[This entry is cross-posted on my Creative Infrastructure blog]

I am preparing to walk into a university classroom next Tuesday to teach 16 college students “Foundations of Arts Entrepreneurship.”  Preparing for a class such as this necessitates some prioritizing of topics.  What are the most important ideas to convey in the first 75 minutes of the semester? What can be left for later? … or for never?  What topics will be “discovered” by the students through project work and research and what topics “delivered” by me?

My theme for the first class meeting is arts entrepreneurship as “ACTION,” and here is why: One can learn to be a master of one’s discipline as a lighting designer, a poet, a clarinetist, but until one ACTS to advance that talent, skill, and mastery, to put it out there in front of an audience, there is no entrepreneurship.  One can see an opportunity, but until one ACTS to seize that opportunity, there is no entrepreneurship.  One may have a creative idea, but until one ACTS to…well…. actualize, that idea, there is no entrepreneurship.  Anne Bogart writes, in “And then, you act” (required reading for my course), “in order to engage in effective action you must first find something that you value and put it at the center of your life.”

Some scholars of entrepreneurship focus on who an entrepreneur IS, on the entrepreneurial “character;” others focus on what an entrepreneur DOES, on the logistics of venture creation.  Both are important: an entrepreneurial mindset without action is not entrepreneurship – its just risky behavior.  Intent is critical.

My own intent for this class is to excite and incite, rather than recite.    I haven’t been in the classroom in a long time –I can’t wait!

Michael Kaiser, president of the Kennedy Center, published his New Year’s resolutions for the arts in the Huffington Post earlier this week. How can we apply our entrepreneurial habits of mind to help Kaiser achieve his very worthy goals? His five resolutions are (and I’m paraphrasing here): provide consistent arts education in public schools, continue to make bold artistic choices, bring more 20 year-olds into the arts, train next generation arts leaders (especially internationally), provide arts access to rural America, and use technology to improve arts knowledge. This is an agenda that moves beyond – in fact doesn’t even mention—the popular economic arguments for arts engagement and instead is about improving arts infrastructure for the sustainability of arts and culture. If we can each strive toward achieving these goals by applying entrepreneurial habits of mind, we can, perhaps, individually and collectively advance the arts in America.

What are those entrepreneurial habits of mind? In a recent article in the Journal of Entrepreneurship, my former ASU colleague Tom Duening (now at U of Colorado) adapts Howard Barker’s Five Minds for the Future to entrepreneurial thinking and acting. Duening’s five “minds” for entrepreneurship are:
• The Opportunity Recognizing Mind
• The Designing Mind
• The Risk Managing Mind
• The Resilient Mind
• The Effectuating Mind

Providing consistent arts education in the public schools requires the application of at least three of these minds: the designing, the resilient, and the effectuating. For the next year or two, the resilient mind might be the most important as public school budgets continue to shrink, but the designing mind will be equally critical as entrepreneurial arts educators develop innovative means for integrating arts education into the K-12 classroom.

The risk-managing mind is critical to the maintenance of a bold artistic vision. Kaiser has always been a proponent of making bold choices in light of adversity (see his The Art of the Turnaround). Doing so is risky, but in truly entrepreneurial fashion, those risks are a necessary prerequisite to the rewards of artistic innovation.

The next two resolutions, to train artistic leaders internationally and to provide access to the arts in rural America, seem like they could be entrepreneurially connected to the fifth, to use technology to improve arts knowledge, if we apply our “opportunity recognizing mind.” This is the mind that connects the dots and recognizing patterns. Coupled with the effectuating mind, the opportunity-recognizing mind could put technology to work to bring the arts (and especially arts participation) to rural communities and bring training to nascent arts organizations both here and abroad.

Personally, I don’t usually make New Year’s resolutions because I’ve found that the risk of burning out on them by February is greater than the potential reward. This year though, I promise myself that I’ll think about Kaiser’s resolutions and Duening’s five minds and ways to connect them… I may even share a few of those thoughts here.

On another note, there is still time to register for the second bi-annual p.a.v.e. symposium on entrepreneurship and the arts: Creating Infrastructure for Creativity and Innovation, to be held in Tempe AZ April 1-2.
HAVE A VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR!

It’s been a while since I’ve posted here (I never thought a sabbatical would be so much work) so I thought it time to provide you with an update on the second bi-annual p.a.v.e. symposium on entrepreneurship and the arts: Creating Infrastructure for Creativity and Innovation to be held April 1-2 in Tempe AZ.

ETA’s own Lisa Canning will be leading a workshop on “Discovering your “WHY”” and John Cimino will lead another on building personal and creative infrastructure. Shelley Cohn, former executive director of the AZ Commission on the Arts will lead a workshop on turning your creative ideas into reality and our local chapter of Volunteer Legal Assistance for the Arts will lead one on legal issues for artists.

