• careers that connect personal interests with meaningful social relationships; careers that shift with interests and times and places;
profit incubators, collaborative spaces.” In other words, “creative entrepreneurship is spawning its own institutional structure” says Deresie- wicz, and that means exciting times ahead for anyone interested in entering the world of art, design, comedy, music, and, and so on. The reason why creative entrepreneurship is so exciting and impactful today (and will be even more tomorrow), is because on one hand more foundations and capital venturists are inter- ested in the social impact afforded by creative endeavors in their communities, and, explains Deresiewicz, on the other because young crea- tors are turning these careers into what they want them to be: • careers that allow for versatility—meaning you can be a photographer and a maker, a story- teller and a designer...
Want to be a creative entrEpreneur? Making a social impact while making money.
• careers in which you get to do what you deem most important, not what a “gatekeeper” wants;
• and careers that don’t just lead to transforma- tive experiences, but, as Deresiewicz so beauti- fully remarks, that are also experiences in and of themselves. So the next time you thinking about a possible career in the wonderful world of art, think be- yond, think about becoming a creative entrepre- neur, and doing it your way.
by Christine Henseler
misconception is that art organizations are not able to measure “impact,” thus making it more difficult to measure and evaluate the benefits of investing in art organizations. But, points out Cal- lahan, “beyond providing quality jobs and eco- nomic growth, arts organizations have been found to have correlated with lowered obesity, higher academic attainment, and enhanced safety within the communities where they are located.“ Although impact targets can narrow a company’s goals, argues Alexander Kühl, the founder and partner of Purpose Ventures, he is finding that creative entrepreneurs are so target-oriented, that they want to make their accomplishments and the benefits to their communities visible. And visible they have become. Artists today are no longer “solitary geniuses,” who avoid any con- nection to the market economy, as a piece from 2015 by William Deresiewicz in The Atlantic sug- gests. In fact, thanks to the technology at our fin - gertips, artists today can promote and sell their work directly to consumers, allowing them to scale up in ways never before seen, through: “on- line marketplaces, self-publishing platforms, non-
Did you know that “creativity lens investing” has become an emerging subset of what’s known as the broader field of “social impact investing”? Well, Laura Callahan, deputy chief investment officer at the Rockefeller Foundation, has recog - nized the societal benefits of investing in the arts community, citing its ability to provide “quality jobs, social connections, and civic engagement.” That’s why she decided to invest in artists who see themselves like social entrepreneurs and “want to use the marketplace to scale and sus- tain a concept.” In “Why Investors Are Looking to Back Artist-Run Businesses,” published on December 17, 2018 in the magazine Art Market, Anne Louie Sussman re- ported that Callahan decided to collaborate with an investment firm called Purpose Venture be - cause she believed in the long-term investment approach to entrepreneurs who build companies that “remain independently owned and get re- paid through dividends and share buybacks, and the community-oriented mission of creative lens investing.”
Most importantly, she points out that a common
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