





































 

VOL. 13 
2024–2025 

 

Creative Social Entrepreneurship Curriculum 

Development 
A Case for Democratizing Arts Administration Education 

Jaleesa Wells 

University of Kentucky 

Rachel Shane 

University of Kentucky 

 

 

 

 

ABSTRACT: While entrepreneurship in education continues to grow, the arts and arts 
administration fields are trailing behind new, innovative, and enterprising curriculum 
development and progress. The continued rise of online learning environments creates 
opportunities for dynamic partnership development that democratizes the current structures 
of entrepreneurship education within the arts. This article presents the case of creative social 
entrepreneurship curriculum development as an opportunity to democratize arts 
administration education, highlighting the innovative online learning approach of the 
Department of Arts Administration at the University of Kentucky. It outlines the background of 
the emerging arts and entrepreneurship education landscape and specifically highlights the 
opportunity gap to develop an enterprising culture across arts and arts administration 
curriculum and in partnership with Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), which 
presently lack arts administration and entrepreneurship curricula in their art and design 
programs. Importantly, the article illustrates the possibilities of transdisciplinary curriculum 
development through the creation of an online certificate series in creative social 
entrepreneurship and provides the concepts, context, and framework for curriculum 
development. The value of democratizing curriculum development is through innovative 
approaches within cross-institutional partnerships within and between institutions. As such, 
this article highlights the possibilities of building partnerships with HBCUs as part of the 
development process for the creative social entrepreneurship certificate program series. 
KEYWORDS: creative social entrepreneurship, democratizing education, arts administration, 
SDG 4: quality education. DOI: doi.org/10.34053/artivate.13.1.215 

 
 



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Introduction 
Entrepreneurship remains one of the top competencies in the cultivation of dynamic 

leaders across industries, sectors, and economies. However, entrepreneurship education 

has been underdeveloped as a comprehensive curriculum within arts, arts administration, 

and creative and cultural industries (CCI) education. Furthermore, as interests in social 

progress, sustainability, and responsibility continue to rise, there is an emerging interest 

in the intersections between the arts and social entrepreneurship in both research and 

practice. Yet, there has been little to no attention paid to the educational opportunities of 

teaching social entrepreneurship to artists and creative practitioners. This article and the 

case presented illustrate the process of developing certificate programs in creative social 

entrepreneurship, focusing on curriculum development and cross-institutional 

partnerships for the sustainable future of entrepreneurship education. 

The gap in curriculum presents the following main questions: what are the best 

practices for developing a social entrepreneurship curriculum geared towards artists and 

creative practitioners, and what are the democratizing opportunities for cross-

institutional partnerships in certificate program development? The majority of 

educational programs in the arts focus on developing artistic skills and practices within 

particular arts disciplines, such as acting programs in theatre, performance and 

composition programs in music, and studio art programs in the visual arts. Because of the 

focus on developing artistic practices, these programs are largely missing any educational 

courses on developing a career as an artist. Unless students seek out experiential learning 

opportunities, such as internship and apprenticeship programs, career readiness is 

lacking in art students’ educational development. Furthermore, art students rarely have 

the opportunity to develop entrepreneurship competencies as part of their arts 

educational curriculum.  

Emerging from empirical research on past and present creative social entrepreneurs 

and enterprises, creative social entrepreneurship as a curriculum can be described as the 

skills-based practice of establishing new ventures that combine creative methods with 

commercial strategies to improve the economic, environmental, political, and social well-

being of society. Due to its hybrid nature, there are a plethora of opportunities embedded 

within this burgeoning field of study, such as the opportunity to establish a 

transdisciplinary enterprising culture for students and the opportunity to build cross-

institutional partnerships with arts programs that may not have the resources to develop 

entrepreneurship curriculum and that are external to the principal partner. Ultimately, 

collaborative partnerships serve as mission-driven opportunities to make 

entrepreneurship accessible to students from marginalized and/or minoritized 

communities that are sorely underrepresented in the creative and cultural industries, 

especially the arts.  



