Before he decided to pursue a degree in musicology, Gary Beckman was a metal guitarist and played the Renaissance lute. When he decided he wanted to leave his metal music performance past behind, he went to the University of Texas in Austin, focusing on Renaissance and Baroque lute to become a Renaissance musicologist. In the middle of his doctorate program, he found the only two jobs in which he could apply his degree were already filled.
“I wasn’t going to give up a doctorate for nothing, so then I saw an opportunity to work up an entrepreneurship minor,” Beckman said.
In 2012, Beckman founded and led the Arts Entrepreneurship Minor at NC State, one of three in the nation and the first campus-wide. The Arts Entrepreneurship Minor at NC State considers the arts first, according to Beckman.
He was able to start teaching as a graduate student while the academic field of arts entrepreneurship started to grow.
Beckman said the first step to understanding art is being able to communicate it, market it and be successful with any kind of arts venture. There is no agreed upon definition of what art is or isn’t, and there’s no overall consensus of entrepreneurship either. Beckman said this minor is trying to make sense of two things that cannot be defined.
“I don’t do a whole lot; it’s really the students doing the work,” Beckman said. “I’m just trying to guide them and to help them think through things.”
The minor has seen quite a number of successes, from patents to manufactured goods and consulting businesses in between.
“I believe that students approaching their desired career goal is admirable; there’s always opportunities out there to expand on,” Beckman said. “Students can train for one thing, but looking around, they can see other chances to success that they may have not thought about.”
Beckman said the minor differs from the minor at the University of South Carolina because there, it is geared more toward performance art whereas at NC State, it’s more for inventions geared toward arts.
One of the ways most of the students get to showcase their inventions and possibly earn money for them is to participate in the Lulu eGames, which is an annual startup competition that celebrates student innovation and entrepreneurship.
“The minor allows for a student to see the industry from a perspective that will bring success upon whatever their venture may be,” said Caroline Caldwell, a senior studying fashion and textile management with a minor in arts entrepreneurship.
She was the first-place winner in the Arts Feasibility Study Challenge in this year’s Lulu eGames. Caldwell is currently working on a patent on an interchangeable weighted paintbrush collection, already manufacturing shelf-ready prototypes.
Most dancers’ careers end when they are about 30 years old, and an NC State alumna is working to extend that time. Suzanne Matthews, 2014 NC State alumna with the Arts Entrepreneurship Minor, has developed dance tights with integrated ankle support. The patent for her design and the way the tights are made are both pending.
“What I like about this minor is that it makes people realize that they can have a career doing what they love,” Matthews said. “The program helps challenge them to see it through and allows them to succeed by thinking outward and not upward.”
Besides starting the minor, Beckman has other ventures as well. “Artivate” was a journal Beckman co-founded in the field of arts entrepreneurship, and from there, he started two other online academic journals. The “Journal of Arts Entrepreneurship Education” and the “Journal of Arts Entrepreneurship Research” focus on impactful articles for the field. Compared to “Artivate,” these two journals are more competitive. He also co-founded the Society for Arts Entrepreneurship Education.
More information on the Arts Entrepreneurship Minor can be found at http://www.ncsu.edu/music/ema/. For more information on the Society for Arts Entrepreneurship Education, visit societyaee.org.
Jenna Auton dances with the tights Matthews created.
