Rethinking cultural and creative entrepreneurship education

Abstract

For a number of creative graduates, self-employment, micro-entrepreneurship and freelancing is the main pathway to a career in the cultural and creative industries (CCI). In response, creative degrees have adapted their curriculum to include knowledge and skills associated with entrepreneurship, to prepare learners for CCI labour markets. But entrepreneurship education for creative graduates has distinctive characteristics, informed by an understanding of CCI, producing a context specific curriculum and pedagogy. In this paper, we consider models and methodologies for a contextualised entrepreneurship education aimed at students on creative degrees, which aims to develop skills and knowledge for entrepreneurship while engaging critically with CCI entrepreneurship. This potentially contradictory position builds on a critique of cultural and creative work, sometimes described as ‘forced’ entrepreneurship which highlights significant constraints, insecurities and precarious work conditions. The tension between learning about entrepreneurship and critical questioning of its paradigms, is also situated within an increased emphasis in Higher Education on learning to be enterprising, often identified as a key factor for student’s future career success, whether working for yourself or as an employee. In equipping creative graduates for the challenges and realities of cultural and creative labour markets, entrepreneurial learning and teaching is framed through social, political and economic debates. This paper draws on innovative pedagogies that make use of exploratory approaches, such as the use of participatory, visual and creative methods. These approaches can enable students to utilise different values, strategies and reflexive processes and can assist in opening up space to interrogate and engage critically with cultural and creative entrepreneurship. In applying entrepreneurship education to a discipline outside of a management and business school context, we problematise common assumptions, norms and discourses regarding entrepreneurship curricula and pedagogies. This paper contributes to debates which seek to review entrepreneurship education, embracing contradictory positions to shape new perspectives by considering students’ engagement with entrepreneurship curricula in higher education and reflecting on the broader CCI labour context.