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Entrepreneurship Education in the Creative and Cultural 

Industries 
Extant literature identifies three distinct approaches to entrepreneurship education in the 

creative and cultural industries (CCIs). The most widely used in the US is the dual program 

curricular approach where art students complete courses across two programs of study: 

their specific art discipline courses and general business courses (Beckman, 2007). An 

alternative approach that has gained traction in the last decade in the US is the embedded 

singular course, typically labeled “Arts Entrepreneurship”, within an arts degree 

curriculum (Ibid). According to empirical studies, a third approach found mostly in the UK 

and Europe is the enterprising culture (Carey & Naudin, 2006) approach which involves a 

comprehensive set of courses within degree areas such as creative enterprise, cultural 

entrepreneurship, and business of the arts. A key difference between these three 

approaches is that the first two are traditionally established by arts programs and the 

third exists in business school programs.  

The objectives of each approach are different. The dual program approach leans 

towards the application of the arts in business and provides students with a liberal arts 

perspective wherein being an artist is a parallel practice to doing business. In this 

approach, entrepreneurship knowledge is decontextualized from the unique enterprise 

circumstances of the CCIs. Academics have classified this approach as a “new venture 

creation” approach, as the perceived nature of business school education is to train 

students towards establishing corporate business structures. As such, art students do not 

learn the dynamics of entrepreneurial career readiness through self-employment 

(Beckman, 2007; Rapisarda & Loots, 2021). The singular-course approach aims to remedy 

this issue by educating art students on the broader conceptions of entrepreneurship and 

training students in the skill of having an entrepreneurial mindset for their career 

development (Essig, 2017; Bridgstock, 2012; Chang & Wyszomirski, 2015; Toscher, 

2019).  

However, this approach does not provide a pragmatic understanding of 

entrepreneurship and positions art students pursuing arts administrative courses to 

augment their enterprise knowledge outside of coursework. Transcending the previous 

two approaches, the enterprising culture approach develops an entrepreneurship 

curriculum that illuminates the dynamics and intricacies of “connect[ing] the individual 

with their social context,” and it emphasizes a curriculum built upon “personal and social 

emergence, contextual learning, and the negotiated enterprise” (Rae, 2004, p. 494). This 

approach offers a comprehensive curricular methodology that is focused on the social 

science dynamics of artists and art-based enterprises as intertwined, interlinked, and 

contributive within society.  

Based on these strategies, the enterprising culture is the best approach for developing 

a co-curricular and cross-curricular certificate program, as it focuses on the dynamic 

understanding and application of entrepreneurship within the creative and cultural 



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industries. The enterprising culture approach, though presently limited to business school 

settings, provides a holistic approach to teaching creative social entrepreneurship 

because it combines creative individual contributions with socioeconomic and 

sociocultural values (Raffo et al., 2000). This approach also allows for a curriculum that 

applies arts-relevant learning structures to an entrepreneurship curriculum, such as the 

inclusion of a critical review (also known as ‘the crit’, a presentation of student work in 

progress for the purposes of giving and receiving comprehensive feedback) and a degree 

show (the exhibition of an art student’s final project) within the learning and assessment 

model (Carey & Matlay, 2007, p. 440). As such, student outcomes would involve the 

development of new ventures, the pursuit of a dynamic freelance artistic career, the 

establishment of a hybrid cultural leadership model, the emergence of a new creative 

social practice, or a combination of these and more pathways. Furthermore, the 

enterprising culture curricular approach highlights the possibilities of social innovation 

emerging from the CCIs.  

Arts administration, entrepreneurship, and the arts at HBCUs 
Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) are higher education institutions 

unique to the history of the US and established as safe educational havens for Black 

students. The majority of HBCUs are located in the southern US and in non-urban and rural 

areas. Despite there being many established arts programs at HBCUs, there are no 

established and operating arts administration related programs (Mack, 2020). There is 

virtually no literature that explores the implications of creative social entrepreneurship 

education in HBCUs. However, in recent years there has been a rise in HBCU 

entrepreneurship centers (for example, the PNC National Center for Entrepreneurship 

established at Howard University in 2021 and the Bank of America Center for 

Entrepreneurship established at Spelman College in 2021). While the impact of these 

centers on Black artists and creative professionals has yet to be seen, the implications 

include greater economic adaptability, resiliency, and opportunity for both Black students 

and HBCU institutions (Andrews et al., 2015). As Black students become leaders in their 

industries, there is a major onus on HBCUs to be “catalysts of change in the development 

and promotion” of Black-owned enterprises (Adebayo et al., 2001, p. 166).  

