HybridLab is an interactive, international web channel that celebrates, showcases and supports new creative enterprise. We have begun with a focus on un-signed bands, and will soon be moving into fashion, fashion accessories, lifestyle products and food.

Hybridlab’s unique programming combines entertainment that enables consumers to become involved with the creative entrepreneurs along with support for those enterprises to assist their marketing and growth.

Hybridlab is one of the social enterprises that make up IEA social enterprises, a subsidiary of innovative enterprise action, usually known as IEA (further described below).

An additional feature of Hybridlab is that production is done almost entirely by talented people, particularly women, who are themselves looking to break into the field and have a place to showcase themselves. HybridLab provides work experience and exposure to potential clients in a dynamic, stimulating work environment that provides a stepping stone for THESE aspiring creative entrepreneurs – helping them acquire new skills, establish new networks, embark upon joint collaborations and ultimately launch their careers.

The funding to support these individuals in work experience and career development comes from various funded programmes run by IEA. These include WHAM (Women Helped to Advance in Media) , PRESTO (A programme for refugee professionals) and EASI ( A programme for asylum seekers). All of these are funded by the European social fund (ESF) under different programmes. WHAM is funded by the LSC-central London region, and PRESTO and EASI are both funded under the EQUAL programme.

The majority of Hybridlab’s production team are part of the WHAM programme. Women are under-represented in the workforce throughout the media industry and particularly in high-tech media production where, in London for example, the figures range from 0 to 4%. WHAM provides further training, opportunities and support to women who live in central London.

IEA (Innovative Enterprise Action, www.ieaction.com and www.ieaction.co.uk) is a UK-registered charity that provides enterprise and related enterprise development support in order to achieve social and economic outcomes of inclusion and regeneration. Through its subsidiary IEA Social Enterprises Ltd, IEA operates globally. Hybridlab is an example of this international support, and it looks forward to showcasing creative enterprise from countries throughout the world.

IEA has a strategic focus to its enterprise support, selecting enterprise sectors that are most likely to contribute to broader regeneration. Creative enterprise is one example of this.

IEA's other areas of focus include the construction/built environment sector (where we support sustainable development and historic restoration and related skills) and social enterprise.

Our services to small businesses include face-to-face and on-line business advice and mentoring, specialist skills training for creative and built environment sector businesses, a creative enterprise business incubation centre in central London, a loan fund for new and developing small and micro-enterprises, work-based accreditation in management and leadership, other sector-targeted specialist training in enterprise and technical skills, an internship programme for undergraduates, graduates and postgraduates, the development and operation of social enterprises with work placement opportunities to provide a no-risk introduction to the world of business.

IEA currently works with enterprise support organisations and governmental bodies throughout the UK and in the Caribbean (including the Caribbean countries of Central and South America), South East Europe (primarily in the Balkans, Central Europe (Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia), Eastern Europe (Poland, Southern Russia, Ukraine) and Western Europe (France, Denmark, Germany and Spain), and we are developing links to similar bodies in African countries, Thailand and India.

· To pioneer the development of innovative content for the use of New Media

· To encourage new creative forms of entertainment by involving the audience through the opportunity to have both virtual and real interaction with the artists.

· To promote and support new creative enterprises, especially those developed by black and minority ethnic, refugee, women and other disadvantaged entrepreneurs in advanced economies and those developed by entrepreneurs in emerging economies. HybridLab enterprises are the cutting edge – and they’re located where might not expect to find them – in emerging markets from Barbados to Brixton to Bulgaria, wherever new creativity is crackling.

· To encourage and facilitate collaboration and innovation among creative entrepreneurs by providing them with opportunities to participate in cross-sector and/or cross-cultural ‘fusion’ projects (for example, refugees from a single country now living in a number of countries or for example, traditional crafts persons from one country with designers from another).

· HybridLab brings together traditional and new creative sectors (video animators and landscape architects, fashion designers and CAD-based industrial designers, garage musicians and traditional marionette troupes, electronic game designers and live theatre performers, folk crafts persons and new media advertising specialists…and so on) as members of an interactive community

· Online learning and business mentoring and peer support through sharing experiences, promoting one another across sectors and doing business with one another.

· Technical training, work experience and exposure to potential clients for aspiring creative entrepreneurs in London, Hungary and France facing disadvantages in the market. Current projects involve opportunities for women, refugees and asylum seekers funded through the European Social Fund’s trans-national EQUAL and Pan-London Learning and Skills Council programmes.

HybridLab is a Social Enterprise of Innovative Enterprise Action Ltd., a company limited by guarantee (number: 3169990) and a registered charity (number: 1053819)