SPRING

Female entrepreneurs in arts education

SPRING encourages female students at the arts educations to start up their own business. Experience from student incubators indicates that female students are likely to question their own ability to become entrepreneurs and are uncertain of how to move forward as entrepreneurs in regards to their current situation.

This tendency might have to do with a misleading idea of who an entrepreneur is – is she a freelancer, entrepreneur and/or self-employed person? Also, uncertainty about financial possibilities or challenges when becoming an entrepreneur seems to hold students back.

Some share the assumption that the job of an entrepreneur cannot be combined with the responsibilities of family life. Consequently, few female students take the final step towards becoming (student) entrepreneurs. This reflects the general situation in the industry where the percentage of female entrepreneurs is very small.

The purpose of SPRING is to develop specific methods and concepts that will contribute to engage more female students in entrepreneurship during and after their studies.

CAKI has developed and carried out a pilot project in collaboration with Aarhus School of Architecture and CSE Lab at CBS. The project was carried out and continually evaluated in three stages together with twenty potential entrepreneurs among female students.

The Danish Foundation for Entrepreneurship has contributed to finance SPRING. The pilot project was carried out at the end of 2010.