Columbia’s AEMM Department is playing a leading role in defining the relatively new field of arts entrepreneurship. Joe Roberts, Coleman Professor of arts entrepreneurship at Columbia College Chicago and an active member of the US Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship (USASBE), founded the arts entrepreneurship division of USASBE in 2001. He is now serving as the first Vice President of the division. Celebrating its fifth year, arts entrepreneurship is now considered an established division of the organization, with 113 members nationwide. “USASBE is made up of entrepreneurship educators,” explains Roberts. “It has a built in target audience that understands entrepreneurship and is ready to hear about how it relates to the arts.” Through this association, the AEMM hopes to help encourage the growth of the field. According to Roberts, there are currently 73 colleges and universities nationwide teaching at least one course in arts entrepreneurship, something that was relatively unheard of less than a decade ago.  

     Through their work with the USASBE, Roberts and the AEMM Department are establishing Columbia’s role as one of the leaders in the field of arts entrepreneurship. Roberts, along with the late Clarke Greene, a fellow AEMM Department faculty member, wrote one of the first published textbooks on arts entrepreneurship. As a Coleman Professor, Roberts also brings the Coleman Foundation to the table. Roberts and AEMM Department Chair J. Dennis Rich have co-authored a Coleman Foundation white paper, Arts Entrepreneurship: The Next Generation. Through Columbia’s work, Robert’s says that Columbia is “helping to define the field of arts entrepreneurship, and in the process establishing models and researching objectives that will allow us to position arts entrepreneurship as an academic discipline. Because arts entrepreneurship is relatively new as an academic discipline, it doesn’t have the legitimacy of more established disciplines. We are using our experience to address that issue.”

     According to Roberts, there is currently no scientific proof as to how entrepreneurship creates economic growth, but there is an intuitive acceptance that entrepreneurs hire new employees at a faster rate and create new jobs faster than large corporations. How this relates to the field of arts entrepreneurship is a matter for further research. “We are trying to move from the intuitive stage to the knowledge stage,” explains Roberts. “It’s a difficult process. Inevitably, as the field grows, we get more questions than answers. Through research and quantitative studies, we are seeking to create a rubric of arts entrepreneurship.”

     Through their work in the field, Columbia is now considered a leader in the field globally. Providing guidance to many European colleges and universities seeking to include arts entrepreneurship in their curriculums, Columbia professors have also served as guest lecturers, presenting arts entrepreneurship workshops in Finland, Berlin, Pottsdam, St. Petersburg, and Madrid.

More Arts Entrepreneurship News
     January 12 –15, 2006, the US Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship presented their annual conference in Tucson, Arizona. AEMM Department Coleman Professor, Joe Roberts, conducted several sessions at the conference. Roberts facilitated a Coleman Symposium session with Coleman Foundation professors from four colleges nationwide and facilitated the Entrepreneurship in the Arts paper session; Roberts, along with AEMM Department Chair J. Dennis Rich, and Mark Hoelscher of Illinois State University, presented a special Entrepreneurship in the Arts workshop, Comparing and Contrasting Traditional Entrepreneurship and Entrepreneurship in the Arts; and Roberts, along with Gary Ernst from North Central College, talked about the Self Employment in the Arts Conference. For more information, visit <www.usasbe.org>.

     The Self Employment in the Arts Conference (SEAC) was held February 24-25. A regional conference initiated by a group of three colleges – Columbia College, North Central College, and Beloit College – with the support of the Coleman Foundation, (SEAC) is designed to bring entrepreneurial skills to artists. Every year, Columbia takes a group of 25 – 40 students to the conference. For more information, visit <www.seasource.org>.