





































 

VOL. 11, NO. 3 
SPRING 2023 

 

New Ways of Supporting Arts Entrepreneurship 
A Case Study of Maniobra 

Javier J. Herna ndez Acosta 

Universidad del Sagrado Corazón 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ABSTRACT: This research analyses Maniobra, a cultural employment initiative that offers 
guaranteed income and additional support for three years to selected artists in Puerto Rico. 
Maniobra’s program design phase and preliminary first year results are analyzed through the 
author’s personal experience with the project as an arts entrepreneur and scholar. This 
reflection suggests how to address barriers facing artist initiatives with a lens of diversity, 
equity, and inclusion. A conceptual framework analyzes the preliminary impacts through a 
combination of artistic, personal, and economic well-being. The article also highlights the 
importance of institutional trust in artists and artistic work, expanding traditional philanthropy 
models. KEYWORDS: cultural work, cultural policy, arts entrepreneurship, artistic well-being. 
DOI: doi.org/10.34053/artivate.11.3.193 

Introduction 

Maniobra is a cultural employment initiative that offers guaranteed income for three years 

to a group of artists in Puerto Rico. The project was launched as a strategy to recognize 

the economic challenges of arts entrepreneurship and to identify models that can be 

replicated in the future. This article analyzes Maniobra’s program design phase and the 

preliminary results from the first year by using my personal experience with the project 

as an arts entrepreneur and a scholar. 

Artistic practice has many intersections with entrepreneurial thinking. Artists 

constantly navigate uncertainty to create value. Both artists and entrepreneurs start with 

imagination, creativity, and non-conformity, work to generate disruption, integrate 

diverse resources from their environment, and assume risks to advance their ideas. 

Although it might be easier to find an entrepreneurial mindset in the arts than in other 



ARTIVATE 11.3 

2 

occupations, we are still developing knowledge about the practice of artists in 

entrepreneurship. This research has developed a theoretical framework for arts 

entrepreneurship that is implemented in this paper. 

Arts entrepreneurship continues to be an academic field under construction. It 

attempts to define a set of practices in the arts and creative sector, with very different 

dynamics and implications than other industries. While in some sectors entrepreneurship 

can be seen mainly as the creation of economic value through cultural work, scholars such 

as Rowan (2010) have argued that it mobilizes a neoliberal strategy of reducing the 

government’s responsibilities over culture that in turn increases precarity in its creators.  

Among these tensions, we need to find concepts, practices, and guidelines to define 

arts entrepreneurship as an exercise of creating economic and cultural value within an 

environment of creative freedom, collaboration, and sustainability. To achieve this, it is 

necessary to rehearse experiments where the balance between the sustainability of both 

the venture and the entrepreneur is guaranteed, with the entrepreneur’s sustainability 

guided by the improvement of their artistic practice, economic well-being, and personal 

well-being.  

Puerto Rico’s recent economic challenges presented an opportunity to explore how 

to address sustainability for arts entrepreneurs. Puerto Rico is a Caribbean country, a 

territory of the United States that during the last decade has suffered multiple crisis 

scenarios including the economic bankruptcy of the government, devastating hurricanes, 

earthquakes, political crises, and the pandemic that has affected the world since 2020 

(Bonilla, 2020). These compounding scenarios made visible the precariousness of the 

cultural sector while also provoking reflections on innovative models to promote arts 

entrepreneurship. 

In March 2020, the Centro de Economí a Creativa, Inc. (CEC), with the support of the 

Mellon Foundation, launched the Maniobra program. This initiative provides salaries, 

fringe benefits, health insurance, management services, and an operating budget for 37 

artists in 25 cultural projects around the archipelago. The name, translated as “maneuver,” 

serves as a metaphor for the constant work artists need to do to persist in a creative 

career. The initiative supports the economic and personal well-being of the artists, 

guarantees creative freedom, and respects the processes and methodologies of the 

participating artists to minimize the influence and negative externalities that social 

investors and philanthropy can sometimes have. These supports provide artists with the 

security to create new artistic work.  

The Maniobra initiative creates space for artists to develop projects by providing 

trust-based economic support that recognizes the artists’ trajectory. This article presents 

Maniobra as a case study exploring new ways of understanding and supporting artist 

entrepreneurs, using my own personal involvement in the work as a reflective tool. The 

article analyzes the design process of the program and its approach to addressing barriers 

of similar initiatives for artists and adding a perspective on diversity, equity, and inclusion. 

A conceptual framework is introduced to analyze the preliminary impact identified 

through a survey with participating artists focused on well-being. 



