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 12/24/21 Graffio Arts 12/24/21

Helping Crochyay Spread the Love

One of our key goals at Institute, is to empower local creatives. Olivia Fletcher talks about our work together with Crochyay and encouraging random acts of kindness…

One of our key goals at Institute, is to empower local creatives. Olivia Fletcher talks about our work together with Crochyay and encouraging random acts of kindness…

“In 2019, after struggling with my own mental health, I decided to start a crochet kindness project, where for 100 days, I left a flower with a label attached saying ‘if you found this flower and it brings a smile to your face, feel free to take it home’ in a random location for a stranger to find. I think my goal was to prove that even a tiny act of kindness could be enough to brighten someone else's day, and that it doesn’t always have to be a grand gesture.

After I’d been doing it for a couple of months I was contacted by the BBC and they said they wanted to make a short video about what I’d been doing. This ended up getting over 2 million views and I was then overwhelmed with people contacting me asking how they can get involved with a similar project.

I started off by making a facebook group called Random Acts of Crochet Kindness (RAOCK), where people could share their acts of kindness and seek support and inspiration.

From there I came up with the idea of The Flower Wall Project.

I loved the idea of there being this wall of crocheted/knitted flowers with blank labels attached, in a public space for anybody to take and pass on as an act of kindness. In that way, a person may leave their house with no intention of passing on an act of kindness, but if they see the wall, they may think ‘oh why not!’ and then an act of kindness is carried out that wouldn’t have been before.

Everyone is so busy in their own lives that they often don’t have the headspace to think about doing random acts of kindness, however when they see the flower wall it puts an idea in their head that wasn’t there before, and it often brings happiness to their day too.

So once this idea had firmly planted itself in my brain I had to figure out how I was going to make it work. I turned to my lovely friends for help and the RAOCK group (which by this point had 8000 members) and asked for donations of flowers, and was blown away to receive thousands of donations which I then attached blank labels to.

This is where Graffio Arts came in, they listened to me ramble on about my hopes and dreams with The Flower Wall Project and they helped me piece it together into a logical plan, even inspiring me with ideas I never would have thought of alone, and reassured me that it was all achievable.

Working with Graffio Arts has been so empowering, they didn’t just do everything for me, they taught me how to do it myself, from building the flower wall, to learning how to take it further.

When I was on my own, I felt like the Flower Wall was so far fetched, and probably never going to happen, but now with Graffio Arts’ support and the RAOCK group (which now has 18,000 members!) I’m allowing myself to dream even more about where it could go.

COVID 19 has hit everyone hard and I know there must be so many people feeling lonely and isolated, so the next goal is to take The Flower Wall Project online, where you can send a random flower to a friend or family member with a handwritten label and you just pay for postage.

In the future I would love to set up support groups where everyone comes together to talk about how they’re doing whilst crocheting flowers for the wall, and even lead workshops teaching crochet so I can hopefully inspire more people to get involved with the crochet kindness movement!”

Make it stand out

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

LINKS

CROCHYAY ON FACEBOOK

CROCHYAY ON INSTAGRAM

BBC CROCHAY INTERVIEW

Graffio Arts 6/5/20 Graffio Arts 6/5/20

AR EXTRA [Street Version]

It may look like a guerrilla poster bombing campaign but this one had permission…

It may look like a guerrilla poster bombing campaign but this one had permission. AREXTRA launched under our ARCITY initiative as a vehicle to bring more exposure to more creatives across Loughborough.

THE PROJECT

ARCITY was created as an umbrella for our augmented reality projects around the city. A Window to Reality was the first project. AREXTRA launched soon after as a an additional vehicle for the augmented artworks. We received permission to take advantage of the windows of disused spaces across Loughborough in a ground-breaking AR land-grab.

An open call was sent out to creatives interested in engaging with AR and once the work started flooding in we selected and developed a range of work for the project. This meant that we could include a wider variety and representation of creatives than the initial project had scope for.

