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Artivate: A Journal of Entrepreneurship in the Arts  Volume 2, Summer 
http://artivate.org  pp. 3-13 
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Copyright © 2013, the author     
 
 

SITUATED CULTURAL ENTPRENEURSHIP 
Johan Kolsteeg, Hogeschool voor de Kunsten Utrecht 
 

Abstract 
In this essay, I investigate the relationship between local political context and 

entrepreneurship in the arts, specifically entrepreneurship by cultural institutions, which I refer to 
as “cultural entrepreneurship.” I look at cultural entrepreneurship as a discourse and discuss one 
locus in particular, the city of Utrecht in The Netherlands. The discourse on cultural 
entrepreneurship in the Dutch context is influenced by diminishing government responsibility for 
financial support of the arts. Entrepreneurship is seen in that context as finding new sources of 
income. Entrepreneurial values such as curiosity and experimentation are dominant in the routine 
relationship between cultural organizations and their subsidizing administrations but are not 
incorporated in the understanding of cultural entrepreneurship. After applying these 
considerations to the observation of the culture-political practice in the city of Utrecht, I suggest 
a framework that allows us to understand the discourse on the relationship between cultural 
entrepreneurship and political context along two axes. One axis moves between risk acceptance 
and aversion, and the other between the private and public interests. 

 
Introduction: Definitions and Discourses 

 The discourse on entrepreneurship in the arts is characterized by issues concerning the 
unequivocal definition of central terms and the situatedness of discourses and practices. Just as 
we understand art through a combination of universal connotations with the word and local 
discourses on aesthetics (Pratt, 2005: 7), the term “entrepreneurship” also has both a universal 
connotation and practices defined by local culture. The motivation for individual 
entrepreneurship, for instance, is likely to vary with the level of importance given in different 
regional contexts to entrepreneurial values such as open-mindedness, perseverance, and risk 
acceptance. Institutional conditions for entrepreneurship vary regionally (Wennekers & Thurik, 
1999), as does the moral attitude towards entrepreneurial behaviour (Klamer, 2011). Further, 
there is the matter of what is included in the terms cultural and creative industries and products. 
Since in the UK the term cultural industry was replaced by the term creative industry and was 
given the definition “those activities that have their origin in individual creativity, skill and talent 
and which have a potential for wealth and job creation through the general exploitation of 
intellectual property” (DCMS, 1998), the terminology has suffered from a certain diffuseness. 
For one instance, the adjective creative has been employed to describe products we generally 
consider to be “cultural” (Caves, 2003; Hesmondalgh, 2002). Unesco’s recursive definition of 
the cultural industries as industries that “combine the creation, production and commercialization 
of contents which are intangible and cultural in nature, and are involved in the commercialization 
of copyright protected goods and services” (Unesco, 2008), suffers from a recurring association 
of cultural industry with Adorno’s understanding of the “culture industry”, which confines itself 
“to standardization and mass production and sacrifices what once distinguished the logic of the 
work from that of society” (Horkeimer and Adorno, 2002, p. 95).  
 Throsby proposes a distinction between the cultural and the creative by which creative 
industries produce products “that require a reasonably significant level of creativity in their 
manufacture, without necessarily satisfying other criteria that would enable them to be labeled 
‘cultural’” (Throsby, 2009, p. 16). These “other criteria” refer to the symbolic, cultural value that 
cultural products communicate. In the European context, this distinction would roughly equal the 