In additional to the workshops (pre-registration is required) there are several community forums. We’ve recently added Steve Peters, president of ATHE (Association for Theatre in Higher Education) and tubist Sam Pilafian, developer of the “Breathing Gym” to our list of forum participants.

And, if all of this isn’t enough, the highlight may very well be the keynote address by Ben Cameron of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. If you haven’t seen his recent TED talk, it should be required viewing for anyone interested in arts entrepreneurship.

It’s going to be a great event and if you can get yourself to Tempe AZ, the symposium itself is free, thanks to the generous support of the Kauffman Foundation of Kansas City. Our community partners include the Arts and Business Council of Greater Phoenix, the AZ Commission on the Arts, and the Phoenix Fringe Festival, which was launched with a p.a.v.e. seed grant three years ago.

What’s the catch? You have to register in advance. Workshop space is limited and filling up fast. To register, go to http://theatrefilm.asu.edu/initiatives/pave-symposium.php and select the “Register Now” link.

Hope to see you in April!

I had reason to read the Australia Council report on artists’ careers this week (http://www.australiacouncil.gov.au/research/artists/reports_and_publications/artistcareers) and found the news simultaneously encouraging, grim, and enlightening. Forty-five percent of Australian artists make their living outside of the arts sector – not just day jobs related to the arts, but jobs that are not in the creative sector at all. On the other hand, artists report spending 80% of their time on creative or arts-related work. The overwhelming majority of those employed in the arts sector are employed in the design professions of illustrator, graphic designer, interior designer, or fashion designer. The proportion of arts sector workers employed in these applied fields has been growing steadily since the inception of the study in 1996, indicating that more arts workers are seeking – and finding — employment in the “applied arts” than in the “fine and performing arts.” Ultimately, artists are likely to develop what my (Australian) colleague Ruth Bridgstock calls “portfolio careers,” a mix of employment opportunities that enable artists to be creative in a number of different areas, which, when amalgamated make for a whole career. We see this phenomenon frequently in the US, where artists often combine their creative work with teaching positions or service jobs.  The most touching part of the report was the quote from a young man in whose “portfolio” includes a job as a warehouse manager:  ”I enjoy the balance between working in the warehouse and making art. The warehouse and driving the delivery van give me the headspace to come up with ideas for projects and problem solve projects I’m working on at the time. If I only made art I think I would burn out very quickly.” I guess that’s one way to put a positive spin on it…..

This evening, I participated in ATHE’s all-conference special forum addressing “elephants” in the traditional theatre curriculum.  Here are my opening remarks –

In his introduction to a series of project profiles in the April 2010 issue of American Theatre, Mark Blankenship writes of a kind of performance utopia:

Consider yourself lucky: You’ve just seen a piece of theatre that sprang from your own community – a show that had to be created here, where you live, because it says something authentic and essential about the place

The show you saw was especially powerful because it reframed the setting of your everyday life – it turned our neighbors, your neighborhood, and (you begin to feel) even aspects of you into art, opening your eyes to new possibilities, new connections.

Blankenship describes a performance ideal that is profoundly relevant to its audience, a performance that matters.  Are we teaching our students to create work that matters?  Are we teaching them to “create” at all, or merely passing on the techniques that we ourselves learned as graduate students? And, if our students are learning to create work that matters, are we teaching them the skills they need to sustain their work and their artistic life over time?

So my elephant is this: Its not so much an elephant as a hole or a crater in many curricula:  appreciation for and skills in creating new work and especially new work that speaks to the community and skills to maintain a personal infrastructure that enables the young theatre artist to take the risks necessary to create new work.

How can we do this:

1. First, create an environment in which real creativity is supported (see “Its not about the Money” parts 1 and 2)
2. Provide experiential learning opportunities
3. Teach students to enter the ACTUAL marketplace, not the commercial and nonprofit theatre marketplace of the 1980s
4. Teach students to diversify their skill set to respond quickly to opportunity
5. Teach students to diversify their skill set to include opportunity creation
6. Teach students to support their personal infrastructure

Earlier today, I sat on a panel at the annual conference of ATHE (Association for Theatre in Higher Education) entitled “Will We Just Survive or Will We Thrive? The Challenge of Implementing Entrepreneurship in Theatre” at the invitation of the panel organizer, Carolyn Roark, editor of the journal Ecumenica. In her preparatory email, she said that her thoughts on the topic were informed by several concepts among them Pine and Gilmore’s “The Experience Economy: Business is Theatre and all the World’s a Stage.” In my opening remarks, largely in response to that book, that I’ve written on this blog before: we need to stop saying “hey, let’s use the skills and creativity of theatre to make business better” and start saying “lets use the skills and creativity of business to make theatre better.” This reversal was met with a polite smattering of chuckles, which I took to be a positive response.

