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Participating Units
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Piedmont Triad Arts Calendars:
- Go Triad Scene
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PLANNING UNDERWAY FOR 2008-09 EIA PROGRAMS
Planning is underway for special EIA workshops for local entrepreneurial artists during 2008-09. If you are interested in being involved with such workshops, please contact John Lee Jellicorse.
Media Workshop in Fall 2008 to Focus on Media Opportunities
Presentations Open to the Public on Wednesdays at 4:00 p.m. in Ferguson 100
In the spring semester of 2008, Media Workshop, the Broadcasting and Cinema Department's student-run weekly public forum, focused on arts entrepreneurship. In the fall Workshop (directed by Ethanie Walentuk with the help of Stephanie Reinhart), the emphasis will be on media production, management, and the massive changes taking place in the traditional fields of broadcasting and cinema. Entrepreneurs interested in working in or with the media will find most of these programs extremely relevant. The first four programs for the semester are:
Wednesday 27 August: "The Current State of Feature Filmmaking in North Carolina," Rebecca Clark, Director of the Piedmont Triad Film Commission.
Wednesday 3 September: "Opportunities for Student Participation in Campus Media," representatives from the Carolinian , Spartan TV, and WUAG.
Wednesday 10 September: "The Changing Face and Fate of Local Television," Karen Adams, Vice President, General Manager, and Program Director of WGHP.
Wednesday 17 September: "How to Live in LA," Frank Donaldson, Director of Undergraduate Studies, Broadcasting and Cinema Department.
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David Holt Successfully Closes BELL Forums for Spring 2008
The BELL Forum ended on a high note for the spring 2008 semester. UNCG welcomed folk musician and storyteller David Holt . . . Full Story>>
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Dianne Welsh, Leader in Developing Self-Employment in the Arts, Joins UNCG Faculty
DIANNE H. B. WELSH has joined the University of North Carolina Greensboro as the Hayes Distinguished Professor of Entrepreneurship at the Bryan School of Business and Economics. She comes from the University of Tampa where she was the James W. Walter Distinguished Chair of Entrepreneurship and Director of the Florida Entrepreneur and Family Business Center. Welsh holds a BA in English from the University of Iowa, an MS in Psychology from Emporia (Kansas) State University, and a PhD in Management from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She is a published poet. A recognized scholar in international entrepreneurship and franchising, she is coeditor of the first comprehensive volumes on global franchising in emerging and industrialized markets. She is the author of over one hundred published manuscripts that have appeared in the Academy of Management Journal, Journal of International Business Studies, Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, Journal of Business Venturing, Journal of Small Business Management, and others. Her current research interests are social entrepreneurship, family business, international franchising, and international entrepreneurship sustainability issues. She is the Past President for the US Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship (USASBE) and was a Presidential Appointee to the Board of Visitors for the US Air Force Academy and a member of the Defense Advisory Committee for Women in the Services (DACOWITS).
Welsh founded and chaired the Southern Self-Employment in the Arts (SEA) Conference that was held in April of 2007 and 2008 at The University of Tampa. The Conference captured the spirit of the national conference started eight years ago at North Central College in Naperville, Illinois, by offering entrepreneurial strategies and resources to emerging artists so that they could be self-supporting and successful in their careers. The Conference was attended by close to two hundred the first year and one hundred and fifty artists the second year. A cross-campus, community, faculty, and student committee of twelve members made the Conference a success. The committee elected a Visual Arts, Performing, and Literary Arts Chair. Twenty sponsors were involved in promoting the 2008 Conference. All Conference Sessions included Malcolm A Teasdale, CEO, Teasdale Worldwide, “Succeeding on Your Terms”; Christopher Still, freelance artist, “A Passion for Life”; Brent C. J. Britton, Esq., attorney with Squire, Sanders and Dempsey, “Legal Issues for Artists”; and Carol Mickett and Robert Stackhouse, freelance artists, “Art and the Practical: A Collaboration.” Nine workshops were offered throughout the day. Workshops included Susan Ladika, self-employed writer and editor, “Finding Your Freelance Niche”; Eugene Bondurant, actress, “Auditioning for Commercials, TV and Film”; Dominick Pages, owner of Crystal Blue Sound Studios, “How to Market Your Music”; and Sharon Rose, owner, Mermaid’s Slipper, “Marketing Yourself: Thriving in the Conceptual Age,” among others. The Conference ended with a wine and cheese reception at the Scarfone/Hartley Gallery on campus featuring a juried exhibit by student artists. The 2007 Conference also featured a musical theatre production.
