Building a Sustainable Business in the Creative Industries: Guest Lecture at City, University of London
The Brief
Diagonal joined students at City, University of London for two guests lectures in 2024 and 2025, exploring Building, Scaling and Funding Your Business, as part of their Entrepreneurship in Media and Creative Industries studies.
Drawing on the experience of developing Diagonal from an idea into a creative business, students got an insight of the behind the scenes, sharing some of the practical decisions, challenges and lessons involved in building a business within the cultural and creative sectors.
Rather than presenting entrepreneurship as a linear process, the session looked at the different elements that need to work together: developing a business plan, creating the right infrastructure, finding funding and partners, and ultimately building a model that has the potential to grow sustainably.
What We Explored
The session followed the different stages involved in developing and growing a creative business, combining practical advice with examples:
- Turning an idea into a business plan
- Building the infrastructure behind the idea
From choosing a legal form and establishing financial operations to finding collaborators, developing a website and creating a brand identity, the session unpacked some of the less visible elements involved in turning a creative idea into a functioning business model.
Our Approach
For these sessions, the starting point was real-world experience.
The lecture drew on the five-year journey building Diagonal, from establishing its business model and infrastructure to developing partnerships, fundraising and creating professional development opportunities for the cultural sector.
By sharing those examples alongside practical frameworks, the aim was to give students a more transparent picture of entrepreneurship: one that includes experimentation, relationship-building and adaptation alongside business planning.
What They Took Away
The sessions encouraged students to think about entrepreneurship as a connected process: understanding the need their idea responds to, testing it with audiences, putting the right infrastructure around it, diversifying how it is funded, developing meaningful partnerships and regularly reassessing whether the model still works.
Most importantly, it brought these questions back to the realities of working within the creative industries, where a sustainable model might combine different activities, income streams, collaborators and funding sources rather than following a traditional business trajectory.
For students beginning to imagine their future projects, the sessions offered practical starting points while opening up a wider conversation about what sustainable creative entrepreneurship can look like.
Professional Development at Diagonal
Our professional development sessions give cultural organisations and creative teams the space, time, resources and practical tools to step away from day-to-day delivery and look at their work from a different perspective.
From communications strategy and storytelling to audience development, content creation and campaign planning, sessions can be tailored around the questions and challenges a team is currently navigating.
Could your team benefit from a session like this? Get in touch with us to explore a professional development session designed around your work.
