The model of ”the five plus two entrepreneurial skills“ for successful entrepreneurs in the arts

The Magnificent Seven is a 1960 American Western film, directed by John Sturges and starring great Hollywood actors like Yul Brunner, Steve McQueen or Charles Bronson. The film portrays a group of seven gunfighters hired to protect the belongings of farmers in a small village in Mexico from a group of marauding bandits. Although time passed and gunfighters are not appropriate means anymore to help artists to protect their belongings and earnings in the arts, "the magnificent seven" are still alive and urgently needed by working artists.  

 

Labour market statistics worldwide evidence that up to 90% of artists are self-employed, mostly organized as one-person-businesses and show strong difficulties in earning a living in the arts. Due to the fact that there are hardly any full-time and permanent employment opportunities for artists in the arts, but primarily opportunities to pursue work on a freelance and self-employed basis, artists need to develop entrepreneurial skills and operate like entrepreneurs to successfully meet multi-facetted economic and opportunity-driven challenges and, finally, to make a living in their beloved profession. However, what does it take to become an arts entrepreneur - or to put it in a more stylish word: artpreneur?

 

The answer is quite simple. It only takes some specific skills and an entrepreneurial mindset, meaning an open-minded and opportunity-driven attitude and thinking. In the context of my PhD research, I identified the crucial seven skills for entrepreneurs in general and professional artists in particular, required to make a living in the arts. Resulting from it, I developed the model of "the five plus two entrepreneurial skills”, to measure the entrepreneurial fitness of art graduates.  

 

 

The process of identifying the crucial skills for entrepreneurial success of artists was conducted by two means. The research started firstly with a comprehensive review of entrepreneurship literature and statistics on reasons for business failures and success in order to identify the key factors and crucial skills for entrepreneurial success. Secondly, a survey among 208 lecturers in Fine Art, all of whom were simultaneously working artists in the UK and Germany, was conducted in order to use their professional experience to determine crucial entrepreneurial skills for fine artists. Fine Art lecturers’ opinions were valuable as well as they worked also as professional artists and trainers or teachers of prospective fine artists at higher education institutions (HEIs). In this dual function, they provided valuable insights into their professional understanding and knowledge, particularly in relation to the required skills to successfully meet the market requirements.

 

 

The literature review and survey has shown that the development of an entrepreneurial mindset, defined as an entrepreneurial attitude, understanding or thinking, and behaviour is important for self-employed professionals to become entrepreneurially successful. Additionally, in order to successfully operate like an entrepreneur, seven skills have emerged in the literature as crucial for the success of entrepreneurial businesses, independent of industry, size, culture, and organizational structure

 

Table: "The five plus two entrepreneurial skills” (by Marco Thom)

 

The first five skills named in the table are considered as "real entrepreneurial skills”. They have explicitly and primarily to do with the creation of a successful business or self-employment career, while the last two skills in finance and sales enable the successful running of the business or entrepreneurial career. This classification leads to an explanatory model, which will be called "the five plus two entrepreneurial skills”. For more details to this model, please see the paper "Crucial skills for the entrepreneurial success of fine artists” (Marco Thom (2016), Institut für Mittelstandsforschung (IfM), Bonn). After identifying the crucial skill set, the research interest, therefore, was to discover how this model would work in practice in a multi-cultural context. 

 

 

The National Art Gallery of Malaysia launched a career development scheme for young artists in 2017. It is called Young Art Entrepreneurs (YAE) and based on the abovementioned model of "the five plus two entrepreneurial skills”. YAE aims to develop entrepreneurship skills amongst young graduate artists with no or hardly any knowledge of business management over a period of six months. By applying a combined teaching approach of coaching and mentoring, YAE provides its artists with an entrepreneurial hands-on education that aims to equip them with "the five plus two entrepreneurial skills" they need to create and run their own art businesses.

 

To date, almost 100 YAE graduates have participated in the programme. The YAE analyses and research findings clearly indicate that those artists who are able to better internalize "the five plus two entrepreneurial skills” seem to show a greater chance of success in launching and managing their own art enterprises. The programme’s current success rate is about 80%, which means that 8 out of 10 YAE artists will be able to launch their own art business and make a living in the arts after graduation. 

 

Another finding that is evident is that YAE boot camp and business coaching provided made the YAE artists more aware about business management. All participants were positive about management knowledge they received and believed that all visual artists could be more successful when given adequate training in business skills. 

 

As described in detail by the YAE manager Dr. Rahim in his paper ("Five plus two" skills set and success of Young Art Entrepreneurs: A case study of seven visual artists", Idealogy, 3(3), 2018, 247-260), the programme reviews by YAE clearly reaffirmed that ideation or creativity is paramount in (art) business development. In cases where artists were not successful in developing a viable art business because their ideas were not creative enough and therefore failed to gain support from investors, the artists still show great confidence to make it significantly better in the future, now that they know their shortcomings. At the same time, the ability to think strategically helped them develop convincing business plans. Similarly, networking methods they utilized increased their chances of success. Even in cases of relatively weak and less viable art business ideas, artists who possess this particular skill set benefitted by finding new partners for (redefining and developing) their business model. 

 

YAE also provided the artists with ample opportunities to gain insights into their own leadership capabilities, by heading their own individual teams to plan, organize, direct and control events, successfully. This skill has proven as crucial for their survival when they have to manage their own business teams, mostly including external partners. In addition, the participants were convinced that they had adequately exposed to basics in bookkeeping, accounting and taxation. At the same time, YAE showed them where to find sources of funding and how to approach funders with compelling pitching skills and impressive business plans. Lastly, YAE showed their artists how to market their ideas and promote their art, products and services with ease by employing online and offline marketing strategies that most artists often neglect. In addition, YAE made them establish their own sole proprietorships and develop their own brands to help them market their products with greater confidence. 

 

Pictures that illustrate the Malaysian Young Art Entrepreneurs Programme can be found on the programme's facebook page. 

 

Adaptability 

 

In conclusion, the career development scheme by YAE and the National Art Gallery of Malaysia has shown two major contributions of the model of "the five plus two entrepreneurial skills": Firstly, the YAE scheme shows evidence that the exposure of artists to "the five plus two entrepreneurial skills”, as crucial components to successfully develop art entrepreneurs, have impacted their professional lives considerably. Second, the YAE career programme has shown evidence that the model of "the five plus two entrepreneurial skills" is simple to apply and to provide efficient results in multi-cultural environments, as far as access to education is available. The proof of model is given. YAE successfully developed artists with different cultural and artistic backgrounds, since all the world religions, including Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Christianity are present in Malaysia and in the YAE scheme. Religion correlates strongly with ethnicity, with most Muslims Malay, most Hindus Indian, and most Buddhists Chinese. The presence of such diversity heightens the importance of religious identity, and most Malaysians have a strong sense of how their religious practice differs from that of others. However, the cultural and religious identities had no impact on YAE artists‘ entrepreneurial teaching and development.

 

"The magnificent seven” will be in action next in Kenya to support streets artists in their professional career as well as in Brazil to turn professional Samba dancers, who usually work as freelancers in a very competitive business environment of entertainment, into performing art entrepreneurs with focus on cultural event management. The model of "the five plus two entrepreneurial skills” will help them to provide their art in a different but economically most attractive business context. The success story of "the magnificent seven” or to be more concrete, of "the five plus two entrepreneurial skills" is to be continued.