Ashfield District Council: The Greenhouse

The Greenhouse

The Greenhouse is a partnership initiative supported by Mansfield, Bolsover, North East Derbyshire, Ashfield, Chesterfield Borough and District councils, Derbyshire County Council and the Alliance SSP. The purpose of the initiative is to create an online network resource combined with localised network events to support creative businesses across all partner Districts and Boroughs.

The Greenhouse has culminated from the work of two separate networking initiatives both of which were developing in parallel. The first, BAM Creative were developing an online network seeking to offer support to Bolsover, Ashfield and Mansfield creative enterprises. BAM was inspired by the successful alliance of the three local authorities, having recently won a joint award through the Local Enterprise Growth Initiative (LEGI). The second, NED Creative offered a physical creative industries network, again in its early stages of development for creative enterprises across North East Derbyshire, Bolsover and Chesterfield Districts and Boroughs.

The Greenhouse offers a web based resource providing support to creative enterprise, giving creative businesses the opportunity to access information on business and skills development support, events, access calls for tenders, place job advertisements and freelance requests and access a regularly updated sector specific news section. Additionally, members are able to showcase their creative work by having an online portfolio targeted towards people seeking to buy creative services.

The Greenhouse online resource is also used by other sectors to publish tenders for creative services and to refer to the site as a one stop shop for sourcing of creative talent within the area.

For more information please visit www.creativegreenhouse.org.uk