Later in the session, in response to an audience comment about producing plays being a bad business model, Carolyn made a rather brilliant statement, which I can only paraphrase here so won’t capture her clarity or poeticism. She said basically that we have to stop thinking of what we do solely as producing plays. Rather, we should think about “putting on plays” as only part of the portfolio of what a theatre artist does. We then ran with that together to provide examples of how theatre’s ability to make meaning can reach new and different audiences that in turn can earn money that enables one to produce plays – because that’s still important too.

I was a bit skeptical going into the session, but left feeling energized and ready to tackle tomorrow’s plenary panel, “Elephants in the Curriculum: A Frank Discussion about Theatre in a Changing Academic Landscape.” But that room seems awfully big…..

Speaking of conferences, the schedule for the second bi-annual p.a.v.e. symposium on entrepreneurship and the arts is shaping up nicely. We’ve added John Cimino to the schedule of the April 1-2 event. He’ll be leading a workshop on “Self-knowledge and Directions of Growth: Building Your Personal and Creative Infrastructure.”

I just got off the phone from talking with John Cimino (who as you may now has some association with this website). He wanted to have an introductory chat after reading my last column (Its Not about the Money!).  He’s a good listener, so talking with him helped me organize my ideas with a little more clarity around what kinds of SPACE(s) I was writing about last time. Also clarifying was a message I received from Elena Thornton of the Arizona Arts Consortium. The consortium’s vision is “to create a multicultural arts center, where children, teens and adults will become inspired, to develop their creative abilities, in conjunction with exhibiting artists, writers, actors, dancers and musicians who will share their expertise in a gallery, theater setting.” While I applaud the consortium’s efforts and think the project of great value, this kind of community arts space is not precisely what I was thinking about (blogging sometimes breeds imprecision), but I was thinking about several other kinds of spaces. Let me take up the space of this blog to clarify further, and note that the list following is neither completely inclusive nor exhaustive:

1. Headspace: Artists, and creative people of all kinds, need intellectual room to breath. Headspace requires time, and – depending on one’s personal preferences – a certain amount of solitude and quiet. When interacting with others, creative headspace needs constructive feedback (both positive and not) and an emotionally supportive atmosphere. Too many conservatory environments, to provide one counter-example, include teacher-centered classes in which the master teacher expounds on his or her own work, negating the validity of the budding student artist. This teaching method does not promote the kind of headspace needed for students to be innovative and creative. Headspace is akin to the image I included last week as well as this: a wide open expanse filled with possibilities – ideas don’t happen inside closed minds!
2. Physical incubator space: Artists need physical space in which to develop work. Artists need physical space in the same way scientists need laboratories – a place to experiment and evolve ideas long before they are ready for exhibition to or performance with the public. Many of my region’s emerging visual, media, and performing artists were bred at the university at which I work, but once graduated, they lose access to the physical space in which to create the new work they were taught to value and create. Without physical space in which to develop work, the fertile headspace will lead only to frustration.
3. Networking space: Artists benefit tremendously from interaction with one another. The coffee shop next door (or inside) of the incubator space can serve this purpose physically, and the web provides those networking opportunities virtually. My colleague Jake Pinholster is developing a networking web-based space for metro-Phoenix artists called AMOK: Arts-Materials-Organization-Knowledge that, once it goes live, will create a networking space not only to facilitate the exchange of ideas, but the exchange of materials as well. How cool would it be if artists could use a site like this to create a local barter economy in art-making materials (and I don’t just mean visual arts, but performing arts as well)? There are some models for this nationally (the Ohio Theatre Alliance comes to mind for materials and Springboard for the Arts (Minneapolis) for knowledge sharing and other important infrastructure support – like healthcare) so we need not re-invent the wheel, at least not from scratch, to create such space.

My own headspace is opening up significantly as I begin a much needed sabbatical. No doubt my imprecise ideas on this subject will continue to evolve over the next several months.

Since I touched on the subjects of networking and virtual spaces, I’ll let you know that the p.a.v.e. symposium website has just gone live. It contains a mere tickler of information at the moment, but as the schedule develops, we’ll be posting updates. Registration for this free event will open in October. See http://theatrefilm.asu.edu/initiatives/pave-symposium.php

I had an epiphany the other day as I was reading Marjorie Garber’s excellent book “Patronizing the Arts.” This was one of those “a-hah” moments that comes at you sideways – not directly from what you’re reading or writing or working on, but has been gestating and then is synthesized from the scattered input of life. Its not a huge life-changing or world-changing epiphany, but is an idea that will cause me (and perhaps you) to re-focus some of the arts entrepreneurship curriculum I’m developing. Its also not new idea – not even to me – I just haven’t put it front and center: building an environment – a SPACE– for creativity and innovation is a prerequisite to all the teaching and learning about arts entrepreneurship that we may do. The SPACE needs to be both physical and conceptual (or, if you prefer, “spiritual”), a SPACE where work can grow. Many cities have such SPACES – unfortunately, mine isn’t one of them. There are national “SPACES” (Creative Capital comes to mind as a creator of such SPACE conceptually), but, like politics, art-making is local. There’s a lot of enthusiasm in the arts community for creating that local SPACE for nurturing artists, but we’ll need to work harder to make it happen.

