SERVICES

We provide a full spectrum of business services including strategy, consultancy, mentoring, automation, brand development and design.

We have produced solutions for fashion houses, film, galleries, tech and sports giants through to tv channels and national museums.

Experience

Over the last 25 years, the founders of Institute, have worked on thousands of projects that includes work for the following brands:

Adidas, Barclays, BBC, Bench, The Body Shop, Boots, The British Museum, The Carphone Warehouse, Cartoon Network, Cath Kidston, Clarins, Conde Naste, Daks, The Design Museum, Diesel, Disney Stores, EMI, Esquire Sport Magazine, Exposure, Fate Face, Fred Perry, Givenchy, Gieves & Hawkes, Godiva, Habitat, Halifax, Haribo, Harrods, House of Fraser, Hedkayse, HMV, The Independent, Kookai, Levis, Marks & Spencer, MGA, National Gallery, Procter and Gamble, Royal Court Theatre, Selfridges, Schuh, Sony, Superdry, TATE Enterprises, Ted Baker, Three Mobile, Tower Records, TKMaxx, UNIQLO, United International Pictures, Virgin, Vodaphone and Zoological Society of London.

We bring this experience of the design and delivery of a diversity of projects to Institute.

Business Development

We provide mentoring in business practice and development. We cover the progression of practice, the nuts and bolts of running a business through to brand strategy and development. We provide consultancy and think-tank style services for creative businesses, organisations and initiatives. We cover strategy, identity frameworks and business development. We are used to thinking outside the box and asking the right questions that result in the right frameworks for success.

Consultancy

We tend to focus on SMEs, as they are the collective powerhouse of the UK Economy and often do not receive the support they require. An external support structure characterised by objective analysis and targeted support is often a key mechanism for the success for businesses of all shapes and sizes.

Our business consultancy is run by Steve Barradell. Steve is an approved business mentor for Enterprise Nation on the Help to Grow initiative.

Enterprise Nation exists to shortcut the route to trusted business support. Founded by Emma Jones CBE in 2005, Enterprise Nation has grown to a community of over 120,000 people. They support people to start and grow their own successful businesses and represent their views to the government and media: www.enterprisenation.com.

Steve is also a member of The Association of Business Mentors: www.associationofbusinessmentors.org and a Creative Business Mentor on the EMC2 Create Growth Programme: www.eastmidlandscreategrowth.co.uk

Our recent work includes the running of an incubator Course for Phoenix Arts (the REAL Initiative). We supported 25 Digital Artists and Documentary Film Makers in getting them business ready, providing them with strategic advice, support and mentoring and to create a platform for growth. We are about to start a short series of courses for East Midlands Creative Consortium: Conversations with a Machine

We have extensive experience in Branding , Business Planning , E-commerce, Communication, Freelancing, B2B Marketing, Data & Analysis, Problem solving, Strategy - both business and creative, Sales.

The Benefits of Mentoring

Gaining new perspectives

Since mentors, by definition, have more experience than their mentees, they look at the world with a different perspective. As each decision is considered, the mentor will bring an informed opinion to bear as it is likely that they have seen the pros and cons of this situation before.

Improved leadership abilities

A mentor often performs many leadership duties, such as inspiring their mentees, providing guidance, and even solving taxing problems. They may also give constructive feedback to their mentees. Developing these skills will help you become a better leader in the future.

Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurs tend to like ‘going alone’. Business owners will often state that If I had their time again, they would have worked with several mentors to learn valuable lessons from each. From not making certain business decisions to fostering certain partnerships, a mentor can help guide you through your entrepreneurial journey.

Networks and contacts

Your mentor has already acquired a variety of valuable contacts that could be out of reach to you. Your mentor can facilitate access and open doors, giving you the opportunity to develop your business and grow your network. Networking opportunities are often the key to business growth.

Confidence building

Confidence grows through the mentoring process. You will have a guide for the ups and downs of business and develop the ability to succeed.

The Benefits of Consultancy

You need an outside / objective opinion

Sometimes it’s difficult to solve your own problems because you’re just too involved. You might just be so close to the problem that you’re missing an obvious solution. When there are tough decisions to be made, sometimes it’s easier to leave it to an expert who isn’t personally involved or emotionally invested.