We designed and printed heavy-duty vinyl posters with artwork and information about the project. Those passing by the windows could point their phone at a QR code and quickly download the Graffio AR app. Once the app was installed they could point their phone at the artwork on the poster and see the designed-in layers of extra reality emerge.

We all know what posters are for- they are usually inexpensive to produce and meant to impart a message. It was interesting to subvert this medium into a thing that required more than a double-take-it turned the shop windows into a walk-by augmented reality gallery.

Graffio Arts 5/23/20 Graffio Arts 5/23/20

Gallery Without Walls 04

Selected creatives from Design Season become part of the GWW umbrella and have their work displayed across venues within the city.

Gallery Without Walls project 4 launched as part of Leicester’s Design Season at LCB Hub. To increase exposure to the event the launch coincided with LCB’s Last Friday Street Food Night to a huge audience.

Following on the excellent open-call graphic design and illustration exhibition LOOP we collaborated with the organisers to bring the benefits of GWW to Design Season.

We selected a hand-full of the best creatives from the group that exhibited in the LOOP open-call exhibition. We got more information and more work from them and then matched them with venues throughout the city. We then printed, framed and installed their work across participating venues. We included GWW and personal information cards for the general public to buy their work or contact them in person.

After all the installations we had some cocktails and great street food and the launch night went down a storm. Thank you for the cooperation of all those involved and we hope that the extra exposure for the creatives involved helps on the road to their future careers.

GALLERY WITHOUT WALLS

Gallery Without Walls is a platform for the distribution of artworks across multiple traditional or untraditional spaces around Leicester. We curate exhibitions, collaborate on events and experiment with new ways of displaying art within the city. Our aim is to increase exposure to the arts for the benefit of creatives, venues and the wider community.

ORGANISING CULTURAL EVENTS

If you have an idea for an event and you’re not sure how to move forward or you’d like to collaborate with Institute, then get in touch here.

Graffio Arts 2/23/20 Graffio Arts 2/23/20

Gallery Without Walls 03

A single digital artwork distributed across multiple locations…

27, Gallery Without Walls project three launched at the LCB Depot in Leicester. Featuring the work of Dr Sean Clark, 27 took the GWW brief one step further by distributing one artwork across multiple locations.

Project 03: "27" by award-winning Leicester digital artist, Dr Sean Clark, was premiered at the LCB Depot in Leicester.

The exhibition itself is the completion of a work cycle that started with two works that were part of the Resonance exhibition with Esther Rolinson in Leicester the previous December, then became part of the East Meets West exhibition in Guangzhou, China in April and is now a stand-alone exhibition in its own right.

27 is based around self-organising visual systems. The main building blocks of the piece are groups of three connected grids that grow together by exchanging colours and sorting them according to pre-defined rules. After the grids have been running for a while, Sean captured an image and then combined the images to form larger images. These larger images were then arranged according to additional rules.

The result is a system of patterns-within-patterns where the "parts" make "wholes" that then become parts in larger wholes and so on. In the case of this exhibition, nine locations around Leicester each had three images, which were each composed of three connected grids, which were each composed of 25 colours.

DYNAMIC PATTERNS

Sean’s work is concerned with dynamic patterns or systems of organisation and is inspired by natural processes such as flow and connectedness. His images are generated by computer programs and can run "live" on screens, or exhibited as prints. His first exhibition was in 2000 and since then he has shown work around the world - including in the USA, China, UK & Europe and Australia.

ONE ARTWORK / MULTIPLE LOCATIONS

27 is a single artwork distributed across multiple locations. There are three framed images at each location, each image is composed of a three by three grid of patterns and each pattern is generated by a computer program.

THE LAUNCH

The GWW hub is the LCB Depot, Leicester, and was a great place for the opening night of Project 3. The event was packed with people, amazing street food was served and in the words of Graffio’s new designer, the place was ‘…full of creative souls.’ Perfect.

VENUES

The artwork was distributed across six locations within the City: LCB Depot, The Adult Education Centre, Phoenix, Manhattan 34, Peter’s Pizzeria and The Exchange.