How does my minor epiphany relate to the arts entrepreneurship curriculum we’re developing? Here there’s a more direct relationship with my current reading, although its still involves reading between the lines. I’m working on a chapter for a book on “signature pedagogies for disciplinary habits of mind” with two colleagues from Australia. Our chapter is, as you might imagine, about arts entrepreneurship/enterprise education so I have been doing a lot of reading on business entrepreneurship pedagogy. Reading between the lines of that scholarship (and there’s a lot of it compared to the scholarship on arts entrepreneurship pedagogy) and about the fine work Rick Cherwitz is doing at UT as well as my own experience with the p.a.v.e. program at ASU I have come to realize that we need to teach students about ownership in the business sense by first providing them SPACE to have ownership over their own learning about arts entrepreneurship. I want students to come into my arts entrepreneurship classroom with a commitment to their own work. Then I need to get out of their way to provide them the space to be as creative as possible, providing a backstop where necessary on the issues that can, if misunderstood, put a premature end to their creativity: financing, IP protections, and the like.

Perhaps my interest this week in SPACE is more personal. As I embark on a bit of a professional transition, I find myself looking ahead (and looking forward) to having more space – space to think, to write, to teach, and to find connections that will help support the creativity of emerging artists.

While I have your attention, don’t forget to mark you calendars for the second biannual p.a.v.e. symposium on Entrepreneurship and the Arts, to be held April 1-2 2011 in Tempe AZ. Ben Cameron of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation will be our keynote speaker and ETA’s very own Lisa Canning will be conducting a workshop on “Discovering your WHY? Artist Empowerment and Self-mangement.” We’re partnering with the Arizona Commission on the Arts to help get the word out, and the symposium coincides with the fast-growing Phoenix Fringe Festival, a project that the p.a.v.e. program helped to launch.

Warning: This posting may be short but it contains numerous mixed animal metaphors.

Lately, I feel a bit like the mouse being asked to bell the cat or the canary hired to go into the coal mine (or the monkey being sent up into space). Why? Because I have been asked repeatedly recently to identify “the elephant in the room” – the missing piece of curriculum, the most surprising faculty issue, or the problem with assessment. The people or organizations who ask these questions must know the answers, they must see the elephants too, or they wouldn’t pose those questions to me. But what is so dangerous about providing the answers that prevents them from engaging with the questions themselves? What are the consequences of facing head-on the questions of relevancy and sustainability. Is what we teach our (arts) students relevant and sustainable? Is the faculty teaching it relevant? How should we evaluate the curriculum? And the faculty who teach it?

And so, I get back on my soapbox to champion the idea that we should teach our students the importance of creativity, create environments that enable innovation rather than stymie it, and provide skills training that will help young artists sustain their lives and careers. Until we create the infrastructure to do so, ridding the room of elephants will be like….well…..herding cats.

I had an opportunity to host an amazing celebration last week. The celebration was in honor of the twelve student teams that received seed grant funding from the p.a.v.e. program in arts entrepreneurship this year. It’s a diverse group: grad students and undergrads, for profit and nonprofit, technology-focused and human-centered (often at the same time), led by students across all of the fine and performing arts disciplines. Part of what made last week’s celebration so amazing is the networking that went on between the students. To nudge the networking forward, I employed an old icebreaker game. Each project team randomly picked a card with another team’s logo on it, had to seek out that team, and learn enough about them to present the other team’s project and project progress to the assembled guests. Much lively discussion ensued!
Here’s a rundown of the projects:
WORLD IS STAGE is a multimedia content distribution network focused on connecting local performance artists, businesses, and community audiences through geographically specific media being developed by Dan Roth and Brandon Mechtley, graduate students in the joint Theatre/AME program in Interdisciplinary Media and PhD Computer Science programs.

THE SOMEWHAT THRILLING TALES OF THE MONOCLE is a steampunk-inspired animated web comic under development by a large interdisciplinary group of Herberger Institute freshman led by film major Brad Decker.

SHONTO ARTISTS PROJECT is a pilot for a facility for community artists working on the Navajo Reservation being developed by music graduate student Joshua Hill.

