Artistic and cultural entrepreneurship bridges the worlds of business and culture. In the trade press—particularly that covering the performing arts—as well as within nonprofit organizations and at strategic meetings of cultural institutions, it is increasingly being discussed as a way to address the challenges of funding, producing, and presenting works. Artistic and cultural entrepreneurship involves the structured development of a project in the arts and culture sector by balancing the artistic and economic dimensions.
It generates both symbolic value—such as the creation and dissemination of aesthetic forms—and economic value, because art is produced, sold, and purchased, and thus creates jobs and professions that account for 2% of France’s economy. Creative and cultural entrepreneurship is attracting increasing interest, as the decline in subsidies for cultural funding is not merely a temporary setback, but an issue that raises questions about the economic models we need to develop without selling our souls to the devil. Rather, we must view all administrative and managerial systems as serving the arts and culture, and not the other way around.
The Challenges Facing Women Entrepreneurs in the Cultural Sector
This situation is common to all players in the sector. But when you’re a woman—and especially a mother, otherwise known asa “mompreneur”—turning that tension into momentum becomes a challenge that can sometimes feel like a real headache. According to the 2023 French Entrepreneurship Index, 28% of women are engaged in entrepreneurial activities (planning to start a business, starting a business, or taking over a business), compared to 37% of men. In the arts, entertainment, and recreation sector, 39.6% of sole proprietorships are started by women and 60.4% by men. Women’s motivation to become entrepreneurs is based on three factors: the need to provide for the household’s basic needs; a career choice aimed at greater personal fulfillment; and balancing family and work.
In the case of “mompreneurs,” all three factors come into play; however, seeking a professional role that fulfills a need for self-actualization is the primary motivation. In the arts and culture sector, 32% of these women are freelance workers with irregular work schedules. Mompreneurs face greater job insecurity than any other type of freelance worker. They are also referred to as “ matermittentes ”; their numbers are not officially tracked. The collective of the same name is working to secure recognition of this unique status.
Beyond material conditions, what sets artist-entrepreneurs apart is their multi-layered organizational structure, characterized by the “interdependence of time” between personal, family, and professional life. How can one successfully navigate the triple challenge of being a woman, an artist, and an entrepreneur all at once?
To rise to the challenge, you have to come up with your own tools. That’s exactly what Caroline did. We met with her and tried to understand how her entrepreneurial journey unfolded.
How can I balance it all?
Caroline holds a Ph.D. in Business and Management Sciences, is an opera singer, and serves as co-director of the nonprofit organization Brins de Voix, which focuses on both cultural outreach and the production of opera performances. When the organization was founded, Caroline had a one-year-old child; she would go on to have two more. She is a freelance performer and is therefore not a salaried employee.
Our “mampreneur” faces two challenges that are characteristic of female artists in business: balancing two roles that may seem incompatible—namely, creating and running a business; and reconciling her personal life with her professional life, which in the performing arts is marked by an atypical rhythm due to irregular schedules and absences caused by tours. Caroline thus found herself needing to innovate in order to navigate her career path, particularly in terms of managerial tools—an approach that, while not offering a single solution, provides a framework from which other artist-mompreneurs can draw inspiration. We studied this entrepreneurial process using an autoethnographic approach—that is, by analyzing the experience as narrated by the author and illuminating it through the theory of effectuation.
This theory is well-suited to contexts of uncertainty because it offers an alternative to rational models of entrepreneurship. It prioritizes intuition over causal logic, the process of creating the future over predicting it, and successive transformations over the development of a business model. It is thus based on five principles: making do with what you have (1); defining acceptable losses (2); prioritizing partnerships (3); being open to surprises (4); and creating your own world (5).
A journey fraught with difficulties
Caroline’s entrepreneurial journey has been fraught with challenges, which she has managed to overcome thanks to her ability to devise management tools and organizational systems that can serve as inspiration for female entrepreneurs in the performing arts.
Physical appearance is often a factor in auditions; women, more so than men, must resemble the character they are to portray. Hormonal cycles affect vocal quality; their careers tend to be shorter than men’s due to changes in vocal range. Challenges also stem from childcare, as schedules and travel are ill-suited to family life and even less so to medical emergencies; it is impossible to bring a child backstage without a nanny, and, ultimately, a child without childcare means the singer must be absent—and thus the performance must be canceled—which is simply not an option. Fatigue caused by sleep deprivation and pregnancy can impair the artist’s performance. Career interruptions during maternity leave affect the renewal of contracts; artists who are likely to become mothers are sometimes denied contracts because they represent a risk of absence for employers. In this regard, the arts and culture sector is no different from the findings of studies on the link between the risk of motherhood and employment opportunities.
Faced with this intersection of constraints and in order to chart a dynamic course, Caroline developed the following strategies, which we examine in light of the key principles of effectuation theory: She started her own business (5) to successfully balance her personal life with her professional life (2) using the resources at her disposal (1), particularly her knowledge of business administration and team management, while incorporating her personal constraints. She quickly built a network (3), which led to unexpected encounters (4).
Specifically, she set up progress meetings with the members of her association’s board of directors; organized personalized coaching to manage her time and priorities; developed a contract acceptance tool with criteria for justifying a refusal or acceptance, thereby streamlining her workload; and arranged for “backups” from the very start of a production to anticipate sick leave, maternity leave, or unscheduled absences. Once a week, she discusses organizational challenges and the division of responsibilities with her partner to maintain a healthy balance in their relationship. Caroline has also developed a support network among parents to find shared childcare solutions and reduce related costs.
These management strategies enabled Caroline to achieve her three goals—singing, managing, and teaching—while growing her business.
The ability to take initiative despite obstacles
Caroline’s story—as a woman, mother, entrepreneur, and artist—is not an isolated case. Others, such as pianist Pauline Chenais, bear witness to this intertwining of lives—the obstacles that shatter the harmony between personal and professional life—for example, when concert organizers are unwilling to accommodate an artist who takes her child backstage to breastfeed before going on stage.
Caroline, an artist-entrepreneur, has created management tools and frameworks that are essential for decision-making; these guide and structure an entrepreneurial approach that can be described as “augmented.” Indeed, they become instruments for bringing projects to fruition, “mediators of meaning,” and as researchers Sarasvathy and Germainexplain: “You start with the world as it is—simply the small part of it that is accessible to you in particular—and you carry out a series of effective transformations on it that lead to the creation of new worlds: imagined, unimagined, and even unimaginable.” (Translated by the authors of the article.)
Although the Ministry of Culture has been working since 2017 to combat discrimination based on sex and gender, there are no studies that document the entrepreneurial journey of mompreneurs. Caroline’s story has allowed us to delve into a process of developing tools that, while not a model—much less a formula—demonstrates an entrepreneurial spirit. It is undoubtedly an inspiring example for other women artists and entrepreneurs.
