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VOL. 10, NO. 1 
SPRING 2021 

 

Entrepreneurial Pathways in Art  
An Introductory Course for Undergraduate Students in Arts 
Entrepreneurship 

Scott Benzenberg 
Tampere University of Applied Sciences 

Kaisu Tuominiemi 
University of Mondragon 

 

ABSTRACT: Arts entrepreneurship is an emerging discipline in post-secondary edu-
cation which aims to help student artists design the future of their own work (Beck-
man, 2011). In this discipline, artists learn to extend the scope of their work by con-
necting the creative product with value streams such as cultural funds and new 
business ventures. While pedagogical strategies are defined in literature (Beckman, 
2007; Essig, 2013; Hong et al., 2012), the work here seeks to extend the conceptual-
ization of arts entrepreneurship as a distinct discipline by establishing materials and 
teaching units that might introduce first-year undergraduates to the field of arts en-
trepreneurship. The work here reflects findings about both the pedagogical aims of 
arts entrepreneurship as well as instructional strategies focused on the entrepreneur-
ial process. Rather than a curriculum borrowed from other domains, the course pro-
posal aims to formulate an instructional program for arts entrepreneurs from the 
ground up. KEYWORDS: arts entrepreneurship, pedagogy, course design, instruc-
tion. DOI: 10.34053/artivate.10.1.106 

Background 
Art programs at the university level are often designed in a studio-based model where the cur-
riculum objective is “high-levels of disciplinary expertise” (Hong et al., ). These programs 
graduate artists who, while highly proficient in creation and performance, must navigate a ca-
reer market that is limited and highly competitive. Many arts programs at the university level 
are now beginning to offer educational opportunities to help student artists as they navigate the 



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business of the art world, but many of these are offered as standalone courses or units rather 
than integrated into the curriculum of a wider degree program. Where these courses are offered, 
they often rely on approaches and content borrowed from the domain of business schools 
(Beckman, ) rather than the specific types of employment and venture creation common 
in the creative industries.  

Arts entrepreneurship is an emerging discipline in postsecondary education. This field re-
sponds to the needs of student artists by extending beyond the studio art model of arts education 
and aims to help students “understand how they might create value in society with their art” 
(Beckman, , p. ). In this discipline, artists learn to extend the scope of their work by 
connecting the creative product with value streams such as cultural funds and new business 
ventures. Arts entrepreneurship programs aim to develop student artists who can pursue mean-
ingful employment and orient themselves towards new venture creation.  

As a discipline, arts entrepreneurship seeks to train students to be able to design the future 
of their own work. The pedagogical focus of arts entrepreneurship is therefore linked to three 
broad aims. The first aim (more generally linked to entrepreneurship education) is focused on 
the development of skills and knowledge for business startup and new venture creation and 
management. The second broad aim (more generally linked to enterprise education and em-
ployability) is focused on the development of skills and knowledge necessary to engage proac-
tively and effectively in the process of career self-management and to add value through work 
(Hong et al., ).  These two aims, new venture creation and employability, are critical for 
artists who wish to have viable careers in the art world, but we argue the value of arts entrepre-
neurship education extends beyond learning how to profit from art. Bridgstock () offers a 
third key aim of the discipline: being enterprising. This third aim provides a way forward for 
artists seeking to maintain financial viability and extend the impact of their work. Impact here 
refers not only to commercial but also social and cultural impacts—constructs not featured in 
mainstream entrepreneurial courses.  

While integrated programs or even full degrees in arts entrepreneurship are beginning to 
appear and practitioners build a body of pedagogical aims, there is still a need to develop mean-
ingful course content and instructional materials which ground content from the domain of 
entrepreneurship with the orientations and needs of the creative professional. Particularly in 
our European context, much of the entrepreneurial content available to student artists is heavily 
borrowed from business schools and emphasizes management of cultural institutions rather 
than individual enterprise (Essig, ). This borrowing—either from existing arts management 
programs or mainstream entrepreneurial courses—can fail to capture the motivation, disposi-
tions, and needs of the student artist (Roberts, ).  