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distinction between commercial creative firms and cultural organizations that depend largely on 
government subsidies. Commercial creative firms are entrepreneurial by some definitions of that 
term because they are financially self-sufficient. Cultural organizations in the Netherlands 
originated as public institutions with the task to conserve art and secure public access to art 
without claim to financial self-sufficiency. There are at least two diverse interpretations of 
“entrepreneurship,” as described following. Cultural organizations are beginning to become 
aware of the possibilities of being entrepreneurial within a traditional European government-
supported model. In the process they encounter institutional limitations and underlying 
suppositions. In the Dutch discourse on cultural entrepreneurship, for instance, there is an 
expectation that economic circumstances will force cultural and creative organizations to 
increasingly merge into hybrid organizations, but in reality such organizational syntheses hardly 
ever materialize, if at all.  
 In order to establish a definitional point of departure, I follow Throsby’s understanding of 
creative and cultural industry and connect the distinction between them to the term 
entrepreneurship. So defined, creative entrepreneurship is found in for-profit firms that produce 
products or services that “require a reasonably significant level of creativity in their 
manufacture” (Throsby, 2009, p. 16), and cultural entrepreneurship, the focus of this essay, is 
found in cultural (arts) organizations that produce products or services that communicate a 
symbolic, cultural value. This phrasing tells us nothing more than where to find cultural 
entrepreneurship, and doesn’t give us a substantive definition of the term. It is the position in this 
essay that a dynamic definition is arrived at in artistic and culture political discourse and 
practice. The essay does not aim to solve the problem of how to define cultural entrepreneurship, 
but to look at the lines along which it is given substance in discourse and communicative 
interaction.  
 What we can say is that cultural and creative entrepreneurship have to do with balancing 
artistic freedom and entrepreneurial freedom (Hagoort, 2007), or in other words balancing 
autonomy and heteronomy, while acknowledging a responsibility for cultural infrastructure. We 
look at cultural entrepreneurship as a moral act (Klamer, 2011) in a culturally-cum-politically 
situated discourse and practice. In different geographical and political contexts, cultural 
entrepreneurship manifests itself in different ways, not only because art, culture and 
entrepreneurship have different connotations, but also because the process of mediating between 
artistic and political discourses is likely to progress differently in different contexts. Following 
Hagoort’s (2007) contention that cultural entrepreneurs tend to show responsibility for the 
greater picture, they are reminded of this responsibility in relationship to their direct environment 
as public and political stakeholders. Given that how the process of balancing artistic and 
entrepreneurial freedom materializes is a situated matter, in order to understand the practice of 
entrepreneurship it is important to look at the relationship between the practice of mediating 
autonomy and heteronomy on the one hand, and socio-cultural political context on the other.  
 A third discourse to be aware of when thinking about cultural entrepreneurship is that of 
the history of local support for the arts. In The Netherlands, a country with a traditionally large 
government responsibility for arts support, the term cultural entrepreneurship became 
increasingly important with the gradual reduction of this government support during the period 
2005–2010. Here, entrepreneurship de facto has come to be about making ends meet and 
reducing dependence on government support. This reductionist position is deeply embedded in 
the discourse on cultural entrepreneurship in the Netherlands.  



