Cultural Entrepreneurship Resource Roundup: April 22nd

Happy Earth Day GCCE’ers!

Below are a few cultural entrepreneurship related sites and opportunities I thought might interest you.

1. Culture Label: Living and Breathing Cultural Entrepreneurship by Mark Nagurski on iddictive.com

Check out Mark’s article about a service called Culture Label, a “one-stop-culture-shop, bringing you an edit of products currently available from over 70 leading museum shops, galleries, artists and culture institutions from around the world.

Here’s what Culture Label has to say about cultural entrepreneurship:

“For us, cultural entrepreneurship is all about connecting culture and consumers – demolishing walls and supplying enormous mainstream demand. In doing so, over and over we’ve seen vibrant new relationships develop between museums, galleries and the world at large.”

2. Craft Research Grants from the Center for Craft, Creativity and Design

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Fantastic Blogging Book for Crafters, Artists, and Creative Folks

“On the business side, blogs are designed to help promote creative wares or services, and if done well, they can be an invaluable business tool.  Those who blog for business live creatively; their businesses, their personal lives, and friendships are all approached through their creative spirit and it shows in their blogs.  Whether they promote products and services through their sidebar links or talk about business in every post, their blogs are beautiful and inspiring.”

-Tara Frey, Blogging for Bliss

I just finished reading Blogging for Bliss: Crafting Your Own Online Journal:  A Guide for Crafters, Artists and Creatives by Tara Frey, and highly recommend it.  Frey covers everything from what to write about, how to choose a blogging platforms, how to customize your blog’s look, ways to increase traffic, and the basics of blogvertising.

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Six Sudsy Soapmaker Blogs

You can’t beat the yummy smell and bubbly goodness of handmade soap. I love it, don’t you?

According to the Handcrafted Soapmakers Guild, Inc.:

“The industry of handcrafted soap is growing and expanding; the number of handcrafted soapmakers has increased exponentially over the last 10 years and the support services for them, including vendors of all types, has become an industry unto its own.”

If you are an aspiring handcrafted soapmaker, or just a lover of handmade soap(!), below is a sampler of soapmakers’ blogs to inspire you to start your own: Continue reading

5 Ways Theatres Can Use Social Media

1. Live Blogging & Live Tweeting
The smArts & Culture blog reported in February about the Portland Center Stage’s Live-Tweeting Theater experiment. “They invited ’30 or so of [their] closest twitter friends’ plus anyone else who cared to join them, to live-tweet the world premiere performance of the play Apollo.”

The Art of Business Blog also used the Portland Center Stage Twitter experiment as an example in their post, How Businesses are Using New Media for Publicity, and noted that, “The Vancouver Opera invited three bloggers to come and live blog and Twitter a performance of their latest Opera, Carmen. The show was a sell-out.” Continue reading

7 Ways Potters Can Use Blogs

1. Advertise shows, exhibitions, and festivals like William Baker did on in his blog post, Mudfire Exhibit.

2. Share photos and reflections from shows like Jen Mecca does in her post, Blowing Rock Photos on her blog, Jen Mecca’s Pottery Blog.

3. Show your creative process like Gary Rith did in his post, John Makes My Day, on his blog, Gary Rith Pottery Blog.  He also posted photos from a day in his studio and a video interview of him in his studio in the blog’s sidebar.

4. Share photos of new work like Vicki Hartman did in her post, More New Work on her blog, These 2 Words, and Steven Colby did in his post, 4 New Mugs on his blog, Steven Colby: Potter. Continue reading

Who is Blogging about Cultural Entrepreneurship?

culturalentrepreneurWelcome to the GCCE blog!

When we were looking around for folks to add to our blog roll, we found a lot of people who are writing about social entrepreneurship, but not a lot who are writing about cultural entrepreneurship.

We need your help!  Let us know who is blogging about cultural entrepreneurship in the comments.

Below is a quick round-up of the bloggers we’ve found so far:

Creative Economy on Australian Policy Online
A Cultural Policy Blog by Ben Eltham
Social & Cultural Entrepreneur
by Lotta Lekvall and Olav Unsgaard
Lab for Culture Blogs
on LabforCulture.org
Magna Kultura Foundation blog
by Dickie Aguado

In addition to writing about what we know about cultural entrepreneurs and cultural enterprises, we also want to shine a light on what you know, so let us know who we should be reading.

Image credit: Screenshot of Social & Cultural Entrepreneur by Lotta Lekvall and Olav Unsgaard