I will soon be teaching a new course called Arts Entrepreneurship here at Drexel. I’ve been preparing for this on and off since last summer. In addition to reviewing literature and current thinking on the topic I have been looking at offerings in various higher education locations, especially those with a music focus.
There appears to be some confusion regarding just what arts entrepreneurship means. Some researchers have been able to identify 2 distinct tracks, or types of entrepreneurship. One relates to enhanced student preparation for careers or potential careers after graduation. The other mirrors “true” entrepreneurship, the creation of new ventures and enterprises. It appears to me that too much emphasis is being placed on the former definition here, not the latter.
Let’s call the first track the professional development track. In it the student imagines how h/she can adapt h/her skill area to the existing marketplace. Yes, this is entrepreneurial thinking, but it appears to result in a type of masquerade exercise. In other words, how can I form my own chamber ensemble (or continue one that I began with in college) and dress it up so that it can survive in a particular location. All sorts of adaptations are tried, from repertoire to presentations off the stage, to programming for specialized populations.
Some colleges include enhanced career services as part of an entrepreneurship definition. Among these are how to construct a portfolio, how to better prepare oneself for auditions, how to write cover letters, resumes, grants, etc. This is not entrepreneurship, but good professional development.
There are few examples of the second track, that of imagining and creating new ventures and enterprises. Two reasons why stand out immediately. One, there is no venture capital support system for arts enterprises; and two, there are few who can teach it. However, I also believe that as a field, and I mean here the arts, not just music, we severely lack the imagination and chutzpah to break out of our well-beaten paths and take risks.
If ever there were a time when new ideas and new ventures were needed in our field, it’s now. We look just like we did decades ago: same products, same ideas, same problems. Correct me if I’m wrong.
As I see it, only our colleges and universities can stimulate new thinking, and new enterprises. It’s there that risk-taking is permissable, where ideas can be tested and given life. Let’s get off Track One and onto Track Two!
9 responses to “Arts Entrepreneurship — Lack of Imagination, Lack of Chutzpah?”
I think your analysis is spot on, but it’s just those “few examples” of venture creation that we need to emphasize.
As a fellow music educator, I can confirm that it’s difficult for those currently teaching in schools of music (who were all taught that excellence would result in opportunity and if things weren’t working, just be more excellent) to adjust to entrepreneurial (as opposed to career development) thinking.
There are a couple of shining examples out there, such as Margo Drakos and InstantEncore.com which provides online social media products for a range of musical organizations. She’s a former cellist, of Curtis and Pittsburgh Symphony credentials.
Folks like Amy Bogard, a artist now leading visual thinking workshops (see Drawing Down the Vision) with Adam Siemiginowski (of Proctor & Gamble) are another example.
Both of these ventures and their creators were featured at last weekend’s Arts Enterprise National Summit in Kansas City. Arts Enterprise is a student-focused organization that operates in the gap between arts and business schools on ten campuses across the U.S. That it focuses on venture creation, rather than traditional career development (what you identify as track one) is probably one reason it has been slow to catch. I’d encourage you to consider forming an Arts Enterprise Chapter at Drexel as part of your course.
So, how will you instill in your students the values of “imagining and creating new ventures and enterprises”? If, indeed, there are few who can teach it, why not tell us how it should be done. Pass the stick. This blog post is pretty dull in that way so far!
Great post, Jim. I just posted a response over on my blog. More grist for the mill:
http://www.artsjournal.com/artfulmanager/main/is-arts-entrepreneurship-train.php
I agree, Jim, that we’re stuck trying to support an old model that is out of touch with contemporary culture. We need to build some new paths for classical music.
I’m a big fan of Clayton Christensen’s book, The Innovator’s Dilemma, in which he distinguishes between sustaining technologies and disruptive technologies. Sustaining technologies being those that “improve the performance of established products,” and disruptive technologies are those innovations that “a few fringe (and generally new) customers value.”
I can’t help but draw comparisons to the classical music field, where the innovation is almost exclusively toward sustaining an old programming model (sustaining technology), rather than truly new, disruptive innovation (disruptive technology) that would lead new audiences to engage with classical music.
Like you said, risk taking is not common in most classical music groups, but there are pockets of experimentation where the fundamental product of classical music is taking a new form to engage today’s audiences. That kind of experimentation can and should co-exist alongside traditional programming models.
Although ground-level training is essential to nurture the next generation of decision makers, we have to fearlessly build new programming and community engagement models at the institutional level now, or your students will have far fewer opportunities with which to experiment in the future.
I also agree with this perspective and the comments of my colleague at University of Michigan – Mark Clague. Arts Enterprise is an excellent way to get students from a number of disciplines thinking about an entrepreneurial approach to creating, producing, and supporting art in ways other than traditional career development. It does seem to fit between and across many disciplines, and the original group spawned at University of Michigan caters to students from a wide range of majors.
We have found that a great difficulty with your track two is that variety of entrepreneur is generally nurtured in business school, but the problem there is the reality of repayment of student loans for the higher costs often associated with MBA. This can easily overshadow a focus on artistic entrepreneurial endeavor – where the risk and potential loss may be greater, and as you point out, venture capital is scarce. Break a leg with your new course!
Crucial distinctions you are making here, James. Three thoughts you inspired in me:
1) “Artists Are Entrepreneurs” is a truism that has outlived its value. “Artists” are not one thing, nor are “entrepreneurs.” SOME artists are entrepreneurs for SOME of their working life.
