This article reports on a survey of artistic entrepreneurs of Indian classical dance companies and studios (ICDC&S) in the diaspora and their clientele. Results suggested that diaspora ICDC&S are fairly sustainable businesses. Artistic entrepreneurs reported good self-efficacy in diaspora engagements, with variations due to gender, dance style, and entrepreneurial experience. The majority of ICDC&S clients reported high pro-cultural attitudes, a fair propensity to explore and commit to one’s ethnic group, and high ideal-type value orientations. Diaspora ICDC&S are emerging sustainable business models that connect the artistic worlds to market realities and deploy culture/values to strategically carve a space within complex globalized landscapes.
This study explores artistic entrepreneurship as a strategy for cultural revitalization and social cohesion in rural contexts affected by depopulation. Drawing on a collaborative and participatory process of social mapping, the study analyzes how artistic practice can operate as a method that connects situated knowledge production, community engagement, and public cultural projection. The research is articulated around three analytical axes: (1) collaborative artistic practices as vehicles of memory, belonging, and recognition; (2) participatory mapping as a process of cultural placemaking and community leadership; and (3) the transformation of collaborative processes into public cultural outputs, with the exhibition understood as a form of artistic entrepreneurship with social projection. The methodology combines the analysis of discursive fragments and visual artefacts—intervened stones, photographs, and site-based installations—interpreted as symbolic mediations in the construction of place-based meaning. The results show that collective artistic creation not only strengthens identity and memory but also activates collaborative networks, fosters local leadership, and projects rural narratives to wider audiences. The findings highlight the capacity of artistic entrepreneurship to generate expanded cultural and social value beyond aesthetic outcomes, offering a replicable methodological model for sustainable cultural development and the strengthening of social capital in depopulated rural communities.
This paper conceptualizes the Canadian music industry as an entrepreneurial ecosystem, applying an ecosystem lens to a creative sector where artists act as entrepreneurs. By examining systemic conditions such as finance, networks, leadership, talent, knowledge, and intermediary services, it highlights how cultural, economic, and institutional forces interact to generate innovation and value. At the same time, benefits are unevenly distributed: women, Black professionals, and other equity-deserving groups face persistent barriers to mentorship, leadership, and professional services. The music industry therefore illustrates both the potential and the paradox of entrepreneurial ecosystems. It raises a central question: how can an entrepreneurial ecosystem be considered productive when systemic exclusion prevents full participation?
This paper conceptualizes the Canadian music industry as an entrepreneurial ecosystem, applying an ecosystem lens to a creative sector where artists act as entrepreneurs. By examining systemic conditions such as finance, networks, leadership, talent, knowledge, and intermediary services, it highlights how cultural, economic, and institutional forces interact to generate innovation and value. At the same time, benefits are unevenly distributed: women, Black professionals, and other equity-deserving groups face persistent barriers to mentorship, leadership, and professional services. The music industry therefore illustrates both the potential and the paradox of entrepreneurial ecosystems. It raises a central question: how can an entrepreneurial ecosystem be considered productive when systemic exclusion prevents full participation?
This paper conceptualizes the Canadian music industry as an entrepreneurial ecosystem, applying an ecosystem lens to a creative sector where artists act as entrepreneurs. By examining systemic conditions such as finance, networks, leadership, talent, knowledge, and intermediary services, it highlights how cultural, economic, and institutional forces interact to generate innovation and value. At the same time, benefits are unevenly distributed: women, Black professionals, and other equity-deserving groups face persistent barriers to mentorship, leadership, and professional services. The music industry therefore illustrates both the potential and the paradox of entrepreneurial ecosystems. It raises a central question: how can an entrepreneurial ecosystem be considered productive when systemic exclusion prevents full participation?