THE GLOBAL CABARET is a multi-location live variety show that builds community through an artistic emphasis on regional music, performance and stories from School of Theatre and Film and AME students Sara Schwabe and Dustin Chaffin

CLOPET THEATRE is dedicated to producing new and devised plays with and for the underserved 13-19 year-old demographic; the youth serve as directors, designers, technicians, and playwrights as well as performers. M. Yichao Wang is the team leader.

THE IMPROVIDERS ASSOCIATION, developed by Ned Simonson, is a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing improvisational theatre workshops that will develop communication and coping skills of caregivers of patients with Alzheimer’s and other dementia-related diseases.

DANCERS AND HEALTH TOGETHER. Originally conceived as an awards presentation to raise money for health-related research, Mary Lane Porter has evolved this project into a community-based workshops focusing on dance as a means to achieving a healthier lifestyle.

SCRATCH THEORY is Chris Gallego brainchild for an interface between a DJ turntable and western musical notation.

URBAN ARTS CONNECTION is a networking website for student artists

RADIO HEALER is a performance and research enterprise focused on the interaction between technology and indigenous communities

THE DIFFERENT FROM WHAT? FILM FESTIVAL under Lisa Tolentino’s direction brings together films, filmmakers, and audience members exploring the nature of disability on film. Differentfromwhatfilm.com

JOIN AND CAST VENTURES is a field guide to the visual arts in Phoenix consisting itself of original artworks by urban artists.

For a more in-depth article about the most recent p.a.v.e. awardees, see http://entrepreneurship.asu.edu/newsletter/2010/04/29/pave-winners-2010

Finally, you’ll see me signing off on this posting an all subsequent postings with a reminder of our second biannual p.a.v.e. symposium on entrepreneurship and the arts April 1-2 2011 in Tempe AZ.

I recently had the pleasure of awarding seed grants for student arts ventures through our p.a.v.e. program in arts entrepreneurship. In this latest round, we reviewed thirteen letters of intent and seven full proposals. The proposals were very diverse (I’ll give you a rundown in my next posting) but had one thing in common: insufficient understanding of how to conceptualize or present a budget. We don’t ask for a detailed business plan as traditional venture incubators do, but something simpler: a project budget for the award period, usually the current and following fiscal year. Needless to say, we’re mentoring our p.a.v.e. students through that process, but thought I’d share a few budgeting basics here.

A BUDGET IS A PLAN.
A budget is only a plan for how the venture is going to spend the money it raises and earns. So, in the simplest terms, the budget plan is a list of all the sources of revenue and a list of all of the anticipated expenses. The accounting that happens afterward is an opportunity to assess how well the plan worked in achieving the goals of the venture or project.

REVENUE SHOULD EXCEED EXPENSES.
My quick lesson on financial management is equally simple: the total revenues must meet or exceed the total expenses. THIS IS NOT ROCKET SCIENCE.

It will probably come as no surprise to hear that sometimes student arts entrepreneurs don’t include everything they should on their planning budgets. What is surprising is that the most common mistake on the revenue side is the exclusion of earned income from the budget. That’s right, they don’t realize they can count the money they will generate from ticket sales or DVD sales, or tuition to the community arts workshop they’re starting in their budget. These students are smart and have big ideas, but they’re not yet fully thinking entrepreneurially. My guess is that leaving earned income off the budget plan is a problem of mindset. These students don’t expect to make a profit right off the blocks (if at all) so why include earned income. Because……

REVENUE AND PROFIT ARE TWO DIFFERENT THINGS.
Revenue is all the money that comes into the project. Profit (or deficit) is the difference between the revenue and the expenses. Most of our student arts entrepreneurs aren’t out to make a profit out of the box, but it is our hope – and theirs – that they’ll make the money needed to sustain their venture.

BUDGET PLANNING DOES NOT REQUIRE HIGHER LEVEL MATH
Some arts entrepreneurs are intimidated by the math needed to create a budget. There really isn’t anything more than basic arithmetic needed – primarily addition and subtraction. Multiplication may be needed if sales projections are part of the plan, but that only involves multiplying the unit price (e.g. ticket price) by the number of units projected to be sold.

RESEARCH REQUIRED
Sometimes, student arts entrepreneurs leave key items out of their budget or grossly underestimate the cost of something important — like marketing materials. It just takes a small amount of research to find out what it would cost to print and mail a thousand flyers, buy a domain name, or the like.

With a little research, some basic arithmetic, and the necessary foresight, putting together a budget can be pretty simple – especially when we’re only talking about four figure numbers. Multiple funding streams will make things more complicated, but by the time there are multiple funding sources to keep track of, the venture may want to consider a professional business manager or accountant. Think ahead, face your fears, and get started!