2) Art schools and training do need to prepare students to create lives for themselves as artists, as cultural actors. The artists who survive and thrive do this: their artistic, professional, and financial lives are CREATED and recreated. Their is some entrepreneurial thinking in this, but it is not, strictly speaking, entrepreneurism.
3) I think for these skills — how to build a sustainable life — artists learn best form other artists. Too much professional development is non-artists talking down to artists, who aren’t really listening. Artists U is a program in Philly I started to do that. And we’re now expanding to Baltimore and Chicago. Since you are in Philly (I didn’t know!), we should chat!
As a former Eastman and Yale student, I provide notes direct from the field on this subject and can attest to the fact that school did not prepare me for professional life, or support or encourage the kind of creative thinking I’ve used now in the creation of my own career. I attended Eastman before the ALP and Yale before their very recent efforts to provide some professional development for students. That being said, I have been developing my own career path outside the world of non profits and have single handedly created a sucessful community music school as a business venture. I have had interest from some prominent business leaders in my community that have offered me financial backing,(and which I have yet to utilize,) and I have used my own creativity to come up with a venture that fills a gap in my home community, making it relevant and filling a need–it is this creative thinking I believe every artist has and is capable of utilizing for their own benefit. Artists need to be exposed to alternative creative thinking such as this beyond traditional practicing and performing. This brings relevancy and ideas of possibility, then inspiration and the impetus to act. This is the future of arts entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship can indeed be taught to musicians, as it is a specific mindset that most effectively is learned through direct experience or exposure to others who exemplify this philosophy and through encouragement to think differently. Yes, professional development is also crucial, but to go beyond this is where I believe is the future success of professional music careers. Good luck with your new course!
I’ll certainly agree with most of Jim’s observations about arts entrepreneurship curricula.
Indeed, the professional development (PD) side of things has emerged as Jim states, yet I think that some of these programs are in a state of flux as they move to something a bit “truer” to the ethos of entrepreneurship’s promise.
We should note that one typically finds this model in our larger music conservatories – and of course, those research one universities who aspire to that end. As one who teaches arts entrepreneurship and writes a bit in this field I agree with Jim wholeheartedly that the PD model is not entrepreneurship education by any means – but it is something that we should expect students (as “professional musicians & artists” in accreditation parlance) to possess. That is, if one is being trained to be a “professional musician or artist” then one should hold the materials that a “professional” is expected to hold by their peers – if not their potential employers. [I penned a essay on this exact topic recently, so the issue is still rather fresh].
Yet, I would caution that “true entrepreneurship” is not exactly articulated in the discipline. If one examines entrepreneurial theory (and I appear to be one of the few of my arts peers who has a penchant for this activity), we would find that there is no consensus in the business school concerning a definition of entrepreneurship. Though one could read this as a negative, it is instead a rather liberating development for the arts entrepreneurship classroom. For example, one of my favorite “theory” articles by Kelly Shaver is “Person, Process Choice” (I’ll be glad to give a full citation if need requires) that appeared in Entrepreneurial Theory and Practice some 20 years ago or so. The gist of the article is that entrepreneurship is a behavior and new venture creation (as we observe it) is simply a consequence of that behavior.
The implications of this single idea in the classroom are epic – especially in the arts classroom. So, instead of simply teaching how to start new arts ventures, an instructor can begin to nurture a distinct behavior through an arts entrepreneurship curriculum. This is something I do with each entrepreneurship course I teach and I’ve done it at 2 institutions. This idea may not be perfect, but I have had some success and so have a number of my students.
Certainly much more to discuss on the topic.
Hello, I am a Drexel Alumni. The first to graduate with a Minor in Dance from Drexel. I believe I have something to contribute to this discussion.
Miriam Giguere (Dance Director at Drexel then & now) and my cohorts imagined a Dance Major, a graduate program, a dedicated space for the program, a tenured staff position and adjunct faculty, and enough money for anyone who wanted to dance to participate. Many of these things have been manifested over the last decade. However, my freshman year we had a puny company of 15 dancers and an even punier budget. In fact, the University would only put costumes on 10 dancers. Horrified, I did what any artist/entrepreneur would do. I raised enough money for everyone to get costumes. It was a simple thing, I set-up the practice of selling advertising in the programs (a practice that is still used today at Drexel). This is just one example of hundreds that my cohorts and I worked on for the Drexel Dance program.
This is what it means to be an artist/entrepreneur, creative problem solving. I postulate that you can find more examples of this entrepreneurship if you look into the Dance world than you can in other disciplines- why? Because we are the least funded and the most expensive of all the art forms. Even in the best of economic times dancers are generally broke and unpaid relatively speaking. Here are some examples of entrepreneurial genius that come from having your back perpetually against the wall:
1. The Flash Mob dance craze. If you are invisible, take the dance to them.
2. ODC Dance Commons, San Francisco. 2 successful and struggling dance schools combine their efforts into a giant enterprise where they are really much more than the sum of their parts.
3. Randy Jackson’s America’s Best Dance Crew, TV show. A spin off from So You Think You Can Dance. Not only a money maker for Randy, but creating jobs for dancers everywhere.
To my mind, there are amazing examples of artist/entrepreneurship flourishing in the Dance world. But perhaps the “early expiration date” of most dance careers necessitates us leaving the classroom for the world of work before we get to advanced degrees and the classes you are describing?
I’d love to hear how Dance factors into the formulation of your theories, if at all?