Fostering Art and Cultural Entrepreneurship in Underserved Communities: A Case of Newark,NJ

Abstract

French

Chinese

Policymakers worldwide have invested in art and cultural industries (ACIs) as important vehicles for economic development. However, the issues of race, ethnicity, gender, and inequality have not been sufficiently addressed. This study investigates the factors that enable or constrain art and cultural entrepreneurship (ACE) in Newark, NJ. The findings suggest that a sense of place and the social identities of diverse business owners significantly impact the process of launching and operating creative businesses. Insufficient market opportunity, lack of resources in the community, and uneven distribution of wealth across racial groups are among the biggest challenges they face. Despite these challenges, these artist-entrepreneurs have proactively worked as both business owners and art-industrial gatekeepers to promote themselves and other underrepresented groups in the marketplace. The study also highlights universities’ role in the regional entrepreneurship ecosystem in promoting ACIs. It calls for policy and practices fostering minority entrepreneurship in ACIs, bringing artists to the core of entrepreneurship and development strategies in these communities.

Keywords

entrepreneurship art and creative industry underserved communities inclusion

Introduction

Research has argued that art and cultural industries (ACIs) contribute to economic development, while also bringing a range of nonmonetized benefits such as civic engagement, social inclusiveness, and community development (Ashley 2021; Grodach 2011; Liang and Wang 2020; Woronkowicz 2016). In practice, policymakers worldwide have invested in ACIs as important vehicles through which cities are better able to innovate, attract tourism dollars, compete, and grow. However, race, ethnicity, gender, and poverty have not been sufficiently addressed, despite numerous racial minorities and women being the fundamental contributors to the ACIs (Chapple and Jackson 2010; White 2018). Furthermore, although entrepreneurship and microenterprises have long been a strong characteristic of the creative industries (Barker 2018), current research and practices have mainly focused on the “industry” and “district” perspective, instead of paying sufficient attention to the artists as individual, social, and economic agents in entrepreneurship process.

This study examines the experiences of artist-entrepreneurs in an urban space that is historically art-rich but with a high concentration of racial minorities and people in poverty. Specifically, it asks, “What are the factors that enable or constrain art and cultural entrepreneurship (ACE) in traditionally underserved communities?” The term “underserved communities” has both geographic and social meanings in this study: it refers to geographic communities with limited opportunities for entrepreneurship and/or the social groups traditionally underrepresented in entrepreneurial activities or business ownership, such as racial minorities and women (Bates, Bradford, and Seamans 2018; Connor et al. 2020). To address the research question, we have examined the experiences of artist-entrepreneurs, the challenges facing them, and how they operate their businesses in the city of Newark, NJ.

Newark, NJ, is racially and ethnically diverse. The majority of the population is black and brown, with a well-known history of poverty, violent crime, political corruption, and other socioeconomic problems (Rowes 2010). However, the city also has a number of dedicated and long-standing anchor institutions for cultural and entertainment attractions, such as the Newark Symphony Hall, New Jersey Performing Arts Center, the Prudential Center, and the Newark Museum. It also possesses a community of grassroots entrepreneurs anchored in many of the city’s local communities, as well as a growing corporate footprint. Drawing on the city’s rich history of arts and cultural institutions, entrepreneurship in creative industries has attracted increasing attention in recent years from investors, local governments, and nonprofit organizations. Consequently, the National Center for Arts Research in its recent study rated Newark in the top ten of the most vibrant arts communities in the country (Voss et al. 2019).

The results from this study suggest that social identities, such as race, ethnicity, and gender, are intertwined with the professional experiences of business owners in the ACI industries. Beyond money and market, many of the artist-entrepreneurs linked their business goals with social responsibilities related to their lack of representation in economic development frameworks in the community. Although lacking financial resources and business mentors, the artist-entrepreneurs have proactively worked as both business owners and art-industrial gatekeepers to promote other underrepresented groups in the marketplace. The sense of community and the inner drive to represent and make a positive change in Newark serve as a powerful engine for them to creatively integrate artistic work with business endeavors and make significant impacts on their communities.

Focusing on traditionally disadvantaged communities, this study calls for a critique and advancement of existing practices of treating entrepreneurship and innovation as solely profit-maximizing, high-tech, and high-growth driven. Conversely, the study emphasizes the diversity and fluidity of the entrepreneurial process to directly address issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion in entrepreneurship scholarship (Bates, Bradford, and Seamans 2018; Welter et al. 2017). In addition, it highlights that community can function as both material and social resources through which entrepreneurship can recreate, renew, and rectify a purposeful identity for, and relationship to, place and its future, enabling or constraining possibilities for both entrepreneurs and communities (McKeever, Jack, and Anderson 2015).

This study contributes to the scholarship on arts and cultural development. Bringing attention to the marginalized population and underrepresented voices of microbusinesses in ACIs, it calls for placing artist-entrepreneurs—instead of industry, district, or region—at the center of the entrepreneurship process. Also different from the traditional economic development practices based on the creative class thesis (Florida 2005), this study argues to move beyond overgeneralized elitist perceptions of arts in urban development and overaggregated urban cultural policies. The findings underscore how ACE escalates social entrepreneurship across the community through cultural innovation and collaboration, and thus, the study bridges the scholarship of creative placemaking, narrative change, and community development into a broader conceptualization of race, ethnicity, entrepreneurship, and economic development.

