The Double-Edge Sword: Listening to Artist-Entrepreneurs in the West of Ireland

This Fall, a Fulbright grant gave Susan the opportunity to work with the Creative Edge project team at NUI Galway’s Whitaker Institute. She has conducted in-depth interviews with more than 25 artist-entrepreneurs, living and working in Ireland and engaged in a variety of fields. These conversations have revealed innovative strategies for pursuing and producing cultural projects, products, events and services. Questions have probed interviewees values and priorities, and sought to understand the way a rural location has presented each with obstacles and opportunities as well as unique approaches to networking.

Since 2005, Susan has been the Manager of Audience Development in the Department of Theatre Arts at Ithaca College in Ithaca, New York. She mentors Theatre Arts Management students as they gain practical experience running front of house operations and promotional activities for the Theatre’s main stage productions. She teaches courses in Promotion & Publicity and the Creative Economy.

Since 2003, she has been engaged in scholarship that has broadened her understanding that inspired people, quality of place, and innovation are central to economic development and has led her to focus on projects that position cultural resources as key elements in development strategies. Susan has been a team member of Cornell’s New York Creative Economy research project, that explores the potential of creative economy initiatives in upstate New York, particularly those with colleges and universities as strategic partners.

All welcome

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