University of Wisconsin - Extension

They look very much like the typical class at UW-Madison's School of Business. But the 18 people who meet Thursday evenings at Grainger Hall think as much about aesthetics, genre and audiences as they do about accounting, cash flow and marketing.

Meet the class in Business Planning for the Arts, an idea made reality by a $7,500 grant from the University of Wisconsin-Extension Cross Divisional Program Innovation Fund. Collaborators are the Small Business Development Center (SBDC) and the UW-Madison Liberal Studies and the Arts - Continuing Education Extension.

Artists discover that art is business

The objective is to equip artists to create a successful business strategy for starting or developing their art forms. About two-thirds of the students represent various visual arts, and one-third are involved in performing arts, says SBDC instructor Jack Reiners.

Artistic disciplines represented in the class span the imagination. They include metal furniture sculpture, landscape art, letterpress printing, avant-garde troupe performing, custom murals, vocal training, multimedia productions, evocative charcoals, greeting cards and nonprofit community theater.

"The artist's business depends on people's discretionary income," explains Reiners. "Don't tell me you're not in an industry, that you're 'in art.' Actually, you're in an art industry!"

Artists develop business plans

Class members wrestle with business marketing concepts like segmenting and targeting a market and the psychographic values, interests and lifestyles of customers. They deal with the elements of a business plan, their major accomplishment in the five-session course.

"It makes my head work! The planning process is intimidating," says student Kacy Hack.

"I'm challenged by the idea of marketing - getting to know everything before you start: the competition, the customers, everything." says David Wirch, an artist who works in glass.

"You realize it [a business plan] is a living thing," adds Bethany Kopp.

Lectures and discussions in the class are supplemented with breakout sessions for students' market and competition assessments, positioning, promotion and pricing. Sessions are held with arts professionals from the UW-Madison Department of Liberal Studies and the Arts and from the ranks of successful arts practitioners.

For more information: http://www.uwsbdc.org and http://www.dcs.wisc.edu/lsa/classes/ .