Practice and policy advocates on ACI development have traditionally focused on investment in prestigious urban image creation, as well as programs calculated to appeal primarily to highly educated and high-income individuals (Grodach 2017). These policy advocates have largely ignored the urban economic and social divide associated with creative industries and entrepreneurship and have even contributed to its exacerbation (Storper and Scott 2009). This study provides significant policy and practice implications to foster ACIs and creative entrepreneurship as a driver of inclusive economic development in traditionally disadvantaged urban communities.

ACI Development and Entrepreneurship in Underserved Communities

Artists and ACIs: Factors for Growth and Development

The artist labor market is dominated by a project-based system of production, and artists often work as freelancers and independent contractors. To gain a competitive edge in this labor market, artists must have access to a broad pool of knowledge about contract opportunities, potential partners, and new products and techniques. Thus, personal connections are extremely important, and cultural producers rely heavily on their social lives to advance their careers and generate value for their goods and services. To this end, proximity and face-to-face networking are paramount in ACIs, and place-embedded social relations are particularly important for artists (Clare 2013). Being located in the right location provides its members with not only shared languages, norms, and expectations but also the networks of relations for support, feedback, knowledge, inspiration, and resources (Currid 2007; Lange 2014).

Beyond the individual level, art production networks are particularly created through repeated and enduring interactions involving trust, reciprocity, or shared interests and thus, form agglomeration or clusters with linked groupings of creative industries, firms, or cultural activities (Currid and Williams 2009; Evans 2009). Aside from collective knowledge sharing, shared resources, and acting as an urban amenity, these arts and cultural clusters also form an active part of the local ecosystem of creativity and make investments in organizations; social capital; new ideas; and innovation spillovers (Markusen 2014; Lin 2019).

Collaboration among stakeholders is very important to cultivate ACI development. Markusen and Gadwa (2010) identify that commercial and community sectors, arts and cultural nonprofits, local officials, and politicians have significant influences on ACIs. Also, developers, construction companies, banks, and media companies can all wield a lot of power over local policies (Murdoch, Grodach, and Foster 2016; Strom 2003). The role of arts gatekeepers (such as the curators of art galleries and museums) is particularly important to facilitate connections between artists and institutions to distribute creative output to the public. For example, artists represented by established gatekeepers are given more exhibitions at prominent galleries and museums and are more likely to have their work purchased by significant museums (Currid 2007; Grodach 2011).

At the macro level, art and culture tend to thrive in places that support the social and economic dynamics necessary for creative production such as a strong economy, affordable housing, and quality of life (Lin 2019). An ecosystem perspective further suggests that the art and cultural ecology operates across multiple sectors and its development has to be focused on the creative industries’ ecosystem as a whole, being both generic and integrated rather than piecemealed together (Jeffcutt 2004). In this ecosystem, conducive culture, enabling policies and leadership, availability of appropriate finance, quality human capital, venture-friendly markets for products, and a range of institutional and infrastructural supports are all important (Barker 2018; Isenberg 2010).

In sum, these studies provide valuable insights to help better understand the specific factors for ACI development such as the role of the community or place-based social networks and the local and regional arts ecosystem. However, despite microenterprises being a significant proportion of the ACIs, they are significantly underrepresented in the existing ACI development or entrepreneurship literature.

Minority Entrepreneurship and Place

A person’s social identity provides individuals with social orientation and a sense of belonging and connectedness (Hornsey 2008). In the process of firm formation, entrepreneurs shape their behaviors about how they perceive themselves relative to others. As such, the social identities of entrepreneurs impact firm founders, the firm creation processes, and the outcomes of entrepreneurship (Alsos et al. 2016; Fauchart and Gruber 2011). Researchers argue that social identity provides different meanings for entrepreneurs who start ventures not strictly out of economic self-interest, but also because of concern for others, either in their community or in society at large (Gruber and MacMillan 2017). Furthermore, entrepreneurial identity is context- and place-specific, and thus, the sense of belonging and social identities are often attached to a sense of community and sense of place (Anderson, Warren, and Bensemann 2019; Lange 2014; Welter, Baker, and Wirsching 2019).

For ethnic minorities, some studies focus on cultural practices and heritages as explanations as to why ethnic minorities are more likely to own businesses (Fawcett and Gardner 1994). Moreover, the social capital approach argues that the shared identity of a particular ethnic group and using its associated network could act as an informal business incubator and provide varying physical and intellectual ethnic resources, such as labor, capital, suppliers, and markets (Zhou 2004). An ethnic enclave economy explicitly links ethnic solidarity and ethnic network with the spatial concentration of ethnic businesses (Portes and Jensen 1989). As the concrete locus for social networking and social capital, coethnically concentrated areas have created an interdependent pool of resources, such as labor, credit, knowledge of consumer preferences, and necessary consumer markets (Li 2009; Teixeira 2001).

However, compared to businesses owned by whites, minority businesses bear greater financial risk and face larger challenges in startup and scaling up their businesses. A lower level of education, lack of social capital, limited access to financial resources, stereotyping and discrimination, and low family wealth and community assets are among the most cited factors that have substantially prevented ethnic minorities from entrepreneurship opportunities (Bates, Bradford, and Seamans 2018; Fairlie and Robb 2008). In particular, as racial minorities are highly concentrated in poor areas, these neighborhoods are often stripped of capital, market, and entrepreneurial resources (Sanders and Nee 1987). An extreme case is ethnic “impoverished ghettos” (Wilson 1987), where extreme levels of disadvantage and the development of an underclass can barely support any ethnic enterprises. For example, Fairchild (2009) found that high levels of segregation have a negative influence on black self-employment likelihood. Likewise, Bates and Robb (2014) found that serving local clientele in minority neighborhoods is strongly related to firm closure and low profitability.

