This special issue examines entrepreneurial practices of artists in their activities of creation, production and dissemination. While management has long been characterized as an art due to its creative and non-iterative dimension, the relationship between artistic and managerial spheres has historically been presented as antagonistic or dichotomous. However, contemporary research reveals a growing convergence between the figures of the artist and the entrepreneur, notably through shared practices and approaches.
This convergence also reflects the growing proportion of artists becoming entrepreneurs in a socioeconomic context marked by injunctions to entrepreneurship and innovation, as well as by increasing precarity in artistic creation activities. These approaches highlight initiatives carried out by individuals often marginalized geographically or socio-culturally who mobilize cultural, social and emotional resources to create value within their communities. They also reveal the interrelations, sometimes fruitful and sometimes more harmful, between artistic creation and entrepreneurial practices and the challenges facing artistic entrepreneurs.
Several artistic and cultural sectors—visual and media arts, performing arts, popular music, etc.—can constitute privileged fields of observation. Urban art, for example, by mobilizing public space as both an artistic resource and vector of meaning, embodies new dynamics articulating creation, community engagement and economic constraints. Artists in this field develop forms of resilience and collaboration revealing tensions inherent between cultural expression and market imperatives, particularly in contexts marked by precarity and intense competition.
In this era of increased precarity of artistic work, massive use of digital technologies for creation and distribution of cultural goods affecting artists' remuneration, reconfiguration of cultural policies, ecological and territorial crises as well as persistent social and identity tensions, artistic creation is no longer limited to an aesthetic function but becomes a space for action, experimentation and reflection on the societal impact of art and its interrelations with entrepreneurship. This special issue invites contributions exploring these interrelations.
This call invites contributions exploring the interrelations between art and entrepreneurship through the lived experience of artists, their subjectivities, their trajectories and the tensions they negotiate daily. It distinguishes itself from approaches mobilizing art as a metaphorical or methodological resource for entrepreneurship (arts-based methods, art thinking) as well as work focused on support mechanisms, public policies or action levers of cultural entrepreneurship.
Despite growing interest in artistic entrepreneurship, many existing works approach this phenomenon through classical frameworks of entrepreneurship, privileging market logic and institutional perspectives. Moreover, research has historically examined entrepreneurship in artistic and cultural spheres from the figure of the entrepreneur, concentrating on their characteristics, tensions, identity, training, tools and know-how, financing mechanisms or collaborative practices.
To complement these approaches and deepen the fundamental dynamics at work in the entrepreneurial process of artists, three paths appear worthy of exploration: artists' trajectories, which existing literature neglects in terms of the relationship artists maintain with themselves and how intrinsic dimensions influence their entrepreneurial practices; context as creative resource and constraint, to which little attention has been paid regarding how broader contextual dynamics actively shape and inspire artists' entrepreneurial trajectories; and the individual-collective dialectic, which remains insufficiently explored regarding interaction dynamics between individual artistic interests and collective action, particularly regarding tensions between personal creative expression and collaborative community engagement.
This special issue aims to advance both theory and practice by inscribing anew artistic entrepreneurship in a perspective of subjectivity, context and collective dynamics, thereby contributing to research in management and organizational studies. We seek both conceptual and empirical contributions bringing new insights into how artistic identity, contextual factors and collective dynamics shape entrepreneurial practices. We particularly seek studies presenting original results or challenging dominant assumptions of artistic entrepreneurship through a critical approach. Interdisciplinary approaches from other research fields are also welcome, provided they maintain clear relevance to managerial theory and organizational practice.