Rather than borrow from existing programs, this course proposal aims to introduce the 
student artist to entrepreneurialism for the artist. We seek to extend the conceptualization of 
arts entrepreneurship as a distinct discipline into materials and teaching units which might in-
troduce and frame the discipline of arts entrepreneurship in a way that is both salient and rele-
vant for the student artist. 



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An Introductory Course for Art Entrepreneurship: Scope and Pedagogy  

Context 

The course proposal below is designed to meet the needs of incoming, first-year students in an 
undergraduate degree program titled Entrepreneurial Leadership and Innovation with projects 
focused on the domain of arts and the creative industries, which began in fall . This course 
proposal would serve as an introductory course for degree students interested in exploring the 
intersection of entrepreneurship and arts. 

Defining Features 

Entrepreneurship for the Artist 
For the artist in this discipline, entrepreneurship extends far beyond the ideas of for-profit en-
terprise. We refer to entrepreneurship in this content more broadly a "seeing the potential for 
something to exist in the future that does not exist in the present” (Essig, ). This definition 
is critical because it establishes that at the core of entrepreneurial activities lies the spirit of cre-
ativity and vision. The domain of entrepreneurship in this sense is very much also the domain 
of the artist (Gettings, ). 

The first stages of this introductory course will be to draw the student artist’s attention to 
the connection between ways conceptualizing creative work with the outcomes or aims of en-
trepreneurship. Much of the language which describes desired attributes of the entrepreneur 
might be interchangeable with descriptions of the studio artist (Brice Heath, ). The curric-
ulum here seeks to draw the artist’s attention towards wider possibilities of self-concept and 
future work.  The scope of the student artist’s future work is central to this curriculum. Career 
opportunities as presented in the traditional studio art model are limited, competitive, and rely 
on the existing marketplace. Artists, even after years of training, too often approach the world 
of work without the tools necessary to financially sustain their work or to see different contexts 
and ways to apply their talent in the work world. 

The studio habits of mind are ways of thinking and approaching artistic work in the studio. 
At the bachelor level, artists—both studio and performance—will be familiar with these habits 
of mind for the studio artist (Hetland et al., ). Research has shown that these studio habits 
of mind can be applied across disciplines. More critically, these habits of mind can be neatly 
mapped to the entrepreneurial habits already established in mainstream entrepreneurship pro-
grams: 

The four fundamental entrepreneurial actions elucidated in the literature: opportunity recogni-
tion/discovery; creation (the novel); innovation; and equilibration (of an imbalanced market) 
are actions as applicable to the arts disciplines and trans-disciplines as to any (Essig, , p. 
). 



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These studio habits of mind offer a salient way for arts students to understand how their own 
ways of thinking and working in the arts disciplines can be readily extended to these entrepre-
neurial actions. The studio habits of mind framework structure the course as well as the scope 
of each weekly unit. Adapted from “Studio Thinking” (Hetland et al., ) each lesson is struc-
tured in three parts:  

. Demonstration—introductory session and key information from instructor 
. Challenge—scaffolded assignments to test understanding 
. “Students at Work” —learning by creating 

Making—either individually or collaboratively—is at the center of learning. 

Process-Based Assessment 
Because the scope and central aims of this course focus on the artist extending habits of mind 
into entrepreneurship, the focus of assessment will be according to the process of work as well 
as final outcomes. The key assessment task for the course will be a concept creation for an arts 
venture. This venture might take the shape of a small business concept, artistic platform, or a 
nonprofit work for the public good. The concept must include early visioning within the frame-
work of the course content, peer assessment and interaction with the project, third-party feed-
back (detailed below), and, finally, a self-reflection which compares the original venture concept 
with the final proposal after feedback and trials. This assessment is designed to encourage stu-
dents to incorporate entrepreneurial strategies to update and revise initial thinking to include 
external feedback. 

Impact Measurement and Social Entrepreneurship 
A defining feature of the course proposal here is that student artists will gain practical tools and 
strategies to design and create for positive change through their work and further the impact of 
their work. The key to this approach is that students define an external party, develop work 
which responds to a particular need or issue, and then learn to measure to what extent their 
work had on the external party based on a measurement response. Students may well use these 
measurements to design work which responds to a market for future profitability as an artist, 
but the core intention is that student artists in this course think of entrepreneurship and their 
own potential for social impact more broadly. 