In sum, these studies suggest that business owners’ social identity and sense of place, agglomeration effects of industrial clusters, and regional entrepreneurial ecosystem are all critical factors for entrepreneurship. Ethnic minorities face structural barriers and constraints of limited resources in minority concentrated neighborhoods; however, shared identity, trust, and social networks embedded in their communities could bring resources for their entrepreneurship activities. Based on these studies and the earlier discussion of ACI development, we hypothesize that for ethnic or racial minority entrepreneurship in ACIs, the socioeconomic and institutional environment is not simply a context, but deeply entrenched with art entrepreneurs’ identity, sense of community, and their social and economic lives. The interaction between the art entrepreneurs and their communities influences their values, entrepreneurial goals, perception of entrepreneurial opportunities, and practical business management strategies, while consistently shaping and reshaping each other.

Study Area

Newark, NJ, had an industrial boom in the 1800s, but, by the 1960s, Newark was a poor urban center surrounded by richer and whiter suburbs. Poverty, crime, inequality, political corruption, and socioeconomic problems of its majority-minority population remain salient issues for the people living in the city today (Rowes 2010). Despite its troubled past, Newark remains the largest city in New Jersey. It hosts the busiest seaport on the East Coast and one of the busiest airports in the country. Newark’s cultural diversity in its neighborhoods coupled with a growing footprint of business, art industry, and entertainment positions the city for significant growth. With more than one hundred years of history in the art and cultural industry, Newark has an abundant art and cultural infrastructure and strong interests from local communities to regenerate its urban center through art and culture development (Strom 1999). Through the years, the state’s largest museum, The Newark Museum of Art, and the Newark Public Library have continually had active arts and culture programs spreading throughout the city and surrounding area. The opening of the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in 1997 marked a turning point with both public and private investments, as the centerpiece of a new downtown arts district. Besides, an array of smaller but equally vibrant arts groups fills out the city’s growing cultural scene. More than thirty art studios, museums, galleries, and outdoor visual arts spaces are currently operating in Newark (Newark Creates 2020). More than five hundred artists registered and participated in the 2019 Newark Arts Festival. The roster represents just a portion of actively engaged artists and art organizations from all genres—visual arts, performing arts, media arts, and more. Newark was ranked the nation’s seventh most arts-vibrant community in 2019 (Voss et al. 2019). Also, the city has a small but thriving central business district, home to the Prudential Insurance headquarter, as well as banks, utility companies, law firms, and universities. The different sectors are contributing to not only the arts ecology at Newark but also the regional entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Nonetheless, it is also evident that less-resourced, entrepreneurial, individual artists—the vast majority being women, minority, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ)—as well as lower budgeted art organizations and smaller creative businesses, have struggled while contributing mightily to the city’s cultural ecosystems. The American Community Survey (ACS) 2018 shows that 89.5 percent of Newark’s labor force is nonwhite, with roughly 10.9 percent white and 7.9 percent nonwhite working in the ACIs. As shown in Table 1, compared to whites, the nonwhite labor force is younger, has lower educational attainment and a higher unemployment rate, and earns significantly less. While business ownership is 14 percent for whites, it is only 5 percent for nonwhites. For business owners in the ACIs, the nonwhites are older and more likely to be female and have higher educational attainments, but their unemployment rate is significantly higher. Seventy percent of them are working part-time, compared to 42 percent of whites. They also earn significantly less than their white counterparts.

Table 1.

Basic Characteristics of the Labor Force and Art Business Owners at City of Newark.

	All labor force		Art business owners^a
	White	Nonwhite	White	Nonwhite
Age (mean)	42	40	41	43
Work hours (mean)	38	34	35	21
Female (%)	42	49	14	44
Married (%)	45	33	51	35
<High school (%)	18	17	16	0
<Bachelor degree (%)	54	66	70	64
≥Bachelor degree (%)	28	16	14	36
Unemployment rate (%)	9	12	0	11
Part-time (%)	27	39	42	70
Job earnings (median)	35,336	25,616	41,895	12,296
Family income (median)	60,400	47,132	84,230	42,100
Business ownership (%)	14	5	—	—
Total number	14,098	119,544	213	348

Note: Basic characteristics are calculated by the author using the Public Use Microdata Sample from the 2014 to 2018 ACS. The classification of art industries is based on Lin (2019). ACS = American Community Survey.

There are no public firm-level data that provide both business and business owner characteristics for our research purposes. Therefore, by using ACS data, we use self-employment to approximate business ownership (e.g., Wang 2018). It includes the self-employed with businesses incorporated or unincorporated.

Data and Method

Since the development of A&C industries is impacted by multiscalar stakeholders, we solicited perspectives from multiple sources through in-depth interviews, field observations, and archival documentation (Patton 2002). Table 2 provides an overview. Organizations and agencies include local government agencies and nonprofit organizations, such as community financial institutions, art councils, galleries, universities, the chamber of commerce, and industrial associations. Local community refers to private sectors including big corporations, supporting businesses, urban planners, individual artists, and other community members.

Table 2.

Data Collection from Multiple Sources in Different Formats.

	Art and cultural businesses	Arts and cultural organizations and agencies	Local community
American Community Survey	All self-employed		Overall picture
Self-collected data
Interview	30	15	10
Documents	Yes	Yes	Yes
Field observation	Yes	Yes	Yes

The interviews were conducted by the first author from September 2017 to April 2018. The interviews took place either over the phone or in person. Within each group, each participant was presented with the same set of open-ended questions that permit a high degree of flexibility and allow informants to move their narratives to topics outside the immediate scope of the guide (Hay 2000). Each interview was transcribed verbatim. The quotes and discussion of these interviews remain anonymous in this study by using a case number.

