Cultural Entrepreneurship

Culture refers to the ‘lifestyle’ of groups of people, or rather, how they carry out their activities. What has been defined may include different cultures for different groups. Learning makes transferring culture from one generation to another possible while heredity makes it possible to transfer genes from one generation to another. Culture within human beings can also be observed in how people write, their faith, songs, garments, food, and activities.

We distinguish three broad meanings of culture

• Culture is defined as the quality of taste in the fine arts and humanities better referred to as high culture.
• According to the definition given by anthropology, culture is the totality of socially acquired knowledge, beliefs, art, morals, customs, and other capabilities acquired by man during his development.
• Culture is the people’s view, beliefs, norms, ethics, aspirations, and practices adopted within societies.

In its most generic meaning, ‘culture’ embraces all aspects of human activity that cannot be attributed to direct genes’ expression. Anthropology is the study of cultures although many other branches are involved for its study or the study of other disciplines.

Meaning of Cultural Entrepreneurship

Arts and Cultural entrepreneurship can be defined as the process of innovation, opportunity exploitation, and bearing of risk within economic and social contexts, aimed at the creation of goods and services in the cultural sector.

It is an activity that is creative, structured, long-term and people-oriented. It is the process of generating or starting up business opportunities within the cultural industry. Cultural entrepreneurship relates to how one can recognize the available cultural resources and turn them into products, services, and experiences with economic value. In other words, it is about applying business scenarios and management strategies to the advancement and cherishing of wide culture.

For example, Fabindia, Amul, Dastkar, Rang De, Women’s ERA Magazine, Chhota Bheem animation film, Banksy run their Galleries, Jay-Z is a musician who runs their label called Roc-A-Fella Records, Stella McCartney is a fashion designer who launched their clothing lines.

Definition of Cultural Entrepreneurship

Well, Cultural Entrepreneurs are individuals who are purposely involved in the change-making processes and are gifted resourceful people who harness cultural, financial, social, and human capital to make money out of a cultural activity. This they achieve by coming up with economically sustainable business models for cultural activities hence improving livelihoods for the cultural producers and consumers of cultural services and products.

Importance of Cultural Entrepreneurship

Cultural entrepreneurship is a significant factor in maintaining the plurality of cultures in the world and its active promotion and further evolution. 

Here are some reasons why cultural entrepreneurship is important:

• Economic Growth: Cultural entrepreneurship offers a boost to the economy through increased employment opportunities, increased income, and tourism promotion.
• Preservation of Culture: Thus, cultural entrepreneurship is an excellent opportunity to perpetuate cultural heritage and promote cultural values among the young generation.
• Diversity: Cultural entrepreneurship can bring cultures and peoples into focus thus creating equal opportunities for all.
• Innovation: Cultural entrepreneurship promotes cultural practice through the integration of new creative achievements into the result-oriented process.
• Community Development: Cultural entrepreneurship also holds the capacity to unify a whole community by creating an identity and foundation for togetherness.
• Social Impact: Apart from providing economic value, cultural entrepreneurship can directly contribute to society’s welfare through youth employment and cultural promotion of talents within the region or nation.

Challenges Faced by Cultural Entrepreneurs

However, like any other practice, cultural entrepreneurship also has its strengths and drawbacks. 

Some common challenges faced by cultural entrepreneurs include:

• Lack of Funding: Most cultural investors face a major challenge when it comes to funding the cultural business because most conventional financial institutions will not entertain such proposals or may lack ready capital to fund the business.
• Limited Access to Markets: Some challenges affect cultural entrepreneurs when attempting to access new and broader markets for cultural products such as goods and services because of their specialty.
• Balancing Creativity and Business: It is always a challenge to strike a balance between maintaining cultural heritage and fulfilling market expectations.
• Changing Consumer Preferences: For cultural entrepreneurs, they need to understand that even consumers are undergoing a paradigm shift, thus they need to find ways of shifting with them.

