Practical workflows and skills for creative entrepreneurs to scale with AI.
CREW’s CLIMB Course, AI for Creative Business Growth is now accepting applications.
CLIMB Courses offer targeted, flexible learning for entrepreneurs and SMEs across the creative digital ecosystem, focusing on the critical skills needed for market and business growth. They are a key part of CLIMB – Creative Leaders Innovating for Market & Business Growth, a wider programme of supports and tailored growth opportunities for high-potential digital creative businesses.
To see the full range of CLIMB Courses, head over to our CLIMB programme page.
About AI for Creative Business Growth
AI for Creative Business Growth is an outcomes‑driven online course that helps creative entrepreneurs leverage AI to standardize, refine and scale their business processes and grow their practice.
Across two live classes and a practice week, participants will learn core AI competencies, redesign 1-2 key business workflows with automation/augmentation, experiment with applying AI-supported methods and multiple LLMs to their real work, and leave with a future‑state process and adoption plan that fits their studio’s or businesses goals and constraints.
Course Overview
This course is designed specifically for creative entrepreneurs. It addresses common issues and concerns in the creative industries around AI, while guiding participants to develop the skills and knowledge to use AI to power business workflows.
Participants are interested in using AI to increase their reach, gain efficiencies, or support their creative thought process. They may have questions or concerns about maintaining the quality and rigor of their work with AI, but are willing to experiment with evaluation methods and developing quality standards.
Course Structure
Format: 2 live classes (3.5 hours each) + 1 practice week (async) with coaching
1) Pre-work (2–3 hours)
- Map your current business processes
- Identify goals and pain points in the current process
2) Class 1: Design your AI-supported workflow
- Framing: Where AI helps in creative businesses (sales ops, pre-production, asset management, post, content ops, finance/admin)
- Discussion: Participant goals for applying AI to business processes
- Core skills foundations such as:
–Communicating with AI (Automation): task decomposition, role setting, constraints, guardrails
–Thinking with AI (Augmentation): idea expansion/refinement, challenging assumptions, adapting messaging for different contexts
-Evaluating AI (Discernment): accuracy, reasoning quality, performance checks
- Hands-on labs:
-Turn one manual process into an AI-supported workflow
-Draft an individual Experiment Brief for the practice week
3) Practice week (async + coaching)
- Participants run an experiment on live work (e.g., pitch deck, feature backlog grooming, content pipeline, estimate creation, client onboarding pack)
- 2 x 1 hour coaching office hours
4) Class 2: Future process + adoption plan
- Share experiment results and insights including:
-Demo + peer review
-Calculate impact: hours saved, cycle time, win-rate or a quality proxy
- Define the future process: roles/RACI, SOPs, checklists, tool config, costs
- Adoption plan: disclosure/crediting/IP, training, documentation, pilot timeline
- Next actions: select a second workflow to scale + checkpoints
Deliverables for Participants
As part of this course you’ll receive a number of tools and workbooks which you can use to implement your learning and integrate AI into your workflows including:
- CLIMB Methods Playbook (prompts + instructions for sample workflow tasks)
- Self-led exercises including:
-Communicating with AI (Automation): rewrite weak prompts using best-practice guidelines
-Thinking with AI: 9 AI dialogue practices + practice conversation exercise
-AI Evaluation Toolkit: 12 methods to assess quality and accuracy
-Diligence Checklist + Value Statement: disclose how AI is used responsibly and what remains human-led
- Future-state process + 90-day adoption plan
The course is being offered to the SME at 20% of the market rate (the full programme is valued at €1000) with the remaining 80% supported by Enterprise Ireland Smart Region scheme. In order to avail of this discounted rate, all applicants are asked to confirm that they have the appropriate De Minimis balance to accept the support. More information on De Minimums State Aid can be found here: State Aid | Enterprise Ireland
How to apply
You can apply for the course by filling out an application form by Friday March 13, which you can find here: https://crew.acceleratorapp.co/apply/program/ai-for-creative-business-growth-2026
Please note that there are a limited number of spaces for this course. For more information contact Stephanie Ford, Programme Associate: stephanie.ford@crewdigitial.ie
CLIMB Courses are delivered by CREW as part of the CLIMB programme and are co-funded by the Government of Ireland and the European Union through the ERDF Northern and Western Regional Programme 2021–27.