The business interviewees were initially recruited from the Newark Business Hub at the Rutgers Center for Urban Entrepreneurship and Economic Development (CUEED). Then, more interviewees were found through introductions made by business participants and local organizations. Among the thirty business interviewees, seventeen were female and twenty-five were black. Although quite a few interviewees had multiple holdings, most of the businesses were in multimedia industries related to music and film production (nineteen); seven were in fashion and design, and four were in other areas including photography, painting, and dance. Each interview lasted for 40–120 minutes, focused on their experiences as business owners for their business goals, operational strategies, challenges, and interaction with local communities.

Representatives from local organizations and communities were recruited through purposive sampling. The leaders at universities, art associations, economic development agencies, and representatives from local big corporations were first contacted for interviews. Then, we asked the business and organization participants to identify other local community stakeholders. The interview asked about their role and capacity in fostering the art community, as well as their experiences of working with art businesses. Each interview normally lasted thirty to sixty minutes and some lasted two hours.

Furthermore, document data were collected from fieldwork and the Internet. Fieldwork included visits to businesses and studios, walking tours led by organization representatives in the city and different neighborhoods, observing small business training sessions and socializing events, and attending formal and informal community meetings. For local agencies or organizations, the documents include white papers, mission statements, annual reports, and event calendars on their websites. On the business side, data were collected from business websites or public media coverages to showcase their activities. In the end, an inventory of documentation data was created, allowing for triangulation of data collected from different sources (Patton 2002). For the data in the public documents, quotes will be presented by using real names as they appeared.

Using the qualitative software package, QSR Nvivo, the techniques of narrative analysis outlined by Strauss and Corbin (1990) and Saldaña (2015) were employed to code qualitative data. All data were first read repeatedly to achieve immersion in data and obtain a sense of the whole dataset. Then, a more focused list of preliminary codes was derived through word-by-word reading based on the similarities and connections between the transcripts. In this process, notes were taken to reflect initial interpretations, thoughts, and analyses. Once all transcripts were coded, these different codes were then sorted into categories based on how they were related. Further, by aggregating common and recurrent categories, they were then distilled into themes and subthemes. To ensure the themes and subthemes were reflective of the interviewees’ responses and individual claims, data from different sources were triangulated to determine commonalities in the narrative, as well as differences in perspective (Saldaña 2015).

Findings: Opportunities, Challenges, and Common Practices

At the Business Owner Level

Social identities: Race, gender, and class

The artist-entrepreneurs in our study depicted their reasons for starting a business as being strongly motivated by the passion for arts and personal experiences, the opportunity to create products or services filling the niche markets, and/or entrepreneurship as an avenue to empower themselves and strengthen their communities. At the same time, the majority of the business interviewees indicated that they face particular challenges because they are people of color or female. The challenges come from distrust, stereotyping, difficulty in accessing equity and loans, and direct discrimination. Some business owners expressed a sentiment like this, “I feel a disadvantage of being African-American and being a business owner because it’s almost expected that you’re not supposed to know what you know” (p. 1).

The participants particularly believed that racial inequality resulting in uneven accumulation of wealth is a fundamental systemic barrier to their entrepreneurial achievement. As one business owner commented,

No matter who’s in charge as far as the art institutions and the galleries and all that kind of stuff, the funders of these organizations are still Caucasian people. [. . .] at the end of the day, they still have to say where the money goes and what’s being done with their money. . . the wealth distribution of the entire society is very uneven, [. . .] And that’s where all the challenges come in for artists of color. (p. 5)

These comments suggest that race, ethnicity, class, and gender are deeply entrenched in the personal experiences of business owners. Nevertheless, these social identities are not all associated with negative experiences. These minority business owners are proud of their social identities and further link their identities to Newark. Beyond money and market, the majority of the businesses talk about their business goals with social responsibilities related to their underrepresentativeness. As one business owner said,

I just had the passion of starting my own business as a minority, number one, and I felt that there were too many people in my community that didn’t have the resources or the education to start their own business. And so one of the things I wanted to do was also be able to be an example and be a resource for other people who were becoming entrepreneurs, starting their own business and things of that nature. (p. 5)

Multitasking as both cushion and drag

The most prevalent and harsh challenge shared among the business owners is the lack of financial support and savings. To cope with financial difficulties, many business owners work multiple jobs. Throughout the study, we heard repeatedly that these business owners are working in hybrid ways that defy discipline classifications. As business owners are becoming proficient in multiple disciplines simultaneously, their business activities span extensively. Accordingly, the contexts in which the art businesses operate are increasingly fluid, shaped by both artistic and business goals, training, resources, partners, location, and timing. Furthermore, new technologies and the Internet are important drivers of multiple-roles blending, enabling these businesses and artists to create more work in multiple genres and experiment with mixed media formats. The social media tools particularly make arts more accessible and less expensive and facilitate the multiple roles of art entrepreneurs. However, working on multiple jobs has significantly limited its capacity to focus on artistic creation and business operation. Some people had to delay their formal investment (time and resources) in business development.

