How Creative Entrepreneurs Balance Art and Business Before and During a Disruptive Environmental Event: Approaches of Creators and Creative Sustainers

This paper examines how creative entrepreneurs manage the interplay of art and business before and during a disruptive environmental event. While numerous studies have explored the financial impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the creative industries, our research provides a fresh perspective on how the pandemic influenced creative entrepreneurs' practices. We present our empirical findings from a study that involved 20 semistructured interviews with creative entrepreneurs in the Norwegian Arctic, conducted twice, that is, before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our findings show that the creative entrepreneurs initially balanced the aesthetic and market logics similarly. However, when COVID-19 struck, the creators and creative sustainers rebalanced the logics of aesthetics and the market in distinct ways. These findings contribute to the literature on creative entrepreneurship in different ways: First, we refine the concept of creative entrepreneurs by noting that creators and creative sustainers, due to their distinct institutional contexts, interpret societal disruptions differently. Second, we expand on the skills needed in creative entrepreneurship, explaining how the actors quickly adjust and rebalance institutional logics during an environmental disruption. The study provides practitioners with a clearer framework for navigating disruptions, emphasising the importance of adaptability in business strategies and the need to uphold artistic integrity while also addressing market demands.