Business consultants are experts in their field. They’ve helped numerous other companies to work through similar issues and they know what’s worked in the past. This experience means that they can bring new and innovative ideas that you might not have thought of yourself.

When you hire a business consultant, you’ll get a new perspective on whatever problems you’re facing, from an outsider’s point of view.

You lack time or resources

No matter how important the problem is, sometimes you just don’t have the time to dedicate to solving it. You’ve still got your day-to-day business to focus on and finding the time to resolve your challenges just feels impossible.

You could hire a new employee to give you the time to focus on the issue at hand, but you know it’ll only be temporary and training a new employee can be time-consuming.

Hiring a business consultant is a great way to outsource your problems to a professional. They’re used to moving around different companies, which means they’ll get to know your business quickly with minimal training required. And most importantly – you can continue with your day-to-day operations so your business doesn’t suffer either.

You have a tactical project you are struggling to complete our to resource or expertise.

Design

We help creatives, brands and organisations to develop their ideas and to design solutions that communicate these ideas to their chosen audiences.

We believe in the maxim, Form follows function. The solutions that we produce should look, feel and essentially, be, the answer to your problem. Each problem requires a unique solution that emerges out of the design process. By going through the discovery stage to define the core problems to solve, we are then free to develop a solution that solves these unique problems and is fit for your purpose. This is a formula for success. It encourages clarity in the way we think about the project objectives. That aids communication with each other. This clarity allows us to get from A to B in an understandable way but allows us the freedom to produce dynamic solutions.

Projects Portfolio

Graffio Arts 3/2/22 Graffio Arts 3/2/22

Delivering Culture in Uncertain Times

An Arts Council funded initiative to deliver art to your living room.

Concept, design and production: Graffio Arts. Artists: Miriam Bean, Alison Carpenter-Hughes, Thierry Miquel, Josh Semans. Producer: Ben Fredricks. Funding: Arts Council England.

ART IN UNCERTAIN TIMES

If you lived with in the town of Loughborough during the Covid -19 lockdown, you may have been one of 15,000 local residencies that received an augmented reality exhibition through your letterbox from The Culture Delivery Service. You’re welcome.

Building on a successful track record of using augmented reality (AR) art to engage new audiences, Graffio Arts have now developed the CDS. The Cultural Delivery Service saw the postal delivery of AR-enabled artist’s prints and artefacts to over 15,000 households in and around Loughborough in 2021.

The artworks were created by four outstanding Leicestershire based artists, who each took a unique approach to the use of AR to add an animated digital element to their work, allowing them to develop their practice and take their creativity to an audience in a new and inclusive way.

Make it stand out

Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

THE GOALS OF THE CDS

Through the Cultural Delivery Service, we are aiming to tackle some of the barriers that can prevent audiences and artists from engaging with contemporary art by giving artists commissions and training and having their work delivered directly to people's homes. This was a progressive, consumer-friendly model ensuring that audiences still received high-quality culture in innovative ways, regardless of the current global pandemic while being restricted to their homes.

The CDS continues to be available for creatives and arts organisations that would like to test new models of engagement and the meaningful productisation of work.

HOW IT WORKED

A print arrived through the door. The free prints included instructions to download a free smartphone app, which enabled them to view an AR experience of the chosen Artist’s work via their device when pointed at the print.

We then offered the chance to go the next step. We created a website with an online store where the public could purchase an AR-enabled product from each artist, providing a richer experience for the audience and supporting the artists with a new income stream at that critical time.

INCLUSIVITY AND NEW AUDIENCES

The CDS provided us with the opportunity to pilot a new way of engaging audiences and reach potential future creatives.

We posted free AR artist’s prints to 17,484 households in the LE11 1, 2 and 3 postcodes, which are located in and around Loughborough. This adds up to a total audience base of over 30,000 people. The aim of the project was to reach everyone living in those areas, irrespective of their social, cultural or economic context.

If we seek to be more inclusive we need to broaden the range of quality creatives available to produce work when we launch projects. To be at the quality level required they probably have to have been through art college. How viable is the choice to go to art college for a variety of people at that age? Who makes it through and why? We will likely continue to have a shallow pool of creatives available that do not fully represent society if we don’t take steps to engage with younger audiences. We must show those considering future creative paths (in many different forms) that they are valuable and that their voices are required.

If a handful of young people that would not usually visit a gallery, engaged with this project, then that’s a start.

