LCC Accelerate

Kickstart your creative enterprise with LCC Accelerate

Do you want to kickstart a creative business that pushes boundaries, socially, technologically or environmentally?

LCC Accelerate is a 12-week creative business incubator empowering diverse LCC graduate founders to transform impactful ideas into future-ready, sustainable ventures.

Supported by experienced professionals, expert advisors, and successful industry entrepreneurs, this programme will enable you to accelerate your ideas to the launch stage and enhance your expertise as a creative entrepreneur.

Learn essential entrepreneurship skills

Throughout the programme, you’ll gain valuable skills and knowledge, including how to:

Build and launch new business ideas
Familiarise yourself with essential start-up tools and frameworks
Create a viable product or service, financial plan, and distinctive brand
Build a professional network
Master marketing and sales strategies
Pitch to potential investors
Use your business to address real-world challenges
Articulate your vision for your enterprise

Explore what to expect on the programme

The programme offers:

A safe environment to develop your business idea
Expert talks from successful creative entrepreneurs
Practical workshops and group exercises
Individual expert mentoring to guide your progress
Pitching practice sessions
Community and peer collaboration across LCC disciplines
Opportunities to launch, learn, test and launch your venture
A final pitch event for industry, partners and potential funders

Plan your time commitment

You’ll need to dedicate approximately 7 hours per week. This includes 3 hours of in-person, classroom-based sessions, with the remaining time spent working offline, independently or with peers, to develop and refine your venture and pitch.

Apply if you are ready to launch your venture

This programme is designed for creative graduates who completed their undergraduate or postgraduate courses at LCC within the last three years.

We’re looking for creative entrepreneurs who are passionate about:

Making positive social or environmental impact
Innovating in creative tech, digital media, immersive, games, storytelling
Creating new business models that shape culture and community

We strongly welcome applications from:

Underrepresented creative leaders
Disabled and neurodivergent founders
First-generation and working-class creatives

2026 programme

LCC Accelerate is back for 2026, supported by the NatWest Accelerator, to empower the next generation of creative founders. Selected ventures will gain access to seed grants during the programme and launch awards at the end, totalling £10,000 to help you move faster and go further.

2026 funding package (supported by NatWest Accelerator):

£5,000 mid-programme seed fund, allocated across participants to help you test and grow ideas.
£5,000 end-of-programme launch fund, awarded to selected ventures with strong business potential.

Applications for the 2026 programme are now closed.

Key dates

Applications: close on Monday 26 January 2026.
Interviews: If your application is successful, you'll be invited to a 15-minute online interview on Wednesday 11 February 2026.
Programme runs in person on Wednesdays, 4 March - 3 June 2026 (2-5pm)
Final Pitch Event: Wednesday 24 June 2026.

LCC Accelerate 2026, a launchpad into the NatWest Accelerator

For ventures looking to take the next leap after the LCC Accelerate programme, the NatWest Accelerator can provide an ongoing pathway to growth, investment readiness and scale.

Through our collaboration with NatWest, founders will gain exposure to the NatWest Accelerator, one of the UK’s leading programmes for high-potential entrepreneurs.

The NatWest Accelerator supports thousands of founders every year with:

Hands-on coaching from experienced business advisors
Growth-focused masterclasses and specialist clinics
Peer-to-peer learning with innovators across the UK
Opportunities to scale sustainable, socially impactful ideas
Free coworking at 12 hubs across the UK

I came to LCC Accelerate with vast experience, but that experience didn’t translate into how to set up a business. The financials, the business plans, all the little things that you don’t learn about at university. Having access to this, has allowed me to grow and develop my business into what it is now. You don’t get other opportunities like this.

— Abi Chapman, Founder of Accessify

As an entrepreneur and media and communications professional who has had the privilege of working with LCC Accelerate, I can vouch for the programme’s invaluable impact on emerging creative talent. The founders I have encountered through this initiative consistently demonstrate remarkable passion, innovation, and drive.

— Samina Kiyani, founder and media and communications professional

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