There are moments when you realise the quiet work is starting to be seen.
CreateScene has been shortlisted as a finalist for Creative StartUp of the Year at the UK StartUp Awards for the South East. On paper, it’s a regional shortlist. It’s not a win, it’s not national, and it’s easy to downplay it. But the truth is, it means more than that.
Because this is the first time something external has looked at what we’ve been building and said, this matters.
For a long time, CreateScene has existed in that space most things do at the beginning. Built behind the scenes. Shared with people who don’t always fully get it yet. Growing slowly, sometimes quietly, sometimes feeling like you’re pushing something forward that no one is really paying attention to.
And that’s the part no one really talks about.
Not the launch, not the highlight reel, but the long stretch in between where you’re just… consistent. Building, refining, believing, without much noise coming back.
So to be shortlisted, especially in a category like Creative StartUp of the Year, and against over 2,000 businesses across the UK, feels significant. Not because it changes anything about the work, but because it confirms something we’ve felt all along.
That we’re building something real.
What makes it feel even bigger is how it’s been built. There’s no big team behind CreateScene. No large funding rounds or layers of infrastructure. It’s been Rich and Frazer, two friends with completely different skill sets, figuring it out as we go. An artist and a developer, trying to build something that didn’t exist in the way we felt it should.
Every feature, every update, every step forward has come from that place. Not from scale, but from intent.
So to now be in the mix with established startups, to be recognised in the same conversation, it’s a moment. A small one in the grand scheme of where we want to go, but an important one.
Because recognition like this does something subtle.
It doesn’t change the work, but it changes how people look at it. It makes people pause. It makes them take a second look. And sometimes, that’s all you need.
We’re still at the beginning. There’s a long way to go, a lot still to build, and a bigger vision ahead of this. But moments like this remind you that the direction is right.
That the thing you’ve been quietly building, step by step, is starting to make sense to the world around it.
And that’s enough to keep going.