ARTIVATE 11.3 

3 

This article serves as a bridge between my simultaneous Maniobra roles as founder 

of CEC, co-designer of the initiative, and lead researcher studying the development, 

implementation, and impact of the work. The aim of merging these multiple roles through 

this article is to broaden the discussion on the condition of artists and how to develop 

innovative initiatives to advance their sustainability. My previous experience as a 

musician and cultural manager allowed me to experience first-hand the challenges of 

cultural production in the face of economic and personal conditions that interfere with 

creative work. This personal experience with artist precarity led me to establish CEC as a 

strategy to innovate new ways of supporting artists and entrepreneurs. After 10 years of 

working with philanthropy and government as the main social investors in the arts, I was 

able to launch this new program as a diagnosis and response to the challenges caused by 

these structures and dynamics. Also, CEC’s previous work supporting the cultural sector 

gave the team in-depth knowledge of the field and led us to reflect on the need for new 

forms of subsidies that are less restrictive and better aligned with artists’ interests and 

creative agendas. 

The first phase of the work designing Maniobra as an entrepreneurial activity is 

analyzed here as a case study in order to expand the agenda on the successes and failures 

of philanthropy in the arts. My professional experiences as both a musician and an arts 

entrepreneur launching CEC undergird the context for Maniobra, and my role as a scholar 

shapes this case study and my analysis of the program’s implications for the arts 

ecosystem in Puerto Rico and abroad. Research methods used to aggregate and analyze 

data for this paper similarly reflect my multiple roles in the work. My role in the design of 

the program since initial conversations with the Mellon Foundation and later as a 

facilitator of the advisory team contributed rigorous and reliable data to this research, but 

also provided anecdotal elements that inform my analysis as a scholar. This data was 

collected through advisory team meeting minutes and my personal reflections. 

Additionally, a survey carried out among Maniobra participants was analyzed using 

qualitative and quantitative methods to include artist perspectives in the research.  

This article analyses the Maniobra design process and impacts in order to imagine a 

new route to support the arts directly and with a long-term approach toward 

sustainability. I argue that risk management methods should be extended not only to 

artists’ projects but also to new initiatives that are being created to support artists. This 

can be combined with institutional trust in artists and artistic work, expanding the 

processes and methodologies of traditional models of philanthropy.  

Evolution of Entrepreneurship in the Arts 

The field of arts entrepreneurship has made a series of advances in connecting 

entrepreneurship and well-being that establish the foundations of this case study. 

Entrepreneurship is a multidisciplinary field that has evolved in recent years. There 

is an evolving consensus that it represents a process through which people discover, 

evaluate, and take advantage of an opportunity to develop a new product or service 



ARTIVATE 11.3 

4 

(Shane & Venkatamaran, 2000). Economic theory continues to influence the research 

agenda of understanding entrepreneurial behavior, mainly addressed through the 

creation of wealth and the importance of multiple non-economic motivations for starting 

an entrepreneurial activity, including satisfaction, personal achievement, and the interest 

to innovate on top of the current conditions of an industry (Ripsas, 1998 & Van Praag & 

Van Ophem, 1995). 

The issue of opportunities in entrepreneurship is directly connected with the creation 

and delivery of value (Gangi, 2017). In the arts, this does not only refer to economic value 

but to other dynamics such as cultural, social, educational, or community value added, 

establishing the foundations of arts entrepreneurship as a creative and managerial 

activity. The acceptance of these other value dynamics, like the recognition that the 

orientation of new goods or services does not have to be towards the market, and that the 

product can be generated solely based on individual motivations of its creator, is another 

core factor in the fundamentals of arts entrepreneurship. 

Precisely in this way, Gangi (2017) points to the multiple value dynamics as a 

consensus of theories on arts entrepreneurship, following the previous approaches of 

Chang and Wyszomirski (2015), Essig (2015), and Beckman (2014). Similarly, the need to 

import an entire theoretical framework that comes completely outside of the arts has been 

a great challenge (White, 2019). 

However, it is important to highlight that each context requires adding nuances for 

this balance of economic versus cultural value according to its social and political realities 

to avoid the challenges of colonial practices in the knowledge production process (Gaio, 

et al, 2023). Fortunately, approaches such as Rindova, Barry, and Ketchen’s (2009) that 

frame entrepreneurship as an emancipatory exercise allow us to recognize the liberation 

and social justice role of entrepreneurship in the arts. According to the authors, that is 

made visible in the entrepreneur’s interest in achieving autonomy in certain 

circumstances by authoring new ways to generate change and proposing new discourses 

on those possible changes. 

Callander (2019) connects these approaches with arts entrepreneurship, arguing that 

entrepreneurship occurs as an exercise intrinsic to artistic creation and not only as a 

means to commercialize artistic work. Her analysis is central to the case study presented 

in this article: Maniobra prioritizes artistic initiatives connected to social justice, and 

participating artists are motivated by artistic creation rather than using entrepreneurship 

as a post-creation tool. In the same way, the ventures supported by the program have 

played an important role in seeking to transform structures and principles around art, its 

appreciation, and its stereotypes. This connects with White’s proposal of “organizational 

attack” (2019) in theorizing arts entrepreneurship. Howard Becker (quoted in White, 

2019) proposes this concept as a coordinated attack on social structures and sacred 

aesthetic beliefs to create new artworlds. 

