In Short
As a student in the Visual Art concentration of the Creative Arts Enterprise program, you will hone your artistic skills as an artist while also expanding your knowledge of administration, marketing, publicity, and entrepreneurship. CAE graduates are well positioned to be active and thriving art professionals in the contemporary creative economy.
Program Overview
The Visual Art concentration of the Creative Arts Enterprise major equips you to be an active and engaged artist in the modern world. You will get extensive training as a visual artist, and in addition, you will take a highly customizable set of coursework in entrepreneurship, marketing, and professional writing. The major allows you to develop a personalized and flexible set of skills, with which you will emerge as an art professional ready to meet the needs of audiences and arts organizations in a shifting global economy.
You will be prepared for a career as a practicing visual artist with a solid grasp of how to manage the entrepreneurial aspects of being a professional in the arts, and also for a career as an administrator, promoter, or other position with a diverse set of organizational demands, but where a strong grounding as a visual artist is highly beneficial.
The CAE program draws on the expertise of invested faculty in multiple departments and disciplines across campus including Art, Business Administration, Communications Media, and English Studies, which allows students to form multiple mentoring relationships across subject areas. The degree is awarded as a Bachelor of Arts (BA), and you will need to complete courses demonstrating intermediate proficiency in a world language - further positioning you as a versatile arts professional.
Are you a current Fitchburg State student looking to change your major to Creative Arts Enterprise? Please fill out this internal transfer change of major form, and consult the Registrar's Office.
Hear more about the program from Program Coordinator Dr. Jonathan Harvey below and in his blog.
Experiential Opportunities
Internships
ARTeries
Study Abroad
Curriculum and Other Information
- BA, Creative Arts Enterprise(opens in a new tab) - Program information from the University Catalog.
- Four-Year Plans of Study - Required and elective courses for program completion.
Students who complete this program will be able to:
- Demonstrate proficiency in the core tools and skills of their artistic practice
- Evaluate and critique works from their artistic discipline through the lens of appropriate theoretical and historical contexts
- Develop writing skills needed to address diverse audiences in a variety of professional products and genres
- Integrate academic work with public engagement to produce audience-aware marketing products, artworks, and performances
- Apply entrepreneurial skills (market opportunity recognition and creation, risk assessment, financing, strategic planning, etc.) to artistic practices and institutions
- Develop an understanding of the ways that the arts impact community social and economic development
- Arts administrator/director
- Museum/Gallery manager or curator
- Professional artist
- Representative/Manager for professional artist
- Arts entrepreneur, creating the new art-focused businesses of the future
The Creative Arts Enterprise program creates and enhances institutional ties to our local community, with mutual benefit to students and arts organizations in the region. The city of Fitchburg's focus on the arts as a means of renewal involves an ever-growing number of arts projects and organizations dedicated to this work, which creates opportunities for our students and program graduates alike. To highlight just a few examples of projects that represent this focus:
- NewVue Communities, a non-profit organization working on a range of community issues, runs a Fitchburg Arts Stewards Training program, and as a result the city now has an active and growing Arts Stewards community group
- The BF Brown / Fitchburg Arts Community project involves a large number of live-work artist studio spaces across the street from the Fitchburg Art Museum
- The Community Mural Institute, resulting in three large-scale murals in Fitchburg’s downtown neighborhood, each developed in collaboration with a specific community group to honor their work
- The City of Fitchburg’s recent NEA-funded Main Street Arts Project, commissioning public art pieces for four key intersections downtown
Still have questions? We're here to help!
We know you're busy, so we've given you a few different options to conveniently get the answers you need. You can…
- Email admissions or call 978.665.3144
- Make an appointment to speak to an advisor
- Email an advisor with program questions
- Attend an Information Session
- Watch a webinar