Creative Entrepreneurship in No Man’s Land: Challenges and Prospects for a Metropolitan Area and Smaller Communities. Perspectives from the Never-Ending Transition

Entrepreneurial thinking is a new concept in the Serbian cultural and creative sector. Although the term entrepreneurship is often used in public discourse, it is usually related to female entrepreneurs and small social enterprises. This is a consequence of traditional perception, which holds that in order to work in culture, one must have a relevant educational background, while social or female entrepreneurship does not require formal education. The second reason is that the cultural field is not seen as economically valued. Therefore, when the term entrepreneurship is used in the context of artistic or cultural organizations, it usually does not have positive connotations. During the communist regime in Yugoslavia, entrepreneurship was associated with entertainment with the single goal of accruing revenue (Dragicevic Sesic and Stojkovic, Kultura, menadzment, animacija, marketing. Beograd, Clio, 2011). In the present day, it is linked with the tendency of the state to push cultural workers toward the market and commercial culture. Despite the lack of specific public policies (fiscal, labor) related to the creative sector, a creative class (Florida 2002) is arising, reflecting a post-transitional cultural model. This cultural model can be described as a hybrid of a neoliberal economy and a welfare state and is characterized by a traditional system of cultural institutions inherited from the previous state (Yugoslavia), non-existent market regulations, low budgets for culture and arts, almost non-existent inter-sectoral policy relations, (Compendium of cultural policies and trends in Europe, http://www.culturalpolicies.net/web/index.php ) and a lack of specific education in the field of creative entrepreneurship. The focus of this research will be to define the main features, issues, challenges, and prospects for creative entrepreneurship in a metropolitan area by using a multiple case study methodology.