Though entrepreneurship development centers provide significant opportunities to 

students, they are limited by their geographic locations, exclusive to their situated 

institutions, and mainly present extracurricular programs. They serve as hubs for 

entrepreneurship learning to a much wider community and are good stewards of business 

investment from community stakeholders. While these are important forms of non-formal 

learning, combining them with formal learning opportunities allows for the development 

of leaders who understand the dynamics of social, legal, environmental, and political 

decision-making in business (Ibid, 170-171). The formal educational context creates a 



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“‘safe environment’ to develop creative ideas” where experimentation, trial and error, and 

idea formation and strategic application occur and “ideas [can become] a guiding force for 

future business activity” (Raffo et al., 2000, p. 356). However, many HBCUs still lack formal 

entrepreneurship programs and more so lack programs related to the various 

combinations of art and business. Furthermore, there is a significant gap in the literature 

that has explored the issues of business literacy amongst HBCU arts graduates. Only a 

handful of studies have emerged in the last ten years exploring the implications of arts 

administration, leadership, and management education on Black-owned and Black-led 

arts and cultural organizations (Mack, 2020; Curtis, 2020; Green, 2017; Wooden, 2016).  

While entrepreneurship education in the arts has expanded, these programs are still 

relatively new and not widely available or accessible to all arts-focused students. One 

possible reason for this gap is due to the lack of available, qualified, skilled faculty able to 

develop programs and facilitate courses (Carey & Naudin, 2006, p. 524) and sustain a 

relevant research agenda to inform teaching. Another possible reason is the lack of 

innovative and adaptable delivery formats and systems. As such, many programs do not 

have robust online learning systems and processes. The online learning system offers an 

opportunity to expand the reach of entrepreneurship education in programs that wouldn’t 

otherwise have access to qualified and experienced faculty, such as arts programs at 

HBCUs.  

Context of Online Education in the Department of Arts 

Administration 
Arts administration as an academic discipline began offering degrees in the United States 

in the 1970s. These early degrees were almost all launched in the dual program model 

utilizing business along with arts courses. The first alternative format arts administration 

degree program was offered by Goucher College. Launched in 1988, Goucher offered a 

“low-residency” program where students spent some summer weeks on campus and the 

rest of the program was offered via telephone conference calls and mailed homework 

submissions. Twenty years later, two private universities began offering online-based 

degrees in arts administration. In 2013, the University of Kentucky (“UK”) became the first 

public state university to offer an online degree in arts administration. This also marked 

the beginning of non-residential requirements for degrees in arts administration. The MA 

in Arts Administration at UK offered a 100% online, asynchronous program allowing 

students to study from anywhere in the world, in any time zone.  

The MA in Arts Administration was just the third online degree program offered by 

UK. This required the program be built as a singular course curricular model as there were 

very limited course offerings online for students and even fewer faculty familiar with 



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online instruction experience.1 While the degree was built in a single course model, the 

faculty hired to build courses came from transdisciplinary backgrounds. Most faculty held 

degrees in an artistic discipline (e.g., music, art history, theatre) as well as in business, 

public policy, law, or the humanities. Few, in these earlier years, had degrees in arts 

administration because so few degrees were offered at higher education institutions. 

The department of arts administration 

While arts administration as both a field and curricular discipline developed in a 

transdisciplinary approach, the traditional structures of American universities produced 

obstacles. First, degree programs developed across different colleges; some were set in 

business schools, others within fine arts or arts and sciences. At UK, the BA degree was 

developed outside of the department or school as an “interdisciplinary program” 

embedded within the College of Fine Arts. The interdisciplinary status of the degree 

aligned philosophically with the transdisciplinary approach to the curriculum. However, 

it posed logistical and structural obstacles within the higher education bureaucracy. 

Notably, faculty could not tenure within an interdisciplinary program; rather, faculty must 

tenure to a department or school. This is not unique to UK. Since faculty had a wide-

ranging array of degrees from a variety of academic disciplines, the development of 

tenured faculty lines was prolonged within an environment unsure of how to categorize 

its instruction or research. This issue was significant at UK where the first full-time faculty 

member in the program was denied tenure (a decision later overturned by the university 

president). As the program grew in size and visibility, hiring also became problematic. 

