Certificate Arts and Entrepreneurship Certificate
The graduate certificate in Arts & Entrepreneurship focuses on helping students cultivate tools that are essential to launching and sustaining successful for-profit, non-profit, and community-based arts programs and initiatives that place art at the forefront of social innovation. These tools include creating sustainable business plans, grant writing, fundraising, social media marketing, cultivating and engaging stakeholders, arts administration, and social entrepreneurial and design thinking skills. These skills are paired with critical tools drawn from studying the social, political, economic and cultural value of arts-based innovations. The certificate is intended for individuals interested in studio and/or the performing arts, including painting, sculpture, metalwork, graphic design, cartooning, illustration, letterpress, music, dance, theatre, film and video. Students earning the 13-credit certificate will obtain skills that equip them to start and/or sustain their own arts-based enterprises. Coursework is primarily project-based allowing students to apply course content while actively working with existing arts organizations and on art-based campaigns and initiatives. The certificate culminates in a capstone project wherein students will develop a proposal for an arts-based program and present their proposal to stakeholders in Hampton Roads for critique, feedback and possible implementation. The certificate is open to any graduate student enrolled in any graduate program at ODU. Non-degree seeking individuals can also earn it as a standalone certificate.