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 Another element to take into account if we want to develop awareness of the discursive 
context of cultural entrepreneurship is that the general political discourse on entrepreneurship 
tends to be uncritically transferred to the cultural field as a whole. Klamer points out that in 
economic science, the quantitative economic angle on entrepreneurship is easily transferred to 
the cultural and creative areas. Klamer contends there is little mention of the cultural 
entrepreneur in economic literature since “they come with characteristics that are hard to specify, 
like creative, risk taking, and alert. How to put those in an equation?” (Klamer, 2011, p. 143).  
 Cultural organizations and creative for-profit firms may value creative identity and 
network position higher than growth and profit (Kolsteeg, forthcoming). Yet there is 
considerable attention to the economic impact of the creative sector in terms of number and size 
of firms, financial growth potential, competitiveness and employment figures (Stam, De Jong, & 
Marlet, 2008). Also, growth of the sector is considered vital for the Dutch economic agenda: 
“The government designated the creative industry as one of the top areas with a significant added 
value for Holland” (Government, 2011, p. 29). The approach to the creative sector as a whole in 
this quote is another typical element of the government’s approach, which continues despite 
awareness that the creative industry is strongly fragmented (Government, 2009a, p.12; see also 
Kooyman, 2009).  
 That cultural and creative entrepreneurs are ‘different’ from other entpreneurs is also 
found in research from Norway, which shows that cultural and creative entrepreneurs react 
differently to entrepreneurship support policy than non-creative entrepreneurs do. Cultural 
entrepreneurs “did not find the support understandable, relevant and in a language that appealed. 
They also found that it was difficult to obtain support […] and they thought that IN [Innovation 
Norway, a centralized state owned agency] consultants did not have the right competence and 
insight in the cultural field” (Bille and De Paoli, 2012, p. 83). Bille and De Paoli show that the 
Norwegian support policy is not inadequate in itself, but that it fails because intermediaries relate 
to the internal discourse (“competence and insight”) of the cultural entrepreneur inadequately. In 
Holland, comparable government programs are equally unsuccessful. One of these programs, 
meant to improve innovation and economic growth, and improve networking skills among 
creative entrepreneurs and their access to finance and connection to other societal areas, is 
evaluated as having little lasting effect (Government, 2009b, p. 57), among other things, because 
policy targets were sometimes insufficiently supported or shared and support programs had entry 
barriers for parties outside an inner circle (Den Hertog et al., 2012).  
 Finally, to further bolster the importance of qualitative investigation of cultural 
entrepreneurship, it is important to realize that there is no entrepreneurship (cultural or 
otherwise) in a void. Cultural entrepreneurs by definition work in a social, political, economic 
and artistic discourse. Understanding what motivates a cultural entrepreneur in balancing 
creative identity with context is crucial to developing a relationship between ‘the cultural’ and 
‘the political’ that can effectively explain entrepreneurial behavior. Doing so requires awareness 
of the genealogy and context dependency of the terms and a framework in which the relationship 
between cultural entrepreneurs and their socio-political contexts can be understood. This article 
suggests the contours of such a framework. I use a case study of cultural entrepreneurship in The 
Netherlands, not with the purpose to evaluate the quality of entrepreneurial choices made by 
organizations, but to see how we can understand cultural entrepreneurship as a situated discourse 
in a socio-political context, elaborating on the points made by Hagoort (2007) and Klamer 
(2011) that cultural entrepreneurship is to do with balancing cultural and economic values and 
also with caring for a society’s cultural infrastructure.  



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Methodology and Theoretical Construct 

 A discourse analysis of the strategic interaction between cultural organizations and local 
administration was made during my PhD research on strategy formation in subsidized cultural 
organizations and for-profit creative firms in Utrecht, 2010-2012 (Kolsteeg, forthcoming). The 
empirical data in this essay are extracted from this study, which used documents, observation of 
practice, and interviews. The research looks at the construction of creative identity in strategic 
practice. That study involves a discourse analysis (Heracleous & Barrett, 2001) along the lines of 
Giddens’ structuration theory  (Giddens, 1984), applied to organizational practice. Giddens 
contends that “social structure is constituted by human agency and yet is at the same time the 
very medium of this constitution” (p. 128, emphasis in original). Institutional context, the 
“universe of objects”, is “constituted or produced by the active doings of subjects” (Giddens, 
1993, p. 168). Actors are seen as knowledgeable individuals, and this knowledgeability is partly 
explicated and partly hidden in practice itself. People produce society in a situated structural 
context. Analysis must clarify what aspects in human action display structural properties, where 
the boundary lies between intentional reflective actions and ‘occurences.’ Structure is considered 
to show a duality in the recurrent influence of structure on action, and of action on structure: this 
process of structuration is observable in the “interplay of meanings, norms and power” (Giddens, 
1984) in daily routine. The analytical question is how in daily human interaction communication, 
power and sanction are instantiations of, and at the same time instantiate themselves, macro level 
structures.  
 