Within the literature on entrepreneurship, the topic of well-being has increasingly 

been discussed since 2013 (Sa nchez-Garcí a, et al, 2018). The nature of a job which does 

not have a guaranteed income and is mainly based on scenarios of uncertainty and risk 



ARTIVATE 11.3 

5 

can have a significant impact on the health and well-being of entrepreneurs. Even with the 

difficulty in measuring the issue of well-being, research has identified variables such as 

affect, life satisfaction, and aspects of physical health and social well-being (Wiklund, et al, 

2019). 

Well-being has been approached from two very broad perspectives: hedonic, related 

to happiness as an integral state of mind, and eudaimonic, linked to self-realization and 

personal development (Wiklund, et al, 2019). The literature establishes a direct 

relationship with the economic performance of the venture (Shepherd, et al, 2019), 

recognizing that the ups and downs of the entrepreneurship process impact life-work 

balance and also have a great impact on the entrepreneur’s family members (Stephan, 

2018 & Nguyen & Sawang, 2016). Also, the importance of autonomy and leisure time is 

highlighted as a key resource for navigating the challenges of developing a new venture 

(Wiklund, et al, 2019 & Shen, et al, 2018). 

The issue of well-being in artistic occupations has been implicated by the economic 

challenges these professionals experience. Multiple research projects highlight the 

income “penalty” that artistic work entails versus other occupations that require similar 

levels of formal education (Alper and Wassall, 2006). The low-income condition adds to 

the need for multiple jobs, increasing time management challenges in the completion of 

artistic work (Menger, 2006). 

Research on well-being in the performing arts is approached from multiple 

perspectives (Willis, et al, 2019). One emphasis is on the demands of the job in terms of 

skills, time, and preparation. In contexts such as theater and music, the high level of 

performance required and the interrelated fear of making mistakes are significant 

stressors (Kubacki, 2008). In the same way, the social context through teamwork can have 

positive and negative effects depending on the equity practices among the collaborators. 

Arts entrepreneurship is an autonomous process compared to the dynamics in other 

economic sectors because other motivations transcend the creation of economic value and 

the creation of wealth. In the same way, the issue of comprehensive or holistic well-being 

is raised as an important challenge for entrepreneurs. This is intensified for arts 

entrepreneurs precisely because of the difficulty of capturing their economic value as well 

as their artistic, social, and cultural value given that they tend to produce art as a public 

good.  

Cultural Work in Puerto Rico 

Puerto Rico is a Caribbean archipelago and a territory of the United States, which means 

that it operates under a political, economic, and regulatory framework similar to that of 

the 50 states. In 2006, the country experienced an economic crisis after a federal change 

in the tax incentive model no longer encouraged multinational companies to locate their 

headquarters on the island. The country continues to experience an ongoing economic 

recession at all levels, including declaring government bankruptcy in 2015. Further 

compounding this economic crisis, Puerto Rico suffered the impact of two powerful 



ARTIVATE 11.3 

6 

hurricanes in September 2017, and the continued recovery has been very slow, further 

accentuating inequality (Bonilla, 2020). 

In January 2020, just two months before the first closure caused by the COVID-19 

pandemic, Puerto Rico suffered earthquakes for the first time in almost 100 years, which 

caused major impacts in the southern region. This was further compounded between 

March 2020 and May 2021 as the whole world navigated the pandemic and almost all of 

the cultural sector halted face-to-face activity, greatly affecting visual arts, performing 

arts, and music. 

Changes in cultural consumption patterns during the pandemic also affected the 

sustainability of cultural work. According to the Survey of Cultural Consumption and 

Participation in Puerto Rico carried out in 2021 (Herna ndez, 2022), the consumption of 

visual arts fell from 16.6% attendance in 2015 to 12.8%, and the consumption of 

performing arts fell from 23.1% to 16.5%, even including participation in the wealth of 

virtual activities. In the case of music events, the percentage of people who participated 

increased from 22.9% to 30.6% mostly because of virtual events. Unfortunately, despite 

these levels of consumption, very few people paid to attend these events in 2021. For 

example, only 16.7% of attendees paid for music events, 25% for performing arts, and 

12.6% for visual arts. 

These new trends in cultural consumption tied to expectations of free participation 

created a great challenge for the economic sustainability of artists and cultural entities. 

Crisis response strategies took a while to reach the cultural sector, possibly due to the high 

rate of self-employment and the difficulty of demonstrating economic impacts that initial 

federal aid programs requested. Subsequently, multiple alternatives were opened that 

made it easier for self-employed workers to receive unemployment benefits just like 

salaried people. 

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, the artistic sector was already facing the 

economic challenges of the compounding crises in Puerto Rico. In 2020 a total of 11,197 

cultural workers were estimated to be working, representing 0.9% of total employment 

in Puerto Rico. Similar to many countries, 48% were self-employed as opposed to only 

12% of workers across the rest of the labor market. The average income from self-

employment was $16,652, less than across the rest of the labor market where the average 

was $21,094 (Herna ndez, 2023). 

