Creative industries organisations around the world have commissioned David Parrish to design and deliver training for creative entrepreneurs in many different ways.
Sometimes the requirement is a single workshop on a particular business topic. In other cases, a workshop becomes part of a wider visit involving individual mentoring, presentations, meetings with local businesses or other activities.
David has also contributed to longer-term business support programmes, worked with organisations online as well as face-to-face, and delivered series of workshops in different locations.
The starting point is always the same: what does the commissioning organisation want to achieve, and what would be most useful for the creative entrepreneurs it supports?
Find out more about David’s creative business training workshops.
Explore creative business workshop topics.
Here are some examples of training projects and clients:
Creative Business Development with Impact Hub Almaty, Kazakhstan
Impact Hub Almaty invited David to Kazakhstan to work with creative entrepreneurs as part of a wider creative business development initiative.
The visit centred on David’s Designing Your Creative Business™ workshop, helping participants think strategically about their enterprises, opportunities, customers and ambitions.
But the workshop was only one part of David’s time in Almaty.
He also provided confidential one-to-one advice to individual entrepreneurs, gave a public presentation and delivered a guest lecture at a local university.
Being on the ground for several days also created opportunities that weren’t necessarily part of the original brief.
One of those conversations led to negotiations for a licensing agreement for a local-language edition of David’s book T-Shirts and Suits: A Guide to the Business of Creativity.
The Almaty project illustrates why David particularly enjoys spending more than a single workshop day with a creative community. Formal training can be combined with individual support, public events and other activities — while leaving enough space for useful conversations and unexpected opportunities to emerge.
Find out more about David’s creative business development work in Kazakhstan.
GENERATE — Creative Jobs in Donegal, Ireland
Some commissions develop into much longer relationships.
David worked with Donegal Local Enterprise Office on GENERATE, a two-year initiative supporting creative and digital businesses in the Republic of Ireland.
The programme had a clear economic-development objective: helping participating businesses develop and create new jobs.
David’s contribution combined workshops with individual business mentoring, delivered both face-to-face and online.
He also visited participants in their own studios and workplaces, allowing the advice to be grounded in the realities of each enterprise rather than confined to the training room.
The businesses themselves were diverse, ranging from arts and crafts enterprises to graphic design and an online newspaper.
This required support to be adapted to very different business models, ambitions and challenges while remaining focused on the objectives of the commissioning organisation.
The programme achieved its job-creation targets.
GENERATE demonstrates a different kind of relationship: rather than a visiting trainer delivering a workshop and leaving, David became involved with the participating businesses over an extended period, combining group learning with individual advice and follow-up.
“My work with David on the Generate programme has gone from using business tools for fully reviewing the market, industry and competitors to deeply considering what type of lifestyle I want from being self-employed; whether I want to continue letting a brand control my lifestyle or start letting my lifestyle dictate what projects I take on. He is guiding me through a fully integrative and enlightening process with his naturally caring, holistic approach and instinct for creative business.”
— Ciaran Boyce, Modern Eire, Ireland.
Find out more about the GENERATE programme and creative job creation in Donegal.
“As an economic development agency, we help creative and digital businesses to grow and create jobs. We are judged on results, so we use Dave as a business adviser because he delivers results.”
— Kevin McManus, Head of Sector Development: Creative/Digital, Merseyside ACME / Liverpool Vision / Liverpool City Council, UK.
A Creative Business Workshop Tour of New Zealand
Sometimes it makes sense to take the workshops to the entrepreneurs rather than expect everybody to travel to one location.
David travelled around New Zealand delivering a series of interactive workshops for creative businesses on subjects including marketing, pricing and leadership.
The principal client and coordinator was The Big Idea Trust, working with a network of partner organisations that helped organise, sponsor and promote workshops in different locations.
These included Arts Regional Trust, Creative Northland, the ART Venture programme, Creative New Zealand, Ministry of Awesome, XCHC Creative Exchange Christchurch and BNZ.
The result was effectively a creative business training tour, allowing different creative communities to participate while partner organisations shared the benefits of bringing an international specialist to New Zealand.
This model can be particularly useful when several hubs, agencies or regional organisations have similar objectives and can collaborate around a visit.
Find out more about David’s creative business workshops in New Zealand.
CASE Programme — Malta
The CASE Programme (Creative and Social Entrepreneurship) in Malta demonstrates another possibility: combining online and face-to-face activities within the same initiative.
The project was a collaboration between UK-based NGO In Place of War and Arts Council Malta, supporting creative entrepreneurs through a range of business development activities.
David delivered both online and in-person workshops, covering subjects including creative entrepreneurship, business strategy and creative leadership.
He also offered one-to-one advice to participating creative entrepreneurs and took part as a judge in a pitching competition.