National Context 
 Let’s take a short look at the history of the discourse on cultural entrepreneurship in The 
Netherlands. In the 1950s a cultural policy was installed in which a large responsibility for 
funding the arts was given to the national government. Based on the philosophy that the 
government may be the financer of art but should not be the judge of its quality, over time an 
elaborate system was developed in which cultural organizations apply for government funding 
for periods of four years. Every four years, organizations write strategic plans, which are 
assessed by independent committees on whose advice the government decides on funding. This 
routine is dominated by arguments concerning the organizations’ creative identities and artistic 
development.  
 In 1999 the Secretary for the Arts introduced a new element into the culture politics, 
pertaining to the cultural institutions’ responsibility to involve new audience groups. This was 
intended to result in democratization of participation in the arts and a measurable increase in 
ticket sales. At the end of the first decade of the current century, government support became 
connected to the question of whether or not an organization shows efforts to increase self-
generated income (i.e. earned revenue). What started as a (social democratic) ideal of 
democratization of the arts changed over a decade into the position that an increase in self-
generated income for cultural institutions is a goal in itself to be reached by what is called an 
entrepreneurial attitude.  
 Until the recent economic crisis, Dutch cultural policy was generally seen as supportive 
towards all administrative levels (Utrecht, 2011) but the economic crisis forced the 
administration to make radical choices: “All three administrative levels [national, provincial, 
municipal] will have to make sharp choices in the coming time.” This led to decentralization of 
national responsibilities to lower administrative levels, and it led to a smaller “cultural 



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infrastructure” (Government, 2011, p. 4). The government announced it would reduce its support 
in the arts to “those developments that don’t automatically come about in the market” 
(Government, 2011, p. 4). The political rhetoric referred to a necessary radical change in cultural 
policy because of a changing society, historically developed excessive government dependence, 
too little entrepreneurship, and “giving culture back to the people,” leading to a reduction of the 
government budget for culture by twenty-five percent. Because of the four-year system, the first 
instance to effectuate the new situation was January 1, 2013. Entrepreneurship is invoked as a 
solution for the retreating government involvement. As of 2013, a set level of self-generated 
income is a condition to be admitted to the system of government arts subsidies: “A norm of 
17.5% self generated income is conditional to be allowed into the basic cultural infrastructure for 
2013-2016” (Government, 2011, p. 11). In The Netherlands, there is hardly any private 
patronage for the arts.  
 In this context the involved players, cultural institutions and subsidizers, share an 
understanding of cultural entrepreneurship as synonymous with finding solutions to the problem 
of decreasing government support. Cultural institutions respond to this in their strategic 
documents for government support in the period 2013-2016. I will not discuss individual 
documents but continue to follow the discourse by looking at an audit that was performed in 
2012 for the Ministry of Culture. This audit contributes to the discussion on the level of 
entrepreneurship displayed in the strategic documents. The audit looks at quantitative (financial) 
criteria for good entrepreneurship such as cash position and solvency, as well as positioning, 
cooperation, marketing, governance and vision. The audited institutions were seen to be 
generally strong in explaining their position in a creative network, but poor in financial 
robustness and awareness of risks and opportunities. The audit concludes that many 
organizations do not convincingly ground their business models in creative strategy (In 't Veld, 
Gerdes, & Gooskens, 2012). 
 The importance given in the audit to the connection between the organizations’ artistic 
strategies and their business models is a new element in this survey of the discourse on cultural 
entrepreneurship. The poor foundation for the entrepreneurial figures (figures that would project 
the necessary increase of self generated income over 2013–2016) in substantive strategic policy 
leads the auditors to suggest that organizations relate to entrepreneurship only discursively (In 't 
Veld et al., 2012). The audit is based on strategic documents of nationally supported 
organizations, but the conclusions can also be applied to cultural organizations in a local context.  
The auditors conclude that a relationship between artistic identity and entrepreneurship is 
missing. This omission can be explained by looking at discourse surrounding the routinized 
quadrennial subsidy exercise. Cultural organizations, in their strategic documents, identify 
opportunities for artistic growth and innovation based on the need to further develop their artistic 
signature and work with a larger and more diverse ensemble. In its feedback to one such subsidy 
request, the local Arts Council accepts the growth ambition: “The ambition to scale up […] is 
sufficiently motivated from earlier successes” (Utrecht, 2008). Despite the general importance 
given to critical examination of the budgetary proposals of the applying organizations, in 
individual evaluations the local arts council considers financial aspects to be logically 
consequential to artistic growth ambitions. In fact, if organizations are critically reviewed at all, 
it is for lacking an articulated artistic vision.  
 The traditional focus in the quadrennial subsidy exercise is on the organizations’ own 
artistic developments, and organizations make sense of the term entrepreneurship as synonymous 
with financial planning consequential to this artistic strategy. Organizations do not feel invited to 



