The Network Effect of Arts Incubators

Although there has been a proliferation of metrics to evaluate arts incubators, the academic field is still developing. Different models and methods of education are applied to the complex phenomena of arts incubators; therefore, it is crucial to measure the effectiveness of education programs from many different perspectives. Our aim is to propose a metric that can estimate the effect of each incubator activity based on the geospatial distribution of its participants. This GIS-based metric will provide a descriptive measure for the quantity and density of the geographical communities affected by the incubator’s activity as well as a socio-economic and demographic benchmarks. Our study investigates 14 US-based arts incubators that offer entrepreneurial training to their associated 1,087 incubatees. The goal of this study is to provide a metric that can assist arts incubators, program directors, arts administrators, and university programs assess program growth as well as funding and marketing efforts.

Book Review: Can Music Make You Sick? Measuring the Price of Musical Ambition by Sally Anne Gross & George Musgrave

Book Review of Can Music Make You Sick? Measuring the Price of Musical Ambition by Sally Anne Gross & George Musgrave (University of Westminster Press, 2020)

Book Review: The Death of the Artist: How Creators Are Struggling to Survive in the Age of Billionaires and Big Tech by William Deresiewicz

Jonathan Kuuskoski reviews William Deresiewicz’s The Death of the Artist: How Creators Are Struggling to Survive in the Age of Billionaires and Big Tech.

Effectual Entrepreneurship in the Arts: The Story of Austin Classical Guitar

This article tells the incredible story of Austin Classical Guitar, provides empirical evidence supporting the efficacy of Sarasvathy’s Effectual Entrepreneurship principles within an arts context, and contributes to theory development for the field of entrepreneurship and the subfield arts entrepreneurship. Individuals and organizations can utilize the concepts, principles, and method illustrated in the organizational history of Austin Classical Guitar to launch and sustain successful arts ventures. Arts entrepreneurship educators and scholars are encouraged to consider effectuation a foundational building block for the subfield and incorporate it into their work.

Entrepreneurial Orientation among Arts Managers in Western Australia

As a region, Western Australia is the largest and most isolated state in Australia, and supports a community of vibrant Arts Organisations. The Arts is widely recognised for its creativity and innovation, but what about the managers of these organisations, are they equally innovative, or entrepreneurial? Rusak (2016) explored this question and found that their Entrepreneurial Orientation (EO) matched the three core dimensions of Innovativeness, Pro-activeness, and Risk-taking, but the study did not include the other two EO dimensions of Autonomy and Competitive Aggressiveness. It did however observe that "arts companies don’t generally try to take offensive postures or aggressive responses to competitive threats and rather work collaboratively, as this sample shows". This assertion was not the focus of the article, nor was it explored in any depth in that paper. There are at least two possibilities here: it could be a passive aversion to competitive aggression, or a more deliberate counter-behaviour of collaboration. Either of these would appear to contradict the EO construct, in particular the expectation that all EO dimensions covary, which makes it interesting from a theory perspective. This paper explores this challenge to the EO theory in some detail, using software-aided analysis to tease out the finer nuances in this dimension of Competitive Aggressiveness. While the sample size and its geographical confines limit the generalisations that can be made, there is solid evidence that in this sample of Arts Managers, the Arts acts as a powerful contextual modifier to the expectations of EO theory. The dimension of Competitive Aggressiveness has not simply been altered or toned-down by this context, it has been replaced by a polar opposite.

Universities as Arts and Cultural Anchors

Economic developers commonly refer to universities as anchor institutions because they are large, rooted regional economic drivers that are sites of development, incubation, entrepreneurship, workforce readiness, and knowledge transfer. But most anchor research speaks generally about the university or focuses on STEM and not on arts and culture. Our study asks: what is the role of universities in anchoring arts and cultural innovation in the regional creativity ecology, and how are university leaders identifying, communicating, and investing as arts and cultural anchors? Through a qualitative comparative case analysis of four public universities in the Intermountain West combined with target interviews of field innovators and a synthesis of transdisciplinary literature, we deepen the concept of the university arts and cultural anchor and map a theoretical and practical shift from a traditional to contemporary form of anchoring. We identify four stages of anchor readiness, and we propose a pilot assessment tool for university leaders to determine their anchor stage based on awareness and investment. Our applied research helps universities move from being an arts patron to an arts entrepreneur, investor, innovator, and catalyst.

Editors Introduction

Editors' Introduction to Issue 10.2

The Story and the Data

Creative economies are touted as engines for economic prosperity and social good in cities. The wide applicability and inclusive definition of what counts in creative economies means that conceptual definitions are not universal. Studies on the promise of the creative economy have emerged, however, analyses of these reports and their policy value are scarce. We explore five creative economy reports, applying the Narrative Policy Framework, a novel analytic lens for comparing policy documents according to “setting,” “characters,” “plot,” and “moral of the.” Key contributions of this research center the ways that reports use rhetorical devices and empirical data to support claims and recommendations, forwarding policy learning and adaptation as tools for building and sustaining creative city branding.

Entrepreneurial Pathways in Art

Art programs at the university level are often designed in a studio-based model where the curriculum objective is “high-levels of disciplinary expertise” (Hong, Essig, & Bridgstock, 2012). These programs graduate artists who, while highly proficient in creation and performance, must navigate a career market which is limited and highly competitive. This studio model is shifting. Many arts programs at the university level are now beginning to incorporate courses which help artists as they navigate the business of the art world, but these types of interventions still neglect opportunities to fully harness artistic skillsets of art students. Arts Entrepreneurship is an emerging discipline in post-secondary education. This discipline aims address the needs of the artist while also recognizing the unique habits of mind the artist might bring into enterprise. The scope of this discipline extends beyond studio practices by considering and measuring the impact of an artists’ work. “The unique mission of arts programs and therefore a unique of arts entrepreneurship education and a defining aspect of its signature pedagogy is the practice of making art work in and for the real world” (Hong, Essig, & Bridgstock, 2012). In this discipline, artists extend the scope of their “work” beyond creation and towards practices which can future sustain an artistic venture. Arts Entrepreneurship therefore seeks to graduate artists who are able to consider and measure the scope of external impacts. The proposal here seeks to address the need of graduates in art education to pursue meaningful employment while also generating new potentials the artist’s role in wider society.

Refining Understandings of Entrepreneurial Artists

There is a disconnect between artists’ applications of entrepreneurial behavior in their practice and evaluations of artists as productive members of their communities. Informed by interviews with Nashville-based artists to investigate how artists understand their creativity, artistic practice, and approaches to entrepreneurship in the context of a their vibrant, artistically oriented community, this study finds that artists engage in entrepreneurial behavior by deploying creativity in multiple domains, including art, business, and the social, with their skills in each being important towards preserving the motives of their artistic practice. The findings highlight artists as multi-faceted creatives capable of transforming their practice through entrepreneurial pursuits.