Creative NAGRENTS – Mission Impossible?

My research participants (NAGRENTs*) have set themselves an almost impossible task - to set up a viable business in the creative sector on graduation from university.  How do they cope as their initial enthusiasm is tempered by the reality of the overcrowded marketplace?

This problem raises questions about why universities produce so many creative graduates entering the over-supplied sector, and also whether we are helpful in encouraging them to believe that they can really set up a business.  However, that is not the subject of my research, or of this blog.

My interest is what happens to them in the first four years of trying to square their circle. How their great expectations are revised over time, and how they resolve the conflict between their identities as a ‘creative’, as a business-person, and as a graduate carving out their place in society.

Early observations of three participants show that each is taking a different approach to resolving the problem.

• Keep banging your head against a brick wall.  If they have no other viable options then all they can do is soldier on and try and find a niche in the market.
• Switch to employment in the sector.  If running the business proves too difficult they may have the skills to take up employment in the sector, for instance as a designer or in a teaching/training role.
• Switch to employment outside sector.  If the graduate has other saleable skills then they have the option to look at employment outside the creative sector even if, ideally they would prefer to stay within it.

Which of these options the participants are choosing  is driven by a complex mixture of personal preferences, their identity as an artist, and personal financial commitments.  The first few years are proving to be a good example of the 'co-evolution' of their business lives, their artistic live, and their personal lives.

*NAGRENTS – ‘Nascent Entrepreneurial Graduates’