I chose the very title of the article to be what it is because it has been my experience that many people, and sadly enough, even artists themselves do not see artists as entrepreneurs.

I remember many days at art school hearing a number of tutors saying, “Do not prostitute your art, do not focus on selling large volumes of pieces”, or “Do art for art’s sake and never focus on money.” All this I found to be quite curious, because the brochure that I got when applying for art school, encouraged me to “pursue a career in the arts”, and in my opinion a “career” involves undertaking tasks with the aim of generating income on a regular basis.

The sad thing is that many young impressionable minds readily absorb that illogical statement because they often revere the people who utter it. But is it really the role of the artists in society to sacrifice themselves upon the altar of social and economic martyrdom? Is it that as creative geniuses we should resign ourselves to the notion that we should not be able to afford comfortable homes, be able to send our children to the best schools, buy land, invest, and be able to prepare for a happy retirement? For people whose creativity enriches the fabric of life itself, are we just called to suffering?

I think as artists we have to start seeing the importance of being entrepreneurs and business people as well. Art is satisfaction for the soul, food for the emotions, but without apology I will plainly state that it is quite a viable business. I am an artist, my area of emphasis is ceramics, though I love exploring other disciplines to expand myself. I am also equally happy to declare myself to be an entrepreneur.

Even the very context in which I operate at my studio makes me automatically an entrepreneur. Ajay Bam, a lecturer at the Lester Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of California, Haas School of Business, said: “Entrepreneurship is the journey of opportunity exploration and risk management to create value for profit and/or social good.”

So let me dissect this definition comparing it to my process in the potter’s studio: “Entrepreneurship is the journey of opportunity.” As a potter I have limitless creative opportunities made possible by a resource that nature provides, all over this wonderful island of Jamaica, called clay. This clay can be fashioned and moulded into decorative and utilitarian objects that consumers want and need. The potter has the ability to see the prospect of endless possibilities within a material that does not readily show forth its value at a casual glance. That is an entrepreneurial mind at work.

Risk management

Clay is a wonderful material to work with but it does come with its own risk. When I make an object it has to be properly dried, because having too much moisture in the piece before the initial firing can cause pressure to build up in the piece, and this would lead to cracks or total breakage of the piece. Sometimes the glaze for the piece is applied too heavily, and this can lead to excess running so the piece can end up being stuck to the shelf in the kiln. Ceramics forces you to work out technicalities before a firing so that you can minimise or even completely neutralise risk. This calls for risk management at all times.

Create value for profit or social good

The end product of my process in my ceramic studio is really to achieve these two ideals, for me it is both for social good and profit that I produce my ceramic pieces. I love the process of taking clay and adding value to it by the potter’s process but I also get great satisfaction of seeing customers react positively to the pieces, of hearing them tell stories about how my pieces enhanced a living room, a kitchen or a garden area. I like taking my pieces to market and seeing how many times a single piece can stimulate a conversation among a group of people. I especially like when one of my pieces causes someone to become a new collector and starts them on a journey of appreciating art and also seeking to know more about the general realm of art which lies beyond my own studio. It is a great blessing to achieve financial gain from the sale of my work, but it is even a greater feeling to know that something that comes from inside the domain of my mind can be so appreciated by so many and can bring delight to so many people.

As artists we are already wired to be entrepreneurs. We are often driven by imagination, we can see objects before they even take on form. We can analyse keenly what is already there and replicate it with dexterity. We just need to take some of that same creativity and push ourselves to be able to draft business plans geared at achieving realistic, attainable goals, create sales forecasts and cash flow projections for our artistic ventures. We have to have the ability to realistically put together a S.W.O.T. (Strengths , Weaknesses , Opportunities , Threats ) analysis. We have to be able to truly become businesspeople, both artist and entrepreneur.

To my fellow artists reading this, we have to start taking art seriously and see it as serious business. For those who have the means to be potential investors in the industry, please stop seeing art as a “bad bet”. Art and other creative industries have enormous potential to generate wealth if a proper framework and policies exist to aid them.

Take into consideration the following statistics. In 2005 worldwide the creative economy was worth about US$2.7 trillion, and is growing at a rate of 6 per cent each year. The leading countries are: America, Japan, Germany, China, Britain, France and Italy.

America has the largest market, where IP (Intellectual Property) is worth US$5 to $6 trillion, representing 45 per cent of the country’s GDP. Japan has the highest per capita demand for newspapers, electronics, entertainment and comics (its ‘MANGA’ comics have sales of more than US$5.9billion), while Germany has high expenditures on R&D and Mass Media.

China became the third largest exporter of creative goods and services (design, crafts, publishing, electronic media & communications). Britain has a market size of £108 billion due to activity across all 15 industries. In France and Italy the creative industries employ more than 5.8 million people, which is more than the working population of Greece and Ireland combined. So we see that the creative industries have golden opportunities for job and wealth creation.

So we can see here that all over the planet the creative industries are generating not thousands, not millions and not even just billions, but it has reached into the trillion-dollar mark, and that is astounding.

I wonder what international value Jamaican IP and creative product offerings have? We will never know or tap into that until art becomes a serious business, but it cannot happen until there is an entrepreneur as well as an artist in the artist’s studio.

Wazari Johnson is a ceramist, an entrepreneur and a member of the Jamaica Design Association (JDA). Contact the JDA at info@jamaicadesign.org