Birmingham City University

West Surrey College of Art & Design, Farnham

King's Lynn, Norfolk

Creative & Cultural Lead at Greater Birmingham & Solihull Local Enterprise Partnership

David Furmage is director of Freshlook Creative; a Strategic and economic consultancy for the creative and cultural industries, primarily working with local authorities, combined authorities and other cultural and creative organisations. Core activity includes writing policies, strategies, business cases to win public funding and develop and run grant funding programmes within the creative and cultural industries.

Freshlook Creative Limited

Senior Creative & Cultural Policy Consultant

currently supporting the development of cultural funding programmes and writing business cases

Birmingham City Council

Senior Cultural Advisor

West Midlands Combined Authority

Interim Head of Culture, Creative Industries & Digital

Senior Culture & Creative Consultant (secondment)

Focused on developing the creative industries and cultural economy, which includes business growth and support, skills development, cross-sectoral innovation and the development of cultural assets.

Greater Birmingham and Solihull Local Enterprise Partnership

Executive Officer - Creative Industries & Cultural Economy

Developing Strategies, Policies, Programmes & Bids for local authorities, Local Enterprise Partnerships and stakeholder organisations. Facilitating Cross-Innovation labs and Innovation brokerage, bringing different industries and stakeholders together to stimulate new collaborations and sector wide growth.
European Specialist, adding value in the UK through Consortia building and collaborations post brexit. Recently worked with: Creative City Partnership (Birmingham), Greater Birmingham & Solihull Local Enterprise Partnership (GBSLEP), Birmingham City University, European Creative Industries Alliance, Creative England, Coventry University Enterprises, Digital Media Businesses and SME’s including Pearcelegal LLP. 

Recent projects include: 
Bid-writing on business Support Programmes for Creative Businesses, Event programming for creative sector, Running an EU bid on Next-Generation Business Support and Policy for Creative Sector across Europe, Regional innovation Bid Development, Development Strategies for Business Clusters,  Marketing & Communications Planning for SME’s.

Freshlook Innovation

Creative, Digital & Innovation Specialist

Policy Advisor supporting the decisions of Creative City Partnership. Focused on Creative & Digital Industries and Innovation policy. Contributing to the development of outline strategies and bid-writing to support the growth of Creative businesses and the sectors powerful value-adding to Birmingham City and its region.

Creative City Partnership

Policy Advisor

Experienced in implementing cross-sectoral business support around Innovation, with a focus towards creative, cultural and digital businesses.

Experienced in developing strategies and policy recommendations at cluster, regional, national and European levels.

Experienced in working with cluster organisations, businesses and regional ecosystems to develop 'next-generation' business support and funding programmes.

experienced in supporting individual businesses in developing new ideas and launching new products and services.

Experienced as a bid-writing specialist, including ERDF, CIP and FP7 at European level and UK bids, including Regional Growth Fund, NESTA and Innovate UK.

Experienced in managing European programmes and cluster initiatives. (Cluster 2020, CIP Framework)

Creative Industries Consultant (freelance)

Creative, Cultural & Digital Industries Consultant

Expert in developing, writing and running European projects. 
Extensive network of potential project partners across Europe.
Expertise in working with Europe post brexit.

Experienced in writing successful bid proposals for Competitive Innovation Framework Programme (CIF) and European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). Experience in developing FP7 bids around data. Specialist area has been focused around Creative & Digital Industries, developing and testing new innovation models, working practices and policies. Also, developing infrastructure bids for regional economic development.

Experienced as Co-ordinator in running a £2m CIP bid for DG Grow (Cluster 2020)
Experienced as bid assessor for regional development agency (AWM)

Experienced in reporting on EU projects; around research, test results, findings and evaluations.
Experienced in evaluating EU bids and collating outputs and outcomes.
Experienced in pulling together EU project bids by building consortia.

European Project Specialist (freelance)

European Specialist

Worked at Coventry University Enterprises on projects related to Creative Industry Policy & Strategy in the UK and Europe. This includes being project Lead on Cluster 2020, a £2m EU project focused on next-generation business support, innovation and policy making.

Coventry University Enterprises

Policy, Strategy & European Specialist

Working for public and private sector organisations, my work involves: 
> Consultancy and bid-writing for the Regional Growth Fund, with a focus on innovation/creative digital industries, business transformation and growth.
> Developing Strategy & Policy focused on the Creative & Digital Industries Sector.
> Bid-Writing for European Funding, including ERDF, FP7,CIP, etc.
> Developing and Managing Projects & Partnerships

Digital YoYo

Digital Industries, Innovation & Digital Media Consultant, Bid-writer

> Content Producer, including shooting video productions and developing social media and web-content.
> Shooting photographic content for websites, video and print media
> Developing digital strategies, including marketing and social media campaigns

Freshlook Digital

Media Producer / Digital Consultany

Responsible for developing and implementing a Regional Economic Strategy and Innovation Strategy for the Creative &amp; Digital Media sector. This involved:
[1] Building partnerships with many organisations and businesses
[2] Developing new projects, writing bids and strategically managing existing projects worth over £20m.
[3] Developing regional responses to national policy for the Digital Industries, including: Digital Britain, Creative Economy Programme, Skills Agenda, Future of Television &amp; Cross-Media production.
[4] Building the regions profile as a 'Digital &amp; Creative Hub', this involved preparing and delivering presentations in the UK and abroad.

Advantage West Midlands

Screen, Image & Sound Cluster Manager

Forward Vision started life as a post-production facility for broadcast TV. It developed into a video production house for international charities. A design studio was added, and the company moved into CD-ROM/DVD and Web Design. It had a number of interests in elearning, with a specialism in personalised learning systems. the company also provided training facilities. David bought the production and post-production business back in Jan 2007.

Forward Vision

Managing Director & Founder

My role was to edit documentary series, current affairs and news. I worked on a wide variety of network programmes both as a film editor and then as a videotape editor. I was also involved as dubbing editor on several dramas.

Central TV

Film & Video Editor

I was a film editor working on a variety of broadcast series, from documentary and current affairs to drama.