Qualified applicants for faculty positions were rejected by the administration because 

their degrees were outside of the College of Fine Arts (meaning there was nowhere the 

potential hire could be tenured within the college). With two degrees and a growing need 

to establish an unambiguous academic discipline, the faculty aligned with the program 

sought “department status.” This status would allow a broader hiring pool from all 

transdisciplinary areas and the tenuring of faculty directly in arts administration. It will 

also permit more extensive curricular offerings under this new curricular umbrella. As of 

2016, UK became the first dedicated Department of Arts Administration in the country.   

 
1 The BA in Arts Administration at UK, launched in 1988, was created utilizing the dual program 

curricular approach. Students completed a curriculum in business, economics, and art form along with 

several specific courses in arts administration. “Arts administration” course requirements (“AAD 

courses”) grew from two courses at the program launch to six courses in 2010. As the field evolved and 

the program grew, more courses were added in arts administration and course requirements in business 

decreased. As of 2024, the BA now requires over twenty-eight specific courses within the arts 

administration discipline. While still requiring courses in arts disciplines, the degree no longer relies on 

business and economics coursework.  



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An Autoethnographic Case of Creative Social Entrepreneurship 

Curriculum Development 
Creative social entrepreneurship is a rising field of study combining the concepts of 

creativity, social value, and enterprise development into a hybrid form of 

entrepreneurship and organization (Wells 2015, 2019). While more research studies have 

emerged over the last few years on the unique dynamics of creative social 

entrepreneurship across the globe (McLean, 2020; Pearse & Peterlin, 2019; Permatasari 

et al., 2021; Permatasari et al., 2023; Qu & Zollet, 2023), the majority of this research exists 

outside of the US, leaving a dearth of understanding in the American context. Building 

upon over ten years of empirical work by Jaleesa (Wells 2015, 2016, 2019, and 2022), 

creative social entrepreneurship is made up of two distinct but interrelated actors: the 

creative social entrepreneur and the creative social enterprise operating within the CCIs.  

Initially, the development of a creative social entrepreneurship curriculum began 

with the traditional approach to entrepreneurship education within an arts 

administration program: the single-course approach. However, through a series of 

conversations between Jaleesa and Rachel, Rachel encouraged Jaleesa to pursue the 

development of a full certificate program utilizing her research and framing as the basis 

for the curricular development. Instead of embedding within the current curriculum, as is 

the usual approach to entrepreneurship education for artists, the certificate would serve 

as a catalyst for building an enterprising culture within the Department of Arts 

Administration and College of Fine Arts at UK. This required specific buy-in from the chair, 

dean, and broader university stakeholders in order to continue.  

While Jaleesa soft-pitched the course idea to the chair, Rachel, and received 

departmental buy-in, two key subsequent pitches supported buy-in from the 

administration for the comprehensive certificate program development: (1) Jaleesa 

invited the chair, dean, and instructional designer to her final pitch on her creative social 

enterprise to investors during a 2023 entrepreneurial bootcamp; and (2) Rachel pitched 

a combined certificate and cross-institutional partnership initiative to the dean when 

presented with the opportunity to create a Provost-funded curricular initiative within the 

College of Fine Arts.  

The success of these two pitches helped to garner key administrative support for 

what would become further reaching cross-institutional partnering, both across UK and 

crossing the fields of arts education and arts administration education. In parallel, the 

success of these two pitches provided grounding for the piloting of a democratized 

certificate program by gaining buy-in and investment to hire diverse and socially 

embedded course developers for the seven certificate courses, and time to cultivate cross-

institutional partnerships with HBCUs. 



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Curricular design and framework 

Embracing an enterprising culture philosophy, the curricular design adapts Rae ’s (2004) 

triadic model for entrepreneurial learning and creates a creative social entrepreneurship 

curricular development framework that directly aligns with its co-constructed, hybrid 

dynamics, as shown in Figure 1. The descriptions below also align each theme to program-

level learning objectives.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The creative and cultural industries as ‘contextual learning’ 

The creative and cultural industries serve as the contextual learning that surrounds the 

actions of the two actors of creative social entrepreneurship: the creative social 

entrepreneur and the creative social enterprise. While there are clear definitions of the 

creative and cultural industries in parts of Europe, there is no unified definition of them 

in the United States. As such the industries can be composed of any type of market activity 

that exists, operates, or intersects with creative activities. This can mean that a freelance 

designer is as much a part of the creative and cultural industries as a well-established 

Broadway theatre. 

