Artpreneurship - Projects

The Artpreneurship Research Group engages in research, educational development and broader dialogues, initiatives and advocacy work, ultimately aiming at cultural and systemic change and building connections between artists and businesses.

Our research is rooted in artpreneurial thinking and focuses on the development of an artpreneurial curriculum, widening the understanding of the unique skills that creative professionals can bring into other sectors, and exploring artistic ecosystems, such as opera, and the development of new communities and relations with audiences through, for example, virtual reality.

Artpreneurship focuses on research projects and educational development. Check the links below:

VOPUS

Artpreneurship Research Project

Luova Lämpiö co-research

Future Artpreneurship

Educational development

VOPUS (2026–2029)

VOPUS - Virtual World Opera for Participation, Unity, and Social Cohesion, is an initiative led by Aalto University alongside 8 partners from 7 European countries, supported by the European Union programme Horizon Europe. Between 2026 and 2029, this consortium that includes three opera houses (Finnish National Opera and Ballet, Staastheater Augsburg and Stara Zagora State Opera) will create together a new digital platform, OperaLand, to engage varied audiences and build communities thanks to the exploration of the performing arts in a virtual environment.

The project proposes to establish evidence on how engaging in virtual environments has an impact on wellbeing, social cohesion and diversity of citizens. Likewise, VOPUS will promote the development of artists’ digital and entrepreneurial skills by showcasing their work on OperaLand as a new distribution platform, as well as connect with new and existing audiences through the discovery of the behind the scenes of opera houses.

There will be three pilots of the platform accessible yearly during the 2026-2029 period.

More information about VOPUS? Visit the official website:https://www.vopus.eu/

Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Executive Agency (REA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

Artpreneurship Research Project (2026-2027)

Artpreneurship Research and Collaboration project (Artpreneurship Collaboration project for short) takes a more in-depth look at artist-business collaboration. Expanding from the Challenge Lab experiments conducted during the Luova Lämpiö co-research, the Artpreneurship Collaboration project continues the case study approach but takes an angle on bringing artists into businesses, studying how their presence and work within the company facilities affect the company, and how artistic approaches can both impact and point out company structures otherwise invisible to the organization, especially at the leadership level.

The company partners are Genelec Oy, Danske Bank Finland, Paree Group, and Mäkelä Alu Oy. The project is funded by The Swedish Cultural Foundation in Finland and The Finnish Cultural Foundation.

Luova Lämpiö co-research (2024-2025)

Luova Lämpiö was a Business Finland-funded co-research project (2024–2025) rooted in artpreneurial thinking. It explored ethical and sustainable cross-sector collaboration through creative agoras and a multi-case research structure.

Led by researchers from Aalto University and other partners, the project aimed to fill research gaps, develop scalable models, and promote fair, sustainable partnerships in the arts and creative industries. It was structured into four work packages that unite academia, business, creative industries, and technology to generate innovative collaboration and contract solutions.

The Luova Lämpiö co-research project was an integral part of the broader Artpreneurship research initiative. The project applied a creative and experimental multi-case research structure to develop new concepts and principles for ethical, mutually beneficial, and scalable cross-sector partnerships. As part of the Artpreneurship research, Luova Lämpiö addressed a critical gap in research knowledge on ethical and sustainable entrepreneurial collaboration with the creative sector.

The Artpreneurship research group leading the Luova Lämpiö project included scholars from Aalto University’s School of Arts, Design and Architecture, and the School of Business, alongside other university collaborators, creative sector partners, and cross-industry organizations.

The company partners in Luova Lämpiö were Taiste Oy, Moomin Characters Oy Ltd, Power-Deriva Oy, Ilmatar Energy Oy and Harjavalta Oy. Through Aalto Innovation Services connected six Aalto start-ups with the reserach project. These start-ups were Arivin Therapeutics Oy, Epicmeets Oy, CuRen, Otos Health Oy, Vacuum Wood. Tech, and Woamy Oy.

Luova Lämpiö operated as a multi-partner model, structured into four distinct work packages, each led by specialized researchers. These work packages utilized a partnering model that unites different industries, leveraging academia, creative industries, business strategy, technology, and cross-sector collaboration. This approach created a dynamic ecosystem for designing innovative partnerships and sustainable contract solutions. The generated research contributed to a two-tier outcome system, ensuring both academic impact and practical implementation in business and creative industry collaborations.

Luova Lämpiö - Novel Solutions for Cross-Sectional Collaborations Built on Artpreneurial Partnerships co-research project was funded by Business Finland and NextGenerationEU from January 2024 to December 2025.