In the wake of Hurricane Maria in 2018 multiple support programs arose from United 

States-based foundations that, until then, had had little presence in Puerto Rico. In the 

same way, the federal government began to implement pandemic emergency funds after 

2020. This injection of recovery funds has strengthened an ecosystem of support for 

cultural entities that did not exist before. 

Methodology 

This study uses a case study methodology to analyze the design process and preliminary 

results of the Maniobra program in Puerto Rico. The case study methodology was selected 



ARTIVATE 11.3 

7 

following Yin’s recommendation for its relevance when the aim is to explain the why and 

how of a process or scenario (Yin, 2003). The author is also the founder of the organization 

being studied and facilitator of the design process and uses that experience to develop this 

case study based on observations, discussions, and analysis that occurred throughout 

different stages of program development. Following the alternatives presented by Yin 

(2003), the author participates as a participant observer with direct involvement in 

decision-making of the organization. Recommendations from Patton (2003, 2014) were 

used to assess the quality of the fieldwork and the documentation in terms of the role of 

the participant observer, the level of focus of the observations, its perspective, and its 

scope. Despite the challenges of this type of analysis, this method allows access to valuable 

information and insights difficult to collect from external observation alone (Yin, 2003). 

Observations about the design process were aggregated in documentation of virtual 

meetings held by the advisory committee and meeting notes during the program creation 

process. Additional data about the preliminary impact of the project was collected through 

a questionnaire sent to the project participants. The design of the questionnaire was 

similar to the survey of the Census of Cultural and Creative Work in Puerto Rico 

(Herna ndez, 2022). Three open-ended questions were added to collect information about 

the impact of the project on the participants’ artistic practice and on their economic and 

personal condition. A question about possible negative externalities of the project on their 

individual artistic practice was also added. The survey was shared with the 37 

participating artists from whom 32 responses were received. This questionnaire was 

administered in November 2022, eight months after the formal start of the program. 

The responses to the open-ended questions were analyzed and the answers were 

coded according to the three main axes: artistic practice, economic well-being, and 

personal well-being. Based on the coding exercise, key elements were identified in each of 

the well-being axes through which the analysis was organized. The artistic practice 

component was later named as artistic well-being based on the analysis and as a proposal 

to achieve consistency between the three components.  

Background and Context of Maniobra 

Maniobra is a guaranteed income program for artists developed by the Centro de 

Economí a Creativa, Inc., an organization founded in March 2020 in Puerto Rico. The 

organization was created as a strategy to develop an entity that would serve to advance 

the needs of the art and culture sector in Puerto Rico. This organization was incubated by 

Inversio n Cultural, a non-profit organization that has carried out research projects, 

training, and management services for the creative industries since 2008. The new 

organization would be responsible for implementing LabCultural projects (an arts, 

culture, and creative economy observatory) and Nido Cultural (“Cultural Nest,” a 

management services program). These programs were launched with a combination of 

funds from entities including the Flamboya n Arts Fund, Filantropí a Puerto Rico, and the 

Mellon Foundation.  



ARTIVATE 11.3 

8 

After the implementation of these programs, internal reflection identifying new needs 

highlighted the opportunity for greater direct support for artists who lead impact 

initiatives in their sectors and communities. As part of the diagnosis, the following key 

needs were identified as the ones that the ecosystem was not yet addressing. 

1. Lack of diversification in financial support for artistic work – Much financing for the 

arts comes from government entities and foundations. Following the regulatory and 

tax framework of the United States, non-profit organizations must be approved for 

local (1101.01 of the Internal Revenue Code) and federal (501c3 of the Federal 

Internal Revenue Code) tax exemptions. In the United States, many organizations of 

this type achieve their economic sustainability through a combination of public 

funds and private donations thanks to the philanthropic culture of citizenship. In 

Puerto Rico, in the absence of a collective philanthropic culture, it is very difficult 

for entities to depend solely on proposal and government funds, which generally do 

not cover indirect costs. Even so, many entrepreneurial arts projects are structured 

as non-profit organizations to access these funds. 

2. A direct focus on the instrumentalization of creative work – In the case of Puerto Rico, 

there are few philanthropic entities focused solely on supporting artistic creation. 

Those entities that support the arts mainly do so through their impact on 

educational, community, urban, or social dynamics. Therefore, regional arts funding 

initiatives are conditioned on practices whose results measure specific indicators 

of audiences, communities, or other evidence. Often open calls for funding require 

that applicants carry out new projects outside their strategic priorities in order to 

access funds. Once again, the unique focus on the programmatic part prevents the 

funds from contributing to the sustainability of the project, accentuating the 

precarious scenarios in the creative work of the founders.  

3. Difficulty understanding creative processes and their impacts – Creative processes in 

the arts still lack visibility within much of the philanthropic and government 

sectors. The magnitude of research, conceptualization, planning, development, and 

execution of creative projects, representing the early stages of the 

entrepreneurship process, is rarely understood. Therefore, many support 

initiatives from foundations focus mainly on the production and diffusion stages of 

the value chain, including concerts, performances, exhibitions, and other examples. 

