Abstract
Arts festivals provide fertile ground for cultural entrepreneurs to access a marketplace and to grow and sustain their businesses. Yet, festivals also generate social value in the form of networks and social cohesion that extends far beyond economic means. Building on entrepreneurial ecosystem (EE) theory, we explore the collective effort of dealing with social and physical constraints in building a sustainable ecosystem that enables cultural entrepreneurs to make a living. To do so, we study cultural entrepreneurs who participate in the ‘Aardklop’ (‘Earthbeat’) Arts Festival, held annually in Potchefstroom, South Africa. The festival is built upon the Afrikaner culture and provides a temporary place for cultural entrepreneurs to express this culture using language, art, food, dance, and music. Our research questions were directed to get a deeper understanding of what motivated the cultural entrepreneurs to participate in the festival. Other research questions asked about ‘what’ value they perceive that they create at the festival and ‘how’ this value is experienced. Our findings suggest that cultural entrepreneurs negotiate a dynamic and resource-constrained environment by creating economic and social value through networking, social support, and the preservation of their cultural values. We contribute to a better understanding of cultural entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship ecosystem theory in particular, by highlighting the opportunities festivals offer to cultural entrepreneurs and by specifying their reasons to participate in them. We discuss the implications of our findings and give recommendations to guide local stakeholders, organisers, and business support organisations on how to increase the capacity of cultural entrepreneurs in the festival ecosystem.