Social entrepreneurs are individuals with innovative solutions to society’s most pressing social, 
cultural, and environmental challenges. They are ambitious and persistent — tackling major 
issues and offering new ideas for systems-level change (Ashoka, n.d.). 

Experiential and Collaborative Learning 
The eight-week course has both individual and teamwork elements, with the aim to begin ex-
ploring entrepreneurial action in art. Throughout the eight-week course, different teamwork 
activities take place, and, at the end of the course, the students demonstrate their capacity to 



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behave in an entrepreneurial manner by presenting their project proposal, gaining feedback 
from the peers and mentors, and showing their action and engagement with external parties 
thus far. We have structured the course delivery to correspond to an online platform where 
students can further gather resources and participate in a community of peers. This platform 
provides a space where students and instructors can collaborate and problem-solve in a virtual 
space. The online platform also provides a space where content can easily be managed, modi-
fied, and generated with learners. The online platform can also be integrated as an ongoing tool 
for learners pursuing the wider dual-degree program. 

The decision to design the initial modules through an online platform also takes advantage 
of the ability to provide course content in a variety of mediums and offers ways to collaborate 
beyond the scope of the eight weeks. This collaborative learning is vital: “collaborative learning 
processes help students achieve deeper levels of knowledge generation through the creation of 
shared goals, shared exploration, and a shared process of meaning making”(Palloff & Pratt, 
). We intend that course participants extend thinking and ways of working from one do-
main where they are familiar into a new domain where collaborative work is the norm. For the 
course to provide opportunities for deeper learning, the online platform offers ways for course 
participants to collaborate in meaningful ways. 

The Course: Entrepreneurial Pathways in Art 
The course is designed to introduce and prepare those in the creative disciplines for entrepre-
neurship. Ways of working, mental models, and tools from the art world provide relevant 
frameworks that can be extended into entrepreneurship. This course seeks to inspire and equip 
participants to use art as a tool for problem solving and creating solutions to current global 
needs. 

The aim is that learners and instructors use this space as a springboard for future collabo-
rative projects beyond the scope of the eight-week modules. 

This path is for you, if you are looking 

• to make meaning, 
• to contribute, 
• to impact others, 
• to develop solutions for societies, 
• to design your own future in the working world through your art. 

Let the journey begin. 
 

The objectives of teaching and learning in Entrepreneurial Pathways in Art are that the 
learner: 

• understands the wider contexts of arts entrepreneurship and uses entrepreneurial practices 



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for both opportunity and future job creation; 
• identifies and utilizes entrepreneurial habits of mind such as resiliency, design-thinking, 

alertness to opportunity and risk-taking; 
• deepens understanding of creativity, pattern finding, and generative thinking as these relate 

to arts entrepreneurship; 
• can recognize and act on patterns of opportunity; 
• gains practical competencies such as understanding forms of finance, marketing and culti-

vating human networks; 
• recognizes art as a tool for social change making; 
• develops attitudes and habits as change leader gaining understanding on how art ventures 

can impact societies in a positive way. 

Week : In the Domain of Arts and Entrepreneurship 

 
Description: 
Understanding the art world as it relates to social innovation, here is the first week where we set 
the scene and establish the connections between the studio habits of mind and the "world" that 
our course examines—the space between social entrepreneurship and art—and start seeing oppor-
tunities and sense of purpose in connection with other artists and broader society. 
 
The objective of the unit is that the learner: 

• broadens understanding about the entrepreneurial world and its relationship to the artist, 
considering also its different role in Europe compared to the US; 

• explores potential of entrepreneurship and art as a means to impact cities and societies; 
• can make connections between artistic and entrepreneurial habits of mind; 
• recognizes a personal potential for impact as a global changemaker; 
• starts building a set of personal learning goals and habits; 
• visualizes different stakeholders from the art field of their own natural environment; 
• builds collaboration skills with other artists. 

