The CLIMB Programme (Creative Leaders Innovating for Market and Business Growth) is a dynamic two-year initiative designed to empower creative entrepreneurs to scale their businesses, embrace innovation, and strengthen their leadership capabilities.
Developed by CREW, the CLIMB Programme supports digital creative entrepreneurs through targeted training, personalised mentorship, and access to a vibrant digital community, enabling participants to transform creative ideas into sustainable, market-ready ventures.
Participants will gain the tools, insights, and networks required to lead with confidence, adapt to industry change, and capitalise on emerging opportunities in Ireland’s growing creative digital economy.
The CLIMB Programme combines a six-month structured mentorship programme, short courses, an annual acceleration bootcamp, and access to CREW’s digital community. Each element is designed to nurture creativity, build commercial acumen, and develop leadership capacity within the creative digital sector.
The CLIMB Programme is ideal for:
CREW’s CLIMB Courses offer targeted, flexible learning for entrepreneurs and SMEs across the digital creative ecosystem, focusing on the critical skills needed for market and business growth. Participants can enrol in a single course or combine several. Alongside structured learning, the courses also offer networking opportunities, access to mentorship, and a useful collection of digital resources and tools designed to support continued growth and devlopment.
Confident leadership skills and strategies for building resilient, high-performing creative teams.
Overview
A 1-day course is for those who want to lead with more confidence and clarity. Participants will explore your leadership style, build self-awareness and learn practical ways to communicate, motivate and support others. The focus is on leading collaborative, high-performing teams in the digital creative industries, with tools you can apply immediately in your own work.
Facilitator: Katelyn Divilly
Delivery Dates & Location: Friday, January 30, 9.30am – 4.30pm @ CREW, plus follow-up online mentorship on Friday, March 13
Application: Apply
Deadline: 20 January 2026
Practical workflows and skills for creative entrepreneurs to scale with AI.
Overview
An applied course for creative entrepreneurs to use AI to power business workflows. Participants will learn core competencies including automation (effective prompting to offload tasks) and augmentation (dialoguing with AI as a creative thought partner), and design one real workflow in their practice. Participants will practice using AI-supported methods and multiple AI tools in hands-on practice with their real work. Participants will leave with a future-state business process defined, exercises and templates to further develop their methods, and a 90-day adoption plan.
Facilitator: Ann Conway
Delivery Dates & Location:
This course is delivered online, with two live workshops and a practice week in between. Mentorship & guidance is provided via online office hours during the practice week.
Workshop 1: Friday, March 20, 2pm – 5.30pm. Practice week: March 21- March 31, with 2 x office hours. Workshop 2: Wednesday, April 1, 2pm – 5.30pm.
Cost: €200
Application: Opening February 2026
Master the money side of your creative business.
Overview
This hands-on, interactive short course is for creative entrepreneurs and businesses who want to get confident with their numbers, without having to navigate complex financial jargon. Participants will build rock-solid financial foundations on budgeting, pricing, cashflow planning and projections with ready-to-use templates and resources, as well as learning how to apply for grants and e-tenders with confidence. It also features a clinic with a creative industries tax specialist to offer support on specific tax queries relevant to your industry. Suitable for anyone in the creative industries who want to strengthen their financial foundations and plan for sustainable growth.
Facilitators: Shirley Halvey, Donncha Hughes and Sarah Ryan
Delivery Dates & Location: Thursday, March 26, 9.30am – 12.45pm with optional tax clinic from 2 – 4pm & Friday, March 27, 9.30am – 12.30pm @ CREW
Cost: €160
Application: Apply
Deadline: Wednesday, March 18
Sharpen your brand’s message for maximum impact and grow your reach and reputation with stronger publicity and smarter marketing.
Overview
This course is for entrepreneurs and businesses in the creative industries who want clarity, focus and momentum as they grow their publicity, public relations and marketing. Starting with publicity & PR, participants will learn how to use storytelling and strategic outreach to increase visibility, build credibility and sharpen their brand’s message. The second part of the course builds on participants existing marketing foundations, with a focus on strategy and planning for success.
Participants will leave with practical publicity and marketing roadmaps, including templates and planning tools that can be applied immediately. The course also includes a follow-up 1:1 online mentorship session on publicity and brand reputation, tailored to your business needs and growth goals.
Facilitators: Cróna Esler and Jane Manzor
Delivery Dates & Location: Thursday, April 23,10am – 1.30pm & Friday, April 24, 10am – 1.30pm @ CREW, plus follow-up 1:1 online mentorship on Tuesday, May 5
Cost: €200
Application: Coming soon
Learn strategies to safeguard your business, respond to change, and spot new opportunities.
Overview
This course is for established creative businesses who want to navigate uncertainty while protecting profit. Participants will learn to identify and prioritise key risks, put simple mitigation actions in place, and use scenario planning to understand impacts on revenue, costs and cashflow. A central theme is margin protection: understanding break-even, where profit leaks occur, and how to ensure growth happens in a controlled way that safeguards profitability. The course also explores resilience through diversification, helping businesses assess new income streams, customers, or markets in a way that supports long-term stability. Participants will leave with a clearer, more confident plan for sustainable expansion and a practical risk-and-diversification roadmap.
Facilitator: Declan Droney
Delivery Dates & Location: Friday, June 12, 9.30am – 4.30pm @ CREW
Cost: €160
Application: Coming soon
Design, grow and leverage cross-industry networks to drive collaboration, creativity and new business.
Overview
Coming soon
Facilitator: TBC
Delivery Dates: June 2026
Cost: €160
Application: Coming soon
Courses are delivered in person at CREW, Galway over 1 day, 1.5 day or 2 x half day workshops, with some additional follow-up mentorship offered online for select courses. Some content may be delivered virtually, and this will be indicated in the course descriptions and registration forms.
The cost to participants is €160 – €200 euro per course. The courses are being offered to the SME at 20% of the market rate (the full cost per course is valued at €800 – €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
All courses delivered by CREW as part of CLIMB are co-funded by the Government of Ireland and the European Union, through the ERDF Northern and Western Regional Programme 2021–27.
Each participant will benefit from a tailored mentorship experience, combining individualised guidance with peer collaboration and expert feedback.
The cost to participant is €285. The programme is being offered to the SME at 20% of the market rate (the full programme is valued at €1415) 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
Applications Close – 24 October 2025.
Programme Kick Off (online) – 31 October 2025
Mentor Matchmaking Session (online) – 10 November 2025
Programme Duration – Dec 2025 – May 2026
Download the CLIMB Mentorship Brochure for more information.: CLIMB Mentorship Info Brochure
Ready to Apply? CLIMB Mentorship Programme Application
The CLIMB Accelerator Bootcamp includes expert-led workshops, hands-on strategy development, and targeted mentorship. Focus Areas include:
Funding and Investment
Market Expansion & IP
AI, Legal and Regulatory, Copyright and IP
Team Development and Leadership
Applications for CLIMB Accelerator Bootcamp will open at the end of February 2026.’
CREW’s AccleratorApp platform is an interactive online platform to foster collaboration, resource sharing, and peer-to-peer engagement. The platform acts as a central hub for knowledge exchange and networking for CLIMB participants on our mentorship programme, short courses and our Accelerator Bootcamp, ensuring sustained support for creative professionals and long-term access to learning materials and networks. The platform can be accessed here: https://crew.acceleratorapp.co/
Please note that you must be accepted onto the CLIMB programme to access the platform.
