Entrepreneur

Paula Graham, Fossbox CIC

Academic Partner

Geraldine Healy, Queen Mary University of London

Project Title

Diversifying creative industries

Project Description

Fossbox is a female and LGBT led social enterprise that organises an annual conference for women in the fields of open technology, open data, digital arts and research. By working with intra-female and mixed-gender collaborations Fossbox have observed significant differences in the type of collaborations that form. This experience has led them to believe that diverse teams equal meaningful innovation.

For their residency with Queen Mary University of London Fossbox paired with Geraldine Healy from the School of Business Management to explore the university’s internal diversity networks and foster links between students and Fossbox’s own creative, entrepreneurial and industrial contacts. Their aim was to prototype an entrepreneurial programme that was relevant and engaging for diverse students and that would be productive, generating innovative ideas and processes.

At Fossbox’s annual conference, Fossie, Queen Mary students were recruited and involved in a collaboration with two tech start-up accelerators: Bethnal Green Ventures and Collider 13. The students also participated in a codesprint which lasted over two days and was facilitated by Google talent-spotters. The conference through a mix of artists, designers, coders, makers and embedded systems engineers together from across Europe, Africa, Canada and Latin America.

Since the conference students have engaged in further technical training to enhance their skills portfolio.

Additionally, Paula Graham from Fossbox was invited to speak at the Creativeworks Women in the Digital Economy & Culture networking event on the 20th of February 2015.