Building blocks for learning: 

• Different concepts of entrepreneurship and examples of their intersection with art 
• The role of the student's own view and new construction of entrepreneurship, leadership, 

and artistry 
• Means of leading one's own learning process by creating a learning compass for the eight-

week course 
• Role and opportunities of art in the future of work and seeing different disciplines that 

relate to art (film making, architecture, design, music, visual arts, performative arts) 
• Understanding the entrepreneurial world (what it means and different ways of 



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understanding) 
• How can art and entrepreneurship interconnect, what opportunities does this create? 
• Engage & inspire, building the bigger picture 
• Building connections, networking, entrepreneurship for good, collaboration skills, social 

innovation 

During the first week, the main goal is to set the common ground for the course by creating a 
common consensus through dialogue and debate on how arts entrepreneurship operates as a 
discipline. The course participants gather insights from Art Council UK´s infographic regard-
ing the value of arts and culture to society and continue by sharing concrete examples and in-
spiring stories of different creative entrepreneur stories. An example of such stories is Mel Zu-
kernik of Fauna Querida, who uses illustration and children's books to create awareness 
regarding animal rights. Participants then gather and debate more generally known examples, 
such as Andy Warhol or Jeff Koons, and investigate Ashoka social entrepreneurs connected to 
arts. 

What makes an artist entrepreneurial? After setting the common ground, the course par-
ticipants are invited to inner inquiry of their own journey as artists and, potentially, artist-en-
trepreneurs through the learning compass tool (MTA-TA), where one is invited to reflect: 
Where have I been? Where am I now? Where do I want to go? How will I get there? How will I 
know I´ve reached my goal? By sharing the results in teams, collective understanding and peer 
support is created to enable one's goals and dreams. The first module offers a framework for the 
entire course and enables the participant to work on building their own goals and visions ac-
cording to the course theme. 
 
Concrete deliverables and key activities of this unit: 

• Dialogue—Defining arts entrepreneurship 
• Reflection paper—What is my definition of arts entrepreneurship? 
• Learning compass—My journey as artist, my potential as an arts entrepreneur, how this 

relates to the coming eight weeks, and which skills I want to develop 
• Visualizing the outline for the whole course 

Readings that explore the definition of art from different viewpoints—that can be of Vasili Kan-
dinski, Dadaism, Ernst Gombrich, Pierre Bourdieu, Arthur Danto, Oxford/Cambridge diction-
aries etc. Creating a dynamic with the students where they write, “art is . . . ,” building dialogue 
of what art means for them in order to extend that dialogue towards arts entrepreneurship. 

Week : Key Ingredients of Art Ventures 

 
Description: 
After building common ground for arts entrepreneurship, we can understand and withdraw key 



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ingredients of arts entrepreneurship in more detail. When adding the layer of entrepreneurship to 
art, there is always third party involved, someone we are creating value for, making feel something, 
or taking to new scenarios. That is why in this second unit we create understanding of the im-
portance of audience or user, how other artists have impact through their work, and what models 
already exist that can inspire and enable. Another key ingredient this week is to work further to 
map out opportunities of finance to make the artist’s work sustainable. 
 
The objective of the unit is that the learner: 

• gains understanding of third-party involvement and value creation through art, 
• builds opportunity seeking and creation abilities in collaboration with others, 
• understands basic tools and contents of entrepreneurship in a practical sense, 
• understands an art venture through someone else's lens. 

Building blocks for learning: 

• Examples and means of art turned into a concept and value creation 
• Basic tools regarding entrepreneurship and understanding money as enabling force 
• Understanding the role of the user or third party impacted through art 
• How can art ventures be financed? 
• Case studies of artist-entrepreneurs and inspirational concepts 

The second week encourages participants to understand the key ingredients of arts ventures and 
arts entrepreneurship in a more practical sense. First, students map potential means of finance—
from artist residences and funds to tools and platforms used by artists in terms of resources such 
as Artist Share. In this process, students gain understanding of different means of financing 
future work. By investigating art venture case studies through teams, the participants gain un-
derstanding of the key ingredients and challenges behind their creation. 

The second key ingredient is to understand the role of the third party in venture creation. 
An example of this approach might be to view the role of the audience in theatre arts in the 
creation of set design and performance. 
 
