Creative Spark British Council: Higher Education Entrepreneurship Development Program

Astana IT University’s partnership in the Creative Spark programme supported by the British Council

Astana IT University entered partnership with Almaty Management University (Kazakhstan) and the University of Northampton (UK) as part of the programme Creative Spark: Higher Education Enterprise Programme.

Creative Spark is a five-year initiative to support international university and institutional partnerships to develop enterprise skills and creative economy across seven countries in Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan), South Caucasus (Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia) and Ukraine through UK support.

Project implementation period

October 2021 – July 2022

The programme has three key elements:

Development of partnerships between universities and creative institutions in the UK and those in programme countries in order to support enterprise education and establish enterprise centres.
Delivering enterprise skills training packages to students and creative entrepreneurs, ranging from pitching ideas and starting a business, to protecting intellectual property and securing credit lines.
Delivering an English learning programme with a range of digital learning content including learning platforms, online courses and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) focused on English for entrepreneurship.

Introduction to Intellectual Property Law

Speaker: Diliya Chanysheva, Practicing Lawyer, Master of Intellectual Property Law and New Technologies of the Université Grenoble Alpes, France.

Current issues in the field of labor legislation in the Republic of Kazakhstan

Speaker: Yessirkepova Madina Meirbekovna – Associate Professor, PhD, Astana IT University.

Digital Entrepreneurship

Speaker: Dr Katerina Thomas – Senior Lecturer, PhD, School of Entrepreneurship, University of Northampton, UK.

AITU HACKDAY: CREATIVE INDUSTRY

Hackathon “AITUHackday: Creative industry” is organized as part of the implementation of the program “Creative Spark British Council: a program for higher education institutions to develop entrepreneurship” on April 8-9, 2022.

Goals of the hackathon

1. Find talented, creative professionals or entire teams.

2. Solve a specific business problem / launch a pilot of a new application or service.

3. Provide an opportunity for live communication between young people and leaders and leading experts in various industries – AITU Partners.

Partners and sponsors

Nursultan Nazarbayev Foundation, Ministry of Digital Development, Innovation and Aerospace Industry of Kazakhstan, KazDream Technologies LLP (hereinafter referred to as KazDream), Almaty Management University, University of Northampton, Seedstars Nabu Limited Private Company.

Participants: students and undergraduates of AITU, ALMAU, MUIT, KBTU, AUPET, UIB, ENU, EKSTU, SDU and other universities of Kazakhstan

Hackathon page: https://admission.astanait.edu.kz/hackaton

Forum “Role of education in development of Creative industries”

The final forum was held with partner universities of the program from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and the UK on October 21, 2022. The forum was attended by representatives from the British Council of Kazakhstan and the European Region, the Ministry of Science and Higher Education, the Ministry of Culture and Sports, the Association of Higher Educational Institutions of Kazakhstan, the Almaty City Administration, international organizations, partners of the Creative Spark program from the UK, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.

More about the forum https://kazakhstan.britishcouncil.org/en/events/creative-spark-final-forum-kazakhstan-and-kyrgyzstan

Big Idea Challenge 2022

The Big Idea Challenge is a video pitch competition which encourages young people from Creative Spark programme countries to develop an innovative ‘startup’ and tell the world about it.

Team Studentor from AITU won on the category “Best Digital Solution” at a country-level competition.

Finalists of the Big Idea Сhallenge 2022 from Astana IT University

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