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see their artistic identity as a starting point for entrepreneurial thought, nor do they see 
entrepreneurship as a way to identify and realize opportunities outside their direct artistic realm. 
Entrepreneurship is a “paper value” (In 't Veld et al., 2012) devoid of entrepreneurial values such 
as open-mindedness, perseverance, and risk acceptance, the very values that creative 
organizations familiarly refer to in the quadrennial subsidy application.  
 As sketched in this national context, cultural entrepreneurship is used as a synonym for 
finding new sources of income as a response to the decreasing government support as a result of 
the economic crisis. Entrepreneurship as it appears in strategic documents of cultural 
organizations comes out as restricted to politically acceptable (and accepted) predictions of self-
generated income. The theme of cultural entrepreneurship does not fundamentally affect the 
artistic growth discourse that dominates the quadrennial subsidy applications.  
 

Local Context: Utrecht 
 On a local level the contours of a different interpretation of cultural entrepreneurship are 
drawn. This is illustrated in the case of the Dutch city of Utrecht. Here, the local administration 
invites cultural organizations to connect to a larger societal agenda. The local administration 
connects cultural policy to underlying socio-political goals. In Utrecht, cultural policy is closely 
connected to positioning the city internationally as a “city of knowledge and culture” and to 
improving its image as a good location for businesses. The city has lined up several large-scale 
cultural events, into the next decade. It connects to European policy in its ambition to look at 
culture as a tool to improve social cohesion in the city. The city specifically mentions the 
challenge to connect artistic autonomy to social inclusion and the policy to get the city 
structurally on a higher financial and economic and competitive level (Utrecht, 2011).  
 The city acknowledges that it needs support from cultural institutions to reach its long-
term goals: “Long term ambitions are expressed in the themes for Utrecht 2018 [the ambition to 
become cultural capital of Europe in 2018, JK], and co-determine our choice to support 
organizations. These organizations will be the bearing forces of 2018” (Utrecht, 2011). Cultural 
organizations are invited to propose artistically provocative projects to substantiate the image of 
the city and help it reach its long-term goals. New connections among players in the cultural 
field, educational field, and the corporate world are expected to be beneficial for 
experimentation, talent development, and innovation. After culture and knowledge became the 
city’s brand, the administration appealed to the entrepreneurship of the cultural sector to help 
substantiate this brand. “The cultural organizations and initiatives we need for the development 
of the city, on the one hand have to be able to inspire the city, and on the other must be of such 
high quality that they contribute to the international profiling of the city. Cultural 
entrepreneurship must run through their veins” (Utrecht, 2011, p. 12). Without providing an 
exact definition of the cultural entrepreneur, the city understands the term as a “partner” in a 
wider political perspective.  
 The administration’s position that organizations become partners on the basis of their 
contribution to a local long term political strategy is an addition to the routine policy to subsidize 
cultural organizations on the basis of the artistic quality of strategic plans and it is a new element 
in this survey of cultural entrepreneurship. The entrepreneurship that is appealed to on this local 
level is based on a broader definition than in the national discourse. The importance given to 
creative diversity and experimentation in relation to a higher goal indicates that the city 
understands cultural entrepreneurship to be driven by an organization’s artistic identity. The 
administration’s proposition is to give substance to the term cultural entrepreneurship through 