Concrete deliverables and key activities of this unit: 

• Reading materials of different finance opportunities in the field of arts as a base to build a 
collective visual mapping of opportunities in teams of six people 

• Case study of an art-venture in teams, withdrawing key ingredients of the venture and un-
derstanding its model of finance and relation to an audience/user 

• Observing a chosen artist-entrepreneur (individual work)—why they do what they do, 
which are the key ingredients behind their venture, who is their third party involved 



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Week : Seeing Beyond the Ordinary—Connecting Craft to Purpose 

 
Description: 
There is no change without empathy, no desired response without understanding the responder. 
By observing, we see beyond the ordinary, find new perspectives to our own work, find areas of 
interest and purpose to our creation. This week is about observation in a wide sense—observing 
your own portfolio craft and values, observing to learn from others, observing to find meaning and 
purpose for your creation. 
 
The objective of the unit is that the learner: 

• develops the ability to see new angles in own work and others, 
• builds empathy through observation and learns to identify needs that could be approached 

through art, 
• discovers possible causes and connects with personal values, 
• defines an area of social engagement to investigate, 
• finds meaningful causes and points of attention, building project ideas based on discover-

ing needs and opportunities. 

Building blocks for learning: 

• The role of observation in entrepreneurship, arts, and making meaning 
• Concepts of building empathy as a part of design process and venture creation 
• Means of observing and interpreting one’s own work as well as the work of others 
• Benchmark as a tool of inspiration, opportunity, creation, and identifying patterns, 

through shadowing the artist-entrepreneur at work and other methods 
• Self-observation: tools to find another way to look at things 
• Examining one’s own technique and sees that it may be employed for social good and 

turned to a venture 

Week three focuses on the student artists’ own individuality. Through self-observation, one 
reflects: What are my values? What can I use my art for? Which causes are meaningful for me 
and why? Another angle on this inquiry comes from looking to one's own craft through exam-
ining an artist portfolio or previous artwork: What are my skills as an artist? What am I good at? 
This is combined with observation, feedback, and brainstorming how your craft can be turned 
into a venture with a peer. The second ingredient of this week is observing your area / world 
needs. The participants investigate areas to impact through art and note the needs they have 
observed on a collective board with links to references that that about the need (news, articles, 
data), connecting to one of the courses core intentions—the student artist thinking of entrepre-
neurship and their own potential for social impact more broadly. 
 



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Concrete deliverables and key activities of this unit: 

• Examining one's artist portfolio or previous work 
• Observation and shared brainstorming session with a peer 
• Possibilities to build an art venture through craft 
• Building a statement as an artist—declaration of intentions 
• Collective board of needs identification in teams of six—needs and causes that matter 

Week : Envision 

 
Description: 
To envision means learning to picture mentally what cannot be directly observed and imagine 
possible next steps in making a piece. 

Envisioning phase takes us beyond observing. At this phase, we can put whole creative capac-
ities in use to collaboratively build ways of engagement to the chosen area. 
 
The objectives of the unit are that the student: 

• explores ways of engagement to the chosen area, 
• can identify the aims and final goals for the venture, 
• understands ways of measuring engagement and uses these in making decisions about 

scope of their own work, 
• develops innovation skills while collaboratively brainstorming solutions and opportunities, 
• uses artistic thinking skills to imagine ways for the work to come alive, 
• understands and builds timeframes and scenarios for a piece in mind, 
• engages in real life challenges and visioning ways to impact through art. 

Building blocks for learning: 

• Concepts of chaordic design in two phases: opening (idea creation, visioning, big lines) and 
converging (narrowing down to most interesting concepts to explore in the feasible 
timeframe of eight weeks) 

• Visioning, forecasting, building scenarios, and understanding timeframes 
• Concepts, tools, and methods for collaborative idea creation and future forecasting 
• Means of building future scenarios and time bound planning through building first vision 

board for the bigger concept in mind (eight week timeframe & contrasted in the final as-
sessment) 

Week four is focused on application with an aim of building the concept idea used in the key 
assessed task. The participants choose an area they want to impact and use the collaborative 
force of the team of six to brainstorm ideas to give solutions through one's craft. By defining the 



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need and the area of impact, students are more able to start defining their audience and build a 
concrete work plan in a timeline to be ready to present their art venture concept idea during 
week seven. Personal goals and aims are made visible through writing a short arts venture con-
cept description as an outcome of the week. 
 
