At Bath Spa University, our enterprise and entrepreneurship activities are focused on enabling all our students and graduates to have the confidence, knowledge and skills they need to realise their entrepreneurial potential. This can be through skills development, linking the value of these skills to employment or supporting the ideation of enterpriseideas regardless of their experience or background. Whether our students or graduates are becoming freelancers, creative practitioners or developing a product or service, with the intention to be a sole trader or launch a company, we’re on hand at every stage of the entrepreneurial journey. We aim to share the importance of entrepreneurial thinking and innovation in industry and the value of these skills as a graduate whether moving into employment or self-employment.
This approach links to our stepped career readiness pathway of Explore, Experience, Progress. Through the Careers and Employability Service, our enterprise and entrepreneurship team offers a range of support which we design for the individual. We have developed an innovative approach to freelance self-employment support and have a leadingoffer to enable our students and graduates to progress. We offer skills development and awareness, self-employment and business support, resources, funding, mentoring, as well as important physical space to grow. Through our wider in-curriculum delivery of entrepreneurship skills development, we are also here to help connect behaviours, attributes and competencies that positively impact the individual student’s career readiness and our graduate’s success.
We have developed a unique supported graduate studio space called Emerge, which is a place for graduate self-employment and business start-ups to thrive. Emerge has an emphasis on cross-disciplinary working and skill sharing together in one space. Through the wider university, led by Professor John Strachan, Pro-Vice-Chancellor Research and Enterprise, the Research & Graduate Affairs Department has a focus on creativity and culture, with a research and enterprise space called The Studio which is the centre of our Knowledge Exchange activities and partnerships.
Bath Spa University has been awarded the Social Enterprise Gold Mark in recognition of its outstanding work as a social enterprise, making it the first university in the South West to achieve this standard and fifth in the whole of the UK. We have recently been named the University of the Year for Social Inclusion by The Times Good University Guide 2024.
Helpful links: