Creative Business course overview

During the Creative Business programme, you will be trained as a manager in the media industry. The skills you develop for this are integrated into the programme and practised through practical assignments and during your internship. Together with real companies, you will learn to develop new media concepts that add value to a company or organisation and make an impact on the target group(s).

Themes:

You will work on different topics from the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the goals agreed upon by 196 countries within the United Nations. For example, you will work on explaining the topic of sustainability to your target audience through media in a comprehensible, engaging way and make an impact. Other topics you will work on are:

• Media business/Media management, Media concepting

• Media marketing

• Content marketing

• Media landscape

• Finance

• Personal leadership

• Practice-oriented research

• Media content

• Media production

Semester 1 - Explore

The media industry is constantly changing, raising questions as to what the industry looks like, who the stakeholders are and what business models can be applied. In this semester, you work with a partner from the media industry looking into what media products and services you could create for this partner that would add value to their portfolio and how you can ensure your product will appeal to the target group. In short, in this semester you learn all about the media industry and the marketing aspects of media products and services.  

Semester 2 - Experience

In this semester, you learn to look at media productions from a media professional point of view and learn how to make these products. You learn about media literacy and how to analyse and evaluate media products. You will make prototypes for future media formats for a partner in the media industry. You will produce content for our own online content channel Matters.

Semester 3 - Adventure

Everything you learnt in the first year comes together in this semester. You work on setting up, organising and managing a creative organisation within the creative industry. What set-up, organisation and management do you need to create value with media? Together with a real client, you will create value with media.

Semester 4 - Concept & Production

Everything you have learned so far comes together in this semester. How do you develop a media concept, how do you ensure that this concept is converted into a concrete product? How do you organise all this and how do you market your product? You will also produce content for our Matters channel.

At the end of year 2, you will choose one of these 4 graduation profiles:

• Media Producer

• Media Manager or Entrepreneur

• Media Marketer

• Media Strategist or Developer

Creative business 3: becoming a creative business professional

This semester, you will consider a number of strategic issues that organisations within the creative business struggle with. As a consultant, you will deal with topics such as developing new business models, product innovations and meaningful communication for a creative business organisation or your own creative company. If you want to start your own business, you may also work on a number of projects within your own company.

Minors 

In this semester you take a minor, a subject you can later specialise in. Read more about the options available and where you can take your minors in the section below on minors and specialisations. 

Start up community: start your own business!

Do you want to do more with entrepreneurship? We give you all the space you need! Within our 'start-up community', you and other enterprising students will be given all the tools you need to take your company further. Among other things, you will have weekly coaching sessions and workshops at our external location MICA (Media Innovation Campus) in Leeuwarden. At this creative hotspot, students and companies from the creative sector work together on various innovative media and communication projects.

CrossWise

In your third year, you can do various projects within CrossWise; a collaboration between theatre and concert organisation SPOT Groningen, the municipality of Groningen and universities of applied sciences in the Northern Netherlands. Together with students and lecturers, you can, for instance, help organise the well-known music festival Eurosonic Noorderslag, carry out projects within your minor and/or do your internship here. Visit the websites for more information (Dutch only).

CrossWise

SPOT Groningen

Internship and graduation project

Work in industry by doing an internship. You can do your internship with a business anywhere in the world, from media companies such as Sony, Netflix, and Vogue to companies with media departments such as Rabobank, Adidas, Ikea and UNICEF. And if you’ve already turned your dream for your own business into a reality, you could consider doing your internship in your own start-up. The Center for Entrepreneurship at NHL Stenden can advise you on how to do this. 

For your graduation project, you work on creating a solution for an interesting challenge in the field of creative business.

In your third year of Creative Business, you get to specialise by taking a number of minors.

Minors are electives in which you focus on a specific subject or expand your knowledge by taking an additional subject. This allows you to truly take charge of your education by ‘customising’ your course.  

You can take these minors on the Leeuwarden campus or at one of the NHL Stenden Grand Tour locations in South Africa, Bali or Thailand. You can also choose from minors offered by other courses and universities of applied sciences – this is all part of broadening your academic skills. 

• Music Business (the Netherlands) 
  Learn the basics of the music business and collaborate with industry professionals on a music digitisation project while specialising in artist management, label or release management or live management. 

• Video Game Business (the Netherlands) 
  With this minor you explore the gaming industry in terms of marketing, publicity and sales, production, project management and scouting creating a commercial concept for a real investor. 

• Integrated Digital Marketing (Thailand) 
  Offering a combination of creative and technical skills development, this minor gives you an understanding of digital marketing strategy and how you can build the online presence of a brand and manage digital platforms to sell products. 

• Media Concepts & Sustainability (the Netherlands)
  Focusing on creating media and communication concepts, with this minor you learn that as a media maker, you can have a positive impact on society, creating concepts and stories that contribute in some way to the sustainable development goals. 

• Digital Entrepreneurship (Thailand)
  This minor provides a creative and structured approach for turning your business idea into a tangible product. You work with an array of digital marketing tools that will support your business’s growth.