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.

To address the call for examination of academic and professional approaches to arts entrepreneurship, we summarize the academic arts entrepreneurship programs in the State of North Carolina and conduct a pilot study with data gathered from arts entrepreneurs who attended the 5th annual Southern Entrepreneurship in the Arts Conference in Greensboro, North Carolina. Our review of the descriptive data reveals that arts entrepreneurs face a variety of needs and challenges, which are psychological (e.g., peer support) as well as technical (e.g., start-up skills). These findings suggest that, as prior literature stresses, arts entrepreneurship education programs should entail both the “entrepreneurship mindset” aspect and the “venture creation” aspect, so we advocate a holistic approach that combines both these perspectives with other related courses. We conclude, based on our exploratory study, that collaborative and flexible approaches, such as cross-campus programs for arts entrepreneurship education in higher education, could have beneficial outcomes for art entrepreneurs. Implications for future research are discussed.