The Business of Art

Lizzy Vivas, a KCAI junior majoring in painting, is using the skills she’s gaining to build Viva y Muerto, an environmentally conscious jewelry business.

A new minor at KCAI will help students achieve entrepreneurial success

By Julie Whitsitt

The Fall 2019 semester marked the launch of a minor in Entrepreneurial Studies in Art and Design at Kansas City Art Institute (KCAI), taught by Bloch School faculty. It also signaled the blooming partnership between KCAI and the Regnier Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, part of the Bloch School. Approximately 60 students are participating in the 16-credit-hour minor with courses designed to provide classroom and practical experiences.

Whether they plan to start their own art studio or join an existing business, Bloch and KCAI administrators think the entrepreneurial studies minor will provide students with the skill set to succeed in both art and business.

“A goal of the Regnier Institute is to educate students at UMKC but also to bring entrepreneurship education to the Kansas City community-at-large. This partnership is just one way we are doing that,” said Andy Heise, assistant teaching professor and managing director of the Regnier Institute.

Increasingly, artists and designers require not only technical skill but a knowledge of business when pursuing ventures after graduation. Traditional career paths for artists are notoriously competitive and navigating health care, business insurance and financial planning while on their own can be uncharted territory. Heise said the entrepreneurship minor aims to broaden artists’ perspectives about how they can create and contribute to their field.

“The systems and theories I’m beginning to understand in my courses will help me navigate the world professionally, no matter where I end up,” said Fiona Dougan, a junior majoring in graphic design at KCAI. “The Art Institute provides students with a very well-rounded education as it is, but this minor soothes my and my parents’ nerves about life after graduation and the ‘starving artist’ stigma I want to avoid.”

According to a study of the landscape of arts entrepreneurship in U.S. higher education by the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts at Arizona State University, the idea of combining arts education and entrepreneurship in higher education began in the 1990s and developed during the 2000s. It wasn’t until after the Great Recession when the concept saw immense growth.

As of 2016, just over 100 art and design schools offered arts entrepreneurship programming. Of those, 30 offerings were online courses or one-off classes and a fraction of those involved business schools teaching at an art and design institution. Among the noted programs is the Kauffman Campus Initiative, a project that sought to encourage new, interdisciplinary entrepreneurship education programs throughout American colleges and universities.

KCAI alumni surveys showed a demand for business-related coursework which sparked the idea for an entrepreneurship minor. When exploring collaborators for such a unique venture and finding there currently aren’t any higher education-led art entrepreneurship programs offered in the Kansas City metro, KCAI approached the Regnier Institute.

It was a natural fit.

“Through our partnership with Regnier, our students have access to transformational entrepreneurship and business classes. Employers have always told us that KCAI graduates bring to the workplace unique attributes, creative experiences and critical thinking. When you add awareness of business fundamentals, they become even more marketable,” said Bambi Burgard, Ph.D., executive vice president for academic affairs at KCAI.

Burgard also said KCAI is incorporating business classes into an upcoming project design major this fall and hopes to add more classes taught by UMKC into its catalog.

“When you have that type of synergy going, it sets our students up for success,” Burgard said.

ARTS ENTREPRENEURSHIP

This fall, Regnier and the UMKC Conservatory will launch a certificate program for UMKC art students. For more information, contact Andy Heise at heisea@umkc.edu.