The mission of the entrepreneurship in the arts division is to promote awareness, interest and investment in arts entrepreneurship. Arts entrepreneurs are those individuals who create business opportunities and or who become self-employed in the arts.

The division’s focus is to bring knowledge of arts entrepreneurship to practitioners, artists, arts students and educators to enhance the ability to successfully assess and meet the needs of the field.

Priorities: (not in any particular order)

• To impart business and entrepreneurial skills and attitudes to students in a forum appropriate to them.
• To impart the entrepreneurial mindset to students and practitioners.
• Help bridge the philosophical gaps that exist between and among different academic fields as they relate to arts entrepreneurship.
• To increase awareness of the value of entrepreneurship education to arts students.
• Fundraising and program support.
• To explore the relationship between the arts as a business and the business of arts.
• Creating wider awareness and support within USASBE and other organizations.
• Help institutionalize arts entrepreneurship.

Division Officers - 2007

VP:  Mark Hoelscher, Illinois State, mlhoels@ilstu.edu

Division History*
2006 VP: Karen Thornton, University of Maryland
2005 VP: John ODell, Rhode Island College
2004 VP: Brent Nicholson, Bowling Green
2003 VP: Sharon Alpi, Millikin University
2002 VP: Gary Ernst, North Central College
2001 VP: Joseph Roberts, Columbia College Chicago

* Approved as USASBE Division in 2001