Luova Lämpiö Challenge Labs results

LUOVA LÄMPIÖ

Project Loom
_{Power-Deriva was developing their brand, communication, and marketing, and saw the collaboration with Luova Lämpiö as a chance to gain fresh, diverse perspectives. The research case produced a short animation using music and weaving as metaphors to express Power-Deriva’s values.}

The Future Artpreneurship project (2021-2022)

The Future Artpreneurship project was a multidisciplinary and international collaboration from August 2021 to December 2022. Additionally, an ending seminar was held in January 2023 in Helsinki.

The operative project team partners were Aalto University, Aalto University Executive Education and Professional Development, Pentagon Design and Pentagon Insight. Also, the collaboration included a steering group and advisors. The project was funded by the Saastamoinen Foundation and Nordplus Horizontal.

During the project, five key unmet needs were discovered:
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1. translating & communicating skills,
2. varied demands of collaboration,
3. the need for the “right” economic skill set,
4. preparation for work-life realities, and
5. staying up to date in constant change.

The research project also mapped future topics for learning solutions.

The Future Artpreneurship project sparked some of the core reserach themes that were carried out in the Luova Lämpiö co-research project.

Read more about the FA project on the Aalto EE's website: https://www.aaltoee.fi/en/artpreneurship

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External Collaborations: New European Social Media course (Spring 2026)

In this course, a limited number of students were selected to represent different schools and disciplines from Aalto University and the University of Helsinki. Aalto ARTS and an industry specialist with a leadership background at a famous Finnish technology company, Nokia, were the main facilitators of the course. Other specialists were from YLE, Sitra, the National Defence Academy, Sitra futures studies, a cybersecurity firm, a researcher in neuroscience and brain health, and industry investors and founders.

Through EU-agenda-inspired challenge-based projects, students addressed frameworks such as national resilience, youth brain health, privacy and quality of childhood while working on the course's main challenge: How to create social media that is safe?

The course featured a one-week intensive course, including a site visit, mentoring and co-creative teamwork, providing valuable experience in real-world industry collaboration. Students gained practical skills in prototyping a service plan ready for production, presented their plan to a multidisciplinary team of experts, expanded their networks, and contributed to prototyping an idea for a social media service platform that is safe and responsible for its users.

External Collaborations: Future Sustainable Solutions 1 (Autumn 2024) & 2 (Autumn 2025)

In the first implementation of the course, External Collaborations: Co-creating Futures Solutions, in 2024, the students collaborated with Moomin Characters Oy, Rights and Brands, and Taiste Oy to address ethical and sustainability challenges in industry practices. In the second implementation of the course in 2025, External Collaborations: Future Sustainable Solutions, the core structure remained similar to the first version, but in addition to the sustainability challenges, the course offered a possibility for a paid internship, in case the projects developed during the course would expand after the course had ended.

Through team-based projects, students analysed company processes, identified key issues, and developed innovative solutions for sustainable transformation. The course featured two intensive workshops and co-creative teamwork, providing valuable experience in real-world industry collaboration.

Students gained practical skills, expanded their networks, and contributed to fostering a more responsible and sustainable future.

Artpreneurship 1 & Artpreneurship 2 pilots (2025-2026)

The Artpreneurship 1: Understanding Business & Communicating the Value of Your Skills is built around a real-world collaboration with an external company partner. Across seven sessions, students explore business as an ecosystem, strategy in practice, company functions, from brief to proposal, the value of artistic creativity, offer-making, and persuasive communication. The course features a client simulation where student teams present collaboration proposals to the management of the partner company.

The course is targeted mainly for bachelor's and master's students in ARTS, and pedagogical approaches include individual reflection, interaction and peer learning in the form of group discussions, presentations and pitching simulations.

Artpreneurship 2: From Creative Potential to Entrepreneurial Ideas targets mainly master's students in ARTS. During the course, the students will learn how to develop a loose, early-stage creative idea into a coherent business concept with commercial and societal potential.

Through individual projects, interactive assignments and an Artpreneurs' Gala at the end of the course, the students will explore the journey from idea to business through key content areas such as imagination and self-reflection, creativity and value creation, innovation and experimentation, business basics, Go-to-market and storytelling, and understanding the broader impact of creative entrepreneurship and artpreneurship in society.

The course features guest speakers from different fields for creative work; in Spring 2026, artists, an architect, a lawyer and a manager shared their insights, and the steering group for the course collaboration consists of experts in business management, finance, and law.

Course pilots were conducted in Autumn 2025 and Spring 2026, and the second round of Artpreneurship 1 & 2 courses is in active curriculum for Autumn 2026 and Spring 2027.