While entrepreneurship in education continues to grow, the arts and arts administration fields are trailing behind new, innovative, and enterprising curriculum development and progress. The continued rise of online learning environments creates opportunities for dynamic partnership development that democratizes the current structures of entrepreneurship education within the arts. This article presents the case of creative social entrepreneurship curriculum development as an opportunity to democratize arts administration education, highlighting the innovative online learning approach of the Department of Arts Administration at the University of Kentucky. It outlines the background of the emerging arts and entrepreneurship education landscape and specifically highlights the opportunity gap to develop an enterprising culture across arts and arts administration curriculum and in partnership with Historically Black colleges and Universities (HBCUs), which presently lack arts administration and entrepreneurship curricula in their art and design programs. Importantly, the article illustrates the possibilities of transdisciplinary curriculum development through the creation of an online certificate series in creative social entrepreneurship and provides the concepts, context, and framework for curriculum development. The value of democratizing curriculum development is through innovative approaches within cross-institutional partnerships within and between institutions. As such, this article highlights the possibilities of building partnerships with HBCUs as part of the development process for the creative social entrepreneurship certificate program series
The COVID-19 pandemic significantly shifted the context of artistic and creative work, forcing individuals to adapt to wide-reaching changes in the way they operated in both work and life. Relying on interviews with data from 66 U.S.-based arts graduates, this article speaks to needs in sustaining creative life and work after the first year of the pandemic. Interviewees related that their needs for a sustainable creative work and life were primarily that they needed the social and physical distancing restrictions of the pandemic to end, more time and capacity to be creative, and monetary support. Ultimately, we argue that the changing context of the pandemic required substantial entrepreneurial ability toward being adaptable, superseding capacity for creativity during the first year of the pandemic. Our findings reflect that when arts entrepreneurs’ self-structured careers required new or intensified effort toward non-arts aspects of their work, their feelings of, or capacity for, creativity may be diminished.
While artificial intelligence (AI) stands to transform artistic practice and creative industries, little has been theorized about who owns AI for creative work. Lawsuits brought against AI compa-nies such as OpenAI and Meta under copyright law invite novel reconsideration of the value of creative work. This paper synthesizes across copyright, hybrid practice, and cooperative govern-ance to work toward collective ownership and decision-making. This work adds to research in arts entrepreneurship because copyright and shared value is so vital to the livelihood of working artists, including writers, filmmakers, and others in the creative industries. Sarah Silverman’s lawsuit against OpenAI is used as the main case study. The conceptual framework of material and machine, one and many, offers a lens onto value creation and shared ownership of AI. The framework includes a reinterpretation of the fourth factor of fair use under U.S. copyright law to refocus on the doctrinal language of value. AI uses the entirety of creative work in a way that is overlooked because of the small scale of one whole work relative to the overall size of the AI model. Yet a theory of value for creative work gives it dignity in its smallness, the way that one vote still has dignity in a national election of millions. As we navigate these frontiers of AI, exper-imental models pioneered by artists may be instructive far outside the arts.
Extant literature has revealed the issue of gender inequality in art and design education and entrepreneurship. Given that gender inequality hinders socio-economic development in any nation, it is crucial to gather empirical evidence on whether the entrepreneurial potential of art and design students is influenced by gender. Hence, this study examined the relationship between art and design students’ gender and their entrepreneurial potential. Using a well-structured questionnaire, the study sampled 204 art and design undergraduate students from different higher institutions across Nigeria. Data were collected from participants using a questionnaire that included measures of their entrepreneurial traits. The hypothesized relationships among variables were tested based on Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). The findings indicate that CFA and SEM results showed a good fit between the proposed model and the observed data for both female and male groups. This suggests that both genders of art and design students have significant potential to become entrepreneurs without any biases.
This paper investigates whether entrepreneurship training subsequently impacts artists’ labor market outcomes. Collecting data from major universities, we find that only 9.7% have arts entrepreneurship certificates; just 11.4% have any required arts entrepreneurship classes. Analyzing data from the American Community Survey (ACS) and controlling for demographic factors, fine arts graduates are 1.3% less likely to be employed and earn 8.7% lower annual earnings. However, individuals with both arts and entrepreneurial business training earn more and offset the earnings disadvantage by roughly a half. These results underscore the importance of integrating art entrepreneurship education with the sustainability of the arts sector.
