The Renewal of Arts, Lives, and a Community through Social Enterprise: The Case of Oficina de Agosto

Abstract

The present work investigates, with a cultural approach, the emergence of an art-based social enterprise and an art-entrepreneurial ecosystem in Southeastern semi-rural Brazil, shedding light on how local private initiatives may build stronger communities and vice-versa, in a mutually transformative relationship. The focus lies on Oficina de Agosto, a folk-art studio, school, and shop. Fieldwork design combined ethnography and art-based research. The thick description of the phenomenon is organized under the acronym P.L.A.C.E., a conceptual framework describing five principles of community development. The contributions of this study are three-fold: (1) it illustrates how social enterprise may work as an alternative market model that could support community building; (2) it raises awareness to the possibility that social enterprises’ initial social focus may not be perennial or unshakeable, in an undesirable change that might require a both/and mindset and a patient management of paradoxes; and (3) it offers practical managerial recommendations to the SE under focus, which might be extended to other local businesses, or to SEs in other semi-rural Brazilian towns, or even in international settings that might bear economic and social resemblance to our researched context.