeks full-time) our interns can help you take forward new ideas, test or approach new markets, or undertake research that will help position your products or services. Above all, it’s about helping businesses be more sustainable and respond to new opportunities with focused support and capacity.

Workshops
Our workshops are practically focused so that businesses can quickly use new tools and techniques and apply them across their business efficiently. We are delivering a wide programme that covers creative ideation, business innovation, digital marketing, generating value and insight from data, through to focused delivery on business and practitioners working in the rural creative economy.

Funding
The Newcastle team are also working closely with Creative UK who are delivering the new North of Tyne Culture and Creative Investment Programme which provides a range of funding and business support to the creative sector in the North of Tyne (Newcastle, Northumberland and North Tyneside).

The Creative Fuse programme is run out of Northumbria Universities School of Design and the Arts Department and supported by a wide range of academic staff from specialists in areas such as design-led innovation, product development, fine art and creative industries management.

The programme is driven by a commitment to multidisciplinary working, bringing diverse actors and participants together and using our collective expertise to build creative confidence and drive exciting and new innovations that support businesses and organisations to thrive.

There are three strands to our programme delivery:

Get Ready to Innovate is a programme of exploratory, energetic, creative and confidence-inspiring workshops that supports individuals in their business development journey. Our team will help identify new opportunities, address innovation challenges and bring business ambitions to life.

The Get On and Innovate programme is much more focussed, working on a one-to-one basis through workshops and mentoring. It is centred on interrogating a specific business idea in the context of a business’s social, cultural and economic environment. Innovation experts will help build the insights needed to enhance the viability of your idea.

Our Creative Fuse Internships programme offers businesses a fresh perspective, injection of creativity and skilled resource through the placement of talented Design and Arts graduates to work on specific projects. Each funded internship is up to 200 hours long, full or part-time and supported by an academic member of staff.

Teesside University focusses on encouraging growth and increasing the creative capacity in the Tees Valley region. Through its Creative Fuse Tees Valley initiative, in collaboration with the University’s Digital City programme, the University delivers comprehensive support and advice to creative practitioners, cultural organisations, industry SMEs and freelancers across Teesside. Key opportunities include:

One-to-one business consultancy – Tailored business growth support and specialist advice.

Innovation support programmes – Intensive idea generation workshops, bespoke innovation development programmes and sub-sector-specific masterclasses such as the adoption of digital technology and understanding the importance of financial dynamics.

Fully funded internships – Short-term graduate internships to help towards the growth of creative, cultural, heritage and digital businesses in the Tees Valley.