Who are cultural entrepreneurs?

Cultural Enterprise Entrepreneurs are cultural change agents and resourceful visionaries who generate revenue from a cultural activity. Their innovative solutions result in economically sustainable cultural enterprises that enhance livelihoods and create cultural value for both creative producers and consumers of cultural services and products.

What is cultural enterprise?

Cultural enterprises are commercial ventures that connect creators and artists to markets and consumers. They create, produce and market cultural goods and services, generating economic, cultural and social opportunities for creators while adding cultural value for consumers.

Cultural enterprises, both nonprofit and profit, adopt a business approach to their activity and deploy financial and cultural capital (creativity, talent, cultural traditions, knowledge and intellectual property) in a strategic fashion.

Cultural enterprises are diverse in nature and size. They range from micro and SME to large firms. Cultural enterprises operate in the following fields: performing arts, museums, music, literature, publishing, film, photography, folk art, design, architecture, education, cultural and creative tourism, new multimedia, etc. They include, for example, publishing houses, production companies, photo agencies, markets, galleries or museum enterprises.

What's/Who's Involved in C.E.?

Cultural Industries: Music, Performing Arts (Theater, Dance), Literature, Visual Arts, Museums, Craft, Film, Cultural & Heritage Festivals and Markets, Culinary, and Culturally based education, Architecture, Healing Arts, Design, Publishing.
Creative Industries: All of the above plus New Media, Software, Advertising, Marketing, Fashion, Design, Publishing driven primarily by markets
Cultural Creators: Musicians, Dancers, Composers, Writers, Artisans, Artists, Teachers, Designers, Actors, Chefs, Architects.
Cultural Producers & Marketers: Producers, Directors, Publishers, Promoters, etc.
Auxiliary & Support Services: Hotels, Shops, AV, Recording, Technicians, Publishing houses, agents, photo agencies, galleries, etc.

Cultural Capital

Cultural capital can include traditions, music, skills, feasts and celebrations, food, place, etc.
Individuals carry forward traditions while communities often have a legacy of creative talent that form its cultural capital.
Organizations, e.g., museums, libraries, performing arts, are repositories of cultural capital made available to the public.
Educational organizations that foster cultural creativity and advance traditions build community cultural capital.

What are Cultural Organization Entrepreneurs?

Cultural Organizational Entrepreneurs are cultural change agents and resourceful visionaries who create programs and/or organizations that contribute to the enhancement of people’s lives culturally. They create cultural value in the community, small and large, through their entrepreneurial approach to cultural change. These programs and organizations require ongoing philanthropic support and subsidy, some of which is created by cultural enterprises.

What Does a Cultural Entrepreneur Do?

The Cultural Entrepreneur creates a vision for a cultural enterprise that bridges a market need with cultural traditions, cultural experiences and cultural innovations, enhancing the livelihoods of cultural creators and workers and enriching the consumer.

The Cultural Entrepreneur identifies and gathers cultural capital, partnering it with people and financial capital, creating a financially sustainable enterprise.

The cultural entrepreneur holds the passion to muster the resources and the people to make the enterprise a reality and sustainable.

Common Characteristics of Cultural Entrepreneurs

Cultural Entrepreneurs do have common characteristics around the globe. Their values are similar in terms of their attitudes towards authentic culture.
Passion: Every entrepreneur has a passion for the culture, a community’s traditions and talents and especially for the creators, be they innovators, masters or cultural workers.
Vision: The cultural entrepreneur has a vision for the enterprise that encompasses the “wholeness” of the enterprise. The entrepreneur sees the problem and the solution, the need and the talent to create the market link as the whole picture.
Innovative: The entrepreneur thinks out of ordinary ways to achieve solutions and build markets while able to adapt commonly accepted market strategies into the new enterprise.
Vision-Leader: The cultural entrepreneur is a vision-leader who has the passion to see the vision through to the development of the cultural enterprise-persistent, determined, committed to the vision and creates commitment to the vision.
Servant-Leader: The entrepreneur has a deep sense of service to the creators and cultural workers as well as to the consumer. There is a total, selfless dedication to the cultural beneficiaries.
Market Creator: Often the cultural entrepreneur has to create new cultural markets rather than entering into an existing market, making the entrepreneurial effort a twofold challenge.
Resourceful: Acts as though the resources will arrive to achieve the mission.
Networker: Maintains a wide network of people who will support the vision and create strategic partnerships with investors, opinion makers, market makers and creators.
Sustainability Innovator: Creates a whole cloth of sustainability, weaving together economic, social, environmental and cultural values.
Mission-Market Balanced: Creates an enterprise that is both mission-driven and market-focused.
Problem Solver: Problems are not obstacles but challenges that must be met and solved.
Market Savvy: Can create market intelligence through observation, analysis, create analogous scenarios to commercial markets and cultural markets, adopt and adapt and extrapolate it all into a new cultural enterprise vision.

