Strengthening Creative Entrepreneurship in Pakistan
About 40% of Pakistan’s population of 189 million people are considered middle class, 70% are estimated to be under the age of 30, and almost 80% of Pakistani homes have a television set. Furthermore, according to UNDP data, some 12 million Pakistani youths want to launch their own business and the entrepreneurial landscape is growing fast. In this buzzing entrepreneurial context, young creatives with a mind to start a business could play a pivotal role in developing Pakistan’s creative sector and enable access to diverse cultural expressions, not least because there is limited public funding available for arts and culture in Pakistan.
Nonetheless, creative entrepreneurs receive little help to start their ventures. While some academic institutions offer incubation and start-up facilities, no specific programmes are designed for entrepreneurs in the cultural and creative sector.
In this context, this project sought to empower selected creative entrepreneurs who are at the forefront of Pakistan’s cultural and creative industries, to promote participatory policymaking for the culture sector, and to integrate culture in the national sustainable development agenda and in international cultural cooperation. This was achieved through the development and delivering of a training course customised to the needs of Pakistani enterprises in the cultural and creatives industries including training in skills required for business success and growth, and knowledge on how a creative business operates and thrives locally.
The project also had the broader aim of raising awareness of the creative sector for sustainable development and assumed that the development of appropriate policies and measures as per the 2005 Convention on the Promotion and Protection of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions can further help develop Pakistan’s creative sectors, especially in urban areas in which the contemporary art scene is growing quickly. If Pakistan takes advantage of its creative sectors and industries, a boost in economic growth and job creation as well as cultural participation is likely to be achieved.
General aim:
This project sought to empower selected creative entrepreneurs as a motor for developing the cultural and creative industries (CCI) in Pakistan and raising awareness of the CCI for sustainable development.
The project contributed to the creation of a network of young creative entrepreneurs, and to the raising of awareness on the importance of CCI for sustainable development among government officials and other stakeholders.
Furthermore, considering that Pakistan has not yet ratified the 2005 Convention, the project provided an opportunity to engage with relevant government stakeholders to raise awareness of the benefits of the Convention and to push for initiating the ratification process.
Importantly, the project also succeeded in establishing local ownership of the training course by partnering with Beaconhouse National University (BNU), Pakistan’s first Liberal Arts University. As the training programme pilot proved a success, BNU considers including it in future curricular and quasi-curricular endeavours to better support aspiring entrepreneurs in the creative sectors. BNU also considers developing more case studies and build upon the existing ones to take account of the changing entrepreneurial environment in the country. These actions by BNU would provide an important contribution to a vibrant ecosystem for creative entrepreneurship in Pakistan.
The core of this project was the development and pilot-testing, in collaboration with the local university, of a 5-day business training course customized to Pakistani entrepreneurs in the cultural and creative industries. 12 participants (including four women, one transgender, and one person from the Kalasha indigenous community) took part in the course.
The course curriculum addressed the key challenges facing the cultural and creative industries and included four case studies each representing a key sector of the creative industries: game design, performing arts, film and media production and advertising. These case studies were used to familiarise participants to the types of challenges that creative start-ups and intermediate level firms are likely to encounter. Specific components of the training included design thinking, problem solving, accounting and finance, intellectual property rights and manoeuvring in a legal environment, marketing, and internationalization.
The training course proved beneficial both to the case-clients, whose firms were used as case studies and who were able to reflect upon their own business models, and to the participants who were encouraged to consider the challenges in relation to their own ventures.