I’m presenting a paper next week at the European Network of Cultural Management Conference (ENCATC) entitled “Same or Different? The ‘Cultural Entrepreneurship’ and ‘Arts Entrepreneurship’ Constructs in European and US Higher Education.” Here’s a teaser:

“Arts Entrepreneurship” is beginning to emerge from its infancy as a field of study in US higher education institutions. “Cultural Entrepreneurship,” especially as conceived of in the European context, seems to have matured both earlier and on a somewhat different, but parallel, track. As Kuhlke, Schramme, and Kooyman (2015) note, “In Europe, courses began to emerge in the late 1980s and early 1990s…primarily providing an established business school education with an industry-specific focus on the new and emerging creative economy.” Conversely, the development of “arts entrepreneurship” courses and programs in the US seem to have been driven as much or more from interest within arts disciplines or even from within the career services units of arts conservatories as a means toward supporting artist self-sufficiency and career self-management. This paper looks at the conceptual development of “arts entrepreneurship” in the US as differentiated from “cultural entrepreneurship” in Europe and elsewhere in order to uncover where the two strands of education (and research) are the same and where they are different.

(photo: Antranias, public domain)