Written as a concise guide for students and working professionals, this article examines and critiques the “portfolio career” in arts professional development to offer an alternative conceptual strategy to forge a sustainable life. Eight modes of arts work are explored (performing, teaching, creating, writing, healing, manufacturing, distributing, and administering). The “Platform Career” is proposed as an extension of and possible solution to the shortcomings of the portfolio career. In the platform model, one professional activity serves as a financial base for the artist’s panoply of creative work, providing health insurance and other employment benefits plus additional financial stability to reduce financial and emotional precarity.
ABSTRACT:The term cultural entrepreneurship is increasingly used in academic research to address the intersection of business developments and creative work. However, the concept itself is disputed. Unpacking varying definitions of the term, this article revisits literature on the topic, searching for the figures of the cultural entrepreneur that scholars create. The article suggests that the literature is dominated by hero figures, who are based on retrospective analyses of successful individuals, and tragic hero figures, who summarize the situation for most self-employed creatives, establishing a bleak outlook. As an alternative, the article suggests seeing cultural entrepreneurs as catalyst figures.
ABSTRACT:This study addresses the experiences of undergraduate entrepreneurs, including what motivates them, their challenges, and how they navigate both entrepreneurial activities and academic work. Using a snowball approach, a qualitative research design involving fifteen purposively selected respondents from among the sculpture students of the Nsukka Art School was used as a case study. Data collection and analysis were conducted using a semi-structured interview and a thematic analysis approach, respectively. Findings show that respondents are actively involved in entrepreneurial deeds within multiple non-sculpture related fields such as painting, graphic, communication design, T-shirt printing, portrait making, and utility wood sculptures. They are motivated by the quest to address personal financial constraints. Such entrepreneurial quests, however, expose them to specialization and operational, marketing, and managerial challenges. It is recommended that policymakers in academia, industry, and government work together toward repositioning student entrepreneurs by creating the enabling environment for economic growth. While a further study is needed to understand how undergraduates navigate their managerial challenges, the nuanced performance and difference in age and gender is noteworthy.
To launch Volume 12 of Artivate and mark the editorial team transition, we offer the following set of editorial essays to help catalyze conversations and contributions on the past and future of the field. The first is by outgoing coeditors Paul Bonin-Rodriguez and Neville Vakharia, who reflect on the field-building focus of their tenure and some of their key accomplishments. Their excellent retrospective is followed by essays from each of the new coeditors, exploring the origins and nature of their relationship to the field of arts entrepreneurship as well as the evolving topics those origins inspire. We hope that these essays encourage a similar reflection among our community and foster a more expansive conversation and examination of entrepreneurship in the arts.
The term cultural entrepreneurship is increasingly used in academic research to address the intersection of business developments and creative work. However, the concept itself is disputed. Unpacking varying definitions of the term, this article revisits literature on the topic, searching for the figures of the cultural entrepreneur that scholars create. The article suggests that the literature is dominated by hero figures, who are based on retrospective analyses of successful individuals, and tragic hero figures, who summarize the situation for most self-employed creatives, establishing a bleak outlook. As an alternative, the article suggests seeing cultural entrepreneurs as catalyst figures.
This study addresses the experiences of undergraduate entrepreneurs, including what motivates them, their challenges, and how they navigate both entrepreneurial activities and academic work. Using a snowball approach, a qualitative research design involving fifteen purposively selected respondents from among the sculpture students of the Nsukka Art School was used as a case study. Data collection and analysis were conducted using a semi-structured interview and a thematic analysis approach, respectively. Findings show that respondents are actively involved in entrepreneurial deeds within multiple non-sculpture related fields such as painting, graphic, communication design, T-shirt printing, portrait making, and utility wood sculptures. They are motivated by the quest to address personal financial constraints. Such entrepreneurial quests, however, expose them to specialization and operational, marketing, and managerial challenges. It is recommended that policymakers in academia, industry, and government work together toward repositioning student entrepreneurs by creating the enabling environment for economic growth. While a further study is needed to understand how undergraduates navigate their managerial challenges, the nuanced performance and difference in age and gender is noteworthy.
