Chapter 15: Heritage Craft Entrepreneuring in ‘the Wild’: The Role of Entrepreneurial Placemaking for Rural Development

This chapter investigates heritage craft entrepreneurship ‘in the wild’, creative start-ups emerging within a rural context in Norway and the UK. The research asks how entrepreneurs accomplish heritage craft entrepreneuring. To answer this question, we apply relational ontology, conceptualising entrepreneurship as the ongoing accomplishment of entrepreneurial activities, labelled entrepreneuring. We compare two rural heritage craft businesses: Running a spinnery located on a farm in a valley in Norway and a tweed-based textile creating organisation, co-located with other artisan entrepreneurs positioning in a community-led craft heritage building in the United Kingdom. Both entrepreneuring settings employ heritage craft in their businesses and engage in various forms of collaborations and placemaking in their creative entrepreneuring. This chapter unpacks three facets of artisan entrepreneuring through the lens of placemaking – connecting, organising, and co-developing in rural settings. We contribute to the entrepreneurship-as-practice and creative entrepreneurship literature and highlight the implications of placemaking for rural development.