Over the 2000s, Toronto initiated and instituted a process of cultivating itself as a creative city. Entrepreneurial city visionaries found that in order to enter the global market, their planning had to be strategic. This paper explores how Toronto’s policy entrepreneurs used planning, partnerships, and an expanded definition of economic development to create a “Cultural Camelot.” In addition to competing on the financial and revenue-generating fronts, a coalition of cross-sector leaders took on the challenge of fostering a livable city with a deep social ethos imbued within a variety of dimensions of urban life. This new focus gave Toronto the chance establish itself as a center for innovation, which strengthened urban cultural capital and helped promote the strategic agenda of becoming a competitor in the creative economy sector. Investment in research and creative city strategic planning, coupled with the allocation of financial and human capital resources across a variety of industries, served to encourage creativity, promote culture and competitiveness, and drive economic development.

The two authors are members of punk rock trio the Eruptörs. Both also teach in higher education – one in popular music, and the other in management and marketing. Writing from experience in the Eruptörs, we present a case study of the band, and draw on theoretical perspectives from our respective, intersecting fields to explore the Eruptörs’ entrepreneurship, collaborations, networks, and creativities in the “DIY” underground punk rock scene. The paper provides cross-disciplinary insights into internal and external cultures of the Eruptörs. Proposing this as a teaching case, the authors conclude that students, scholars, and practitioners in music education, popular music studies, and related disciplines and fields involving entrepreneurship could benefit from engaging in reflexive and entrepreneurial practice which explores and incorporates ideas, models, and syntheses discussed in this paper.

As the first peer reviewed research journal in the field of arts entrepreneurship, Artivate: A Journal of Arts Entrepreneurship takes its role as a framer of the discourse in and around arts entrepreneurship seriously. To advance that discourse, in addition to the articles and book reviews that have been regular features of Artivate, we have invited members of our editorial board and staff to contribute short think pieces. For these pieces we asked contributors to consider open-ended questions to which they could respond in whole or in part: what is their position in relation to arts entrepreneurship; how is arts entrepreneurship situated in relation to other disciplines or fields; what are the problems we are grappling with as scholars, practitioners, teachers, and artists; and what are the research questions we are attempting to answer individually or as a field? Following, you will find responses from: Andrew Taylor, Associate Professor of arts management at American University; Paul Bonin-Rodriguez, Assistant Professor of performance as public practice at UT-Austin and author of Performing Policy (reviewed in this issue); and Artivate’s publisher and co-editor, Linda Essig, Evelyn Smith Professor and director of the Pave Program in Arts Entrepreneurship at Arizona State.

A lean startup process is an attractive route to business ownership for people with limited funds or who are risk averse, as such a process is designed to avoid significant loss and support success (Thickett, 2013). This article contends that ideal tools to facilitate this lean startup methodology of experimentation, reflection, and flexibility are social media platforms and third party selling. This reflective case study examines the author’s process using these tools to lean launch a niche web-based artisan business.

To address the call for examination of academic and professional approaches to arts entrepreneurship, we summarize the academic arts entrepreneurship programs in the State of North Carolina and conduct a pilot study with data gathered from arts entrepreneurs who attended the 5th annual Southern Entrepreneurship in the Arts Conference in Greensboro, North Carolina. Our review of the descriptive data reveals that arts entrepreneurs face a variety of needs and challenges, which are psychological (e.g., peer support) as well as technical (e.g., start-up skills). These findings suggest that, as prior literature stresses, arts entrepreneurship education programs should entail both the “entrepreneurship mindset” aspect and the “venture creation” aspect, so we advocate a holistic approach that combines both these perspectives with other related courses. We conclude, based on our exploratory study, that collaborative and flexible approaches, such as cross-campus programs for arts entrepreneurship education in higher education, could have beneficial outcomes for art entrepreneurs. Implications for future research are discussed.

An on-going academic debate occupying Entrepreneurship researchers for the past several decades is concerned with defining what an entrepreneur is and what an entrepreneur does. The debate also extends to exploring the influence different types of entrepreneurs have on their environment. In the new creative economy, entrepreneurship has become a central issue for the regeneration of urban space. This essay first differentiates between economic and cultural entrepreneurs and second explores what influence cultural entrepreneurs, especially, have on urban developments. By using Damien Hirst as exemplar for the discussion of the entrepreneurial character and spheres of action, the analysis of his career demonstrates how difficult it is in practice to draw a line between artistic, cultural and commercial activities in the creative economy. Hirst’s approach to contemporary conceptual art and his factory-like art production are both controversial and successful as defined by the author. Nevertheless, there seems to be agreement that his entrepreneurial artistic work has had a profound impact on the revitalization of East London and thus can be used as model for urban planners. The author posits that Hirst is a cultural entrepreneur based on this model for creating/regenerating viable economic urban spaces who embraces the blending of the artistic and market spheres.