Earlier this week, the p.a.v.e. program in arts entrepreneurship at Arizona State University hosted a fabulous speaker, Arlene Goldbard. Arlene is an author and community arts activist, as well as a frequent blogger on issues of cultural policy (see arlenegoldbard.com). Throughout the day, she spoke to several different groups of students and community members about cultural development, the impact of cultural policy in the US — or rather the lack of a coherent “cultural policy “ and, most pointedly, the need to be entrepreneurial about telling NEW stories about the arts and their impact. Mostly, she reminded us, or at least me, that we cannot keep telling a false tale of the arts economic impact; we need to tell the true story of the arts human impact, their impact on the human spirit, on empathy, on our ability to build community cohesion and to sustain culture.

Often, my postings here have focused on the pragmatic and I’ll return to the pragmatic topic of budgeting next  but it is important to periodically fuel our spirit and remind our souls of why we do what we do. I’m driven to provide opportunities for young artists because I believe in the transformative power of art. It elicits joy and sorrow, makes us think, helps us heal. The world we will live in tomorrow will look completely different from the world my father grew up in  or, for that matter, the one I grew up in. The next generation of artists and designers will have the responsibility of creating the culture of tomorrow, and we cannot even conceive of what that might be.

In her talk yesterday, Goldbard asked, “What do we want to be known for?” Do we want to be known for our prisons? Do we want to be known for what we stop people from doing?Or, as she implied, for what we help people to start? How can we help people to start? Public funding in its current model doesn’t work. Goldbard has been advocating for a new WPA, one that would put 120,000 artists to work in communities as painters, writers, actors, dancers. A program like that would transform the lives not only of the newly employed artists, but of the communities with which they come into contact.

Imagine that!

Our p.a.v.e. program in arts entrepreneurship brought in a fabulous artist as its March speaker. Leni Schwendinger is a lighting designer and public artist whose work is visible in New York, Seattle, Glasgow, Philadelphia, Dallas, and elsewhere. She was also named by the Manhattan Chamber of Commerce as its 2008 Woman Entrepreneur of the Year.
Leni spoke for a little over an hour about her creative work, her vision, and her philosophy, and ended with the following advice for all creative entrepreneurs, not just the student entrepreneurs who were in her audience (used with her permission):
1. Explore your vision
2. Take Risks to Discover
3. Focus your efforts
4. Expand your medium
5. Ask for support

Let’s unpack these points a bit. While the origin points are Leni’s (as is the image of the Triple Bridge on Ninth Avenue in NYC), I’m doing the unpacking.

Explore your vision, an artistic vision, is like a landscape. It can have breadth and depth, with high points and low points. The artist can move around in this vision and find new and interesting areas to explore within it. To do that, the artist needs to be in motion rather than static, constantly examining and re-examining their vision, moving through the landscape in search of the next project, the next opportunity.

Take Risks to Discover  there are two important concepts here, risk and discovery,  Risk being the means to discovery, the goal. Discovery comes at a price, or at least at the potential of a price. Entrepreneurship of any type involves risk. What are you willing to risk to discover a new place in your creative landscape?

Focus your efforts. I’m not a very good pianist. I’m a very good lighting designer. The lesson seems obvious to me.

Expand you medium  at first blush, I thought this was a contradiction to focus your efforts  but instead it’s a complement. Once the artist focuses their efforts, they can expand their medium. How? By taking risks to discover– to discover new meanings and new ways of expressing them, by advancing the medium itself technologically and creatively.

Ask for support. That landscape of creativity need not be a desert or deserted. How much more fun is it to work with a team or on a team? More than just fun, how much more productive and creative can one be when joining forces with other smart, productive, creative people. There are resources out there“ seek them, find them, ask them.

Next month, we’re hosting a talk by Arlene Goldbard, community arts activist and author. Stay tuned for some thoughts from and about her in mid April.

I’ve been having a great time the last several weeks developing the syllabus for a course we’re calling Foundations of Arts Entrepreneurship that I’ll teach for the first time a year from now. It’s a challenge to determine the right balance between content related to creativity and innovation, content related to self management, and content related to venture creation — what business schools think of as entrepreneurship. What seems most important, as is the case with an entrepreneurial venture, is to set clear goals. The goals for the course focus on developing foundational skills and knowledge needed to undertake an entrepreneurial approach to art making and art management AND developing entrepreneurial knowledge and skills to support the self actualization and self efficacy of the emerging artists in the class.

In a class that may be taken by as many as 80 student artists per year, I have to recognize that not every one of those 80 will start the next great arts-based venture. The take-aways from the class need to be as much the self-actualization mindset as the fiscal literacy and knowledge of business models. In the hierarchy of needs (at least as defined by Abraham Maslow), self actualization is at the very top. Is it ethical to focus on self-actualization without providing some means by which the student artists can achieve the lower rungs of that hierarchy (food, shelter)? Balance will again be key. Students will ” hopefully“ leave the course not only with an understanding of opportunity creation but also with a solid professional looking resume and some self-management and self-marketing skills that will help them climb above the first two rungs of the hierarchy of needs.

