Location: Global Lounge, Senate House, 1st Floor, Tyndall Avenue. Bristol, BS8 1TH

Researchers Kier Williams and Anne Angsten Clarke ask, what drives young entrepreneurs? What barriers do they face? And can a peer network help overcome some of them and support them on their journey to building or growing their enterprises? Using participatory design, they worked with 10 young entrepreneurs from Enugu, Nigeria to explore these questions and develop a 6 month entrepreneurship incubator that is driven by the participants themselves. In their talk, Anne and Keir will share their preliminary findings around the values, ambitions and vision of these entrepreneurs and a tentative outline of the youth-driven incubator.

Keir is a creative technologist, educator and researcher. He has created commissions for organisations including TATE, ICA London, PS1 New York and Chapter Gallery, Cardiff. His recent creative technology work has included a performance and research residency in the arctic circle, and an oral history project with the MShed museum Bristol. Recent research projects include an ethnographic study on developing technologies for SEN mixed ability classrooms and an innovation training project with former Prisoners in Bristol.

Anne is a part-time PhD candidate at the Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, using participatory design to research how to increase financial resilience for and with low-income households in the UK and Mali. Prior to this, she served as Chief Program Officer of Spark Microgrants, an East African non-profit that champions community-driven development, as Director of Partnerships for myAgro, a social enterprise that serves smallholder farmers in West Africa, and as a management consultant for McKinsey. Anne holds an MA from Johns Hopkins University and a BA from Münster University.