Being an artist and a business owner

Almost every entrepreneur commented that being an artist is completely different from being a business owner. Some respondents highlighted a conflict between creativity and commerce, expressing concern that economic success was achieved at the expense of their symbolic capital, also known as “selling out” (Currid 2007). The following comment is typical among the participants,

If you’re a photographer, people want to hire you because they think you’re a good photographer, you know? So being told that they didn’t care about—that they just wanted me to show up and do what they say, and for a check—cool, but what happens is that you start thinking about your career. [. . .] So it’s tough because you need the money [Laughs].” (p. 17)

They love the art and creative entrepreneurial strategy, but not the “doing-the-business” side, such as budgeting, contract management, and other back-office details. Many artists do not have formal business training, resources, mentors, or networks, and end up doing something that does not inform their art and creativity. Therefore, it is not surprising that they think “some artists are a good artist but not a good businessman” (p. 27). To cope with the issues, some started multiple small businesses, which are used to feed their art business; some went for educational programs, and others sought collaborations.

Relationship building and mentorship

One of the most repeated words from business participants is “network” in one way or another. For minorities and women, however,

It’s very difficult being an African-American entrepreneur in this city because you don’t have economic leverage. You don’t own anything, and you don’t have a network of people who own something. So that means that the folks who are owning these multistory buildings have more influence, and they’re directing their dollars towards the network that they have. Unfortunately, it’s quite difficult for me to become part of that network, [also] because I’m not a man. (p. 14)

One effective tool in building networks is to promote the exposure of their businesses on a local, regional, and even international level through the means of technology and social media with a “consistent social media presence” (p. 24). Another common trend was finding a mentor who not only provides advice on business operations but also helps connect mentees to a broader network of professionals. Some found mentorship through enrolling in educational programs, such as those offered by CUEED. These findings indicate that institutional support is critical for the businesses’ survival and growth in underserved communities.

Self-Functioned Gatekeeper and Platform to Foster a Local Creative Community

The businesses in Newark have used a wide range of temporary venues and events, such as festivals, parks, coffee shops, and restaurants in sustaining and advancing artistic practices. Besides, they have also employed various strategies to operate as platforms of the industry, creating both formal and informal spaces for themselves and other minority businesses in the community. For example, the late Newark-raised artist, educator, arts entrepreneur, and local icon, Rodney Gilbert had focused on developing arts education programming and events accessible to Newark residents and surrounding urban communities. He argued that communities that are not able to tell their own story will often have their story dictated to them by external entities. Emphasizing the importance of representation, he invested in his art businesses significantly to give his community and culture a voice (Carter 2017).

Like him, a jewelry designer created a space in the retail store, with a business goal to “get more artists in there that are willing to grow with us and open us up to their contacts as well” (p. 10). One multimedia company plans to “find all the talented individuals in the community” and “bring them to this development process and connect them to opportunities.” Then, a foundation paralleling with the business was set up to build programs affordable for the local talent and help them

use local resources to create their next commercial, their next logo, or their next website . . . They just don’t have the opportunity to get discovered. And that’s where we come in. Not only do we discover them; we prepare them for the business and help them get an opportunity. (p. 18)

Similarly, one-third of the artists indicate their agent role in the industry, such as the following:

My partner and I [. . .] both deal with a lot of red tapes to cut through an entertainment business, and there was no platform for an unknown artist really to get out there. That’s why I developed [firm name]. (p. 20)

I’m already working in film and television on the music-creation side, but I want to be more on the side of music publishing and helping others to get their music in projects—being more of a middle person. (p. 12)

We tried to do projects that connect with interests that are important to the community. We’re not everything to all people, but we have a niche. (p. 981)

The extant literature has emphasized the importance of gatekeepers in ACIs to promote the arts as a low-income community engagement and development initiative (Currid and Williams 2009; Grodach 2011). However, art organizations located in disadvantaged neighborhoods are extremely rare (Murdoch, Grodach, and Foster 2016). Newark’s case suggests that rising from an art company and functioning as an agent for their community comes from both necessity and creative pursuit of opportunity. Compared to the established platforms in resource-rich areas, such as New York (which is often compared to Newark by the interviewees), the agent-functioning businesses are still at their early stage. However, as community insiders, they are expected to play an increasingly important role to bring the creative community together.

Sense of Community and Fostering Social Entrepreneurship

Newark’s abundant history of ACIs provides an important base from which artist-entrepreneurs can thrive. The sense of community and the inner drive to represent and make a positive change in Newark serve as a powerful engine for them to creatively integrate artistic work and business endeavors. Many grew up in the city noticing that people who resemble them were absent in culture and business. Others see their city’s socioeconomic landscape as being fraught with injustice and communities that have been fractured. For them, art can act as a platform for dismantling injustice and binding the community together; therefore, art is the formative basis for a community, and art entrepreneurs can use it to embody the change that they want to see in their city. Most of them have expressed a similar sentiment like this, “I grew up here in Newark, New Jersey. I’m a product of my community as it pertains to the finer eyes in turning my life around and doing the work that I’m doing” (p. 11).

Businesses have used art to create a space for themselves and people like them. For example, many films, plays, documentaries, and creative works were produced in Newark, through which the artist-entrepreneurs reflected Newark as their community and found nourishment and empowerment from their roots. The film Ugly seeks to provide youth with a healthier understanding of relationships than they would otherwise receive from mass media. Documentaries such as Grind focus on those who had previously taken to a criminal lifestyle, reinvented themselves to become individuals who make community-building their goal, and the Concrete Jungle acts as a condemnation of gang culture. The digital archive project Newark Celebration 350 was developed to commemorate the 350th anniversary of the city of Newark’s founding and became a platform to preserve the history and culture of Newark in the face of rapid urban development. Claimed as “festival of festivals,” the year-long project highlighted over 150 programs to demonstrate the city’s rich history, remarkable achievements, diverse communities and culture by a coalition of citizens, educational institutions, cultural organizations, and community groups. Through these artistic products, artist-entrepreneurs are not only making money but also seeking to shape the conversation that surrounds Newark’s changing identity.

