As I’ve been gearing up to teach my Arts Entrepreneurship course at Drexel this spring, I have been talking to my students and colleagues about the field and have been reviewing (again) the literature. One particular area of confusion that keeps emerging needs clarification, that of the difference between sole proprietorship, and entity, or venture creation.
Not that these 2 areas are opposed to each other, or that they are in opposition to each other, it’s just that some clarification is justified. Sole proprietorship is about transforming one’s talents into income-producing activity. This activity may or may not be innovative or of leadership quality. It’s intent is to provide income and a meaningful profession in one’s area of expertise. This activity may, in part, involve the creation of an entity (small ensemble), but it’s primary intent is to “employ” the individual in question.
There have been a number of excellent books written to empower young artists in this regard. Among them are Beyond Talent, Creating a Successful Career in Music by Angela Beeching; The Savvy Musician by David Cutler; Lessons from a Street-wise Professor, What You Wont’ Learn at Most Music Schools, by Ray Ricker; The Profitable Artist, A Handbook for All Artists in the Performing, Literary, and Visual Arts, published by Artspire/New York Foundation for the Arts; and The Successful Artist’s Career Guide, Finding Your Way in the Business of Art, by Margaret Peot.
For aspiring young artists these books provide comprehensive advice and inspiration.
I continue to be particularly interested in empowering (and inspiring) young artists to create new ventures, ones that both rethink the basic structure of, and that challenge what now exists in the arts and culture sector. I fear that unless we motivate emerging artists to think this way, we will continue to lose market share. I hope to direct my course content and activities toward this goal.
I thank the many readers who weighed in on the issues I confronted in constructing the new program at Ithaca College. I will return to this topic in the near future.
James.
Very interesting. I will want to read more before I say something I think has value – if it does. I am working as a creative agent (my name for it) with artists developing entrepreneurial strategies that mine the content of their creative output, test it in a market, develop it further into a business plan, and then implement it. My goals are to raiser their visibility, compete against the general indifference markets can have when it comes to art, engage, widen the understanding of what the artist does, engage, and get people to fund, support and buy. I have thirty years experience as a producer, artistic leader and executive director for non-profit arts, have started-up numerous entrepreneurial artistic ventures, owned and operated my own art gallery, founded and ran an artist-incubation/residence program, a film company, and a secondary market art dealership. In the last five years I began spending more time researching the issues of art as application and then 18 months decided to go all in and practice what I believed I could some day teach. Doing drives learning for me, keeps me adaptable, and concise. I find some of the things you are saying to be very clear, and strong. I like the directness of your language and imagine it works very well with students. My audience has been working artists but what I hear in your voice tells me I may be thinking the wrong way about my new clients. Anyway, I was just excited to find a good conversation – although I wish for the old days when that kind of thing happened by accident at a coffee shop, or book store. I continually ride the web looking for the teaching component of what I do and I have not really found universities doing much more than sticking a toe into it. Thank you for getting me out of a writing slump. I owe you one. David