The Creative Company Project is a central element in the M.A International Management - Creative Leadership programme. Students work with an academic coach and a professional from the creative industries on a real-life project for several months.
Project examples
Students collaborate with companies who act as project partners. Previous creative company projects include the following examples.
Students of the M.A. International Management - Creative Leadership programme
Music industry marketing strategy for artist mentoring programme
In the summer of 2023, students in this Creative Company Project aim to research, design and pitch a concept for an innovative artist mentoring programme with a marketing strategy. Creative company partners are Ableton and Soundcloud.
The project teams explore vision and scope and develop an artist mentoring programme through applied project and international management methods. They aim to mobilise change by imagining a highly inclusive and diverse representation of music artists and makers. They conduct market research and build international relationships with artists, labels, and the music industry. The client is the artist Felix Räuber.
The academic project supervisor is Dr Laura Lee, a lecturer in the Creative Industries Management and Audio Design programmes at the Berlin School of Popular Arts. Laura has been a project manager for the music company Ableton and has developed artists mentoring programmes in Germany and the UK. Creative Management Coach is Bjoern Krass-Koenitz, a producer, sought-after rhetoric- and stagecoach, and adjunct lecturer in creative management skills. He has broad senior-level networks in the Berlin creative industries and beyond.
Garage Campus Chemnitz: European Capital of Culture 2025
In the summer of 2022, this project helped students foster their creative leadership skills within a creative urban regeneration project. Between April and June, students worked with the Garage Campus Chemnitz to use it as a material, spatial and historical source of inspiration for their creative production work.
With Chemnitz being the European Capital of Culture 2025, the Garage Campus brownfield site served as an intervention area for hosting events, with a longer-term view of regenerating the site as a maker space and cultural venue. Students of the Creative Leadership Master’s researched, designed and pitched marketing communication campaigns which engage citizens and connect Chemnitz with international partners.
The project was carried out in partnership with Age of Artists, represented by Dirk Dobiéy.
Bjoern Krass-Koenitz and Prof Dr Svenja Tams led the project, researching innovative and creative organisational development practices for addressing sustainability and societal challenges.
Photos: Tobias Ahlbrecht
Marketing Company Project with Estancia Verde and Studio 71
In this project, the students developed creative leadership in the context of designing and pitching an advertising strategy for a start-up company, the innovative, sustainability-oriented food-and-drinks manufacturer Estancia Verde. Participants learned from the "inside-out" about creative consumer research, marketing communications and the management of creative projects. The project helped the Master's students to develop an understanding of the design of an advertising strategy at the intersection of the product, users, client and agency.
Creative Management Project with CandyStorm Public Relations
Our company partner was CandyStorm PR, a purpose-driven public relations agency which delivers sustainability and CSR-focused campaigns for commercial and non-profit clients. The student team worked on one of CandyStorm's real-life client projects. The project involves typical creative management activities: developing the concept of a campaign, research activities related to the campaign issue, users and possible channels (e.g., social media, social influencers), pitching the idea to the client, designing the communications strategy, final client presentation and client feedback.