Creating a place to play: Cultural entrepreneurship in the contemporary arts

Our study seeks to contribute an understanding of the situated and meaningful practice of entrepreneurs, by asking how cultural entrepreneurs create a meaningful social place for their playful practices, and how the place enables their. We draw on three pieces of longitudinal research within artist led organisations, which provided places for cultural entrepreneurs working within the contemporary arts. What we discovered in the practices and context of cultural entrepreneurs’ everyday life was not singularity and clarity, but rather a complex of contradictions and dichotomies. Our argument is that the production of a ‘place of play’ is what enables the entrepreneurs, and those around them, to absorb and also make the most of the co-existence of apparent opposites.