The Design Economy is one of the UK’s fastest-growing sectors, worth £85.2bn, and provides employment to 1.69 million people and opportunities for more than 65,000 freelancers.
Employment, freelancing and/or setting up as a studio are the typical career options open to a designer today. However, as the world of work evolves and automates, a new option is becoming available to designers – to become founders of start-ups.
Design Future is an accelerator that empowers designers to follow this new career option and allows designers to start their companies, raise money and grow. They are running a competition for young designers offering £30k – £150k worth of funding and full support over the process. Funding is provided by SFC Capital who are the UK’s leading early-stage investors providing capital to British startups.
The “Raise” competition ends on February 28th, and the shortlisting process and interviews will take place in the first week of March. Design Future will prepare candidates and help them get their ideas pitch-ready in the second week of March, when finalists will present to pitch to SFC Capital.
Design Future also provides support for designers who have an idea for a business but don’t know where to start. The “Start” scheme offers a series of workshops and sessions in partnership with universities and people in the industry. Applicants will be added to the waitlist and be notified when the first workshop is available.
“Designers often take the more traditional route of an in-house design role, freelancing or starting a studio, because they don’t have the confidence and necessary skills to start up by themselves, and we want to empower these professionals, giving them the tools and platform to enable them to become creative change-maker founders, and Design the Future with us,” said Kishen Parmar, Design Future’s founder and CEO.
Designers have everything they need to become change-maker founders and creators – they just need to know that it is a possibility and be given a helping hand, and Design Future will play an integral role in bringing more designers to the front row of the creative and business world.