How to Finance Cultural Enterprises

Financing a cultural enterprise can be done in different ways and often several sources of capital are combined and deployed in a cultural enterprise. Financial capital comes after the enterprise concept and business plan is developed. The business idea must be viable on paper before capital can be raised to finance the enterprise. Ten of the most common sources of capital are explained below:
Enterprise Income: Often the cultural organization has funds for investing in a new enterprise. If there is a current enterprise that is profitable and throwing off cash that can be invested in the expansion of an enterprise or to create a new enterprise.
Private Support: The enterprise may have a Board of Directors that can invest in the enterprise or private investors who are prepared to support the new endeavor. Social Venture Funds are now beginning to be formed and it is important that cultural enterprises are in fact viewed of equivalent value as a social enterprise creating cultural value as well as social value.
Grants: When an enterprise is in a non-profit organization or is chartered as a non-profit corporation, it is possible to seek grants to use as zero-cost capital that finances the development of the enterprise. Foundations make grants of this form that are either straight grants or as Program-Related Investments (PRI) that carry a minimal capital cost if they are debt. Foundations will make a blend of investments that are sometimes part grant, part debt and part equity investment using a PRI.
Membership: By creating a membership in the organization to support the endeavor, an enterprise can be financed from start up through to the growth phase. Cooperatives often take this form of financing with each member contributing.
Sponsorship: Offering sponsorships of a market, a festival or a cooperative can raise new capital. Sponsorships are often viewed as marketing opportunities by other enterprises that want their name associated with the enterprise. Individual sponsors want to support the endeavor and do not expect a return for their support. This works best with a non-profit where the individual can take advantage of a tax deduction in those countries that allow them.
Government Support: Governments often have incentives for starting cultural enterprises. These can be marketing funds given by an economic development agency that wants to see the income of cultural workers to improve. Other times there are funds to support development in geographic areas such as rural or depressed urban areas. Cast as enterprise development, cultural enterprise development fits into more categories of governmental support. It is difficult to find funds just for culture alone unfortunately so one must be creative, innovative and entrepreneurial in developing these sources of funds.
Special Events: Linking special events to the vision of the enterprise can often raise capital. Launches of new products can be done in a fashion that raises funds, as can special invitation gatherings that have an entrance price. Auctions and lotteries also can raise capital for a venture.
Passive Income: Owning property that generates rent can be a source of regular capital to finance a venture. Rather than selling the property, the rental income can be a source of the capital needed to begin the new or next enterprise. Investment income from dividends and interest, should the sponsoring organization hold a portfolio, is also a source of fresh capital.
Debt: Debt can be in the form of a bank or private loan. Also, an established organization of substantial size can float bonds to finance part of a new venture. In some economies, non-profit bonds are tax exempt, that gives the enterprise a favorable rate of interest and tax breaks for the investor.
Personal and Family Funds: More often than not, micro and small enterprises are financed at the beginning with personal funds and/or those of the family. The entrepreneur’s passion for the vision is such that initial steps must be taken and created for others to join in the vision. The entrepreneur not only invests time and talent, but personal funds to create the initial capital.

Each of these strategies needs to be screened as to whether they are long or short term and whether they are renewable in the future. Some of these sources of funds can be used for capital and others for operating funds and before seeking the capital the entrepreneur has to be able to explain the uses of the funds.

How to Start Cultural Enterprises

There are five essential steps to starting a cultural enterprise. These are common to every enterprise. Existing enterprises grow by a similar path of development when they introduce new cultural products or services as well as a new enterprise.

Entrepreneur with a Vision: Every new enterprise needs its champion who has the vision and passion for the venture. The entrepreneur sees the connection between the creators and the markets.
Cultural Capital: A rich resource of cultural capital that can be converted into an enterprise. Added to cultural capital must be committed human and financial capital.
A Market: Ultimately, an enterprise serves a need that consumers have, realized or not. The enterprise must find that market and fill the need of the consumer. Understanding the potential of the market is first and foremost in the vision yet ultimately it is the end point at which the viability of the enterprise will be determined.
Network: A network of people in the cultural field as well as marketing, production and finance. This includes people who will help fund the enterprise. This team is committed to supporting the development of the cultural enterprise.
Business Plan: The entrepreneur, often with the help of professionals, creates the business plan that lays out the vision, mission and values of the enterprise; defines the product or service; describes the marketing mix strategy of product, pricing, promotion and distribution; outlines the need for human capital; lays out the production and packaging plan; and has a full five year financial plan that includes Profit and Loss Statements, Balance Sheet and Cash Flow and sources of funds.