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realizing projects in partnership for the good of the city’s general political strategy. Partnership is 
introduced in the strategic discourse but it is left to the organizations to give it substance. The ad-
ministration’s role is to “encourage a very diverse group of partners and stakeholders to work 
together in creating our common European future” (Utrecht, 2012, p. 106). 
 It is not the aim of this essay to evaluate the artistic success of the partnerships that have 
developed, but to see how they influence the discourse on entrepreneurship. Two elements are of 
importance.  First, the interpretation of entrepreneurship as a connection between organizations’ 
autonomous artistic identities and societal goals leads to the strategy for organizations to connect 
to higher goals in turn leads organizations to initiate ‘partnerships’ with the city (and with other 
cultural organizations) in a way that ‘fits’ the organization. Such partnerships may be modest, as 
is one museum’s when it says it is fair that its enthusiasm towards the city is in line with the 
city’s contribution to the its subsistence (Kolsteeg, forthcoming), or more elaborate. In the 
preparations for the Cultural Capital of Europe bid, new creative partnerships were forged, 
leading to programs like ‘Former West,’ an “artistic reflection on a new world order”, by the 
Center for Contemporary Art plus international partners: “Over a ten-year period (2008-2018), 
[this program] will seek answers and develop possible scenarios for our global future, […] 
involving universities and arts academies, and […] arts institutions from Europe and beyond” 
(Utrecht, 2012: 183). The program ‘Hacking Habitat’ proposed by a group of educational and 
artistic partners, ascertains a tendency among artists to “form alliances with colleagues and with 
other stakeholders such as local residents in order to ‘reclaim the public domain  and design their 
own human habitat’” (Utrecht, 2012, p. 170).   
 Second, we should address the implication in the term ‘partnership’ that in order for the 
city to be a credible partner, it, in turn, should show a risk-accepting, ‘we’re in this together,’ 
attitude. Doing so is a struggle for the local administration. Formal administrative procedures 
(and their bearers) are not easily tolerant of a risk accepting interpretation of cultural 
entrepreneurship. Early in 2013, the city of Utrecht organized a conference on cultural 
entrepreneurship at which it asked, “Entrepreneurship often involves taking risks, artistically and 
financially. In return for subsidies, the administration requires that public money is spent 
responsibly and is accounted for adequately. How can the city of Utrecht find a balance between 
freedom and control?” (Utrecht, 2013). Paradoxically, the answer to this question is to adopt the 
criteria developed in the above mentioned audit, along with setting up a structure that facilitates 
early identification of possible financial risks (Utrecht, 2013). Along with the invitation to the 
sector to partner in the city’s underlying strategy, the need for the local administration to execute 
its responsibility as a controlling government is a political and bounded reality.  
 In the case of Utrecht, a condition for establishing an entrepreneurial attitude that fits the 
context is that cultural organizations understand and share a sense of urgency about local 
underlying political targets, in this case targets such as the European Cultural Capital ambition, 
social cohesion, and/or city marketing. At the same time, it is important that the local 
administration understands how organizations strategically balance artistic and contextual 
elements, and how they feel about the importance of their creative identity. Intermediaries need 
“the right competence and insight in the cultural field” (Bille and De Paoli, 2012, p. 83) to 
introduce cultural entrepreneurship as a discourse on creative positioning in relation to a political 
discourse.  
 In summary, we see that in the Dutch context, where support for the arts is (still) largely a 
government matter, the discourse on cultural entrepreneurship shows a limited financial 
interpretation of the term, separated from the artistic identity of organizations. On the local level 



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of the city of Utrecht, cultural entrepreneurship is themetized as using artistic creativity for 
realizing underlying socio- and culture political goals, limited by the administrations formal 
controlling responsibility. Cultural institutions in Utrecht accommodate the partnership discourse 
within a strategic discourse of artistic innovation and positioning in a cultural network. One 
theatre organization, for instance, states, “An appealing international city of culture does not only 
present, but takes risks and makes a contribution to international developments. For this, an 
initiating producing role is needed. We want to play this role as an international production 
house” (interview, quoted in Kolsteeg, forthcoming).  
 