Concrete deliverables and key activities of this unit: 

• Participants choose an area/need in which they want to work and investigate it further 
• Collective brainstorming session in teams to come up with raw ideas of venture creation 

matching the need and one's craft 
• Building first vision board for the bigger concept in mind, including timeline and small 

concept description with one's personal goals and aims for the creation 

Week : Stretch and Explore—Beyond the Familiar 

 
Description: 
Learning to reach beyond one’s capacities, to explore playfully without a preconceived plan, and 
to embrace the opportunity to learn from mistakes and accidents. 

What would you do if you weren’t afraid? This week we freeze time for a moment. We take a 
beat for collaborative exploration and creation and focus on solution building in teams. Inspired 
by stories of failure from artist-entrepreneurs  we create our safe space to explore and discover, to 
build and destroy. We'll let the collective creativity at play show how it can take us further. 
 
The objectives of the unit are that the student 

• solves problems by using teamwork flexibility and creativity; 
• experiments boldly different possible solutions for the design challenge; 
• explores failure as ingredient of growth in a creative process; 
• prototypes ways for expression of the artistic venture; 
• stretches beyond the original ideas and concepts, finding new elements, angles, and ingre-

dients to test; 
• recognizes own strengths and weaknesses and how they can play role in teamwork; 
• navigates chaos by working in uncomfort zone; 
• explores freedom of creation; 
• expands thinking—brings new layers to the creation. 

Building blocks for learning: 

• Concepts of collaborative problem solving and design challenges 
• Fail forward stories where mistakes have turned into learning opportunities 
• Play and prototype 



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The main goal of this week is to take concept idea further in a way that enables trying and pro-
totyping. For this, first the participants expand their thinking and bring new layers to the crea-
tion through building a mood board connected to the art venture idea chosen, and gathering 
one hundred references/sources of inspiration to support the venture creation. They finish the 
week with a rapid prototype connected to their concept (radio podcast, and so on). Peer feed-
back is given according to the prototypes and the venture idea, and the participant lists strengths 
as well as challenges and needs they should consider for the final concept. 
 
Concrete deliverables and key activities of this unit: 

• Distilling the key ingredients of one's concept and building a small prototype 
• Building a rapid prototype of how the concept could look (a fraction piece) 
• Creation of a mood board connected to the art venture idea chosen and one hundred ref-

erences to support the venture creation 
• Peer feedback and list possible challenges that should be taken into consideration in the 

following week creation 

Week : Engage and Persist 

 
Description: 
This unit focuses on learning to embrace problems of relevance within the art world and/or of 
personal importance, to develop focus and other mental states conducive to working and persever-
ing at art tasks.  

With the last two weeks in horizon, this week is the most important to bring everything im-
agined so far to life. “Engage and persist” is about learning to manage time pressure, building 
resiliency to get things done, and to ensure that artistic creation and making meaning with a third 
party is coming to shape. 
 
The objectives of the unit are that the student: 

• defines final cause, user and artform to express, 
• builds engagement through clarifying purpose, 
• develops resiliency by taking the concept work further. 

Building blocks for learning: 

• Learn to manage frustration, time pressure/deadline, persistency to keep going 
• From teaching point of view—encouragement, building a safe environment, sometimes 

pushing to persist, sometimes helping to loosen up, keeping track of student progress. 
• Concepts of experience economy can be offered to help the student with the preparation 

work for the art venture fair. 



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This week is the most important for creation, in which previous ideation mood boards and pro-
totypes elevate into the art venture concept creation. The key ingredients from before should 
take form on the final concept presentation—cause or need, the user, one's craft, sustainability 
of the idea, and so on. A simple template and concepts of Lean Canvas or Business Model Can-
vas may be considered from the educator’s side to introduce and support venture creation. Con-
cepts of Experience economy may be added to support the creation for art venture fair and 
another peer feedback session is encouraged before the final version is created. 
 
