SNAAP+ Leadership Forum

Observations from 10 years of Arts Entrepreneurship Education

Dr. Linda EssigHerberger Institute Director of Enterprise and Entrepreneurship Programs

Session overview

•The landscape of arts entrepreneurship

•Small group activity

•Experiential learning in the Pave Program

•“Mind the Gaps”

•SNAAP findings

•Q&A

An arts entrepreneurship landscape

Source: http://www.societyaee.org/resources.html

Geographic trendsPainted with broad strokes…

•US: the individual artist as entrepreneur

•Australia: the entrepreneurial arts leader within organizations

•Europe: building cultural capital organizationally and physically while reacting to changing public funding via earned revenue approaches

Career Services orCurricular driven•Career Services as an administrative

home:

• U Mich EXCEL (hybrid); CalArts to Career

•Curricular and co-curricular within the arts

• ASU (A modality for making work that connects directly with audience/community); SMU

•Curricular: business school collaborations

• UW-Madison; Millikin

Research

•Books

•Journals • Grey literature

Professional Organizations•Association of Arts Administration

Educators, entrepreneurship focus group

•US Association of Small Business and Entrepreneurship, arts entrepreneurship special interest group

•Society for Arts Entrepreneurship Education

•Discipline-specific focus groups or committees within other organizations

•Management vs. entrepreneurship

•Individuals vs. organizations

•Within disciplines vs. across disciplines

•Multiple points of entry (Core study vs. add-on or extension)

Tensions:what and how

Tensions: definition

•Tautologies:

• Entrepreneurial action in the service of art

• Creating opportunity for artistic practice

•A management process? (lit review; Chang & Wyszomirski)

•Means and ends (two recent JAMLS articles)

•A discovery and creation process for connecting means with desirable ends through an appropriate mediating structure.

Description…

Source: Essig, L. (2015) Means and Ends: A Theory Framework for Understanding Entrepreneurship in the US Arts and Culture Sector. JAMLS 45 (4).

…and a metaphor

Source: Essig, L. (2014) Not about the Benjamins: Arts Entrepreneurship in Research, Education, and Practice. Keynote address for the Arts Business Symposium, UW-Madison..

Activity•What is happening on your campus?

• What is the locus of arts entrepreneurship activity?

• Where is arts entrepreneurship taught, if at all?

• What opportunities exist for arts entrepreneurship experience on campus?

Arts Entrepreneurship Skills

Source: Essig, L. (2016). Editor’s Introduction. Artivate: A Journal of Entrepreneurship in the Arts, 5(1).

Arts entrepreneurship pedagogies

•Traditional classroom

•Collaborative team projects

•Mentorship

•Experiential learning

Experiential learning•Pave Arts Venture Incubator

• Process and criteria

• Outputs

• Outcomes

• Examples

•Other models

Criteria•Open to all ASU students

•Art or “the arts” must be central to the enterprise

•Innovation:• Advance innovative forms of creative expression in the arts.• Combine existing disciplinary knowledge in original ways.• Make innovative use of existing technologies to support the

creation of artistic work.• Develop new technology for the creation, delivery or dissemination of creative work in the arts.• Initiate the creation of new business models to advance and support the arts.• Create and develop innovative arts education concepts and programs in the community.

Process

•Letter of intent reviewed by steering committee

•Finalist workshop by invitation

•Full proposals ranked by steering committee

•Register for 1 credit “Arts Venture Incubation”

Outputs•Seed funding (up to $5000, depending on

funding availability)

•Workshops on technical skills of business planning, financial management, marketing, and legal issues

•Mentorship

•Business services

•Graduated “firms”

Outcomes•Learning outcomes:

• Increased self-efficacy

• Domain knowledge

• Technical knowledge

•Cultural impacts

• Over 30 arts enterprises

Incubated firms•From the first group in 2006

• UrbanStew

• Progressive Theatre Workshop

•2015 cohort• ¡Habla!AZ

• Honest Words, Open Minds

• [nueBOX]

• University Gigs

•In development now• Interactive Tango Milonga

• Kerfuffle

• Gray Box Collective

• Catalyst Source: ¡Habla!AZ; photo by Elisa Gonzalez

Other university incubator models

•University of the Arts

•Millikin

•UNC Asheville

Activity: Mind the Gaps•Arts entrepreneurship skills

• Collaboration / Networking / Knowledge exchange

• Communications / Marketing

• Business management / finance

• Strategy / Opportunity recognition / Understanding context

• Creativity / Ideation

•Use your inventory to determine what’s missing

•Consider how knowledge and resource sharing can help fill the gaps

SNAAP Findings

•Q&A