Framework 
 In this essay, I have described the discourse on cultural entrepreneurship in the 
Netherlands and in the city of Utrecht. It is not the purpose of this essay to evaluate the success 
of cultural entrepreneurship in the described context, but to identify along which lines it is given 
meaning. I have discussed the different usages of the term cultural entrepreneurship. I have 
described the pressure from the national administration on cultural organizations to understand 
entrepreneurial behavior as the strategy to reduce subsidy-dependence. I have referred to a semi-
independent audit that establishes entrepreneurship is a ‘paper value’ if the projected finances 
(self generated income) are not supported by strategic artistic choices. I have discussed the 
practice in the city of Utrecht, where the local administration calls on the cultural field to 
contribute to the city’s long-term cultural-political ambitions. Cultural organizations relate to this 
invitation in a pragmatic way.  
 I propose now to look at cultural entrepreneurship in these observed cases along the lines 
of two discursive tensions deducted from the observations and considerations made thus far. 
There is the ‘risk-tension’, between understanding entrepreneurship as a safe and risk-averting 
way to secure a financial future and entrepreneurship as the risk-taking practice of realizing new 
artistic opportunities. The second tension is the perspective tension, between private or 
organizational interests (artistic development) and responsibility for societal infrastructure, an 
elaboration of Hagoort’s (2007) observation on the entrepreneur’s responsibility to care for 
cultural infrastructure. These tensions are expressed in Figure 1. They are to be understood as 
dynamics that occur in discourse, and I suggest the discourse on cultural entrepreneurship in this 
particular context is influenced by the way interlocutors make sense of these tensions.  
 If we illustrate this framework with the cases discussed here, we see that the local 
administration attempts to provoke cultural entrepreneurship by involving cultural institutions in 
considerations concerning the top right quadrant of Figure 1, while routine interactions on 
subsidy-requests traditionally are dominated by considerations found in the lower right quadrant. 
With awareness of (local) socio-political goals, cultural institutions can decide if and how they 
will develop artistic activities that connect to these targets. If they do connect to these goals 
pragmatically from within their own creative perspective they find themselves in the upper left 
quadrant, whereas the city invites them to develop innovation and artistic entrepreneurship and 
move to the ‘risky’ upper right quadrant. The lower left hand quadrant represents cultural 
entrepreneurship as a ‘paper value’, the most limited interpretation of the term. 
 If cultural organizations would move to the upper right quadrant in the case of Utrecht, 
this would create a situation in which the artistic diversity that the administration claims to need 
would give substance to its policy. Both the local political interest and the organizations’ artistic 
interest would be met. The next step in using this model would be to identify what is needed to 
reach the upper right hand quadrant. It requires organizations to risk their routine position in a 



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cultural network. In return, organizations need the local administration to review traditional 
structures and procedures that originated to control institutions in a subsidy situation but now 
hinder the development of the entrepreneurship it advocates. Governments should become 
partners, co-entrepreneurs, and allow an innovation of the relationship between ad-ministration 
and cultural institutions to grow. 

 
 

 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 

Figure 1. Tensions surrounding interactions in cultural entrepreneurship 
 

Conclusion 
 In this essay, I have looked at cultural entrepreneurship as a societal and discursive 
practice in a national and local political context. I have discussed entrepreneurial practice in one 
case, the Dutch city of Utrecht, and I have sketched its culture-political context. The dominant 
interpretation of the term cultural entrepreneurship in the national context is limited to finding a 
safe financial strategy in times of diminishing government support. There is no connection to the 
creative core of the organization or to entrepreneurial values such as risk taking and 
experimentation. In the local context of the city of Utrecht, the understanding of 
entrepreneurship is wider. Cultural organizations are invited to connect profiling artistic projects 

 
Public interest: 

 
Care for Societal 
Infrastructure 

 
Organizational 
sustainability; 

 
Risk aversion 

 
Organizational / 
private interest 

 
Creative positioning 

 
Development and 

innovation; 
 

Risk acceptance 
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Risk 
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Risk 
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to underlying municipal political ambitions. This invitation is at odds with underlying discourses 
such as tenacious institutional routines, the administration’s controlling responsibility, and the 
historical tendency to look at strategy of cultural organizations as limited to autonomous growth 
and development. I suggest to understand this process along the line of two tensions that 
influence the position taken up by the different interlocutors in the discourse on cultural 
entrepreneurship: risk and perspective.  
 Further research on this subject is needed. First, the question is whether the risk and 
perspective tension lines are helpful to understand cultural entrepreneurship as a situated 
discourse in other regional contexts, or whether the ‘tension-model’ in itself (with other tensions 
than the two identified here) can be used as a tool to understand entrepreneurship in other 
contexts. Also, research into the working of cultural entrepreneurship needs to take into account 
regional and historical contextuality in order to find a translation into relevant strategic tools for 
cultural organizations. The model implies the transition process a cultural organization goes 
through towards being entrepreneurial. Attention is needed for the elements that influence the 
changeability of cultural organizations and to the question of to what extent creative 
organizations can connect strategically to challenges in other contexts while guarding (or 
capitalizing on) their artistic core. Finally, more research is needed on how these perspectives 
hold up in the practice of individual artists.  
. 

