Last year entrepreneurial business fund Scottish EDGE launched the first Creative EDGE Award. Partnered with the Cultural Enterprise Office and Creative Scotland, the prize of £50,000 – 60% loan 40% grant – was keenly contested by over 200 applicants from the creative industries. The inaugural winner, DirectDevitt Comedy & Management Productions (CIC), was announced in December.
Chief executive officer and co-founder of DirectDevitt, Anna Devitt, won with her SQA-accredited Comedy & Confidence courses, designed to help young people develop their social skills for the workplace.
With applications for the next round of funding currently open until March 7, we asked Anna what advice she had for those thinking of applying and how she approached the live pitch.
“What I would say is, although it is a business competition, you are a creative person. For my live pitch I had a bespoke rhyming word piece. I didn’t do a business pitch, I did a creative pitch because that’s what I had to do.”
For those unsure about applying Anna didn’t mince her words, “Definitely enter, even if you don’t win the first year, the learning during the application process is great and if you don’t win in the first year you can always go back.”
As for DirectDevitt and how Anna intends to use her Creative EDGE Award to grow the business, the answer was simple and emphatic, “We are going to recruit a training team to go out and deliver our qualification.”
Applications for the next Creative EDGE Award are open now until March 7. Visit the Scottish EDGE site to apply.
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