2017 – 2019
Ran for 3 years
415
Registered businesses (SME’s)
495
Creatives and artists
Small Medium Enterprises
The majority of SME’s we supported through 1-2-1 , workshops and networking are registered sole traders (75%). Classified under Organisations are both charitable organisations or community based enterprises. Businesses are those who registered as Limited Company and more likely to have more than 1 person working.


Artform
As the funding was based on the Visual Arts Market Place Research and Development it is not a surprise that this art form received the biggest portion of our support 24%. Almost at the same level are those in craft 22%, under the banner of craft we see people who makes ceramics, furniture to jewellery .


Geographic Location
We supported artists and creatives across Dorset, Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole. The map shows that where they are from. Although it looks like that there not many people from Dorset, in reality 60% of our client comes from the area. 5% of those from outside of the area also tends to be just across the border of another county and they work in Dorset. For example those from Up Lyme tend to work in Lyme Regis.
Ethnicity
Considering that 95.6% of Dorset’s population are classified White with a UK National identity (British, English, Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish), it is not a surprise that 86% of those we supported self-classify themselves in these identities. With 2% of our clients prefer not to classify themselves, we reached a good number of creatives that are most commonly considered as Black and Ethnic Minority, at 12%


Gender
Compared to the finding from a recent research on UK Women Entrepreneurs that said women are less likely to be entrepreneurs than men, they are also less likely to have access to sponsors, mentors or professional support network (only 31%).
Culture+ programme is providing more support to women creative entrepreneurs in Dorset 75%. We hope that this proof that there are women entrepreneurs, they are creative and in Dorset they had access to a support network.
Age
The age of our clients reflects closely to the data from Office of National Statistic on Self Employed and Entrepreneurs.
That on average that most entrepreneurs are between the age of 30 to 64, source 1, source 2.

Culture+ is a free programme of activities that supported artists, creatives, arts and cultural organisations to thrive in Dorset, Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole. From March 2017 to October 2019.
Funded by the Arts Council England (ACE) and European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).