In curriculum development, this theme is shaped by learning creative economic 

dynamics in relation to community, opportunity recognition through creative market 

 

Figure 1: A framework for creative social entrepreneurship curriculum development. 

 



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research, and applied theories of creative and social entrepreneurial action. The program-

level learning objective is to connect critical thinking with resourcefulness by analyzing 

situations and constructing applicable solutions to address economic, environmental, 

political, and/or social problems in and around the creative and cultural sector. 

The creative social entrepreneur as ‘personal and social emergence’ 

A key characteristic of a creative social entrepreneur is their keen interest in and pursuit 

of opportunities that intersect within hybrid values. They strive to resolve resource 

constraints through the skill of entrepreneurial bricolage (Di Domenico et al., 2010) and 

by coupling and merging their intersecting creative, social, and enterprising values and 

activities (Wells, 2019). The development of an enterprising identity plays a crucial role 

in the activities, orientation, and operations of the creative social entrepreneur. Their 

belief and values system and the expressions of their individual selves are influenced by 

their broader surroundings, such as their interactions within the creative and cultural 

industries, engagement with communities, educational background, and support systems 

(Dimitriadis et al., 2017; Nelson et al., 2016; York et al., 2016). The stereotypical 

expectation to be ‘business-like’ often serves as a hindrance to creative social 

entrepreneurs and their creative ambitions and social intentions (Wells 2019, 2022). 

Thus, it is important to build a curriculum that positions creative practice as a bridge 

between social venturing and income generation.  

In curriculum development this theme is shaped by the co-construction and practice 

of a hybrid entrepreneurial identity, identifying opportunities to embed in communities, 

and the emergence of a hybrid leadership identity. The program-level learning objective is 

to apply strategic, creative, and persuasive communication skills across a range of 

dynamic audience, consumer, and stakeholder contexts, as well as to interpret strengths, 

challenges, and risks within the ideation process, by utilizing a range of creative methods 

to strategize and implement feasible ideas in new, emerging, or existing creative and 

cultural markets. 

The creative social enterprise as ‘negotiated enterprise’ 

The best description of creative social enterprise is as the organized form that holds, and 

potentially protects, the activities of a creative social entrepreneur, team, or group of 

creative social entrepreneurs. This form can take shape as a project, a start-up, a venture, 

a business, a portfolio of clients, etc., and it can be formally incorporated or informally 

organized. Creative social enterprise does not have a specific definition due to its 

adaptability to its hybrid context, which allows creative social entrepreneurs to develop 

adaptive capacity and strategic innovation skills to meet the needs of their communities 

(Wells, 2015, p. 12). Developing a creative social enterprise plays a crucial role in 

understanding the intersections between “creative production, business innovation, 

financial sustainability, and social empowerment” (Wells, 2015, p. 52). Ultimately, the 



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value of a creative social enterprise lies in its emergent nature, where enterprise value is 

connected to “understanding structure, stability, and growth” within and between 

creative and social values (Wells, 2016, p. 13). 

In curriculum development, this theme is shaped by participation in new creative 

social venture development; interlinked meaning between creative, social, and enterprise 

values and practices; negotiated management of hybrid roles and team dynamics; and 

empowering stakeholder networks. The program-level learning objective is to design a 

strategic process that communicates their market, leadership, consumer, operational, 

financial, and innovation knowledge toward the value creation of their creative social 

enterprise. 

Utilizing this framework, the online certificates in creative social entrepreneurship 

combine theoretical and empirical perspectives with the development of practical skills 

and opportunity recognition for application in real life of new social venture issues faced 

by those establishing and managing creative social innovation driven enterprises. Each 

certificate is designed to expand the entrepreneurial experience, knowledge, and skills of 

creative practitioners and professionals, both emerging and established, who are 

currently ideating and building new social ventures in the creative and cultural industries. 

