Creative Entrepreneurship Summer Program

We are looking for ambitious young innovators and entrepreneurs from all corners of the globe who are ready to be pioneers, leaders, and change-makers of all kinds. If you love music, are naturally curious and a great listener, like to question the status quo, work well with diverse groups of people, and enjoy combining disciplines in new ways, then this is the program for you. You must also be fluent in English. You don’t have to play an instrument, but you'll work closely with musicians as well as entrepreneurs, faculty at both schools, and other leading experts and educators.

Students must provide an unofficial school transcript as part of their application. After submitting the application, students will receive instructions on how to submit their transcript. English-as-a-second-language students will be required to submit a recommendation form from an English language teacher. 

This program is the product of a unique partnership between a college of contemporary music and an Ivy League institution. You will leave with a joint certificate from Berklee and the Brown University Pre-College Programs. Equally valuable, you will be given the opportunity to permanently shift how you see yourself, to see what it means to think like an entrepreneur, and to carry with you a lifelong ability to solve problems, analyze issues, and collaborate with others using your inherent creativity. 

Core principles of this program include the following:

• Good listening skills are central to both music performers and all successful innovators.

• Music ensembles are environments for learning how to collaborate.

• Improvisation skills act as channels for the nimble instincts and experimentation of successful entrepreneurs.

• The music recording process is a metaphor for synthesizing disparate parts into a comprehensive plan.

• Songwriting is used as a means of introducing the iterative and cocreation process that all ideas and products undergo, from concept to launch.

The program will include a week with the Brown University Pre-College Program on the Brown University campus in Providence, Rhode Island,  and a week with BerkleeICE on Berklee's Boston, Massachusetts, campus. The program will culminate on the Berklee campus, with student teams pitching their final projects to a panel of top musicians, entrepreneurs, and community leaders.

Please note: The following schedule is only a sample and is subject to change. You will receive personalized schedules on the first day of the program.

• Sunday: Program check-in and start date on Brown University's campus
• Monday–Friday: Program on Brown's campus
• Friday: Transport to Berklee's campus, program check-in
• Saturday–Sunday: Extracurricular group activities around Boston
• Monday–Friday: Program on Berklee's campus
• Friday: Final presentations and program closing

At Berklee, you will immerse yourself in the startup and musician mindset through daily seminars with world-renowned music professionals, innovators, and entrepreneurs from the fields of technology, business, and art. You’ll be in recording studios and ensemble rooms, on concert stages, and in other environments that will demonstrate how the work of musicians provides a model for entrepreneurs. Instruction will be enhanced by hands-on activities and visits to Boston-area innovation labs and organizations such as global design firm IDEO and the Museum of Fine Arts. To get a sense of this year's program offerings, download the 2016 BerkleeICE Summer Program schedule. 

On the Brown University campus, you will learn the fundamentals of presentation, storytelling, and narrative through lectures and workshops with Brown faculty and staff. Outside of program time, Brown's pre-college programs offer a wide variety of extracurricular activities including yoga, art, sports, and dance.

Throughout the 13 days, you and your student team will work together to design a hands-on project, using entrepreneurial strategies to devise creative solutions to community and social issues. 

Below is the proposed daily schedule for the Creative Entrepreneurship Summer Program. 

Please note: The following schedule is only a sample and is subject to change. You will receive personalized schedules on the first day of the program.

• 8:00 a.m. Breakfast break
• 9:00 a.m. Daily debrief
• 9:30 a.m. Mindset lectures with guest speakers 
• 12:00 p.m. Lunch break
• 1:00 p.m. Hands-on workshops
• 3:30 p.m. Daily reflection
• 4:00 p.m. Team work sessions
• 5:30 p.m. Dinner break
• 7:00 p.m. Extracurricular activities 

View the Creative Entrepreneurship 2016 Summer Program brochure, and learn more about the Brown Pre-College Program here.

Still have questions? Email the BerkleeICE team for more information. 

The Creative Entrepreneurship Summer Program faculty includes:

• Panos Panay, BerkleeICE and Sonicbids
• Prince Charles Alexander, Grammy Award winner
• Bonnie Hayes, chair of the Songwriting Department
• George Howard, music industry entrepreneur
• Aithan Shapira, artist and Massachusetts Institute of Technology lecturer
• Michael Hendrix, IDEO partner 
• Brown University Pre-College Program's faculty

Faculty subject to change.