Consultants report that the hardest part of helping artists and arts managers create a strategic plan is getting them to answer the questions: ‘Who are you?’ and ‘What do you do?’
Why is that? Why can’t we tell our audiences, patrons, customers, funders, or collaborators who we are in five sentences or less? Because we are [...]
“…the process itself is more important than the plan.”
- Jeffery Timmons, New Venture Creation
One of the key objectives for our professional development program is to help artists achieve success through manageable, persistent, strategic and consistent action; without sacrificing their spirit. Basically, we want to help you learn how to design a strategic plan for your [...]
Recently, I’ve been conducting interviews with mid-career artists to locate some consistent practices that have worked for career advancement and business development in the arts. Interestingly, negotiation continues to surface as a critical skill and unfortunate pitfall.
“Artists have to learn business, because they are constantly negotiating…you are constantly negotiating with business people…it’s harder for [...]
The majority of respondents to our March 2008 survey agree, business is a necessary and mandatory part of any artistic career. However, many of our respondents also expressed some resistance to actively learning business concepts and skills. Here is a summary of the comments:
Business skills are counter-intuitive for artists
Directly selling your art erodes humility, [...]
“As a photographer, I am actually a small business owner as much as I am an artist.” – Anonymous Survey Respondent
In our quest to better understand the professional development needs of artists, we went beyond the survey/interviews and researched various external sources to find out what artists, arts managers, and industry experts were saying about career [...]
More results from our 2008 national survey aimed at better understanding your professional development needs. So far, we have discussed the universal and career phase needs of artists. Now, I’d like to quickly touch on some of the generational needs we discovered in our research.
Generation Y (born between 1980-1994) - The older half of Gen [...]
As mentioned, we conducted a national survey and a series of phone interviews to better understand the professional development needs of artists. In the last post, I outlined the most common needs expressed by your peers. In this post, I thought you might be interested in understanding how your needs varied by career phase.
Emerging Artists [...]
In March 2008, we conducted a national survey and a series of phone interviews to better understand the professional development needs of artists. I thought you might be interested in what your peers described as their needs, wants, and desires. Sometimes it makes us feel better to know that we are not alone; that others [...]
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