Tina Crawford makes cushions and other things she thinks will make your house look nice. She studied jewellery design at Central Saint Martins, the prestigious London arts school. She graduated back in 1994 but after illness forced her to give up full-time work in television, she was compelled to go it alone and rely on her creative talents.

Crawford, 40, turned to freehand embroidery, which had been a hobby, and set up business alone at the same time she had her son, Toby. “I couldn’t afford to go back on benefits,” she says. “I had to make it work.” But how? Crawford admits she had no brain for business. “I almost ignored that side of things. I didn’t know about pricing or any of the things you ignore as an artist. I just thought I can make things and everything will be hunky-dory.”

It wasn’t. Crawford’s embroidered cushions featuring nostalgic scenes of landmarks in London, where she lives with her husband and son, were going nowhere. After two years in the doldrums, she heard about the School for Creative Startups, a social enterprise run by a man better known for breathing fire over would-be business people.

“Entrepreneurs aren’t born, they’re made,” says Doug Richard, the school’s founder and one of the original investors on the BBC series, Dragon’s Den. He was renowned then for his lack of faith in would-be success stories, investing in just two contestants in two series, but has since become a champion for young creatives. “There’s a tremendous amount of creative talent in Britain but nobody’s helping these people succeed entrepreneurially,” he says.

  All Press Articles