The British Council’s Creative Spark: Higher Education Enterprise Programme, now in its second year, 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 the countries of South Caucasus, Central Asia and Ukraine. Each partnership will be awarded up to £40,000 to develop projects that will provide thousands of young people with enterprise skills and build cultural ties between the UK and Azerbaijan.
Creative Spark aims to support the creative sectors and the next generation with the ability to develop business ideas. The UN has previously recognised the creative economy as being one of the most rapidly growing sectors of the world economy. Those benefitting from the scheme are principally university students, graduates and young entrepreneurs.
The programme focuses on three areas to give young people improved access to international networks, markets and resources:
- Development of partnerships between universities and creative institutions in the UK and their equivalents in programme countries – this year all 90 partner organisations involved in the programme will come together at the University of Oxford (UK) to share expertise, learnings and further develop their projects.
- Delivering enterprise skills packages to students, graduates and creative entrepreneurs, ranging from pitching ideas and starting a business, to protecting intellectual property and securing financial support – everyone involved will be able to participate in an online ‘enterprise pitch competition’ across the programmes countries with UK based professional development courses.
- 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 and English Clubs.
In 2019-20, the British Council is funding three new international partnerships in Azerbaijan:
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In 2018-19, the British Council funded 38 partnerships which has led to 500 new business ideas under development. In Azerbaijan, partnerships underway include:
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Richard Everitt, Director Education and Society, Wider Europe, British Council comments: “We received almost 100 high quality applications and this demonstrates the real appetite for Creative Spark. In total we now have 50 partnerships underway and this will provide thousands of young people with skills required to start businesses and reduce unemployment.”