Not a dirty word: Arts entrepreneurship and higher education

Abstract

While the majority of creative, performing, and literary artists are self-employed, relatively few tertiary arts schools attempt to develop capabilities for venture creation and management (and entrepreneurship more broadly) and still fewer do so effectively. This article asks why this is the case. It addresses underlying conceptual and philosophical issues encountered by arts educators, arguing that in all three senses of the term: new venture creation; career self-management; and being enterprising, entrepreneurship is essential to career success in the arts. However, the practice of entrepreneurship in the arts is significantly different from the practice of entrepreneurship in business, in terms of the artist's drivers and aims, as well as the nature of entrepreneurial opportunities, contexts and processes. These differences mean that entrepreneurship curricula cannot simply be imported from Business schools. This article also examines the arts-idiosyncratic challenge of negotiating distinctive and potentially conflicting entrepreneurial aims, using career identity theory. It concludes by suggesting strategies by which adaptive entrepreneurial artist identities can be developed through higher education programs.

Artists and Multiple Job Holding—Breadwinning Work as Mediating Between Bohemian and Entrepreneurial Identities and Behavior

“…For them, the issue is to avoid multiple job holding and to adopt behavior that enables them to make a living out of their art. These artists would benefit from a greater effort from the higher education in the arts to include preparation for entrepreneurial skills and knowledge on sector-specific rules in order to enhance employability, such as explored by Bridgstock (2013) and Hausmann (2010) 9 . For artists avoiding commercialism and entrepreneurialism, the issue of multiple job holding will be the ability to find income bringing work and employment that is nonexploitable and stable enough to open up space for energy and time spent on their art works.…”

“…The usual sense of the term 'entrepreneurship'-involving pursuit of profit and commercial gain-does not necessarily apply to artists: 'Put simply, artists tend to want to make art and make a living from it-business entrepreneurs tend to want to run a successful enterprise' (Bridgstock, 2013, p. 128). As a result, entrepreneurship education in the arts tends to be a controversial topic, as any commercial emphasis relation to the artist's career will be incongruent with many artists and art educator's values (Bridgstock, 2013;Hausmann, 2010). However, Eikhof and Haunschild's (2007) study of German theaterworkers points to the way a bohemian lifestyle may go hand in hand with a certain entrepreneurial self-management.…”

“…This left above all students lacking contacts in the art world, for example, by having artist parents, feeling empty-handed. They lacked knowledge of the art world when it comes to finding work, as well as how to access networks, an issue found to be essential for career success (Bridgstock, 2013;Hausmann, 2010). As such, the arts education of my respondents largely supported an identity formation close to the formerly outlined bohemian ethic.…”

“…Artists and creative workers have been targeted as forerunners of a kind of work subjectivity that is understood as entrepreneurialmanaging one's own career progression rather than through employment, recognizing opportunity, and managing risk (Bridgstock, 2013;Gill, 2014;Pralong et al, 2012) 4 . Diverse fields of creative and artistic work-especially the creative industries-have even been targeted by policymakers as the key to job growth, gross domestic product growth, and urban regeneration (Bridgstock, 2013;Eikhof &Warhurst, 2013;Florida, 2002) 5 . In Sweden, inspired by particularly British cultural policy, the former center-right government agreed on plan of action in 2009 to encourage collaboration between culture and business.…”

The Expected Job Satisfaction Affecting Entrepreneurial Intention as Career Choice in the Cultural and Artistic Industry

“…Similar trends are seen in other countries. In Australia, 80% of professional artists are self-employed [2]. Based on the Current Population Survey between 2003 and 2015, Woronkowicz and Noonan [3] found that many artists in the United States were freelancers or self-employed, unlike other industries; 37.4% of artists were self-employed while only 13.1% professional workers were self-employed overall.…”