National Endowment for the Arts Documents the Arts' Economic Impact
In a significant new study, Artists in the Workforce: 1990-2005, the National Endowment has documented the full economic impact of the arts:
The time has come to insist on an obvious but overlooked fact--artists are workers. They make things and perform services, just like other workers, and these goods and service shave value--not merely in lofty spiritual terms but also in dollars and cents. Without denying the higher purposes of the artistic vocation, this report shows that artists play an important role in America’s cultural vitality and economic prosperity.
There are now almost two million Americans who describe their primary occupation as artist. Representing 1.4 percent of the U.S. labor force, artists constitute a sizeable class of workers--only slightly smaller than the total number of active-duty and reserve personnel in the U.S. military (2.2 million). Artists represent a larger group than the legal profession (lawyers, judges, and paralegals), medical doctors (physicians, surgeons, and dentists), or agricultural workers (farmers, ranchers, foresters, and fishers).
The size of the artistic community gives the group enormous aggregate income--approximately $70 billion annually. In terms of sheer numbers, artists represent a powerful labor force whose economic contributions go largely unrecognized by both the general public and the government.
Compared to other U.S. workers, American artists tend to be better educated and more entrepreneurial. Artists are twice as likely to have earned a college degree as other members of the U.S. labor force, though they receive relatively less financial compensation for their educational level. Artists are also 3.5 times more likely to be self-employed. American artists have learned to be creative not merely in their chosen fields but also in how they manage their lives. Full Story>>
New York Times Reports on the Growth of Entrepreneurship Courses and Curricula
"As college courses in how to start small businesses are becoming as ubiquitous as Economics 101, gone is the conventional wisdom that such skills cannot be learned in class." Full Story>>
WonderRoot in Atlanta Serves as a Model for Promoting Arts Social Entrepreneurship
"WonderRoot is an Atlanta-based 501(c)(3) non-profit arts organization committed to uniting artists and community to inspire positive social change." Its objectives are "to provide production facilities to Atlanta-based artists, to facilitate arts-based service programs in the Atlanta community, and to encourage artists to be proactive in engaging their local communities through service work." Full Story>>
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This Week's Feature |
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Each week the EIA web site features a new case study in entrepreneurship in the arts. The stories are archived to provide a library of examples of how artists in many different fields have achieved success. The cases are researched and written by UNCG students. This week's presentation of Scott Richardson is by Tyler M. (Tai) Caldwell, a senior Media Writing major in the Broadcasting and Cinema Department. Her work was funded by a special grant from Tim Johnston, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.
Scott Richardson: Light Defines Form
by Tyler M. Caldwell
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The most striking thing about Scott Richardson’s workspace in Greensboro’s Nussbaum Center for Entrepreneurship is the light. Daylight pours in through floor-to-ceiling, north-facing windows, casting a cool blue tone on the hardwood floors. Overhead hang small, high-intensity bulbs for those evenings when Richardson outworks the sun. The light and space in the room feels intentional, professionally designed. And it was—by Richardson himself.
Richardson is an architectural lighting designer and the owner of the consulting firm Light Defines Form. He works in collaboration with architects to create interior and exterior lighting for buildings. It is an artistic venture for him, working to compose space and finding ways to use lighting to accentuate the architectural features of the building. “I try to make the space connect to the people,” he says.
After graduating from UNCG, Richardson attended graduate school at New York City’s Parsons The New School of Design, where he studied architectural lighting. From there, he transitioned into a job at a NYC architectural lighting design firm where he built his reputation, his portfolio, and his contacts list. Soon, he decided it was time to set out on his own. Explaining that large, out-of-state firms in places like New York, Chicago, and San Francisco do most work in his field, Richardson says he felt the North Carolina market was “ripe to be tapped.” He could perform the same professional-grade work as the big firms but for a lower cost and with a more personal touch. With this in mind, he made the move back home and established his company.
When he moved towards incorporation, Richardson looked to the large firms as models for how he would run his business. After his time with the company in New York, he had a sense of how to work with clients and manage multiple projects; he designed Light Defines Form to operate the same way on a smaller scale. He points out that he works with architects, not what he calls “end users”--the owners of the building or property in question--which tends to streamline his efforts and allows him to work on several projects at once.
One boon for Richardson was that he had worked with clients in the Southeast during his time in New York City. He maintained these relationships; therefore, when he moved to North Carolina, he had an instant client base on which to draw—mainly in places like Charlotte and Raleigh. He was able to offer them his services for smaller projects, ones these architectural firms may or may not have contracted out to larger lighting companies. “I was able to take some of the work that was smaller projects that they weren’t hiring out for, but they still saw a need for,” Richardson explains. Once he had set himself up as a professional architectural lighting designer, it was only a matter of setting up Light Defines Form as a legal entity. This was more of a challenge, he says. “I started to acquaint myself with what being a business owner meant versus what just being a designer meant.”