Another question I struggle with is around the teaching of creativity and innovation. My arts entrepreneurship course will have as a prerequisite a lower level course called something like Creativity and Innovation across Design and the Arts. My own intellectual struggle is around whether or not it is possible to actually teach people this topic. There’s plenty of literature out there, especially recent literature from the cognitive and behavioral sciences about creative process, literature on exercises that incite creativity, and great inspiring talks on Ted.com by really creative people. My current view is that before creativity or innovation can be taught, we need to create an environment in which students are actually allowed to be creative and innovative. Creativity and innovation is rarely linear, so teaching step-by-step processes and testing and assessment can be limiting and counterproductive.

Yet, we live in a culture where evaluation and assessment are valued to the extreme, especially as both private and public arts funding shrinks. Granting organizations often require both self- and external assessments, and academic courses include student assessment and faculty assessment. One of the course modules I’m struggling with the most is the one near the end of the course on self-assessment. Venture success can be measured by the financial balance sheet, but creativity, rather than productivity, is harder to measure. Despite my struggles, I’m having a really good time searching for and reviewing the literature!

Your input is welcome. Send me your comments, suggestions, and resources.

There is an opinion piece in today’s Arizona Republic by Craig Barrett, former CEO of Intel, about creating an environment for innovation in the state in which I live. Among his other observations, he writes, “just look at the thousands of start-up companies around Stanford and UC-Berkeley and Harvard and MIT.”This got me thinking, why aren’t there scads of start-up-theatre companies in New Haven, home of the Yale School of Drama, or a multitude of music oriented ventures in Rochester, home of the Eastman School of Music. Perhaps it’s because not enough of our universities, and most especially not our conservatories, are teaching students about innovation and venture creation. Actually, it’s unfair of me to single out Rochester, because Eastman’s new Institute for Music Leadership Center for Music Innovation strives to do just that. In universities and conservatories across the country, however, students are taught by master teachers, imparting wisdom and techniques taught to them by their “master teachers“ hence the very term CONSERVatory. Such tradition creates generations of highly skilled but narrowly focused artists and craftspeople who don’t see themselves as innovators, yet innovation, as Peter Drucker says, is the foundation of entrepreneurship.

How then can we impart a spirit of entrepreneurship in our students? I’m not convinced that it’s through business plan competitions (as Eastman and others are doing), although such competitions can certainly be one part of a multi-faceted approach to arts entrepreneurship education. Some students in the arts need foundational or even remedial education in topics like financial literacy and career planning, and that might be another facet. But those too are not enough. We need to look at Craig Barrett’s charge to create an environment for innovation, an environment where student artists can be seen as co-creators, not merely empty vessels to be filled with the wisdom of past masters. Only through innovation and the creation of new work (and new forms of work) will the arts and culture (and the economy) advance.

Following my last posting on the fiscal health of theatres, my fellow ETA blogger, Jim Hart contacted me with some provocative questions. I thought I’d address two of them and forgive me, Jim, for paraphrasing slightly:
1. Can we teach our aspiring theatre artists to avoid the traditional path of the begging cup?
2. Would it be so bad to have a slew of privately-owned for-profit theatres (to avoid the begging cup that comes with 501c3 status)?

How many times have we gone to a performance at our regional professional nonprofit theatre and been greeted at curtain time by the artistic director or managing director making a plea for support? The curtain speech plea has become ubiquitous in the last 18 months as theatres have struggled to stay alive. But, it’s a technique not confined to the nonprofit market. Broadway cast members have been making their annual Broadway Cares/Equity Fights Aids fundraising plea for the six weeks leading up to the New Year. Both certainly have the air of the begging cup about them. The most successful development efforts, however, have nothing to do with begging during a curtain speech. Successful development efforts have at least three major components: partnering with community, developing audience, and effective grant-getting.

When development focuses solely on asking for money, it is doomed to fail. (So Jim, I agree with you on this point.) However, when a theatre (or any non-profit arts organization) meets a community need, then the community will support it. The question is not how can we avoid the begging cup? but rather œwho can we partner with in our community? and how can we better serve our community? I don’t have any easy answers, but in general, arts organizations need to be focused outwardly rather than inwardly: Who are our constituents and how can we give them something of value? Rather than what do we need to do to maintain our current programming and structure?

This is where the second component comes into play: audience development. If the current audience is not supportive, its time develop new audience, which usually means a change of direction or expansion of programming, rather than a contraction. I’m trying to expand our audience for my current institution by offering more performances, some at nontraditional times. Is it working? Unfortunately it’s very unclear, but we haven’t lost anything in the trying (yet). We took a risk. We’re expanding services to niche audiences like elder hostels and children. But we can’t measure success based on ticket revenue alone. We will measure success on whether or not the organizations and programs we partner with want to continue the relationships we form.

