Artivate: A Journal of Entrepreneurship in the Arts

While many professional arts training programs prepare students to excel at the practice and performance of the arts, evidence suggests that many professional arts training programs may be failing to prepare students to be professional artists. A total of 11.1% of all recent college graduates with undergraduate arts degrees are unemployed (Carnevale, Cheah, & Strohl, 2012, p. 7).

Fifty-two percent of arts undergraduate alumni reported being dissatisfied with their institution’s ability to advise them about further career or education opportunities (SNAAP, 2012, p. 14). Eighty-one percent of all arts undergraduate alumni reported having a primary job outside of the arts for reasons of job security (SNAAP, 2012, p. 19). Many arts higher education administrators address the situation by advising arts students to attend business and entrepreneurship courses. However, these courses are often taught or presented outside of an arts training context. Arts entrepreneurship education can serve as contextual business/career/technology education for arts students; however, barriers make it difficult for administrators to create adequate curricular room for arts entrepreneurship education.

Furthermore, the teaching and learning of contextual business/career/technology education in professional arts training programs may often be thought of as helpful but not essential, as evidenced by the National Office of Arts Accreditation (NOAA) classification of these types of courses as general education units. This essay supports the need for arts entrepreneurship education, and discusses key barriers to recognizing arts entrepreneurship education as essential to professional arts training.

Creative and performing arts schools are increasingly facing the challenge of developing curricula to address an employability agenda in higher education. Arts entrepreneurship education is thought to address this need because it supports the unique nature of the work circumstances of creative and performing arts graduates. As an emerging area of research, arts entrepreneurship education faces the challenge of not only being relevant and important to creative and performing arts education but of being robust enough to contribute to a “paradigm shift” (Beckman, 2011, p. 29). With this in mind, this article attempts to clarify a recurring theme of arts entrepreneurship education, this being the development of an “entrepreneurial mindset.”

We argue that if an entrepreneurial mindset is to be considered an essential aspect of arts entrepreneurship education, educators need to have a good understanding of what it means and how it might be taught. We examine data from four interviews with arts educators who have responsibility for teaching arts entrepreneurship in creative and performing arts schools. Their experiences enable us to clarify the meaning of an “entrepreneurial mindset” in a creative and performing arts context in higher education and to make suggestions about teaching and learning.

This paper applies the social bricolage construct to arts entrepreneurship, utilizing an indepth case study for illustration. The importance of six key elements including: making do, a refusal to be constrained by limitations, improvisation, social value creation, stakeholder participation, and persuasion, are identified and discussed in light of the recent formation of the Grand River Jazz Society. Bricolage is shown to be a process whereby entrepreneurs with local knowledge and access to local resources are best able to create enterprises using the materials at hand, rather than overextending their efforts with externally directed attributes requiring unattainable resources. As such, entrepreneurial process elements may be emulated from successful social bricolage examples, recognizing that each context, community, and circumstances will require their own unique solutions.

Artists play a seminal role in advancing humanity through place-based creative initiatives that change not only the aesthetics of place, but also the aesthetics of belonging. Creative placemaking initiatives should provide authentic opportunities for community members to express their relationship with their physical and social environment. Current models of creative placemaking are tethered to the built environment and urban revitalization. An expanded model of creative placemaking is needed to address the complexities of today’s urban neighborhoods, a new model that develops places of belonging for the collective good; measures empowerment, cultural stewardship and community attachment as indicators of success; and is committed to addressing the root causes of social inequity through artist-led civic engagement activities. Artists develop arts-based initiatives that fully engage and empower a community’s capacity to self-express their distinct cultural identity through place. Artists equipped with nimble entrepreneurial skills who are guided by a spirit of authentic collaboration can be significant change agents in their communities. Established and emerging creative practitioners will benefit from identifying cross-sector collaboration that expands the role of artistic life into civic life.