Fortunately, he was not alone in this. He explored other consulting firms at the Nussbaum Center for Entrepreneurship to conceptualize a model for his business plan, something the NCE requires in writing before they will consider bringing someone into their Greensboro-based business incubator. He also spent time with an accountant and lawyer who specialize in start-up enterprises, constructing a plan based on all the information he had learned since relocating as well as his experiences in New York: “As an artist, or as a designer, those aren’t my areas of expertise, so I really have to rely on professional services to bridge that gap.” There is no reason to reinvent the wheel, he says. Many accountants and lawyers concentrate on entrepreneurship, and years of experience have shown them what works and what does not work when establishing a company. Also, as an associate of the Nussbaum Center, Richardson has had access to all the mentoring resources provided therein. He credits their help in learning to maintain quality and establish a sustainable customer base.
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Richardson’s initial goal in setting up Light Defines Form was simply to find how to create his work his own way, but his business has evolved and grown beyond this goal over the past six years. Now, he sees sustainable growth as a business priority. He works hard to keep his firm growing while at the same time not outgrowing its capabilities. For Richardson, the quality of the work is vital. While he currently outsources to part-time drafts-people and the like as needed, in the future he hopes to bring on more designers and be set up as a major player in the greater Southeastern market. That said, he does enjoy his one-man company and the ability it affords him to have a say in everything, unlike larger firms. “Having a small part in each project lets me focus on the quality.”Light Defines Form has, Richardson admits, seen less growth than he originally anticipated--but the growth he has seen has been of higher value, which evens the scales. “I’m focusing more on quality and larger-scale projects than I thought would originally be available to someone in this market,” he explains. One reason for this is the push over the past several years towards “green building”: designing sustainable, low energy-consumption new structures and revamping old buildings with clean technologies to reduce their carbon footprints. One place this is most evident in daily life is the recent popularity of compact fluorescent light bulbs--yes, light. “The public awareness of the need for sustainability has had a big impact [on the company]” Richardson notes. Light Defines Form is a member of the US Green Building Council and has also been involved with several Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) projects. Constructing green buildings requires architects to farm out different elements of design to specialty firms such as LDF because they cannot just “do it any old way like they used to,” Richardson says. “I think that there is now a recognized need to do things the right way as opposed to just the easiest way. It’s going to be better for everybody in the long-term.”
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Richardson has faced obstacles over the years as he and his company have grown and developed. He points to financing and marketing as two of the greatest problems he has tackled and says he needed help to get past some of those bumps. The Nussbaum Center’s mentoring program and GTCC’s Small Business Center were two assets he indicates helped him through. “There’s a very good likelihood we would have flamed out after the third year” without the NCE in particular. “They have been instrumental in making a sustainable kind of practice.” He recommends the Nussbaum Center, and business incubators in general, to potential entrepreneurs. Whether or not a person seeks out an incubator, Richardson advises, “you really have to find resources beyond yourself” to survive as a small business.
As for his college experience, Richardson claims it prepared him “only marginally” for where he is today. He learned his craft well and there was--particularly in graduate school--an emphasis on professional practice, “but I wouldn’t say that was geared towards entrepreneurship.” The pervasive attitude was that students would move on to work for sizeable firms in large cities, not that they would strike out on their own in regions like the Piedmont Triad. As an artist-entrepreneur, he had to learn a great deal through experience.
Richardson doesn’t complain, however; college was where he had a chance to focus on the design side of his trade. He advises future architectural lighting designers to do the same and to have a portfolio and good credentials before setting out into the business on one’s own. “Thinking entrepreneurially about what you do is good from the start, but you also need to get a really solid background, make those contacts, and build up your credibility. Those are the keys to selling any kind of professional service.”
The outlook for architectural lighting design as a career is bright owing in large part to the sustainability movement. “There’s a real need for expertise in lighting, both electric and day lighting,” Richardson says, pointing to the increase in demand he has seen from architects. There are few companies that do what he does in the region, and he believes there is certainly room for more design firms like Light Defines Form. To that end, he recommends UNCG offer courses that bring art and business into the same classroom, “melding those two sides of our brains together,” as well as bringing together artists and businesspeople with common goals. But no matter what, he says, the art must always come first. “If you’re in an arts business, you’re in a qualitative business. All the business acumen in the world won’t put you where you need to be if you don’t have that quality.”