I listed effective grant-getting as a component of development because grant writing and grant-getting have several benefits. The mere act of writing grants (which are usually only available to nonprofits) forces an organization to focus and articulate its mission. Grant getting is also a form of community partnerships. Foundations want to partner with organizations that help advance the mission of the foundation. It is a bi-directional relationship.

Jim expressed a utopian idea of having many small for profit theatres, privately owned, and risk taking. Here Jim and I disagree. We have a model of for-profit theatres: Broadway. Some are privately owned, some owned by large corporations, but very very few are risk-taking and none of them small. (The risk-taking exceptions are the commercial Broadway productions mounted by nonprofit theatres  here we see riskier fare like Sarah Ruhl’s In the Next Room). But, much as small independent bookstores and mom-and-pop grocers are few and far between, so too would be privately owned for-profit theatres. Such theatres would have no choice but to pander to the ticket buying audience (a demographic not always known for risk-taking) and, driven by a profit motive, would not stay small for long because if successful, there would be buy-out offers from Comcast or Universal or Disney. Making art is risky enough without the art makers having to invest and risk losing significant capital.

That having been said, maybe theatre makers should look to filmmakers for a for-profit model in which a company is formed around a specific project, money raised for that project, and then return on investment may (or may not) take place after distribution. Perhaps the way to have a for-profit theatre infrastructure is to avoid the institution structure completely and consider each project as an independent venture. That would be an idea worth pursuing  but fundraising for a for-profit project-based venture brings us full circle back to the begging cup. Perhaps there’s no escaping it.

HAPPY NEW YEAR! (And don’t forget to give generously to the arts organization of your choice!)

As you may recall from a previous posting, I’ve been doing some research on the fiscal health of nonprofit arts organizations, specifically theatres. Prior research indicated that one could look at several factors (revenue diversification, operating margins, administrative expenses, and access to equity) to predict the viability of a non-profit organization. Well, my research findings (which may or may not ever reach the stage of formal publication) are very surprising- these factors don’t correlate with the fiscal health of theatres! At least not to any extent that seems significant given my random sampling of 10% of the theatres whose tax returns are available through the National Center for Charitable Statistics.

When I talk to people though, people who run theatres, people who work for nonprofit theatres, people who know about theatre management, their mantra is almost 100% in unison: cash flow, cash flow, cash flow. A theatre that can manage its cash flow, whether by maintaining a cash reserve or accurately predicting revenue and expenses — or better yet both — seems more likely to persist. I note that given the current economy, it’s a lot easier to do the former (maintain a cash reserve) than it is to do the latter (accurately predict revenue and expenses) but both are challenging.

I’ve been preoccupied with academic matters recently, but hope to resume more regular postings after the first of the year!

Last week, I got to do the thing that I enjoy most in my job (I also got to do some things I enjoy least, but discussing those would be digressive).  My colleagues and I made six seed grants to student arts entrepreneurs.  If I ever feel down about arts education, I can go back and read the 24 letters of intent and 8 full submissions to our p.a.v.e. program in arts entrepreneurship.  Reading through these proposals makes me feel that the arts are relevant, vibrant, vital, and sustainable.

Students have some of the coolest ideas.  With their permission, I’m sharing some information about the six awardees with you all.  Yes, it’s a little bit of bragging, but it’s also sharing some of the interesting ideas that we’ll be mentoring and supporting in the months to come.  (And, yes, there were a few proposals that just made you roll your eyes, but those were very few.) A lot of proposals were for projects that could be termed “social entrepreneurship” as much as “arts entrepreneurship,” a combination I find both interesting, and hopeful.

With that, I bring you the Fall 2009 p.a.v.e. awardees:

Join and Cast Ventures: Two Art (Intermedia) students, Jennifer C. and Catherine A., are producing a field guide to the downtown Phoenix arts scene that is itself a work of art.

Radio Healer: Led by Arts, Media Engineering (AME) graduate student Christopher M., Radio Healer presents mediated performances that foster intercultural dialogue in Native communities.

Dance and Health Together Awards: Led by undergraduate Dance major Mary P., the DaHT Awards is a combination of dance recognition award and fundraising enterprise benefiting the Susan G. Komen Foundation.

Co-op Film Productions – Film and Media Production/Marketing student Chelsea R. and her team are creating a support infrastructure for student collaboration across arts and design disciplines.

Different from What? Film Festival – AME graduate student Lisa T. in collaboration with Education student Federico W. is producing a film festival focused on films by, for, and about adults with disabilities.

Scratch Theory – Filmmaking Practices major Chris G. and his collaborators are developing a software/hardware interface that will first notate and then play back via synthesizer DJ scratching.