Creativity can open doors, but knowing how to turn your talent into a sustainable career is what keeps them open. If you’re planning a career as a creative, consider adding a few entrepreneurial classes among your painting, design and composition courses. Creatives benefit greatly from tangible business skills such as financial management, navigating contracts, intellectual property and business creation. Take for example a musician. Cultivating a unique sound and a visual identity is what we call branding. Building a fanbase is customer acquisition. Promoting your work through social media is digital marketing.
ASU has been ranked number one in innovation by U.S. News & World Report for 10 consecutive years. Naturally, this innovative spirit extends into our creative programs, too. Students have numerous opportunities on campus to learn how to intentionally blend entrepreneurship with their creative practice.
The Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts
The Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts offers a number of opportunities for students to explore entrepreneurship in their arts majors. The Music Entrepreneurship Certificate, run by Dr. Deanna Swoboda, equips music majors — and non-majors in any discipline with a music background — with the skills and tools required to design a sustainable music career.
The Herberger Institute also offers master’s degrees relating to entrepreneurship. The MA in Creative Enterprise and Cultural Leadership helps changemakers and innovators disrupt traditional business models, advance technological change and democratize access to culture using arts- and design-based methods to advance a spectrum of enterprises. The MS in Innovation and Venture Development is an interdisciplinary program led by faculty from both the W.P. Carey School of Business and the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts, preparing students with the entrepreneurial mindset needed to launch successful ventures in any industry or sector. In true entrepreneurial fashion, all of these programs offer hands-on experiential learning and opportunities to work with industry experts.
A Course for Gig + Freelancers
The MS in Innovation and Venture Development is not the only area where ASU departments are working across disciplines to build creative entrepreneurship resources and learning opportunities. The Gig + Freelance Work Essentials course was designed by Career Services in collaboration with the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts, the J. Orin Edson Entrepreneurship + Innovation Institute and the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. ASU faculty can incorporate these freelancing-focused modules into their own courses within the context of their respective fields. Students can also access the information outside of their coursework to build the skills necessary for freelance and gig work, which is increasingly common in creative industries.
Explore the Benefits of Creative Spark
The J. Orin Edson Entrepreneurship + Innovation Institute has been an endowed Institute since 2020, helping entrepreneurs at ASU and beyond bring their ideas to life through learning opportunities, mentorship and material support. We have awarded over $5.8 million in funding to entrepreneurs and have supported over 800 Venture Devils teams. We have always included creative work in our vision of what entrepreneurship means, and we retain a Venture Mentor, Chase Norris, who focuses on creative work. However, in Fall 2024, we leveled up our support of creative entrepreneurs with the launch of Creative Spark.
Creative Spark equips aspiring creatives with the entrepreneurial skills that support a robust career in the arts. We launched this program because we found that many of our students in creative fields, while being very entrepreneurial, did not have the time or capacity to translate the existing entrepreneurial resources we offer to creative disciplines. Additionally, they often don’t feel empowered to interact with entrepreneurial resources or experiences because when the relevance is not clear, it is difficult for them to get involved. By slightly tweaking and repackaging our entrepreneurial resources to speak their language, and allowing them to apply these skills and concepts to creative projects they were doing anyway, we were able to reach an entirely new demographic of entrepreneurs and open up a whole new world to our creative students about what they can accomplish in their fields.
The Creative Spark pilot had a cohort of 30 students, 12 of whom submitted a project proposal, of which seven were funded. The funding allowed the students to meet a variety of project goals, such as breaking even on the Kax Stage at the Herberger Theater for a performance and releasing professional-quality recordings. Funded projects include Frandsen Agency, a PR and marketing agency for indie musicians founded by Logan Frandsen; Pick Up the Pieces, an EP released by Cassidy Peterson; The Weight of an Existence, an interactive soundscape experience by Rohith Chandrashaker; and Sunday Dinner, a semi-scripted singer/songwriter showcase by Zoe Nichols. There are many more projects that are still in preparation for release. Your next favorite song might be from a Creative Spark-funded project!
We were also able to offer learning opportunities from industry professionals, such as a branding workshop, a session helping students to prepare and market their music to be used in film and television and hearing from an artist manager about what the job entails and how they support artists. One student told us that she was always excited to receive the monthly Creative Spark emails outlining upcoming opportunities, which is high praise from students who are inundated with emails daily! Based on the positive feedback from participants, we will continue to improve on the pilot version of Creative Spark and hope to expand to more creative disciplines in the coming years.
Are you an ASU student who wants to be a part of the next Creative Spark Cohort? Sign up for the Just Start Spotlight Newsletter to get all the latest information on Edson E+I student programming!
Student-Made is Made for Student Creators
Student-Made at ASU® is another Edson E+I program that supports creative work. It is a co-branded retail experience with Student-Made Store, a business started by co-founders Lindsay Reeth and Ryan McEhlhinny when they were students at Elon University, to help their peers who wanted to sell their handmade goods. Any ASU student with a goods-based business can join Student-Made, where they will be able to sell their items through the online marketplace and at in-person pop-ups. The experience is managed by a team of student workers who help their peers run their businesses and learn entrepreneurial skills.
Preparing Students for the Business Side of Creative Careers
The field of creative entrepreneurship is rapidly expanding. Many top universities now recognize that traditional arts programs have left students unprepared for the business aspects of their creative careers. The Society for Arts Entrepreneurship Education advances formal training and high educational standards for arts entrepreneurship education. Edson E+I Institute is excited to be a part of this community and to participate in shaping the future of creative entrepreneurship in higher education.
Together, we have the opportunity to empower the next generation of creatives to succeed not just in their craft, but in their careers. By pairing artistic talent with business know-how, students can step into their careers with confidence and clarity.