FEATURES OF CULTURAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP 

• Cultural entrepreneurs come out with a new product/service that enhances and preserves the culture, cuisine, art form, tradition, or anything related to the soul of a region or a country
• They take a high degree of pride in their respective cultures.
• They are driven by the passion for promoting art and culture rather than profit.
• They work with local people, artisans, and indigenous
• infrastructure.
• The risk of failure is very high in such ventures as the product/ service may or may not click with the general public.
• Venture capitalists too are not very enthusiastic to fund such Ventures.

Culture is, without any doubt, one of the most pronounced private businesses; it is barely existent in the public domain unless in the most unfortunate nations. Therefore, culture is the result of concerns formed and developed by individual players who invest time and money cultivating it, promoting it, and aiming to sell it to make a profit.

These industries are well set, though most of them operate with lower profitability, and the companies operating here are mainly small and globally operating with either very little or no cash balances. Therefore, it could be ascertained that culture does not contradict entrepreneurship but is rather a focal point for it.

Cultural enterprises work on conventional occupations related to art, writing, music, drama, dance, advertising, or architecture, and the more modern occupations like game designers, TV and music producers, bloggers, and graphic designers.

How is cultural entrepreneurship spreading in India?

how it is propagating cultural entrepreneurship, or cultural entrepreneurship activity, across the length and breadth of the country, India?

India has had only a few mature and the most advanced cultural industries. These two creative art forms, namely Film and Music were taken to very soon after the attainment of independence, and almost immediately grew into world-recognized entities. Restaurants were also present in each city and to add to it, each city provided recognizable eateries.

The change that is seen now is the growth of new cultural sectors: publishing ensued, animation emerged, comics came back, fashion rose a little, gaming simmered, and most importantly, recreation spaces flooded, especially cafes which grew incredibly in the last decade.

Children are excellent consumers of content and that is why it is good to have good content for children because most of their learning is done through dramas or plays and not by having to go through classes in geography and history. Yes, through such stories, values too seem to be picked.

This opportunity exists. This is the industry that gives the most enthusiasm to entrepreneurs who want to ‘start a new venture’. Several cultural products and services have performed well over the last decade though. This includes Such as cafes, restaurants, art galleries, comic books, and the independent cinema movements.

How Technology is Helping Cultural Entrepreneurship

Opportunities of technology are slowly appearing as a benefit to cultural entrepreneurs, but at the same time, it has its threats. New technology and social media have brought about changes in how culture entrepreneurs engage their audience and access a global market. Through websites, blogs, and social media, they can display their products to millions of people across the globe no longer bounded by space.

Most e-commerce platforms enable cultural entrepreneurs to sell their personalized souvenirs to prevent cultural merchandise from being undersold. Businesses such as Etsy and Instagram Shops allow artisans to present their works to people ready to appreciate their efforts. Social media crowdfunding platforms such as Kickstarter and Patreon base new funding for creative projects in the community.

Technology has also contributed to changes in cultural preservation techniques due to better technologies in place. VR and AR offer an engaging experience that can be accessed from a distance, making museums, historical sites, and events universally available. Digital archiving and 3D printing can also prevent the loss of cultural heritage since it allows for more accurate reproduction of the lost items.

But technology has its difficulties, for example, the digital divide and globalization, which tends to eliminate individual and cultural differences. It can be challenging to establish a business that lacks a sense of inauthenticity in the digital marketplace while maintaining one’s roots; however, many cultural entrepreneurs are inventive in adopting technology to achieve both goals.

Conclusion

Cultural entrepreneurship stands in between the culture and the markets; it establishes a continuity of the past as it responds to the demands of the present and the future. There are a lot of barriers in front of cultural entrepreneurs as many of them lack enough funding and restricted market access. 

They transform culture by introducing innovative products and services that reflect their regions’ identity. It enhances the history and the culture of the world, connecting the past and the future, and developing the understanding of different cultures. 

Since technology is continuing to advance, it creates new chances for cultural continuity and growth, which makes these legacies remain relevant. Cultural entrepreneurship is not only the business but it is a goal to remain the heritage of the societies in the context of the contemporary environment.