The difficulty of incorporating the design and conceptualization stages into grant 

proposals ends up leaving artists to subsidize these initial activities with their 

personal time and money, contributing to artist precarity. Often direct impacts of a 

project cannot be achieved in the short term, leaving it to fall outside of the 

timeframe required by philanthropic and government initiatives. Faced with a 

philanthropic model that requires measuring final impacts in the short term 

without consideration for the amount of required preparation and planning, many 

artist initiatives are left out of support opportunities because they cannot meet 

these unrealistic expectations. 

Many of these aspects have been present in the arts ecosystem for years, although it 



ARTIVATE 11.3 

9 

should be noted that some were accentuated by the ongoing economic crisis and the 

reduction in public budgets for arts and culture. This scenario led to the Maniobra ideation 

process. 

Maniobra: A Case Study 

This section discusses the process of design, development, and implementation of 

Maniobra as a new initiative to support the arts based on a cultural employment approach. 

The design of the program stands out as an example of an intrapreneurship process that 

begins with the identification of a need followed by an open innovation process for 

developing a new initiative from existing platforms. 

Program Design 

The design of the program was led by the Centro de Economí a Creativa as the primary 

grantee and the Mellon Foundation as the lead social investor. As a foundational step, 

designing a program that fostered economic stability within the community of artists 

leading projects was validated. Next, an advisory committee of five recognized arts and 

culture professionals was convened. During work sessions, program design elements 

were developed and validated based on their relevance to the local context of Puerto Rico 

and the imperative to avoid imposing external models that do not fully recognize the 

country’s complex realities. 

For example, elements of social justice and the geographic diversity were prioritized 

in selected initiatives, with an emphasis on projects developed outside metropolitan areas 

and key demographic diversity such as gender and race. In the same way, it was 

understood that legal structure could not be an obstacle in the selection of the projects, 

considering that the diversity of the cultural ecosystem in Puerto Rico includes non-profit 

entities, artist collectives, cultural ventures, and artist-run spaces, both with and without 

formal legal structures. 

The process offered a critical look at two traditional mechanisms for supporting arts 

and cultural entrepreneurship. First, the annual support model was questioned by 

recognizing that the processes of implementing a project and complying with funder’s 

reporting requirements leave very little room for implementation. Next, it was suggested 

that the call for proposals model does not necessarily represent an exercise of equity, 

considering a context where emergency scenarios overload and wear people down with 

competitive models that sometimes reward the skill of grant writing beyond merit. 

Finally, two additional risks were identified that the Maniobra program was designed to 

address. First, the lack of funds for new creative project implementation could replicate 

the self-subsidy model that accentuates artist precarity; and second, failure to maintain 

program flexibility to adapt according to the emerging needs of the artists and projects 

selected could undermine their success. 



ARTIVATE 11.3 

10 

Final Program 

Maniobra was designed to select 25 arts entrepreneurship initiatives, mainly in the visual 

and performing arts, organized under any legal or informal structure, with an established 

artistic career that included elements of social justice. The application invitation process 

was based on the review criteria recommended by the advisory committee including 

elements of artists’ career trajectory, location, gender, race, potential for collaboration, 

and contributions to the cultural panorama of Puerto Rico. Applicants submitted a one-

page letter of intent and a detailed proposal for consideration; they were assigned a 

mentor to support the conceptualization and development of the proposal and budget. 

The benefits for being selected to participate in the program included receiving a full-

time salary ($48,000) with fringe benefits and a medical plan in addition to an operational 

budget of $20,000 for executing projects, management services, and professional 

development trainings. This support would be sustained for three years, renewable every 

year, recognizing the time required for the implementation of the projects and the 

importance of economic stability beyond a standard one-year commitment. The salary 

could be divided between two participants or go to one person, recognizing cases in which 

there might be more than one founder. The total budget for the three-year program was 

$8 million.  

Participants 

For Maniobra’s initial cohort, 25 cultural projects with different legal structures were 

selected. Of those projects, 64% are organized as non-profit organizations, yet 44% of 

those do not have the federal tax exemption. 8% were structured as an LLC (Limited 

Liability Company). The remaining 28% do not have a formal legal structure and include 

4 artists collectives and 3 independent initiatives of individual artists. To address 

geographic diversity, projects are located in 12 municipalities across Puerto Rico, and 52% 

of the projects are located outside the metropolitan area. 

The 37 participants leading the 25 selected projects represent the visual arts (47%) 

and the performing arts (19%). Their ages range from 27 to 65 years, with a median age 

of 40 years. 48% of the artists are men, while 42% are women, and 10% are non-binary. 

72% of the participating artists have a university degree. 68.8% earned less than 50% of 

their income from their cultural work before starting the program. This includes 53.1% 

who had part-time jobs and 18.8% who had a full-time job in another field. Only 28% of 

the program’s participants consider themselves white. 

