Is money a dirty word? The entrepreneurial worlds of art and sculpting

When we think of marginalisation, artists come to mind less often. This artistic and design-thinking experiment investigated artists’ attitudes after engaging in an empathy-hack with business mentors and service designers. The empathy-hack was based on the Self-Hack concept used for individuals to engage in life design and life-skill development. Self-Hack was developed by Creativity Squads in 2019, a Finnish association established at the Tampere University of Applied Sciences (Pilch and Vessa-Matti 2019). The experiment explored how the arts can function as a vehicle for constructing entrepreneurial worlds, especially for artists who often operate on the margins of entrepreneurial environments. Furthermore, the experiment encouraged artists to improvise by delving into their own unique talents and abilities and collaborating with business mentors and service designers to take a bold leap and cross the divide between art and business worlds.