For instance, Williams started Femworks to fill a void, to represent herself and people within her community, and connect the communities—the LGBTQ community, the disadvantaged urban community, a community of black women—with corporate voices. She expressed the desire to be the connection between corporate interests and the underserved markets and use this company to empower her community. Alves used to work at his parents’ Portuguese language newspaper and his multimedia business stems from and centers around his childhood—recognition, and awareness of the community in which he grew up. He thinks the value of shared knowledge within immigrant communities is unique, as opposed to regular media outlets, which either do not speak directly to immigrants or immigrants simply do not read them.

These businesses suggest that art has significance beyond cultural expression. Integrating with entrepreneurship, it is a tool for presentation, empowerment, and fostering social entrepreneurship. Some entrepreneurs use art as a bridge to communicate with others; some use their business to empower themselves and give a voice to others; and some rely on harnessing communication as a tool to empower minorities and immigrants. As one organization director said, “We’re using arts and culture as a vehicle to uplift the people, give a voice to the voiceless and really shape and shift our community” (p. L10).

University and Regional/Local Entrepreneurial Ecosystem

The study finds a regional mix of nonprofit, commercial, public, and informal sectors that support arts and cultural engagement in the city. Table 3 provides examples of different sectors and their roles in promoting ACE. Among them, Rutgers University–Newark (RU–N) has been working as an intermediary enabler and an engaged community player to build social trust among different stakeholders (Jongbloed, Enders, and Salerno 2008; Noonan, Woronkowicz, and Hale 2020; Wang 2021).

Table 3.

Examples and Role of the Stakeholders of Regional Art Entrepreneurship Ecosystem.

Sector	Example of entities	Example of roles/functions/missions
Government	The Mayor	Leadership in promoting economic development education, tourism, and the arts. Quoted from Mayor Baraka, an artist himself, “We want progressives, artists to come out here. Newark should be the place to be for artists. And, I want Newarkers to benefit from their presence.”
Government	The Mayor’s Office of Arts, Cultural Development, and Tourism	Function as a direct contact between the Mayor and the arts community, and partner with private sector and nonprofit organizations on community art and cultural events and initiatives.
Anchor institution	Newark Arts	Serves as the anchor and umbrella for the arts community providing programs, services, advocacy, and outreach that supports over sixty arts organizations throughout the city.
	Rutgers University–Newark (RU–N)	“Not just in Newark but of Newark—an anchor of our home city.” “Promoting and Leveraging the Arts and Culture” is part of the university mission.
	Prudential Center	With partnerships across the city and commitments to infrastructure, innovation, and education, the corporation has deeply impacted every aspect of the city life and society building.
	The New Jersey Performing Arts Center	“From the outset, NJPAC was intended to revive Newark’s struggling downtown, spur the economy, and celebrate diversity while reimagining the city’s national image, forever haunted by the racially infused rebellion of 1967” (Newark Creates 2020). It employs a majority black staff and it contracts with large numbers of black and brown teaching artists for its arts education program.
	Others, e.g., The Newark Museum of Art, Newark Public Library	Leading arts and cultural production, formal venues for art and cultural performances, public education in music and fine art, providing artists’ spaces.
Nonprofit organizations and community-based organizations	Project for Empty Space	A nonprofit organization with a mission “to promote artists whose work is oriented around social impact; and to initiate conversations that engage issues of marginality, intersectionality, and cultural tolerance.”
	Lincoln Park Coast Cultural District	Plan, design, and build a comprehensive arts and cultural district in the Lincoln Park/Coast area of Newark with a mission to create pathways out of poverty, preserve the area’s unique history, and foster a return of music and the arts.
	The Riverfront Park organization	Created a wide range of cultural and art activities, fitness facilities, and other amenities with a particular focus on the nearby immigrant community, through its hip hop festivals, food truck festivals, interactive art projects, and children educational activities, environmental awareness, and community wellness programs.
	The Greater Newark Enterprises Corporation	Provides loans and needs-based counseling and technical assistance to local businesses, as well as partnering with a large number of community stakeholders.
	Forward Ever Sustainable Business Alliance	Has been building a local first network through sustainable business strategies and tax rebate programs, which also coordinates Prudential’s three-pronged strategy of hiring, buying, and living locally in revitalization of the city’s economy.
	Akwaaba Gallery	“Akwaaba” means welcome in Swahili, reflecting the philosophy of the gallery’s black proprietor, a near-20-year resident of Newark. Akwaaba has become a hub for riveting gallery openings and cultural events.
	RyArMo Photography Studio	Owned and operated by African American entrepreneur. The Studio has served as a viable site for commercial shoots, gallery exhibits, performances, and fundraisers for area nonprofits.
	Gallery Affero	Visual art gallery with leadership advocating for local artists “in service of advancing human dignity and beauty”
	Aljira and A Center for Contemporary Art and City Without Walls	Galleries to foster art and cultural production, especially among black and LGBTQ communities. They are closed now which reflects the struggle of many grassroots organizations in underserved communities.
Small business support communities	Rising Tide Capital, Small Business Like A Pro, Small Business Development Center	Through coaching, counseling, training, and consulting, they provide services ranging from strategic planning, analysis, facilitation, implementation, and feedback. “Small Business Like A Pro” represents how minority business owners also work as mentors.
Philanthropists	Prudential Foundation, Surdna Foundation, PNC Bank, Capital One Bank	Corporate foundations and the financial services sector provide meaningful and consistent grants for local arts organizations and program supporting creative sector entrepreneurs

LGBTQ = lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer.

