The present study entails an analysis of the early measures and policies developed by five smaller and medium-sized European countries (the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovenia, Switzerland) in response to the global COVID-19 pandemic. In order to enable such a comparison, data was collected and categorised on government measures that could affect cultural and creative organizations and workers, issued by departments as diverse as economy and business, social affairs, education, and culture. By using interpretative argumentative techniques, and consideration of selected context factors, possible explanatory patterns of how and why countries have implemented which types of measures are discussed. The findings highlight that early policy measures have been developed against the backdrop of a complex interplay of public policy priorities over the last years. In these priorities the intensity of state involvement, the economic situation before the pandemic and the propensity of self-employment in society are key to understanding the adoption of specific policy measures across countries.

It is still a matter of dispute whether entrepreneurial ecosystem (EE) frameworks can be confined to a single industry in isolation, let alone whether such a sub‐ecosystem approach can be employed in a domain that is distinct from the high‐growth industries usually scrutinised in the literature. This article seeks to apply a systemic and dynamic EE perspective to the development of cultural and creative industries (CCIs) within an urban context, with a particular focus on how urban development interacts with the sub‐ecosystem of this sector over time. An in‐depth case study in the city of Porto (Portugal) revealed that existing EE frameworks are well‐suited to research on creative sub‐ecosystems. It also enabled us to flesh out associations with other entrepreneurial activities and policy domains within the city. We highlight the prominent roles of local culture and policies when the context is resource‐constrained: policy led to an upward, positive spiral that moved Porto’s EE in relation to CCIs into a growth stage, during which it began to interact with, and faced resource competition from, high‐tech entrepreneurship. We argue that having an integrated view of the dynamics of entrepreneurial sub‐ecosystems and urban affairs can improve what is understood of productivity and causality in entrepreneurship.

One of the most-discussed tensions in the cultural and creative industries is that between art and commerce, creativity and business, the artistic and the economic logic. This paper investigates in how far this discrepancy manifests itself in young musicians’ career identities. Based on extant qualitative research, we distinguish between bohemian and entrepreneurial career identities. The goal of our study is to understand whether the two compete (stand in tension) or cohere (harmonise). We address this in a quantitative manner, by surveying 146 music students from two Dutch music schools. An exploratory factor analysis reveals three components of musicians’ career identities, which pertain to ‘open-mindedness’, ‘career-mindedness’ and ‘money-mindedness’. The former two unite bohemian and entrepreneurial career identity items. None of the components exhibits exclusively bohemian career identity items. This leads us to conclude that young musicians do not necessarily experience tensions between bohemian and entrepreneurial imperatives. Rather, they hold career identities that combine bohemian and entrepreneurial elements in a synergetic manner.