‘Start Me Up’: The Challenge of Sustainable Cultural Entrepreneurship for Young Cultural Workers

Cultural entrepreneurship has been seen as a process through which cultural workers organize activities around culture, motivated by their passion and willingness to create cultural value. This chapter provides an account of the actions that cultural entrepreneurs deploy to satisfy the needs related to developing and sustaining their activities. Based on 120 interviews with cultural workers at an early stage of their entrepreneurial activity, the chapter shows that sustainability is a multifaceted concept consisting of three main dimensions: creative, economic, and social. Individuals consider these different dimensions simultaneously while dealing with three main needs: sense of purpose, networking, and professional development. In so doing, they engage in a varied set of actions aimed at figuring out a personal path to sustainability. The chapter contributes to the understanding of how cultural entrepreneurs manage to establish and sustain an entrepreneurial activity, by experiencing the hurdles related to manage the different and often contradictory aspects of it.