 

Variable Results 

Age Range (27-65), Median: 40 

Gender 48% are men 

Race 28% are white 

Education 72% have a university degree 



ARTIVATE 11.3 

11 

Income from Arts 68.8% earned less than 50% of total 

income from arts 

Arts Sector visual arts (47%), performing arts 

(19%) 

Type of organization 64% are non-profit organizations 

Location 52% are outside the metro area 

Table 1. Summary of the profile of participants. 

A range of art activities are represented in the participating initiatives including 

artist-run gallery spaces, community cultural centers with art programming, and art 

workshops managed by artistic collectives. Other projects include performing arts venues, 

historical archives, and initiatives that produce performing arts, dance, and popular 

music. 

Mapping the Preliminary Impact of Maniobra 

The second key objective of this article is to present a conceptual framework on the 

possible impacts of Maniobra on the participants’ creation and entrepreneurship process. 

Analysis of the 32 survey responses (out of 

37 program participants) is based on well-

being and has been structured into three 

components: artistic well-being, personal 

well-being, and economic well-being. 

Although the original program design 

focused on economic impacts through 

guaranteed salaries and managed stable 

work sources, this expanded to artistic 

and personal well-being based on survey 

responses.  

 

Artistic Well-Being 

Activities described by the participating artists in relation to the process of research, 

conceptualization, development, and implementation of creative initiatives informed our 

framing of artistic well-being. Many of these stages of the creation process were made 

visible by the artists themselves. On several occasions, the lack of visibility of the creation 

processes and the lack of initiatives that recognize the complexity of these processes were 

highlighted. 

At this stage, six important elements emerged under artistic well-being: 

• Creative freedom – This component promotes creative freedom within the program 

Artistic

PersonalEconomic

Diagram 1. Dimensions of well-being. 



ARTIVATE 11.3 

12 

context of diversity by combining opportunities for artistic creation with economic 

security through operating outside of market logic. This encourages greater diversity 

within the artistic scene and builds commitment to innovative projects. 

• Focus – This component increases time available for creative activity with a focus on 

artistic practice. This is intertwined with economic well-being as artists identify the 

time they spend on part-time jobs as a major distraction that impacts their creativity. 

• Resources – Artists highlight the positive impacts of having financial resources to 

acquire equipment and materials for their work. It is important in both the 

performing and visual arts to have technical needs addressed in order to freely and 

fully realize creative projects. 

• Processes – One aspect described as having the greatest impact is investment in the 

initial stages of project creation that involve research and conceptualization. 

Respondents described how available funding opportunities rarely recognize the 

necessity of these stages and only focus on the final product. 

• Quality – The artists describe the quality of their work in relation to their time 

commitment and the resources that Maniobra facilitates. They highlight that complex 

labor scenarios and limited availability of funds typically require sacrificing key 

elements of cultural production in order to create a project. 

• Collaborations – Artists desire the ability to establish collaborations from a scenario 

of equity. The foundational economic stability of their work makes it possible to 

identify additional external resources that can be well remunerated to help them 

achieve a greater enrichment of the artistic projects. 

These elements of artistic well-being make it possible to establish key considerations 

for developing programs that support arts entrepreneurship. They represent the 

opportunity to achieve a balance between economic and cultural value, a unique 

foundation that differentiates the cultural sector from other industries. Each element is 

observed through quantifiable variables (investment in equipment, materials, time, etc.) 

and qualitative variables (quality, management of creative processes, etc.). 

The following quotes illustrate how the participants understand the impacts on their 

artistic practice: 

• “In the particular case of the organization, it offered for the first time in its history the 

opportunity to acquire materials and equipment for cultural and artistic production 

that will last in the future.” (Resources) 

• “The support of Maniobra has given me the opportunity to experiment freely. 

Financial support gives me the freedom to work on my projects without worrying 

about buying resources.” (Creative freedom) 

• “Maniobra program honors the process, research, experimentation step-by-step, and 

enhances creativity.” (Processes) 

• “Receiving a fixed income has changed my performance. I have been able to focus 

more on quality and improvements to my projects over having to earn income to live.” 

(Quality) 



ARTIVATE 11.3 

13 

These elements of artistic well-being are relevant for artists and cultural 

entrepreneurs when collaborating in programs that aim to advance their creative 

projects. Beyond the artist residency model, there are few program alternatives that 

impact the development of cultural and creative products. 

Economic Well-Being 

Traditionally, economic well-being is emphasized as the main source of support for artists. 

As a result, it has received more focus in academic research, finding that many artistic 

sectors have a lower average income than the rest of the labor market despite having a 

higher educational level (Menger, 2006). Similarly, the necessity to also pursue jobs 

outside the arts in addition to an artistic career has been documented as well as the “arts 

pool” phenomenon that it promotes, which suggests that artists prefer to take part-time 

or short-term jobs with low pay in order to maintain flexibility for potential creative work. 

However, it is important to understand artists’ perceptions of the value added by a 

stable source of income. Four elements of impact emerged in the survey responses.  