List of References 
 
Bille, T. and D. de Paoli (2012). Approaches to stimulate and support the cultural entrepreneur: 

The case of Denmark and Norway. In: Hagoort, Thomassen and Kooyman (ed.): Pioneering 
Minds Worldwide. Delft: Eburon Publishers.  

Caves, R. E. (2003). Contracts between art and commerce. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 
17(2) 73–84. 

DCMS (1998). Creative Industries Mapping Document. Department of Culture, Media and 
Sports, UK.   

Government, 2009a. Waarde van creatie (The value of creation). Brief Cultuur en Economie 
2009. Ministeries of Culture and Economic Affairs.  

Government, 2009b. Verkenning Creatieve Industrie (Understanding creative industry). 
Ministerie van Economische Zaken en Senternovem. 

Government (2011). Meer dan Kwaliteit (More than Quality). Policy report, Netherlands 
Ministery of Cultural Affairs.  

Hagoort, G. (2007). Cultureel ondernemerschap. Over het onderzoek naar de vrijheid van kunst 
maken en de vrijheid van ondernemen. HKU/UU, speech, 6 June 2007. 

Hertog, Den, et al. (2012). Evaluatie van de programmatische aanpak. Ministery of  Economic 
Affairs. Dialogic. 

Hesmondalgh (2007). The Cultural Industries. Thousand Oaks CA: Sage.  
Horkheimer, M. and Th. Adorno (2002): Dialectic of Enlightment. Stanford University Press. 
In 't Veld, J., Gerdes, E., & Gooskens, B. (2012). Meta-analyse ondernemerschap ('Meta-

analysis entrepreneurship'). Ministery for  Culture.  
Klamer, A. (2011). Cultural entrepreneurship. The Review of Austrian Economics, 24(2), 141–

156.  
Kolsteeg, J. (forthcoming). Construction of identit in Cultural and Creative Organisations, 

Utrecht 2010-2012.   



Kolsteeg            Situated Cultural Entrepreneurship 
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Artivate 2 (3)   

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Kooyman, R. (2009). Entrepreneurial dimensions of cultural and creative industries. Literature 
review. Utrecht: HKU.  

Pratt, A. C. (2005). Cultural industries and public policy. International Journal of Cultural 
Policy, 11(1), 31–44.  

Stam, E., De Jong, J., & Marlet, G. (2008). Creative industries in the Netherlands: Structure, 
development, innovativeness and effects on urban growth. Geografiska Annaler: Series B. 

Throsby, D. (2009). The Economics of Cultural Policy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.  
Unesco. (2008). Creative Economy Report 2008. Geneva: United Nations. 
Utrecht (2008). Advice Arts Committee for 2009-2012. City and province of Utrecht 
Utrecht (2011). Open Spaces. Cultural policy report for the City of Utrecht, 2012-2020.  
Utrecht, 2012: Trust the Future, Create your City. Candidate European Capital of Culture 2018.   
Utrecht (2013). The Future of Cultural Entrepreneurship in Utrecht. Conference report  
Wennekers, S., & Thurik, R. (1999). Linking entrepreneurship to economic growth. Small 

Business Economics, 13(1), 27–56.  
 
 
NOTE: need consistent publication info on the 3 “Government” 4 “Utrecht” entries.  If these are 

government reports or whitepapers, please format as in the following example and send 
in a separate word file: 

 
National Institute of Mental Health. (1990). Clinical training in serious mental illness (DHHS 

Publication No. ADM 90-1679). Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. 