Clearly defining itself as an “anchor institution” (Ehlenz 2019), RU–N (2020) claims “promoting and leveraging the arts and culture” as one of the six areas of the university’s strategic plan. Newark Express exemplifies the collaboration between RU–N and its community partners. Receiving funding from different sectors, Newark Express is located in Newark’s Hahne & Company building, an iconic former department store in the heart of downtown that has now been completely renovated after having been shuttered for thirty years. In addition to providing interdisciplinary public learning spaces and services to artists, community residents, and community partners, its artists-in-residence programs directly incubate local artists and art businesses.

CUEED at RU–N business school has been offering a wide variety of business training and capacity building programs for local entrepreneurs, including classes, seminars, problem-based projects, social networking events, consulting services, mentoring, and coaching processes (Osorio and Cordero 2014). It has a focus on ethnic and underserved communities. For example, the Entrepreneurship Pioneers Initiative is designed for first-generation entrepreneurs at the growth stage. The Pipeline to Inclusive Innovation aims to increase the number of underrepresented inventors, scientists, and technology-focused minority business enterprises engaged in federally funded innovation and technology programs.

Housed at Newark Express and directed by CUEED, Newark Business Hub is a networked accelerator dedicated to empowering media and arts entrepreneurs. Many of these entrepreneurs are first-generation sole proprietors and lack formal education and guidance specific to growing profitable enterprises. With a formal support network, the Hub programs offer creative entrepreneur access to business mentors, sponsors in media and arts professions, strategic professional services, and consultation that can help them achieve market differentiation, market awareness and penetration, operational efficiency, and greater profitability.

Overall, Rutgers’ activities demonstrate that universities can play an intentional and meaningful role in fostering an inclusive entrepreneurship ecosystem. They can go beyond the traditional “triple helix model” in entrepreneurship research for their rich experiences in promoting entrepreneurship, their long tradition of engagement in local and regional communities, and their flexible role as a link between top-down government and industry policies and practices with bottom-up civil society and grassroots initiatives and priorities (Benneworth, Gulbrandsen, and Hazelkorn 2016; Noonan, Woronkowicz, and Hale 2020).

Discussion and Conclusion

Identity and ACE

Being an artist and the social identities provide artist-entrepreneurs special motivations to start their businesses and set business goals that differ from the purely profit-maximizing entrepreneurs. Embedded in their communities, these entrepreneurs not only seek money and market but also seek to aid society at large, the local community, and the marginalized population like themselves (Gruber and MacMillan 2017). The sense of community, sense of place, and social identities impact each other, which further explains the very different economic and social outcomes of ACE activities. Whether they were people of color, homosexuals, immigrants, or women looking for equal footing, through entrepreneurship and artistic expression, these business owners are transforming the feeling of marginalization into a sense of drive. They are building businesses that allow their identities to remain rooted in Newark’s economic renaissance. Although struggling with limited resources and uneven distribution of wealth, these entrepreneurs are creatively operating with multiple roles, as business owners, community leaders, and economic activists establishing platforms for themselves and others like them in the city. Through cultural innovation and social entrepreneurship, these business owners are seeking opportunities to foster civic engagement, animate neighborhoods, and leverage business endeavors as a prime vehicle for asserting their history and presence as traditionally disadvantaged populations within the gentrifying city.

Constraints of Underserved Communities

Although with promises and opportunities, ACE faces tremendous challenges in Newark because of the city’s overwhelming demographic as a poverty-impacted, majority black, and Latinx city, combined with decades of disinvestment, white flight, and long studied litany of socioeconomic ills that have faced many industrial, legacy cities. Business and political leaders have been working to improve the quality of life and economic growth in the city with a determination to change the dominant narrative that Newark is “crime-ridden” and “dangerous.” However, participants still pointed out “the perception of Newark is the number one challenge” (p. L4) and “overshadows all the (positive) things . . .” (p. L2).

The uneven distribution of wealth across different groups is a significant challenge. Investments are especially fewer for people of color and women. For example, organizations led by people of color win less grant money and are trusted less to make decisions about how to spend those funds than groups with white leaders (Rendon 2020). Recent years in Newark have seen local thirty-year cultural pillars close that were led by people of color and women, such as the two influential galleries, Aljira, A Center for Contemporary Art, and City Without Walls.

In January 2020, Mayor Baraka announced the City of Newark’s first arts grant program, the Creative Catalyst Fund. Midway through the development of the Fund, the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic struck, shutting down Newark’s creative arts sector and jeopardizing its future. Even before COVID-19, health has been an issue for arts leaders of color in the city. Many Newark creatives of color have been uninsured, underinsured, or otherwise health-compromised (Bateman 2020). As a hotbed for the COVID-19 pandemic, Newark’s underinsured populations, including creative sector people of color and women, have been and will undoubtedly continue to be impacted.

Another significant challenge is space, from parking to studio. Behind the challenge of space is a deeper concern over ongoing city development and possible gentrification. The revival of urban centers has sparked fears that the renaissance could push out current residents. It is further exacerbated by the oversaturated housing market in New York City. We participated in some of the discussions originated voluntarily by a group of immigrant art entrepreneurs who were hoping to fight the threat brought by the rapid real estate development. At that time, some of them still worked and lived in local churches and others were in a panic searching for new, affordable studio spaces, as the old ones would soon be demolished for luxury development.