• Stable income – Receiving a stable source of income through salaries is an immediate 

direct benefit for artists. However, this change is frequently expressed in terms of its 

noneconomic impact such as improvements in artistic practice and personal well-

being. 

• Multiple jobs and grant writing – Artists criticize the need to have multiple low-paying 

jobs. They also challenge the traditional system of applications and grants that 

requires considerable time and often does not recognize or compensate 

administrative work or the required planning activities. 

• Innovation – In some cases, artists emphasized the opportunity that Maniobra 

represents to start projects or experiments that had been stopped due to the lack of 

economic stability. 

• Resilience (resistance) – The recent history of Puerto Rico poses great economic and 

social challenges that accentuate scenarios of marginalization, displacement, 

migration, and defense of communities and natural resources. Many artists have 

assumed roles in community and social struggles, highlighting the importance of 

economic stability to continue this work in times of crisis. 

The following quotes add depth of understanding to some of these elements of 

economic impact on arts entrepreneurs. They highlight the instability caused by 

depending on funding proposals for realizing projects. 

• “Financially it has been a relief being able to work without the pressure of doing other 

things to live and being able to concentrate on artistic work.” (Stable income) 

• “It is the first time in my 32 years as an artist that I can create without having to make 

proposals to survive or do other jobs to be able to make all the payments required in 

the daily life.” (Multiple jobs) 



ARTIVATE 11.3 

14 

• “My artistic practice is based on projects. The only source of payment is the projects. 

Therefore, all administrative, research, conceptual, documentary, and grant-writing 

work is not sustainable.” (Security) 

• “I had the opportunity of returning to my hometown to do what I love to do.” 

(Resilience) 

• “We were going to close our workshop permanently due to gentrification.” 

(Resilience) 

These examples make visible what academic literature has highlighted about the 

challenges of artistic work. The lack of income stability and the need to hold multiple jobs 

has a negative impact on the well-being of entrepreneurial artists. This is visible in time 

constraints, immobility, displacement, and requiring artists to move to cities and 

countries with the highest concentration of cultural activity. Yet it is underscored by the 

opportunity for artists to use economic resources as drivers of political resistance. 

Personal Well-Being 

Personal well-being should always be an important indicator of success for 

entrepreneurial activity. It places emphasis on the physical and mental health of cultural 

workers. The Census of Cultural and Creative Work in Puerto Rico (Herna ndez, 2022) 

established that in the non-arts labor market 51% of workers state that they are very 

happy, while in artistic occupations this percentage was only 26%. Similarly, 25% of arts 

workers state that their physical health status is fair, and 30% believe the same about their 

mental health status.  

Four elements of personal well-being emerged in the participant survey: 

• Stress – Stress arises in response to economic instability and the impacts it has on 

family and personal lives. It also arises in the uncertainty of project management and 

development. 

• Self-esteem – The lack of visibility of many previous efforts negatively affected their 

self-esteem, creating internal questions about whether they should continue their 

initiatives. Participation in Maniobra is a recognition of the artists’ trajectory and has 

had a positive impact on their self-esteem. 

• Live/work balance – Economic autonomy allows for a better balance between life and 

work. Although cultural work does not operate in the standard time frames of other 

professions, the nature of full-time work and the structure of fringe benefits such as 

vacation and sick days encourage artists to structure their own time to create a 

division between personal life and work. 

• Family – Several participants highlighted the importance of the program in their 

family environment. With the support, they were able to provide medical insurance 

and stable economic income to meet family responsibilities. Similarly, the ability to 

better manage their time as described above also has a positive impact on family 

relationships. 



ARTIVATE 11.3 

15 

The following examples demonstrate how the participants discussed these elements 

of personal well-being. 

• “It has especially contributed to raising the psychological and moral spirits in these 

difficult moments that we face on our island, Puerto Rico.” (Self-esteem) 

• “It has given me the opportunity to continue the creative process without 

interruption by looking for other sources of income.” (Balance) 

• “It has allowed me to dedicate myself fully to the work I do, reducing stressors related 

to money, establishing a network of artists and collaborators who operate from 

solidarity, and allowing me to honor moments of rest, thus achieving healthier spaces 

for creativity and production.” (Stress, Balance) 

The look at personal well-being, including its physical and emotional components, is 

an integral part of entrepreneurial work in the arts. Much of the literature still focuses on 

the creation and development of a company as the axis of entrepreneurial activity, yet in 

arts entrepreneurship that conversation should be centered on the artist, since often the 

product or company will not transcend its creator. 

Conclusions 

This article makes visible an example of a program that supports arts entrepreneurship 

through long-term investment in artists and in recognition of the value of cultural work. 

It also demonstrates how the entrepreneurial process itself applies to the design and 

implementation of support programs. 

As a mediating structure (Essig, 2015; 2022) connecting philanthropy to working 

artists, Maniobra invests time in the imagination, ideation, external validation, iteration, 

and execution of a flexible support program for artists operating in a highly diverse 

entrepreneurial ecosystem and responding to interconnected social, environmental, and 

economic challenges. Unlike initiatives that focus primarily on the final artistic product, 

Maniobra recognizes the precariousness of cultural work and guides social investment to 

prioritize the artistic, economic, and personal well-being of artists.  

