This guide shares Nesta'’s experience and learning of peer mentoring with creative businesses during the Starter for 6 programme. 

Key findings:

• Set expectations at the start of the programme and keep a schedule of meetings.
• Meetings should be structured and finish with a list of action points. Structured guides for discussions can help. 
• Mentees must agree to respect the contacts and networks of their mentors.
• Mentors should be trained to know their limits and to refer issues outside of their experience or knowledge to other agencies.
• Flexibility is advisable, providing mentees with access to different mentors as their business develops.
• Mentors should not be over-burdened by needy mentees or by having too many.

Peer mentoring was introduced to complement Nesta’s Starter for 6 initiative, an enterprise development programme for innovative creative start-up businesses.

Peer mentoring is different from traditional forms of mentoring (parent-child models) as it involves near peers with one or two years more experience than their mentees (akin to teenager-child model).

Nesta was keen to test the efficacy of this form of mentoring within a business context and considers the success of the peer mentoring pilot a valuable supplement to the Starter for 6 business development approach.

Author:

Nesta