Unexpected Enterprises: Rethinking employment, education and training for creative economy entrepreneurship

Response to: <br>Youth Employment, Education and Training - Call for Evidence<br><br>This response focuses on young people’s aspirations to establish careers in the cultural and creative industries, and the barriers they face in doing so. This emphasis is important because the creative industries have been identified as one of the eight sectors in the UK’s Modern Industrial Strategy. The Creative Industries Sector Plan (UK Government, 2025) identifies the significance of the economic contribution of the cultural and creative industries and the challenge of building a resilient, skilled and diverse workforce. The cultural and creative industries workforce has a higher proportion of self-employed workers compared to the wider UK workforce and several of these subsectors typically comprise micro, small, and medium-sized businesses.<br><br>The evidence and insight used to respond to this Call for Evidence comes from the Unexpected Enterprises project funded by Enterprise Educators UK (Agusita and Ashton, 2020a). Unexpected Enterprises used a collaborative innovation approach with creative entrepreneurs and higher education students and educators to consider emerging forms of entrepreneurship, particularly those which leverage digital technologies. This work created opportunities for participants to consider how digital and social innovation can give rise to ‘unexpected enterprises’ (Ashton, 2017) and to question existing ideas about creative entrepreneurship.<br>