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Contribution: "Enterprising culture" by Léonard Anthony

Every entrepreneur is a cultural entrepreneur in a way, meaning that every business is processed by an individual or a group, carrying with them a culture which defines every one of us. The connection we have with our history, whether individual, familial or collective, sometimes from several horizons, often describes the basis of our desires, and the movement underlying our motivations.

Desires and motivations are, to me, the yarn of the fabric of every project lead by an entrepreneur. In the specific case of companies built around a cultural project, they become even more crucial, and a third dimension is often required, emotions. More than ever, no matter which cultural industry is concerned, the ability to move and touch someone, to share this emotion, is one of the pillars of every project a cultural entrepreneur is concerned with. Uncountable examples of start-ups which developed cultural projects in the last few years showed us to what extent those dimensions are essentials, even if they only concern revolutions in the distribution process or the diffusion of cultural content. They also demonstrated how much this sector – inherently connected to the power of imagination, and therefore of reconfiguration of the world – is a never-ending source of projects, which sometimes shake up our habits, but also open new perspectives and possibilities.

It is very likely that we are only at the beginning of an era where entrepreneurs from all over the world will unite and meet to imagine innovations capable of moving in several dimensions, the first one being the one of the entrepreneur. In itself, cultural entrepreneurship is probably at the dawn of its own revolution. 

About Léonard Anthony, associate director of the literary agency Susanna Lea Associates Co-Founder, Versilio (Jury of the Prize of the Cultural Start-Up)