AN ENTERPRISING programme, which has supported more than 90 creative start-up businesses in County Durham, is launching a new series of workshops for rural business owners.

The Durham Creatives programme, which has fostered the talents of dozens of creative entrepreneurs, has been commissioned by Business Durham to run a series of workshops at the premises it manages, the Durham Dales Centre, in Stanhope, Weardale.

The free programme, which was set up four years ago, helps fledgling entrepreneurs by delivering practical workshops on how to run a business, with subjects such as finance, marketing, patent protection and selling online, as well as personal mentoring.

Many of the businesses it has supported have been started by people who have been made redundant, want a better work life balance or who are finally realising their dreams to turn their hobbies and passions into thriving ventures.

Jewellery designer, Kate Gorman, a former accountant who set up Kate Gorman Design, benefited from the programme and has seen her products stocked in the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, in Gateshead, and sold across the country.

“The one-to-one coaching helped me think creatively about how to grow my customer base and offered me a useful sounding board,” said Kate, who lives in Durham City. “Perhaps most importantly for me, it helped me to maintain my confidence in those difficult patches that all start-ups inevitably hit. It was quite scary starting my own business but the support from Durham Creatives really helped me.”

Sarah Slaven, business development director with Business Durham, the economic development company for County Durham, said: “The Durham Creatives programme has proved phenomenally successful at helping creative people take their hobbies and ideas and turn them into flourishing businesses."

Meryl Levington, a partner with Blue Sky Think, which delivers the programme said: “ The Dales Centre is Stanhope’s hidden gem and the rural setting lends itself to many creative people. Rural business owners can sometimes feel quite isolated but here they will find a friendly, supportive, enterprising environment, which will help them on their entrepreneurial path.”

The workshops run until October at the Dales Centre and include Business Planning; Health Wellbeing and Enterprise; The Art of Selling; Protecting Your Business Ideas; Finance – Understanding the Essentials; Food, Drink and Enterprise; Selling Overseas Online.

For more information or to book a workshop log onto www.durhamcreatives.co.uk.