Arts-based creativity and culture in social entrepreneurship

This chapter explores how arts-based creativity and culture have moved further to the center of the social entrepreneurship (SE) field. Through a patchwork of international examples, we ask how arts-based social entrepreneurship reconfigures the relationship between creative and social value? Various cases are used to demonstrate three different ‘depths’ to the blending of these value forms: through the promotion of worker conditions and protections in new ventures (micro-entrepreneurship), the fusion of different social service models across sectors (hybridity), and the revivifying of community spaces and places (transformation). The analysis includes cases such as the DIY (Do It Yourself) movements of Portugal and Brazil as processes of micro-entrepreneurship; INSP, a Danish civil society organization based on principles of the social economy; and the UK-based Bromley by Bow as a community center with socially entrepreneurial character. The concluding discussion considers how arts perspectives can aid the culturally-aware SE scholar in diversifying their units of interest and analysis and makes a case for nuanced attention to practices of redistribution, recognition, and social justice promoted by such arts-based ventures in the SE field