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Among higher education policy types, it’s commonplace to speak of STEAM, which is the integration of the arts into STEM. It’s less common to speak of the arts and entrepreneurialism, which strikes me as a missed opportunity.
Arts programs here attract several different varieties of students. Some are adults -- often retirees -- taking courses for personal interest. Some are traditional students fulfilling a gen ed requirement, which is fine. But many are young people looking for a career in the arts, whether via transfer or just after here.
For that third group, I’m increasingly convinced that some sort of small business or entrepreneurship education makes a lot of sense. Whether they’re hoping to sell artworks or to make their way in the performing arts, they’ll need to know how to market themselves, how to negotiate and how to manage careers. History is littered with the carnage of talented artists, musicians and actors who found themselves taken advantage of because they didn’t understand the business end of what they did.
As academics, we tend to treat business as a field in itself, separate from the others. In some ways, that makes sense: most people don’t need a deep understanding of, say, managerial accounting. But most of us need to make a living, and in fields like the arts, full-time jobs with benefits are the exception. If you’re just starting out, the hustle is as much a feature of life as the art. But we don’t typically equip students with the information to hustle effectively.
The shame of it is that art and entrepreneurialism draw on some of the same skills. They’re both about seeing what isn’t there and making it happen. Both rely on individual perception and drive. And getting the business side right opens up far more opportunities for the art side.
From a transfer perspective, getting four-year partners to recognize the validity of an entrepreneurship class would certainly help. But I see that, perhaps naïvely, as the easy part. The hard part is getting it in there -- or getting the skill set in there -- in the first place.
I’m hoping that some readers have seen cases in which a college managed to integrate the areas well. Ideally, arts students would come to see the value and relevance of entrepreneurialism, and the business folks would be able to appreciate the uniqueness of the arts economy.
Wise and worldly readers, have you seen the two mixed well at a college? If so, what was the secret sauce?