Although crystallized in our case study, challenges facing underserved communities in Newark may not be unique. The marginalization of people of color and women in entrepreneurship activities, especially in the ACIs, is a national issue (Bates, Bradford, and Seamans 2018; White 2018). Gentrification, displacement, and widened socioeconomic disparities associated with the growth of ACIs have been observed and debated in many cities in the world (Kong 2014; Liang and Wang 2020; Peck 2005). With the recovery from the uneven pandemic disruption (e.g. Beaunoyer, Dupéré, and Guitton 2020; Wenham, Smith, and Morgan 2020), inclusive economic growth and development becomes even more urgent. In this sense, the experiences of Newark provide significant implications for ACE policymaking and practices in urban planning, especially when underserved communities are concerned.

Implications for Practice and Policymaking

The opportunities and challenges facing ACE and the experiences of underserved communities in Newark call for practice and policymaking in urban planning and economic development to foster the artist-entrepreneurs role as a social and economic agent, to integrate arts and cultural policies with inclusive entrepreneurship ecosystem building, and to directly invest in underserved communities.

First, support artists pursuing entrepreneurial ventures by putting them at the center of economic development strategies, culture policymaking, and practices. Popular “creative cities strategies” have been criticized for their contribution to the growing polarization and social divide of cities, with the disadvantaged communities left out (Peck 2005). Researchers have increasingly called for “creative placemaking” to encourage a move away from amenities and consumption-based economic development strategies and toward support for arts industries and their workforce (Grodach 2017). Built upon this line of work, we argue that creative placemaking requires putting the entrepreneur back at the center of “entrepreneurship,” and the artist back at the center of cultural production, beyond “district,” “industry,” and “cluster.” As such, practices can steer creative city policy toward community-based activity, rooted in the work of strengthening local entrepreneurs and community-driven urban development. Findings from this study further reveal that an ecology perspective is necessary to situate cultural economies in particular locales with distinctive layers, features, dimensions, knowledge relationships, and capabilities (Jeffcutt 2004; Lange 2014).

Second, integrate cultural policies with entrepreneurship development strategies to foster a regional inclusive entrepreneurship ecosystem. Although creative industries are predominately microenterprises, their particular experiences from business perspectives are not understood or well represented (Barker 2018). Current policy and support approaches should consider the goals and driving values of this significant proportion of the creative industries. Newark’s experiences challenge the traditional concept of entrepreneurship and associated practices that are largely focused on technological changes and economic growth. Instead, the cultural industrial ecosystem should be a part of an inclusive entrepreneurship ecosystem. In other words, bring the artists and artist-entrepreneurs to the core of economic development strategies and provide both physical and social infrastructure to ensure the active participation of the traditionally underrepresented population in both entrepreneurship and ACIs.

Third, policies and practices need to explicitly target the artist-entrepreneurs in underserved communities. For example, Newark’s first comprehensive cultural plan, The Newark Creates, was launched in the spring of 2017. It conceptualizes a “sustainable Newark arts ecosystem” which reflects the efforts to combine the collective impacts and seeks to define Newark’s future “through creativity and shared cultural values of diversity, equity, inclusion and community” (Newark Creates 2020). In January 2020, the Mayor pledged $500,000–$1,000,000 for the capital and project support of arts and education groups. Among other efforts, the city also announced three to five city-owned properties to be made available annually for lease to arts and education groups at a low cost. To cope with the impacts of COVID-19, the City has revamped the Creative Catalyst Fund to particularly provide support to small- and mid-sized local nonprofit art organizations and individual artists or unincorporated artist collectives. Furthermore, Newark Arts has taken to organizing convenings with people of color and women on how to access health insurance and practice wellness. The effects of these programs have yet to be evaluated; however, the community-based practices recognize the city’s majority-minority status and focus on the key issues of traditionally underserved communities. These activities could be learned by other cities in the recovery from the pandemic disruptions.

Limitations and Future Research Agenda

This study is based on one city at one point in time with a limited number of participants. Future studies to enlarge the sample size and examine multiple cities will contribute to understanding the intersection of diversity, creativity, entrepreneurship, economic development, and place. Even within one city, a follow-up study to examine the current case, through a longitudinal perspective, will help examine to what extent these businesses sustain. Besides, it calls for further studies in at least the following directions: First, how did the regional cultural entrepreneurship ecosystem form, evolve, and function as interconnected? To what extent do the experiences of local underserved communities differ from other places? Second, while this study focuses on the factors from individual to the city-wide that have shaped the experiences of A&C entrepreneurs, it is equally important to examine the impacts of creative entrepreneurship on the communities over time. And third, it is important to track and evaluate the effects of urban cultural policies, such as the comprehensive cultural plan, Newark Creates. It will provide significant insights into the creative industry development and entrepreneurship in underserved communities.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

We are very grateful to the project participants who have shared their experiences, insights, and time with us. We thank the editor and the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Research for this study was funded by the Kauffman Foundation and the Washington Center for Equitable Growth.

ORCID iD

Qingfang Wang

Author Biographies

Qingfang Wang is a professor of geography and public policy at UC riverside. She teaches and conducts research in inequality and development, with a particular concern of the minority population and their communities in urban contexts.

Lyneir Richardson is an assistant professor of professional practice and executive director of the Center for Urban Entrepreneurship and Economic Development (CUEED). He oversees the implementation of CUEED programs and teaches MBA courses.

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