TAKING ADVANTAGE OF EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES

It’s important for creatives to be aware of and be able to take advantage of new technology. These things continue to develop and could have potential implications for their practice, their audiences and broader cultural significance.

When embarking on these kinds of projects we talk through the technology with the associated creatives to ensure that they can make it work for them. By the end of the project, we hope that this new technology is now seen as a viable option for them in the future, should they wish to incorporate it into their practice. It is also provided free of charge.

CDS 001: THE FIRST PROJECT

The first cultural delivery was from four outstanding local creatives. We selected artists with a powerful but varied practice who produce work that is usually best displayed within a gallery context. How would their work translate into delivered products? The challenge was on.

CREATING PRODUCTS

We worked with each artist to produce a mail out print and to develop a product. We used augmented reality to bridge the gap between a gallery and home experience of their art. Each piece had a strict time limit and budget but we worked closely with them and they took each challenge in their stride

MIRIAM BEAN + JOSH SEMANS

This is not work that you might imagine would translate into an offering to be mass produced That's exactly why we chose Miriam to work with as we launch the CDS. Our ambition is to get art that would usually be seen in a controlled gallery context, essentially into a box to take the work to a wider audience. Miriam introduced us to and collaborated with, Josh Semans.

We have been impressed by Miriam's work for quite a while. We collaborated briefly on AREXTRA and were looking forward to the chance to work on something larger in scope.

Miriam is one of those artists that have found their focus quite young with a deep, structured practice that builds with clear, powerful projects. Miriam works with sound and tonal visual motifs.

There is complexity in the sound and process and causal relationships are constantly at play but the visual grounding is always so clear and striking that the work seems almost primal.

One of only a few worldwide, Josh Semans is an ondes Martenot player based in the north-west of England. Committed to bringing this enchanting musical instrument to people in new and different ways, Josh works on many fields with composers across the globe; writing and recording material for albums, soundtracks, installations, and a variety of other applications and mediums. His connection to his instrument runs deep, resulting in nuanced and sensitive performances.

As well as working frequently with others, Josh has recently established himself as a proficient solo artist. Amongst various collaborations and features, 2020 saw the exclusive premiere of his first single, Trust on BBC Radio 3, closely followed by the release of ...And the Birds Will Sing at Sunrise.

MIRIAM: FACEBOOK INSTAGRAM SOUNDCLOUD VIMEO

JOSH: SPOTIFY TWITTER FACEBOOK INSTAGRAM EMAIL

ALISON CARPENTER-HUGHES

We've know Alison for a while and featured her work in a Gallery Without Walls project. At the time we discussed potential collaboration and were impressed with how good Alison was at idea generation. Alisons work often involves sewing and moves from delicate, figurative work to incredibly detailed, painterly pieces.

The hand made nature of the work encourages you to touch it but this is often not desirable in a gallery context. There is a contradiction here that we felt could be ripe to explore. This project will allow people to touch and interact with a piece of Alison's art. Alison is working on a piece that deals with endangered British birds. She's currently drawing, sewing and thinking about augmented reality...

WEBSITE FACEBOOK INSTAGRAM LINKEDIN

THIERRY MIQUEL

Thierry is another artist that we've known for quite a while. Thierry works with paint, found objects, wood and anything he can get his hands on. Thierry's work often contains deliberately crude, humorous and sometime oblique references born out of his life experiences.

There is often a focus on object within Thierry's practice. Even when Thierry works with paint on canvas it is clear that the surface is not meant to convey an image but very much a tactile battleground for his creative explorations.

The conceptual and tactile nature of Thierry's work combined with the fact that he's also a furniture maker and knows how to put things together meant that Thierry was an ideal choice for a project seeking to mass produce an artefact.

These figures have come out of a response to the current times and the uncertainty we have all been living through. The Bone Idols aim to provide the owner with hope, they represent a talisman of our times whilst we live through a Pandemic.

Bone Idols are been produced in a flat pack, easy assembled design. The owner will be immediately able to engage with the different tactile materials of the object. This is utilitarian art which aims to bring together a community of ‘Bone Idols' through the letterbox.

FACEBOOK INSTAGRAM

If you are interested in taking advantage of the CDS as an organiser or as an artist then get in touch and let’s see what what culture we can deliver to people in their own homes!