Democratizing Education in Arts Administration: Concluding 

Insights 
The transdisciplinary makeup of the department and its innovative approach to online 

education offers a unique opportunity for faculty to develop curricular programs 

alongside their research. This opportunity further contributes to the democratization of 

arts administration education in distinct ways. Firstly, the online learning environment 

allows students from across the country with diverse backgrounds, and at various stages 

of their careers, to participate in courses together. This environment significantly expands 

knowledge development within arts administration, as a particular cohort is widely 

heterogeneous. Secondly, building new curricular programs based on active faculty 

research allows for current and future-focused innovation to be embedded and taught to 

contemporary students. Information and course content are up-to-date, relevant, 

adaptable, and extremely timely due to this research-informed and applied theory 

teaching approach.  

Jaleesa’s research in creative social entrepreneurship is a good example of bridging 

research with teaching and building educational scope for applied theoretical knowledge. 

It is at this curricular juncture that the opportunity for cross-institutional partnership 

development emerged. So, thirdly, the online education approach of the department 

provides further support for democratizing education by establishing cross-institutional 

partnerships and making entrepreneurship education accessible to marginalized students 

who are severely underrepresented in the arts and in arts administration. The 



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transdisciplinarity of the curriculum in creative social entrepreneurship catalyzes the 

opportunity to establish an enterprising culture in the department and in the field of arts 

administration, which further creates opportunities for finding course developers and 

instructors outside of the geographic boundaries and who are deeply embedded in, 

researching, and practicing creative social entrepreneurship themselves. This particularly 

addresses the issue of program sustainability as the curricular content can be constructed 

virtually and ‘move’ with a course author. Overall, the curricular development creates a 

more nimble, scalable, and multi-faceted learning environment for students, as well as a 

research-centered teaching environment for faculty.  

As highlighted, within higher education the bureaucratic and traditional structures 

and systems can present obstacles to new approaches and innovations within curricular 

offerings as well as the development of external partnerships. The onus of curriculum 

development is mainly rooted in the faculty. Faculty are charged with new course and 

program development as well as modifications to existing curricular offerings. Since 

faculty are primarily siloed within their departments and schools of like-minded and 

educated peers, building relationships and partnerships outside the norms can be 

daunting. It is important for administrators to provide incentives (e.g., internal grant 

funding) in order to encourage faculty to expand their thinking beyond the department 

and school boundaries.  

Partnerships that have emerged from within the curriculum development of creative 

social entrepreneurship include the opportunity to partner with offices within the 

university, such as working with course developers from the Arts Extension Office and the 

Office of Commercialization and Technology. Additionally, there was the opportunity to 

work across colleges by partnering with our business school at the dean’s level of 

administration and funding. These partnerships, as mentioned, include the process of 

negotiating up and across to receive buy-in from the chair, the deans, the offices, and the 

provost. University administration support is critical to the success of the curricular 

development and to a much greater process of developing partnerships than what might 

be expected. 

In this case, UK’s Provost offered an internal funding program to support activities 

that were “transdisciplinary in nature,” “innovative,” and “collaborative” (UK 2023). At the 

time of the funding announcement, the Department of Arts Administration was already 

aware of and contemplating approaches for two matters that had surfaced within our 

discipline: the lack of social entrepreneurship support and education for artists and the 

absence of arts administration programs at HBCUs. Subsequently, the funding call spurred 

the development of new solutions combining the multiple approaches to create new 

transdisciplinary outcomes: a creative social entrepreneurship curriculum inclusive of 

individual courses and certificate programs (undergraduate and graduate), and a pilot 

partnership program with an HBCU to offer an “add-on” certificate to its arts-practice 

curriculum. Here, the department was proposing the development of a curriculum in the 



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“new venture creation” approach (as described above) while simultaneously carrying out 

the complexities of new venture creation within its own creative venture.  

The curricular concept of creative social entrepreneurship was developed by Jaleesa, 

a junior faculty member within the Department of Arts Administration who saw the need 

for the teaching application of her research area. Through discussions, what began as one 

course on the topic grew into a robust certificate offering. Jaleesa, as a junior faculty 

member, did not yet have the experience of managing courses or programs through the 

curricular approval process—a rather arduous and complicated system with eight levels 

of review and approval. Thus, the first partnership and collaboration began internally 

between the chair and junior faculty member. The collaboration allowed for mentorship 

on curriculum development, program delivery considerations, and systems navigation. 

Development of these innovative offerings is structurally complicated—from 

collaboration with UK institutional offices and staff members to negotiations about course 

ownership to partnership formation and trust building, and with the logistical delivery of 

a program across two different universities in two different states.  

Externally, partnerships with institutions outside of the university play a crucial role 

in meeting the wider impact of curriculum development, which is to nurture 

entrepreneurial knowledge and skill development in future creative social entrepreneurs. 

We entered into this initiative without a clear external partnership with an HBCU but 

understood the wider implications that a lack of entrepreneurship and arts 

administration education has on the growth, development, and progression of the arts. 

This is especially true in a time when diversity, equity, accessibility, inclusion, and justice 

are in constant conversation within and around arts organizations and cultural 

institutions. But in order to build partnerships, there needs to be cultivation and nurturing 

of a relationship built on trust and mutually beneficial opportunities. Thus far, we have 

made connections with and are working towards these relationships, finding common 

ground and meeting needs on both sides. Importantly, the responsibility to catalyze and 

pursue these partnerships is for us to be flexible and adaptable to build relationships and 

find commonality with our external partners. 

Recommendations and Future Developments 
While we have come far in both the curricular and partnership development of our 

initiative, there is still much to be accomplished and to learn. We have summarized our 

case into three themed recommendations for moving forward, as shown below.  

Recommendation 1: The transdisciplinary online program development 

There are several factors that contributed to the curricular program development: (1) the 

impetus of transforming research into teaching and learning, (2) the transdisciplinary 

makeup of the department allowing for an enterprising culture to emerge, and (3) the 



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robust, dynamic, and established online education approach embedded within the 

department. The key to leveraging these factors is recognizing the opportunities for 

curriculum development between them. As such, it is recommended that faculty identify 

and leverage the opportunities within their departments and across institutions in order 

to bridge diverse forms of research and learning. Utilizing an entrepreneurial approach to 

course development by listening to and collaborating with a diverse range of faculty 

members allows for the creation of impactful curricular development beyond the confines 

of the institution.  

Recommendation 2: Partnering within and across the principal institution 

Factors that allowed for partnering across the institution include the forging of 

relationships in what can be considered more support-based offices. However, we saw 

these offices as filled with entrepreneurial resources to embed in the creative and cultural 

industries from dynamic angles, such as accessing an arts extension artists network and 

utilizing the innovation resources from the office of technology and commercialization. In 

our case, we also found these partners to be important contributors to the curriculum 

development as course developers of one or more courses in the certificate programs. 

Thus, it is recommended that curriculum developers consider what is outside of their 

immediate, academic realm of knowledge and resource development.  

Recommendation 3: Partnership development between collaborating 

institutions 

Factors that created the opportunity for collaboration between institutions stem from the 

first two mentioned above. The transdisciplinary and online curriculum and the 

partnering within the university allowed a new door to open and directly address the gap 

in knowledge that many students of color and marginalized practitioners do not presently 

receive in their arts education experience. It is here that the impact of merging research-

informed curriculum, an online learning approach, and cross-institutional partnering 

fuels a drive towards democratized arts administration education. Thus, it is 

recommended to leverage this unique opportunity and to build long-lasting relationships 

that are mutually beneficial between two or more collaborating institutions. 



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Cover image: photo by Vonecia Carswell on Unsplash, 

www.unsplash.com/photos/four-person-holding-each-others-
waist-at-daytime-0aMMMUjiiEQ 

 

 

https://doi.org/10.1111/joms.12198
http://www.unsplash.com/photos/four-person-holding-each-others-waist-at-daytime-0aMMMUjiiEQ
http://www.unsplash.com/photos/four-person-holding-each-others-waist-at-daytime-0aMMMUjiiEQ

	Introduction
	Entrepreneurship Education in the Creative and Cultural Industries
	Arts administration, entrepreneurship, and the arts at HBCUs
	Context of Online Education in the Department of Arts Administration
	The department of arts administration

	An Autoethnographic Case of Creative Social Entrepreneurship Curriculum Development
	Curricular design and framework
	The creative and cultural industries as ‘contextual learning’
	The creative social entrepreneur as ‘personal and social emergence’
	The creative social enterprise as ‘negotiated enterprise’


	Democratizing Education in Arts Administration: Concluding Insights
	Recommendations and Future Developments
	Recommendation 1: The transdisciplinary online program development
	Recommendation 2: Partnering within and across the principal institution
	Recommendation 3: Partnership development between collaborating institutions


