Millikin University has one of the leading multi-disciplinary arts entrepreneurship programs in the country, utilizing three student-run ventures and two learning laboratories within the fine arts to bridge the gap between theory and practice.

Artists are passionate about what they do. Passion is the key ingredient in Entrepreneurship.

Students within the arts are generally focused entirely on their craft and often form a sort of "knowledge tunnel" within their area of study. Becoming an expert in a craft is absolutely necessary. But what happens when artists graduate?

Upon entering the professional world, there are two options: work for a company or work for yourself. For artists, working for an established company is often highly competitive due to the few opportunities for employment. Artists have a much higher chance of becoming self-employed. To do so, however, artists need knowledge of the business world.

The Arts & Entrepreneurship Program is designed to help artists gain the knowledge needed to be successful entrepreneurs.

Through the Arts & Entrepreneurship Program, students are introduced to the meaning and implications of ownership by running and operating one of three fine arts related ventures including Blue Connection, a retail art gallery, Pipe Dreams Studio Theatre, a theatre company, or First Step Records, a record label and publishing company. 

In this program, students have the freedom to take creative ideas and translate them into unique products or marketing venues for the student-run ventures.

All the while, students are actively learning what it takes to start, run, and maintain their own business venture through opportunity recognition and capitalizing on those opportunities. Best of all, artists get to do what they do best: their art.


"It was important for me, at least, to see what I was taught in my classes happening in the gallery. It helped me really put into perspective what Millikin wants us to learn." - Paige Williams (Entrepreneurship Major 2011)