Observations from 10 years of Arts Entrepreneurship Education

1. SNAAP+
Leadership Forum
Observations from 10 years of
Arts Entrepreneurship Education
Dr. Linda Essig
Herberger Institute Director of Enterprise and
Entrepreneurship Programs

2. Session overview
• The landscape of arts entrepreneurship
• Small group activity
• Experiential learning in the Pave
Program
• “Mind the Gaps”
• SNAAP findings
• Q&A

3. An arts entrepreneurship
landscape
Source: http://www.societyaee.org/resources.html

4. Geographic trends
Painted 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

5. Career Services or
Curricular 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

6. Research
• Books
• Journals • Grey literature
Pave Program in Arts
Entrepreneurship
Prepared for: Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation
Prepared by: Linda Essig and Mollie Flanagan
Pave Program in Arts Entrepreneurship
Arizona State University
January 2015; revised January 2016
How it’s Being Done
Arts Business Training across the U.S.

7. 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

8. • 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

9. 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)

10. • 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).

11. …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..

12. 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?

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

14. Arts entrepreneurship
pedagogies
• Traditional classroom
• Collaborative team projects
• Mentorship
• Experiential learning

15. Experiential learning
• Pave Arts Venture Incubator
• Process and criteria
• Outputs
• Outcomes
• Examples
• Other models

16. 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.

17. 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”

18. 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”

19. Outcomes
• Learning outcomes:
• Increased self-efficacy
• Domain knowledge
• Technical knowledge
• Cultural impacts
• Over 30 arts enterprises

20. 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

21. Other university
incubator models
• University of the Arts
• Millikin
• UNC Asheville

22. 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

23. SNAAP Findings
• Q&A