Concrete deliverables and key activities of this unit: 

• Individual work on the key assessed task 
• Introducing the concepts of Lean Canvas and Experience economy 
• Final description of the art venture and deciding the forms to present 
• Peer feedback to support final version creation of the KAT (Key Assessed Task) 

Week : Express—Finding Personal Vision 

 
Description: 
Learning to create works that convey an idea, a feeling, or a personal meaning 

“Express” is the week to showcase the concepts of the art ventures with social entrepreneurship 
concepts in mind. Be it through a showroom, social media, art gallery, or experience of some sort, 
this is the week art for the cause really comes to life and is tested, exposing art concepts connected 
with a cause and personal significance aimed to impact. Feedback from the interaction and impact 
measurement is in place for further reflection.   
 
The objectives of the unit are that the student: 

• showcases a prototype venture and receiving feedback accordingly, 
• evaluates the potential impact of the art connected to the original aim, 
• records useful content for further reflection, 
• builds confidence through showcasing work. 

Building blocks for learning: 

• The role of external insights in an art venture 
• Means of interaction and showcase of an art venture 
• The role of artist as a producer 
• Participants pitch their concept idea in a creative format in an art venture fair organized by 

the program 

The creation of the course culminates in the presentation of the key assessed task in which the 



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participants present their concept idea for an art venture in a creative format. The criteria of the 
presentation include all the key ingredients from the course, as well as the participants own aims 
defined on the art venture description. Ideally the concept ideas reflect the participants craft and 
values, and show means of impact in a sustainable manner. In case the course would be carried 
out in a physical format, the artist could also be challenged to bring the public to a physical fair 
and, therefore, add user insights as part of their feedback. 
 
Concrete deliverables and key activities of this unit: 

• Final work for presenting at art venture fair with mentors organized by the program 
• Showcasing one's work 
• Harvesting feedback from peers and from the mentors 

Week : Reflect—Building the Future 

 
Description: 
Question and Explain: Learning to think and talk with others about an aspect of one’s work or 
working process. Evaluate: Learning to judge one’s own work and working process, and the work 
of others in relation to standards of the field. 

The last part of the journey is built around construction of meaning. The core of the process 
is to reflect on work process and outcomes, understanding patterns, strengths, and weaknesses, 
and building good habits for future through recognizing progress. 

 
The objectives of the unit are that the student: 

• reflects on work process and outcomes and identifies impact of decisions techniques and 
final outcomes, 

• harvests key learning individually and collectively, 
• recognizes strengths and weaknesses in oneself and others and can give feedback construc-

tively, 
• evaluates own work and progress and visualize next steps. 

Building blocks for learning: 

• Means of reflecting and analyzing process what, why, how, and outcomes 
• Means of mirroring aims and planning with the final outcomes 
• Collective dialogue to construct meaning (open ended questions) 
• Concepts of constructive critique and feed forward potentially in a  setting 
• Reverse engineering technique as means to understand how something was made; identify 

the effects of different decisions, marks, and techniques; and imagine how the work could 
have been made differently 



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• Measuring feedback and results of impact of the art-venture showcased 
• Combining self-evaluation with art, through illustrating learned strengths and weaknesses 

The last week is important as a means of reflecting on both the presented art venture con-
cept as well as learning from the process as a whole. Each participant gives and receives feedback 
from three peers from the course according to the final key-assessed task and uses the gathered 
feedback together with that of the mentors of the previous week’s showcase to build a SWOT 
analysis of the art venture concept—what should be considered to make this real, what is good 
with how its already constructed. The reverse engineering exercise is used as a means to analyze 
the process, not only the outcome. The final step of the course is a written self-reflection of the 
student’s own work, artistic expression connected to one's craft, and sharing that through a di-
alogue in teams of six.  
 
Concrete deliverables and key activities of this unit: 

• Give and receive feedback from three peers 
• SWOT of the art venture concept using the received feedback 
• Reverse engineering exercise of the process and self-reflection of one's own work written 

and through artistic expression  

Discussion 
In the course outlined above, we have proposed an instructional program aimed at introducing 
first-year undergraduates to the field of arts entrepreneurship. The materials here reflect our 
own findings about the pedagogical aims of arts entrepreneurship. Rather than a curriculum 
borrowed from other domains, we attempted here to formulate a purpose-built course from the 
ground up. While we hope that instructors might find practical value in the instructional mate-
rials presented here, it is also our intention that the course proposal might offer a starting place 
for further empirical research about the learning impacts of instructional strategies such as 
these. Essig () highlights the need for this type of empirical research about the field: 

Arts entrepreneurship seems to be still firmly located in the conceptual phase. More practical 
research is needed before entering the theoretical phase. Although there have been some at-
tempts at theory development based on empirical observations (e.g. Essig, ), there needs to 
be a more robust body of empirical research from which to develop a consistent and solid frame-
work (Essig, ). 

