London Mayor Entrepreneur Awards – Why You Should Enter!

Over recent years, it’s been a proud streak for UAL students and graduates to secure victory in The Mayor’s Entrepreneur Competition’s Creative category!

This annual competition aims to unearth innovative business concepts that can contribute to making London a cleaner, greener, and more future-ready city. The upcoming months offer free workshops, designed to equip you with essential employability and entrepreneurship skills. This presents ample time to brainstorm an idea before the deadline on February 11, 2024.

With four distinct categories (Creative Industries, Environment, Health, and Tech) awaiting your innovative submissions, there’s a coveted grand prize of £20,000 allocated as start-up funding to catalyse the transformation of your idea into a tangible business venture.

To offer insight into the process, we’ve interviewed the 2023 winner from London College of Fashion, who not only claimed victory in The Mayor’s Entrepreneur competition but has also recently won UAL’s Future 50 Founders and Freelancers LCF category. You can read more about their remarkable achievement here.

Who are you and your company brand vision

My name is Hanan Tantush, I graduated this summer from LCF womenswear and I’m the founder of Intotum, an adaptive clothing brand for people with disabilities. Intotum endeavours to empower the disabled community by offering stylish, functional and fashionable clothing that can work with your disability. Intotum advocates for disabled representation in fashion and for the inclusion of accessible fashion to the mainstream.

How did you find out about the awards?

I found out about the awards from a talk with LCF graduate futures about their upcoming enterprise challenge and other opportunities for student and graduate startups

What made you enter? Were you confident about your idea?

I decided to enter as I knew my business could make a huge difference to the disabled community in London and beyond. The competition is looking for startup ideas that can improve the capital and through collaborative work I had done with London based disability charities to develop my clothing, I knew there was a need for what I was doing. I honestly never thought I’d get into the shortlist, never mind win the competition, but as I got through the stages and started to discuss my idea more, I became more confident in myself and my ability to pitch in the final. I think this is totally normal though as a startup, especially when you’re developing your idea alongside studying – to question if what you are doing will work. Therefore, I went to as many enterprise events I could with the university to keep trying to develop and streamline what I was trying to achieve.

How did you find the process of the Awards, were you supported by UAL? Did you join in the support sessions held by the organisers?

The Mayor’s entrepreneur team are incredible and support you through every stage to help you develop your video and in person pitch. They also held really great sessions to help you come up with a pitch script. The LCF graduate futures team then helped me to edit my pitch script down and put me in contact with others that could help me create costings etc ready for any questions I might be asked.

How has entering the Awards helped your company?

Entering the awards allowed me to feel a lot more confident in my business and helped me to define what I’m trying to offer. It also taught me a lot about pitching which I have carried through to winning other awards including the LCF Enterprise Award and The AXA and Evening Standard Startup Angels Award. Winning the Mayors challenge was such an incredible moment and meant I could take my business from an idea to reality, using the amazing support network from the Mayors Entrepreneur Team and the prize money to start developing my accessible clothing.

What advice would you give for other UAL students about entering?

My advice for entering would be really think about how your business can help people or the planet and how it’s innovative. Then work on getting that into words. It’s also a good idea to get a friend, family member or UAL staff member to proofread anything you submit to check it’s understandable and exciting – it can be hard as the person with the idea to step outside of the business so getting help from an outside opinion works great.

Thanks a lot, Hanan! You can enter the 2024 Mayor’s Entrepreneur competition from 16 November 2023! Full details on how to enter the competition can be found here.

You can sign up to the support session workshops to help you here.

If you are looking for opportunities to gain experience to start your career, why not check out UAL’s jobs board, Creative Opportunities? Run by Careers and Employability, it is the go-to hub for creative students and graduates. You can find jobs, paid internships, competitions, and volunteering roles. If you are studying an art, design, communications, or a performance course or have recently graduated, then this is the place for you! Our goal is to help you achieve your ambitions and make a living doing what you love.