Creative Social Entrepreneurship Curriculum Development: A Case for Democratizing Arts Administration Education

While entrepreneurship in education continues to grow, the arts and arts administration fields are trailing behind new, innovative, and enterprising curriculum development and progress. The continued rise of online learning environments creates opportunities for dynamic partnership development that democratizes the current structures of entrepreneurship education within the arts. This article presents the case of creative social entrepreneurship curriculum development as an opportunity to democratize arts administration education, highlighting the innovative online learning approach of the Department of Arts Administration at the University of Kentucky. It outlines the background of the emerging arts and entrepreneurship education landscape and specifically highlights the opportunity gap to develop an enterprising culture across arts and arts administration curriculum and in partnership with Historically Black colleges and Universities (HBCUs), which presently lack arts administration and entrepreneurship curricula in their art and design programs. Importantly, the article illustrates the possibilities of transdisciplinary curriculum development through the creation of an online certificate series in creative social entrepreneurship and provides the concepts, context, and framework for curriculum development. The value of democratizing curriculum development is through innovative approaches within cross-institutional partnerships within and between institutions. As such, this article highlights the possibilities of building partnerships with HBCUs as part of the development process for the creative social entrepreneurship certificate program series.