Jakub's Fantasy Map World

Hello everyone, and welcome back to another blogpost from me! With the world of books and creative writing being closely related to the theme of fantasy worlds, I decided that it would be a great idea for me to share with you my fairly action-packed experience of the DiscoveReads book festival.  What is the DiscoveReads book festival? DiscoveReads is an annual book festival that is run by Suffolk Libraries on the bank holiday weekend in May every year. The 2025 festival hosted talks with six famous authors on a wide range of themes, from fictional novels to real-life political issues, as well as creative writing workshops. In addition to the main event being hosted in the Hold, displays featuring each of the books in the main event also appeared in six different libraries around Suffolk, for those who are unable to make it to Ipswich for the main event.  Tickets to attend events at the festival went up for sale on the 17th of April, with early bird sales running up until the 1...

Wow... it's been a while since I have made a post about how things have been getting on with my business idea... but I am back again, and it is time to present to you my experiences of attending a few events from the Ipswich Thrive programme! There is loads of fun to be had in both the events that I had attended, and so I hope you will read through the whole post to the end.  About Ipswich Thrive Business Week Ipswich Thrive was a series of events that revolved around celebrating the successes of local business and encouraging entrepreneurship and professional development in the area. Ipswich Thrive was organised by Ipswich Borough Council, with events taking place between the 10th and the 18th of March 2025 at a wide range of venues across the Ipswich area.  Over 20 different business and careers services, and government departments were involved in running the events contained within the programme, including the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), the University of Suffo...

Well, here we are then - the year of 2024 has come to an end with even more amazing things being achieved in relation to my business idea than last year - firstly, getting a chance to visit the British Library over the summer on four occasions to explore historic map designs, to getting going with some summer craft fairs and making my first sales, and securing some funding for my business idea. To celebrate the end of the year, I would like to provide a summary of the enterprise-related events that I have been to at the University of Suffolk, and elsewhere in the run-up to the Christmas break. Trust me, there are many exciting things that I have to show you this time round! Enterprise Festive Bootcamp - late October to early November 2024 For those who don't know what my previous posts on the bootcamps are all about, I would like to give a little introduction as to what the Bootcamp is all about. So, the Enterprise Festive Bootcamp was a craft-fair focused bootcamp, that was compos...

Yes guys, I am back again with a reflective post... it is about time that I briefly shared with you my experience of attending two craft fairs and trying to sell some fantasy maps!  So, the business selling adventure started with a trip to the Felixstowe Craft Fair on the 25th of August, and I must say that the craft fair contained some unexpected surprises that had started quite some time before the sales could even begin, with the leisure centre Wi-Fi being unreliable to connect to, affecting the vast majority of sellers at the fair, meaning that they have had to rely on mobile data to take card payments, or otherwise, were only able to take cash. My first sale from my business came just before 12 noon, when one family decided to snoop around my stall and was interested in my work. Now, I was engaging them in the usual talk about the maps that I had made, until the mum decided that they wanted a map of the Kingdom of Ventura and Lorentia and offered to pay me with a £20 note. Pro...

It's back, and it's more wilder than ever... yes, that's right - it's time to present to you the Make a Difference Bootcamp Grand Finale post from June 2024! As you may or may not know, the Make a Difference Start-up Bootcamp is a series of sessions revolving around social enterprise start-ups that are run by a talented Enterprise Team at the University of Suffolk, and consisted of eight sessions focusing on ideation, marketing and financial planning, starting on the 18th of June, and culminating with this session on the 18th of July, where eight Bootcampers competed for the chance to win a share of £2,000 of the prize money. Without further ado... let's get to the event itself! Grand Finale event The morning of the Grand Finale was mostly uneventful - I went back to the Hold to finish off the rest of Young's book, before deciding to go and have some packed lunch, with which my choices were much less interesting than the lunch that I had before going to last yea...

Hello all and welcome back to another post-bootcamp series blogpost! It has been a long time since I last did one of those blogposts, but man... I have been through so much in the last three months with my maps that I felt that it is time to update you all on how I have been getting on - especially since it has been over one year now since I finished the Make a Difference Bootcamp at the University of Suffolk!  Without further ado, let's get going with this post!  3D Expo - 6th of March So, this post-bootcamp report starts off with the trip to the 3D Expo at the beginning of March, to explore the different funding that I could obtain if I wanted to make 3D maps and models to sell in the future. The story started just before 1:00pm, where I was sat outside the Atrium, waiting to go inside. But it wasn't just the usual sitting around and nothing happening around me - I also witnessed a delegation of students from Malaysia being sent off, who had just finished visiting the Univer...