18115: I Cry a lot but I Am so Productive: It’s an Art(ist) Driven Community (session 26072)

Community ecosystems are typically full of local talent in the form of creative entrepreneurs, who nurture and help sustain the resilience of place-based communities. Hence, mutual influence between creative entrepreneurs, community members/outsiders, and organizations are necessary for place-based communities to thrive. Using qualitative data from 30 interviews with creative entrepreneurs and organizations in the Lehigh Valley community ecosystem, we inductively develop a conceptual model of how and why creative entrepreneurs influence place-based communities. We find that creative entrepreneurs’ identities come in three distinct forms—the obsessed, starving, and tortured artists—all which play a critical intertwining role in community building, commerce, and development. Furthermore, creative entrepreneurs apply a broad range of actions, including fundraising and community building that crystallize the identity of their given community. Our study contributes to the literatures on entrepreneurial identity and the development and evolution of place-based communities by advancing a process-model that identifies the full range of interactions across key actors in a community place ecosystem and the role of creative entrepreneurs in these communities.

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