We are interested in the extent to which these pedagogical interventions are able to achieve the 
intended aims. Further research is needed to determine which of these interventions, if any, 
might develop student artists’ ability to design the future of their own work. Practical research 
such as this will be essential to establish a firm theoretical framework for arts entrepreneurship 
pedagogy. 



ARTIVATE 10.1 

16 

Finally, we recognize the course itself is one iteration of an ongoing development process. 
We would like to explore how to instruct student artists to collaborate in wider networks, create 
more authentic assessments, and establish ways of working within the course that might be of 
value to student artists throughout their career. More than anything, we hope to facilitate a 
wider conversation with researchers, practitioners, and artists to continue to develop instruc-
tional strategies and materials in the domain of arts entrepreneurship. 

References 

Ashoka. (n.d.). Social entrepreneurship. Retrieved Janu-
ary 15, 2021, from https://www.ashoka.org/en/fo-
cus/social-entrepreneurship 

Beckman, G. D. (2010). So what’s the point? An intro-
ductory discussion on the desired outcomes of arts 
entrepreneurship education. In G. D. Beckman (ed.), 
Disciplining the arts: Teaching entrepreneurship in 
context (pp 177–184). Lanham, MD: R&L Education.  

Beckman, G. D. (2007). “Adventuring” arts entrepre-
neurship curricula in higher education: An examina-
tion of present efforts, obstacles, and best practices. 
Journal of Arts Management Law and Society, 37(2), 
87–112. https://doi.org/10.3200/JAML.37.2.87-112 

Bridgstock, R. (2013). Not a dirty word: Arts entrepre-
neurship and higher education. Arts and Humanities 
in Higher Education, 12(2–3), 122–137. 
https://doi.org/10.1177/1474022212465725 

Essig, L. (2012). Frameworks for Educating the Artist of 
the Future: Teaching Habits of Mind for Arts Entre-
preneurship. Artivate: A Journal of Entrepre-neurship 
in the Arts, 1(2), 65–77. 

Essig, L. (2015). Means and ends: A theory framework 
for understanding entrepreneurship in the US arts 
and culture sector. Journal of Arts Management Law 
and Society, 45(4), 227–246. 
https://doi.org/10.1080/10632921.2015.1103673 

Essig, L. (2017). Same or different? The “cultural entre-
preneurship” and “arts entrepreneurship” constructs 
in European and US higher education. Cultural 

Trends, 26(2), 125–137. 
https://doi.org/10.1080/09548963.2017.1323842 

Gettings, M. (2016). Putting it all together: STEAM, PBL, 
scientific method, and the studio habits of mind. Art 
Education, 69(4), 10–11. 
https://doi.org/10.1080/00043125.2016.1176472 

Hetland, L., Winner, E., Veenema, S., & Sheridan, K. 
(2007). Studio thinking: The real benefits of visual 
arts education. Teachers College Press. 

Hong, C., Essig, L., & Bridgstock, R. (2012). The enter-
prising artist and the arts entrepreneur: Emergent 
pedagogies for new disciplinary habits of mind. In N. 
Chick, A. Haynie, & R. A. . Gurung (Eds.), Exploring 
more signature pedagogies: approaches to teaching 
disciplinary habits of mind. Sterling Stylus Publish-
ing. 

Palloff, R., & Pratt, K. (2013). Lessons from the virtual 
classroom the realities of online teaching. In Lessons 
from the virtual classroom the realities of online 
teaching (2nd ed.). Jossey-Bass. 

Roberts, J. S. (2012). Infusing entrepreneurship within 
non-business discipline: preparing artists and others 
for self-employment and entrepreneurship. Artivate: 
A Journal of Entrepreneurship in the Arts, 1(2), 53. 

 
 
Cover image: "graffiti on wall during daytime" by Na-

thana Rebouças, https://unsplash.com/photos/G-
3_WcLoQcg..

 


