Entrepreneurship & the Arts

In collaboration with our Riata Faculty Fellow from the Art Department and other faculty members from Theatre and Music, we are currently teaching a course entitled Entrepreneurship and the Arts. It targets theatre, music and fine arts students and is cross-listed with those departments. The focus of the course is less on how arts students can start their own ventures, although there is some coverage of this, and more on how arts students can apply entrepreneurial thinking and core concepts from entrepreneurship (opportunity recognition, risk management, resource leveraging) in their artistic careers. One of the key deliverables for this course is a group project, the objective of which is to apply entrepreneurial thinking and behavior to contribute to “the reinvigoration and socio-cultural transformation of the arts in Stillwater”. The inaugural group organized the highly successful Stillwater Arts Festival which we hope to make an annual event under the auspices of the E Club and the Creativity Institute. Plans for an Arts Incubator are in its embryonic stage.