This combination allowed formal training to sit alongside individual support and other programme activities, with David contributing in different ways at different stages of the project.
Find out more about David’s work with creative entrepreneurs in Malta.
Entrepreneurship Masterclass — Botswana
A client can also combine several of David’s established workshop topics into a more intensive training experience.
Working in partnership with Spark Ideas in Gaborone, Botswana, David delivered a four-day Entrepreneurship Masterclass.
The four modules were:
– Designing Your Creative Business™
– Creative Marketing
– How to Make Money While You Sleep — Intellectual Property and Business Models
– Creative Pricing
Together they took participants from overall business strategy through marketing, intellectual property and pricing — allowing considerably more depth than would be possible in a single-day workshop.
Find out more about the Entrepreneurship Masterclass in Botswana.
Preparing for European Capital of Culture — Trenčín, Slovakia
Training can also be designed around a specific opportunity facing a city or creative community.
David delivered a two-day business strategy workshop for cultural organisations and creative entrepreneurs in Trenčín, Slovakia, as part of RUNWAY, connected with the city’s preparations for European Capital of Culture 2026.
Rather than simply delivering a standard business course, the workshop helped participants think strategically about their organisations and enterprises in the context of the opportunities and changes associated with the city’s European Capital of Culture year.
It is an example of adapting business training around a particular place, moment and strategic objective.
Find out more about David’s training for cultural professionals in Trenčín.
Artbox — Armenia
David was invited to help launch the 12-week Artbox incubation programme in Armenia, supporting artists and creative entrepreneurs developing new ventures.
His workshop, Art of Business, Business of Art, explored how participants could combine their artistic sense with a viable business vision.
David also provided individual mentoring to participating artists.
This is an example of David contributing specialist training and mentoring within a wider incubation or accelerator programme, complementing the work of the organisation and other experts involved.
Find out more about David’s Artbox Armenia workshop and mentoring.
Different Clients, Different Needs
The examples above are only some of the ways organisations have commissioned David.
Over the years, he has designed workshops, seminars and webinars around very different business challenges facing creative entrepreneurs.
Examples include:
– The Business of Fashion Design — Dexy Creation, Nigeria
– How To Negotiate Higher Prices For Your Products — Spark Ideas, Botswana
– Exporting and International Marketing — Creative Scale Up Programme, UK
– Maximising the Monetisation of Creativity — Women Founders Network, Albania
– Creative Strategies for Survival in a Crisis — Tunisian Startups Association
– Better Online Pitching — Audiovisual Producers Finland
– How to Maintain Creativity in a Scale Up Environment — Creative Scale Up Programme, UK
– The Numbers: Making it all add up — Financial Planning for Creatives — The Academy, UK
– Creativity and Business: New Opportunities for Theatre — British Council, Azerbaijan
– Leading Creative Cultures — MILE, Saudi Arabia
– Combining Business and Creativity — Biz Labs, Bulgaria
– Creative Advantage: How to Succeed in Creative Business — British Council, Zimbabwe
The variety reflects the variety of creative businesses themselves — and the different objectives of the organisations supporting them.
David therefore doesn’t expect every client to choose from a predetermined menu of courses.
Sometimes an established workshop is exactly what’s needed. In other cases, the right answer is to adapt existing material, combine several topics or design something around a particular challenge.
More Than Training
The examples also show that David’s contribution doesn’t necessarily have to begin and end with a workshop.
Depending on the organisation and its objectives, a project or visit can combine training, keynote speaking or public presentations, confidential one-to-one business advice, mentoring, studio visits, university lectures, discussions with the commissioning team, books and follow-up sessions.
Sometimes several organisations can collaborate to make more of a visit, as happened in New Zealand.
Sometimes a one-off engagement develops into a longer relationship, as happened in Donegal.
And sometimes simply allowing additional time around the formal activity creates opportunities that nobody could have specified in advance — as happened in Almaty.
The objective isn’t to make every project bigger.
It is to ask:
How can we make the most of David being there?
“David’s engagement and visit to SPARK business park has been an amazing motivation to our startups, with concrete outputs when it comes to them creating new marketing strategies, adapting existing ones and forming brand new ideas with David. The startups have been talking about David’s amazing advice and encouragement for long after he left SPARK.
SPARK team also had the pleasure to have very interesting conversations with David and his insightful observations improved our perspective on our startups, ourselves as a team and the IT eco-system as a whole.”
— Sara Lerota, SPARK Business Park, Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina.
If you’re planning training for a creative community, you may also find David’s guide to How to Choose Business Training for Creative Entrepreneurs useful.
Discuss a Training Project with David
If your organisation supports creative entrepreneurs, David is happy to discuss what you want to achieve and explore the most useful way of working together.
That might be a single workshop, several workshops, a wider visit or a combination of activities tailored to your creative community.