Siân Prime
Staff details
Position
Co-Head of Department, Institute for Creative and Cultural Entrepreneurship and Academic Lead: Enterprise
Department
Institute for Creative and Cultural Entrepreneurship
s.prime (@gold.ac.uk)
Siân has worked globally with cultural, creative and social enterprises to develop sustainable, equitable models.
Siân is a Senior Lecturer, Co-Director for Goldsmiths’ Institute for Creative and Cultural Entrepreneurship (ICCE). She is also Academic Lead: Enterprise for the college. She has co-designed with Adrian De La Court, Synapse, a service that is available to all students (and staff) at Goldsmiths to develop entrepreneurial thinking and potential. She teaches on MA Creative & Cultural Entrepreneurship and has developed a range of modules and programmes to support students in Goldsmiths to develop their understanding of the practicalities of cultural enterprise. She was Co-Investigator in to new digital business models and online audience development with Coney and the Department of Computing. She is currently researching and writing collaboratively on the sustainability of creative practice. She was elected to be a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts 20 years ago, is Chair of National Ugly Mugs, and Board member for Homes for Good . She has a background in funding and investment.
Teaching and supervision
Siân's teaching focuses on developing culturally aware business models: balancing societal, financial and founders' impacts.
- MA Creative and Cultural Entrepreneurship
- Entrepreneurial Modelling
Research interests
Siân worked with the original Creative Pioneer Team at Nesta (then the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts) and was responsible for the content and delivery of The Academy – Nesta’s residential enterprise development programme for highly talented creative graduates to move their creative thinking to founding an innovative business. Through running this programme she understood the difficulties that recent graduates experienced in developing their creative and critical thinking in to entrepreneurial action. She also co-ran a £15million seed fund for Nesta to support the Creative Industries.
She developed the material for Insight Out and Starter for Six which now is delivered without her by Regional and National Development Agencies (Cultural Enterprise Office delivers Starter for Six), and supports the creation of new creative and social enterprises. Siân developed the material with the rest of the Creative Pioneer team for Nesta’s Creative Business toolkit and trained a number of trainers who continue to develop and deliver the work under a Creative Commons licence, for clients including the British Council. She has co-designed kits for Creative Hub Leaders and also continues to develop cultural enterprise approaches globally. She has worked with a range of cultural, creative and social enterprises to find new financial models to ensure strong impact and value creation. As a practitioner academic she is researching in to the culture of business, and how businesses can be formed to reflect and enable people's cultural contexts.
In 2021 Siân won the National Enterprise Educators Award as having the most Inclusive approach to enterprise education.
Publications and research outputs
Article
Hoette, Ruby and Prime, Sian. 2014. Rely on unpaid interns and fashion will fall apart at the seams. The Conversation,
Conference or Workshop Item
Prime, Sian; Turner, Nicola and De La Court, Adrian. 2024. 'Cultural Enterprise and Leadership'. In: Cultural Enterprise and Leadership: Iraq. Erbil, Iraq.
Prime, Sian and De La Court, Adrian. 2023. 'Migrant Enterprise and High Streets'. In: Level Up: Insider Knowledge on Stepping into the Creative and Tech Industries. Migration Museum, Lewisham, United Kingdom 11 November 2023.
Prime, Sian and Pepper, Sara. 2023. 'Colloquim: City, Culture and Society'. In: Colloquim: City, Culture and Society. Bristol, United Kingdom.
Audio
Prime, Sian and McOnie, Drew. 2022. Theatre Blueprint.
Prime, Sian and Evenson, Ashley. 2021. Curious About Creativity.
Digital
Evenson, Ashley; De La Court, Adrian and Prime, Sian. 2023. Employability Toolkit.
Evenson, Ashley; De La Court, Adrian and Prime, Sian. 2023. Start-Up Toolkit.
Prime, Sian; De La Court, Adrian and Silvaggi, Antonia. 2019. A toolkit of exercises for mentors.
Professional Activity
Prime, Sian and Turner, Nicola. 2023. Creative Enterprise Forum.
De La Court, Adrian and Prime, Sian. 2023. Sustainable Enterprise London Festival (SELF).
Prime, Sian. 2023. Artist in Residence.
Project
De La Court, Adrian and Prime, Sian. 13 – 31 July 2020 Sustainable Enterprise London Festival (SELF).
De La Court, Adrian and Prime, Sian. 2016. Good Innovation Lab Tools (GILT).
Report
Prime, Sian; Thelwall, S; Musgrave, S; Dexter, R; Kane, D and Newbigin, J. 2020. Devising a Resilience Rating System For Charities & The Non-Profit Sector. Working Paper. Goldsmiths, University of London, Lingfield.
Mees, Annettte; Wright, Tim; Donald, Nicky; Gillies, Marco; Milne, Austin and Prime, Sian. 2015. Coney: Better Than Life. Project Report. NESTA, LONDON.
Professional projects
Siân with Adrian De La Court, has developed the Synapse Fair Growth programme and the Sustainable Enterprise London Festival (SELF). Both explore emergent models of equitable leadership, business models and employment in the creative, cultural and social sectors. This is work that has a global network of participants and speakers.
Professional Activities
Siân has developed skills as a trainer, facilitator, coach and consultant. Siân has worked for Natverkstan and Globalverkstan in Goteborg, IIMB in Bangalore, ITB Indonesia, the GoDown, Nairobi and East Africa region and nationally for the Arts Council England, the Cultural Enterprise Office, Scotland and Comic Rellief’s Tech for Good programme She’s also worked within a number of sub-regions to deliver business advice, training and coaching for social innovation start-ups, creative individuals and organisations, including members of the UK’s Combined Arts Venue Network (including Tyneside Cinema, Watershed and 6 other combined arts/media venues; Metropolis, Beirut and the National Review of Live Art).
Siân has developed and implemented approaches to business advice for creative and social enterprises. She has developed appropriate strategies for value creation, to support the development of entrepreneurial activity.
She has over 20 years experience in working with start-up and mid-stage creatives and social, cultural and creative organisationsShe has developed new programmes and research in to new models of leadership in a socially networked era, and new paradigms of leadership in social enterprises, creative and cultural industries.
She, with Adrian De La Court, developed a blended learning approach to training mentors and curriculum/approaches to mentoring people wishing to develop careers in the creative industries and develop an online support network and learning space. They worked together to train trainers from the Istituto Luigi Sturzo, Italy, ENCATC, Belgium, Denizli Provincial Special Administration, Turkey, the Finnish Museums Association, Finland, RPIC_VIP, Czech Republic , Romatre University, Italy and the Leisure Studies Institute of University of Deusto, Spain.Funded by the European Commission’s Life Long Learning Fund.
