Scholarship / Creative Director / Graphic Design - Leadership - Chevening Essay [2]

LEADERSHIP

Over the past decade, Indonesia's creative industry has shown significant potential for economic growth. After 8 years of experience as a brand designer, I co-founded Studio MU to accelerate this growth by serving as a strategic branding partner for creative professionals and SMEs.

As the Creative Director of Studio MU, I initiated a pro-bono branding programme, named CitraMU. The programme aims to empower creative professionals and enterprises in enhancing their visual branding. Through this programme, I have supported more than 15 creative SMEs, ranging from neighborhood laundromat to beauty products. One example involved a retired couple in Yogyakarta aspiring to launch an F&B business, where I took the responsibility of guiding them through market research, interviews, and end-to-end visual development. I helped establish their brand credibility and enabled them to launch the restaurant with a greater selling proposition and uniqueness.

Aside from visual branding, Studio MU also taps into education. I have engaged as a creative mentor with the Ministry of Tourism and Creative Economy and Indonesia Graphic Design Association (ADGI) through Wonderful Design, a G20 programme that provides training for creative professionals in Labuan Bajo. I led a workshop for 20 participants to identify their cultural symbols, reinterpret them into a modern design system, and develop a cultural visual identity. This training series sparked pride in their potential. As a result, one participant secured a mural project at Labuan Bajo Airport, while others began taking on design projects with confidence.

These experiences have strengthened my belief and shaped the foundation of how I approach leadership: as a creative leader who listens, identifies problems, and facilitates solutions. Through Studio MU, I am determined to advance Indonesia's creative economy by creating inclusive opportunities and generating employment.

One essay per thread.

Scholarship / Chevening Essay - Building Network in the Creative Industry [2]

Here is the prompt for my second essay

Relationship building and influence
Tell us about a professional relationship you have built and maintained. In your answer, please address:

How was the relationship formed, and what made it important?
What did you contribute to this relationship, and what did you gain?
How have you sustained or developed this relationship over time?
How will these skills help you build connections within the Chevening community and beyond?

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Building a sustainable creative industry requires collaboration across sectors. Beyond working with the government, I maintain relationships with other notable stakeholders in the creative industry, including ADGI and the local communities. I actively engage and show genuine interest in collaborating with a few key people in the industry.

During my time in Labuan Bajo, I met A, a design researcher at ADGI. What began as casual discussions on the creative economy soon developed into a collaboration. He invited me to contribute an essay on the impact of deindustrialisation in Indonesia's creative industry for his publication, Form & Pressure. My relationship with ADGI continued to grow, including with its former Chairman, R, who later invited me to participate as an exhibitor in Bintaro Design District: Designer's Response "Uncertainty."

Apart from my professional network, I actively seek to expand my connections within local communities. One such experience was joining a culinary tour, where I met D, the founder of LK in Nusa Tenggara Timur (NTT), a community that champions local food and cultural preservation. I proposed a collaboration to co-create a participatory creative zine that archives local foods and ingredients. The zine aimed to encourage young people in NTT to reconnect with their food heritage. I designed the template for the zine, which was later responded to by more than 20 young people from the community.

As a future Chevening scholar, I want to participate in the Glasgow Arts & Humanities Partnership Catalyst to facilitate knowledge exchange between the UK and Indonesia's creative community and cultural heritage. Through this programme, I aim to engage with academic and sectoral partners to position Studio MU as a bridge for creative development, bringing international collaboration into local contexts.

Undergraduate / GLOCAL PROGRAMME - CREATIVE INDUSTRY POLICY AND ECOSYSTEM [2]

Please be as precise as you can when writing your Supporting Personal Statement. Do not repeat yourself and do not exceed the word limit (1,200 words):

Answer:

My academic and professional paths have always been shaped by a curiosity that extends beyond design aesthetics. During my undergraduate studies, I immersed myself not only in design practice but also in art history and theory through courses such as Western and Eastern Art Reviews. Furthermore, I was eager to understand how cultural products could be transformed into viable enterprises, thus I complemented this with an Entrepreneurship course and an internship at PPP Branding House. My early academic journey revealed how creativity could serve as a strategic driver of business and laid the foundation for my career in the creative industry.

