Race/ethnicity, place, and art and culture entrepreneurship in underserved communities

Few studies of entrepreneurship and creative industries have investigated the role of race/ethnicity, gender, and poverty. This study investigates the impacts of art and culture entrepreneurship in a traditionally underserved community. The findings demonstrate that, using their business ventures as both economic and social enterprises, art and culture entrepreneurs engage in a continuous process of adaptation, learning, and innovation and seek opportunities to serve their business goals. Through artistic placemaking, race/ethnicity and entrepreneurship in creative industries interact with each other as agents of change in the local community and in social entrepreneurship. Our findings call for a social impact approach that emphasizes the importance of locally formed cultural production and a socially inclusive entrepreneurship ecosystem. •A&C entrepreneurship fosters social capital, sense of community, and shared identities in underserved communities.•The case emphasizes the diversity and fluidity of the entrepreneurial process.•It reflects a locally specific appreciation of the changing interaction between social impacts and economic development.•It emphasizes the importance of locally formed cultural production and a socially inclusive entrepreneurship ecosystem.