Anna Saschenko’s scientific contributions

A new model of cultural policy is currently being developed in Russia, under which creative and cultural industries are becoming more involved in business. Traditional cultural institutions and new creative industries seek to gain stable income, which can only be provided by commercial activity. From this perspective, a study on art university students’ perceptions of entrepreneurship is highly topical. The theoretical background of the study is based on competence theory, comprising components of entrepreneurial knowledge and experience, motivation, and business capabilities as well as the educational forms of acquiring these. The empirical part consists of an expert survey and a survey of more than 100 art university students that was organised by the Laboratory of the Economics of Culture. The findings of the study enabled us to do the following: determine the willingness of creative graduates to run their own businesses in creative industries (CI); produce information about and understanding of the main features and difficulties of business activities in creative industries from students’ points of view; analyse the entrepreneurial education provided at universities and other educational programs for creative start-ups; identify current innovations in educational institutions to reduce the gap between CI needs and the low level of business training of graduates; and discuss the main trends and objectives in designing educational models and other support measures for creative entrepreneurs in St. Petersburg.