Over the past eight years of my professional career, I have witnessed Indonesia's creative sector expand rapidly while many creative SMEs still struggle to scale due to limited branding access. To address this, I founded MMM, a social enterprise providing affordable branding for creative SMEs. MMM has supported over 15 SMEs across F&B, beauty, and home industries. One notable case was KKK, a local food delivery business that grew significantly after our rebranding project. Following the brand relaunch, KKK expanded its team, creating 10+ new jobs. Its presence also grew bigger, now with 8,000+ followers and 20+ local food merchants on the platform.

Beyond individual clients, I also actively became a collaborator with the AAAA. My interest and concern in economic issues facing Indonesia's creative sector led to an invitation to contribute to a publication project about Indonesia's creative industry, named Form & Pressure. In this collaboration, I contributed by researching and writing an essay on how economic deindustrialization impacted the creative industry. This project deepened my understanding of how policy and economy influence creative ecosystems.

My journey building MMM has shaped my aspiration to position Indonesia's creative industry as a true driver of national economic growth and employability. However, helping SMEs has shown me the limitations of creativity when it is not supported with strong business and policy foundations. I often struggle to measure how much branding alone contributes to the growth, which made me realize that creative industries must be paired with solid systemic strategies.

To address this, I am eager to learn from GLOCAL programme Track A, a programme that weaves together entrepreneurship and creative industry policy to study how global and local forces shape economies. Three courses in particular are Creative Cities: Intervention Models and Entrepreneurial Dynamics, Entrepreneurship in Emerging Sectors, and Creative Industries in the Global Economy. These modules will help me understand how entrepreneurial ecosystems can be built in mid-sized cities and how to analyze industry policies that shape creative enterprises, enabling them to drive growth and scale sustainably. With this knowledge, I aim to decentralize Indonesia's creative economy by strengthening regional creative ecosystems. Starting from my hometown, SSS, where 75% of enterprises operate informally, limiting their economic impact. MMM will expand to support at least 45 SMEs by 2030 and co-developing a creative entrepreneurship curriculum with local university, UUU. By 2035, MMM aims to establish the SSS Creative Hub, an inclusive space for knowledge sharing and professional development. This hub will have an integrated approach in business advancement, education, and infrastructure, creating a model for regional creative economy growth.

With that goal in mind, for my dissertation, I intend to explore adapting the Preston Model for Indonesia's creative economy. This research would investigate how community wealth-building frameworks, originally developed in industrial contexts, could be reinterpreted to empower creative SMEs in mid-sized Indonesian cities such as Salatiga. This research will test whether mechanisms for local ownership, procurement, and institutional coordination can be reinterpreted to strengthen creative SMEs' economic contributions.

Lastly, I consider myself a strong candidate for the GLOCAL programme because of my experience beyond academic and professional. I expand my role as mentor and collaborator. Partnering with the Ministry of Tourism and Creative Economy and the AAAA, I served as a creative mentor in Wonderful Design, a G20 programme in Labuan Bajo. I led workshops for 20 creative professionals, guiding them to reinterpret cultural symbols into modern design systems. This training series sparked new confidence and nurturing local talent. Beyond institutional collaborations, I also engaged with grassroots NGO such as LK in NTT, an NGO that champions local food and cultural preservation. I proposed a collaboration to co-create a participatory creative zine that archives local foods and ingredients. The zine aimed to encourage young people in NTT to reconnect with their food heritage. More than 20 young people contributed, reconnecting with local foods and traditions that are often overlooked in the face of global market pressures.

My roles as creative practitioner, mentor, and collaborator have given me insight into the opportunities and obstacles at multiple layers of Indonesia's creative economy. These experiences demonstrate my ability to work across institutions, from government, association to grassroots organisations, and to adapt to diverse cultural settings which also aligns with GLOCAL's emphasis on global-local interplay.

As a GLOCAL graduate, I aim to expand StudioMU's impact to bridge academic frameworks and local implementation to help creative SMEs grow sustainably, create jobs, and shape regional policy that supports inclusive creative economies.