Jasmine Kuti-Smith Is Building a Creative Home Through FreeEve

How the Starting Up, Starting Out™ programme helped a multidisciplinary Southwark artist turn an expansive creative vision into a clearer, more sustainable organisation.

For Jasmine Kuti-Smith, creativity has never belonged to only one discipline.

Her work moves across theatre, film, television, performance, visual art, fashion, music, spatial design and creative production. Trained in art and design, performance design for stage and screen, and creative producing, Jasmine has built a practice around collaboration, experimentation and the power of art to create connection.

That multidisciplinary experience inspired FreeEve: an emerging creative platform, artist collective and social enterprise intended to bring artists together, support collaboration and create spaces in which people can feel authentic, connected and whole.

“Freedom Eve is a place, a home, a place to feel authentic and whole.”

The vision was powerful. The challenge was turning it into an organisation with the foundations, partnerships and resources required to last.

Creating more than a production company

Jasmine’s ambition for FreeEve extends beyond producing creative work.

She imagines an online platform and in-person community through which artists can meet, exchange ideas, develop new work and build relationships across disciplines. Through a planned community interest company, Freedom Eve Productions, she wants to connect performers, designers, musicians, filmmakers, fashion creatives and other artists through productions, storytelling, gatherings and shared creative experiences.

At the heart of the idea is belonging.

Jasmine wants FreeEve to help bridge the distance between grassroots creative practice, the performing arts industry and popular culture. It is an attempt to build the kind of creative home that many artists need but struggle to find: somewhere that values experimentation, lived experience, community and collective growth.

Her vision is grounded in what she describes as sustainable problem-solving, co-creation, social transformation and “mapping futures and legacies.”

Moving from a solo vision to a sustainable organisation

Before joining Starting Up, Starting Out™ with Southwark LAP, Jasmine had already spent several years researching and developing the idea.

She had invested heavily in her arts education, taken part in free enterprise sessions and sought business-development knowledge wherever she could find it. She had also built relationships with artists and creative professionals who believed in the potential of the work.

But FreeEve remained largely a solo venture.

Jasmine needed support to translate her creative thinking into a sustainable organisational model. That meant developing stronger business plans, improving her understanding of financial sustainability and marketing, identifying potential collaborators and becoming more confident about communicating the organisation’s purpose.

“We had a strong vision and commitment to supporting our community, but we needed guidance on business planning, financial sustainability, marketing and developing the confidence and skills to grow our impact.”

Her ambition was not simply to launch something quickly. It was to create the foundations for work that could grow responsibly, reach more people and continue delivering value over the long term.

Finding the space to think strategically

One of the programme’s most significant contributions was giving Jasmine the opportunity to step away from immediate tasks and look at the organisation as a whole.

Like many early-stage founders, she had been concentrating on the work directly in front of her: developing ideas, maintaining her creative practice and working out how to move the venture forward with limited resources.

Through the programme’s mentoring and practical sessions, she began thinking more strategically about FreeEve’s purpose, structure and route to growth.

“The most transformative part of the programme was gaining the confidence and clarity to think strategically about our organisation rather than just focusing on day-to-day challenges.”

The programme helped Jasmine refine the vision and begin developing a more realistic plan. It also reinforced an important lesson: building a sustainable organisation takes time.

Rather than treating that as a limitation, Jasmine has come to see it as part of the process. Strong foundations require planning, collaboration and the willingness to develop an idea in stages.

Learning alongside people who understood

The relationships created through the programme were equally valuable.

Connecting with other founders facing similar questions gave Jasmine access to new perspectives, encouragement and a supportive network. She was able to share ideas openly while learning from people who were also trying to turn community-rooted ambitions into sustainable organisations.

For Jasmine, this sense of belonging was particularly important.

As a woman of colour from a working-class background, she has often had to navigate creative and professional environments in which her experiences were not fully understood. She describes gaining an arts education as both a privilege and a difficult experience, particularly when navigating predominantly white spaces.

Being part of a programme designed for Black and Global Majority-led organisations meant she did not have to repeatedly explain the barriers surrounding access to funding, networks and opportunity.

“It was refreshing to be in a space where our experiences, challenges and ambitions were understood without needing to explain or justify them.”

The programme recognised those barriers while also placing emphasis on the knowledge, creativity and potential already present within the cohort.

That distinction mattered. Jasmine left feeling not only better informed but validated, encouraged and more confident about what she could build.

Becoming a different kind of leader

The experience has also influenced how Jasmine thinks about leadership.

For an artist accustomed to self-producing and carrying a project independently, leadership could easily become associated with personally holding every idea, decision and responsibility.

The programme helped her move towards a more collaborative understanding.

“Leadership isn’t about having all the answers. It’s about listening, supporting others and creating an environment where people feel valued and able to contribute.”

Jasmine has become more comfortable seeking feedback, adapting her approach and learning from challenges. She now sees empowering others not as stepping away from leadership, but as one of its most important expressions.

That is especially relevant to FreeEve. An artist collective and creative community cannot be built by one person alone. Its success will depend on creating genuine opportunities for collaborators to shape the work, bring their own expertise and develop a shared sense of ownership.

Building stronger foundations for FreeEve

Since completing the programme, the most significant change has been greater clarity.

Jasmine now has a stronger understanding of the organisation she wants to build, the community it is intended to serve and the steps required to develop it sustainably.

FreeEve’s plans are becoming more structured. Its purpose can be communicated more clearly, and decisions can be made in relation to a longer-term direction rather than only the pressures of the moment.

The next stage is to deepen the organisation’s reach while protecting the quality and integrity of its work.

Jasmine wants to establish stronger partnerships, increase awareness of FreeEve and secure the funding and support required to bring its online and in-person community to life. She also wants to find collaborators who share her commitment to hope, creativity, diversity, inclusion and legacy-building.

The Starting Up, Starting Out™ programme has not reduced Jasmine’s expansive vision. It has helped her give that vision shape.

When asked to describe the experience in three words, she chose:

Empowering. Inspiring. Encouraging.