Arts and Culture Entrepreneurism

I found out rather quickly that cultural entrepreneurism has a fairly specific definition and that I had misrepresented it.  Please check out a link that one of my readers provided (www.culturalentrepreneur.org).  What this organization does is provide incredible value to its communities both close in and in a wider definition.  And, there are other organizations providing similar service and value. 

So, as you have noticed, I have changed the entitling of this week’s blog to Arts and Culture Entrepreneurism, as I am specifically interested in enabling emerging artists and artist enablers to imagine and create a future for the arts and culture in their communities that is more vital, more enlivening and more integrated into daily life than is now the case. 

I would also like to thank Andrew Taylor, who in his blog, the Artful Manager, provided links to organizations that provide (venture) capital support to artists for their creative ideas.  Please check out his blog on this topic at (www.artsjournal.com/artfulmanager/main/preparing-the-cultural-entrepr.php).  Andrew has been a leader in the field of arts and culture entrepreneurship for some time, and his input is important and essential.

I also got myself into several interesting arguments this week about my assertion that I’m not interested in the plight of the string quartet pursuing a traditional performance and education outreach function, as their “script” is already written.  Perhaps I conveyed that I did not value this effort as much as one that integrates the arts more overtly into the fabric of a community’s common concerns and efforts.  And perhaps this is true.  My point is that the recent past that was characterized by community engagement/outreach needs to come to grips with its lack of success (as predicted by the organizations practicing it).  From the more ennobling goals of enlightenment through exposure in one’s own community to the less ennobling goal of finding a funding source to support traditional performance, these efforts have failed because the offering organizations did not invest the time, nor display the flexibility needed to listen, hear and adapt to the artistic and cultural needs of the communities they were addressing.

My students want to make things happen and are challenging the conventions that my generation invented and then set in stone.  My job, as I see it, is to truly hear them, and then enable them to the best of my ability. 

More on entrepreneurship in future blogs…