In technological entrepreneurship, venture capital firms recognize the long periods 

of time that the adoption of innovation requires. Therefore, their investments are usually 

long-term and facilitate the recruitment and retention of high-level, specialized human 

talent. With venture capital investment in technological production, there is an 

expectation of high returns and value creation. With philanthropic investment in artistic 

production, expectations are oriented around social and cultural returns that complement 

economic performance. However, few artists support programs direct their investments 

to offset the demands that these expectations place on the high-level, specialized talent of 

artists. 

Maniobra reimagines the relationship between philanthropy and the arts to make the 

case for ample investment in both the levels and the length of funding needed to support 



ARTIVATE 11.3 

16 

artistic practice and its innovations. Maniobra’s three-year program design and significant 

total budget allocation support artists’ investment of time in research, conceptualization, 

ideation, identification of resources and collaborators, experimentation, and planning—

all prelude to artistic creation itself. This strategy supports less visible aspects of arts 

entrepreneurship work and the complexity of the creative process. It employs an 

emancipatory entrepreneurial mindset that maneuvers on behalf of artists to develop 

equitable and effective support structures for their full practice and its returns.  

Recommendations and Future Research 

This article has sought to contribute to the arts entrepreneurship literature with a 

discussion of new ways to support artists who develop creative initiatives. While 

Maniobra is in its first year as of the time of writing, it is expected to broaden the research 

strategies on the program and its impact, for example, by identifying how the 

conceptualizations of artistic, economic, and personal well-being established by the 

participating artists could be translated into a system of indicators for arts 

entrepreneurship support programs. 

While this article has focused on Maniobra’s positive impact, it is necessary to delve 

into the possible negative spillovers. For example, the nature of salaried work could imply 

imposing structures that negatively impact the creative process for artists. Similarly, even 

though established salaries seek to compensate artists within a reasonable scale, their 

relationship with compensation structures within organizations and projects could create 

scenarios of inequality. Also, despite offering health insurance benefits, some health and 

wellness practices are still prohibitively expensive within these traditional insurance 

plans. 

Another important area of research could address how innovation is generated in 

these cultural projects, be it in artistic practices, management, collaborations, or business 

models. Often the lack of economic stability forces creatives to place their projects into the 

mainstream to stay competitive. This could discourage innovation as artists seek to avoid 

the risk of adoption by audiences and philanthropic institutions. It would be interesting 

to identify whether economic stability has encouraged greater innovation among the 

participants, something that was preliminarily identified in the survey. 

Initiatives like Maniobra, which have intersections with universal basic income (UBI) 

models or other economic support strategies with continuity, should establish 

mechanisms to measure impact in the long term, considering the three dimensions of 

well-being presented in this article. In the same way, it is important to understand how 

the participants prepare to face the economic, personal, and project sustainability after 

the closure of the program that lasts three years. 

As a final reflection, it is important to highlight how this initiative, whose main 

objective has been to provide direct support to artists, has also facilitated the 

development of a research agenda on innovative alternatives to support creative work 

and the personal and economic condition of the artist. This article accentuates the 



ARTIVATE 11.3 

17 

importance of entrepreneurship as an exercise of emancipation through artistic freedom 

beyond economic freedom. The research exercise has also made it possible to document 

and reflect on a process that can represent great learnings for the future in terms of much 

more democratic dynamics of collaboration/action between philanthropy and the cultural 

community.  

It also makes it possible to strengthen the theoretical and practical bridges between 

artistic work and entrepreneurship as forms of action still under theoretical development. 

Finally, it represents an example of the importance of more action research, bridging 

researchers and practitioners, and the need to support entrepreneurial initiatives led by 

scholars who can execute innovative programs based on their research in multiple 

contexts.  

Arts entrepreneurship requires a support ecosystem that recognizes the production 

dynamics of cultural activity. It also requires that initiatives be designed around user 

experience and the needs of entrepreneurs beyond the evaluation and reporting needs of 

funders. To a large extent, the philanthropic or social investment ecosystem has great 

potential to apply the same design, entrepreneurship, and innovation methodologies that 

we aspire to promote in artists and cultural entrepreneurs. 

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Cover image: Photo by Jo Kassis, 
https://www.pexels.com/photo/photo-of-
concrete-building-4633489/ 

 

https://doi.org/10.5465/amp.2017.0001
https://doi.org/10.34053/artivate.8.2.3

	Introduction
	Evolution of Entrepreneurship in the Arts
	Cultural Work in Puerto Rico
	Methodology
	Background and Context of Maniobra
	Maniobra: A Case Study
	Program Design
	Final Program
	Participants

	Mapping the Preliminary Impact of Maniobra
	Artistic Well-Being
	Economic Well-Being
	Personal Well-Being

	Conclusions
	Recommendations and Future Research

