Best Practice Considerations for Arts Educators When Developing Intensive Online Courses for Creative Industries Higher Education Students

Abstract

The 2-year StART Entrepreneurship Project (StART) aims to support creative industries students to develop skills and utilise real-world experience to build successful and sustainable careers. UK-based and funded by the Office for Students and Research England, StART is a collaboration between the Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM), the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama (RCSSD) and University of the Arts London (UAL). The project involves the development of new in-curricular and extracurricular content and events, tailored specifically for students studying for higher education degrees in these and other specialist creative arts institutions. This chapter explores one specific way of delivering entrepreneurship education to students, an intense period of contact time often referred to as a ‘boot camp’. The chapter outlines the planning stage of this event, including how existing research on entrepreneurial learning might be mapped onto the boot camp format and how aspects of the QAA (Enterprise and Entrepreneurship Education: Guidance for UK education providers, Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education, Gloucester, 2018) guidance was to be integrated. The chapter will also detail how existing frameworks such as EntreComp (McCallum et al., Joint Research Centre Entrepreneurship and the creative economy (3):400–414, 2018) and the CLEAR IDEAS model (Birdi, European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology 30(3):400–414, 2021) informed design and delivery and how input from external industry partners and students themselves (both event participants and members of the StART Student Advisory Board) was a key part of the planning.