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Nominations are now open for the annual DMU Freelancing & Entrepreneurship Awards, which is now in its fifth year.

The awards are open to students and recent graduates (within two years) that have launched their own businesses, freelance ventures or side hustles. There is also recognition for those who have applied entrepreneurial skills within a placement or job role.

The Entrepreneurship Awards will take place on Thursday 30 October 2025 at the DSU event space and will be attended by students, graduates, staff and members of the local business community.   

A list of awards can be seen below:

• Creative Industries Award - recognising entrepreneurial students or graduates who have demonstrated excellence in freelancing, self-employment, a portfolio or launching a business in music, film, photography, animation graphic design or performing arts.

• Health and Wellbeing Award - recognising entrepreneurial students or graduates who have demonstrated excellence in freelancing, self-employment or launching a business in the health or wellbeing sector.

• Global Entrepreneurship Champion - recognising a student who has demonstrated excellence during or since a DMU Global trip led by the DMU Made team which has positively impacted others.

• Sustainability Award- recognising a student whose entrepreneurial activities contribute to or champion sustainability/SDGS.

• Tech Award - recognising entrepreneurial students or graduates who have demonstrated excellence in freelancing, self-employment or launching a business specifically relating to technology or a new product design.

• Fashion Award -  recognising entrepreneurial students or graduates who have demonstrated excellence in freelancing, self-employment or launching a business relating to fashion.

There will also be special awards for Entrepreneurial Student, Entrepreneurial Graduate and Entrepreneurial Alumni.

Any student or recent graduate can self-nominate, or others can nominate on their behalf.

This year's event will also celebrate a number of milestones;

• DMU Made will be celebrating having supported 500 new startups in five years.
• This year marks a decade of DMU Made's long-running networking and guest speaker series 'Connect', which brings together students, graduates, staff and members of the local business community.
• It has been eight years since the DMU Made Enterprise Placement Year launched. This initiative helps students turn their business ideas into a reality via one-to-one support, peer coworking, workshops and industry visits.

Among last year’s winners was Simon Samsome, creator of Snowball, a disability app helping users rate and review venues worldwide. After graduating, Simon went on to join Crucible, a graduate incubator ran by the University’s commercial team, and he has since filmed an episode of the BBC’s Dragon’s Den.

Other winners in 2024 include Joe Shade, developer of an innovative beehive that monitors and provides research data on bees and Sam Thacker, a rising freelancer contributing significantly to Leicester’s creative culture and featured in the Graduate Fashion Foundation’s Talent of Tomorrow campaign.

Simon Baines, Enterprise Project Manager said: "Our Awards event has become an annual highlight amidst our many projects, events and competitions. 

“We are so excited to celebrate not only a number of monumental milestones in our work, but of course also our incredible community of students and recent graduates who among them, never cease to amaze us with their brilliant side-hustles, freelancing projects and portfolios.  It doesn’t matter how big or small somebody’s venture is, how much money it makes or what kind of project it is, we encourage nominations from everybody.

“There are many exceptional graduates we have worked with out there like Jane Hearst, Tarnjeet Kaur, and who are outstanding exemplars for this.  Our mission is to create graduates with entrepreneurial skills, not graduates who are entrepreneurs".

A chance to win big money

The Awards will feature the final of this year's Pitch2Win competition.  Three finalists will pitch their ideas to the audience for the chance to win £1,000 determined by an expert panel and a separate £1,000 prize voted for by the audience on the night.

Previous Pitch2Win participants have included successful graduate startups Leicester Gazette,  and Lead Balloon Studios.

Finalists are determined via a number of online pitching rounds and an in-person pitch day. If you have a business idea, you can get involved with the competition via dmumade.com/take-part

Once again, the awards will feature special guests including presenter Calum Leslie, from BBC Radio 1 Breakfast with Greg James.  The event will take place on Thursday 30 October, 5 – 7.30pm. If you would like to attend, please email dmumade@dmu.ac.uk

The DMU Freelancing & Entrepreneurship Awards will be sponsored by long-term supporter , which has supported previous awards evenings. 

More information about DMU Enterprise and Entrepreneurship is available here.