Designing, Building and Maintaining a Sustainable and Viable Creative Arts Based Practice.
To survive in a modern connected artistic environment artists need to develop awareness of every single aspect of their chosen profession.

Although they would often like to, artists do not work alone. Highly professional artistic enterprise always involves some kind of “team effort”. Creating, framing and presenting, marketing and selling Fine Art is a highly complex and specialised field. And yet artists are in a position where they at least need to know about every single aspect of their chosen profession.

You are welcome to contribute to this channel in the form of articles and participate in the various activities provided to stimulate conversation, debate and a continuing opportunity to give and receive feedback in all things relating to Designing,Building and Maintaining a Sustainable and Viable Creative Arts Based Practice

A rough guide to the kinds of topics you can expect is set out below.

To survive well in the artworld, artists continually hone their skills in these areas
• Negotiating with arts professionals in a mutually beneficial way
• Relating to people from diverse backgrounds and people with diverse abilities
• Working collaboratively with others to establish rapport and build relationships
The artworld has moved away from what was once an aura of elite exclusionism and has become more inclusive, interactive and participatory.
Artists continually work towards building the skills base to
• develop initiative and enterprise skills so that they can view issues from the perspective of others and to anticipate reactions accordingly
To achieve this artists must be able to plan and organise so that they
• gather information required for interaction with arts professionals in a logical way
• organise interactions with others in a timely fashion
These are the attributes of a self-starting self-managing entrepreneur. Arts based courses are now becoming Technoheutagogic in anticipation of the kind of self-management artists would need to develop if they are to survive in a switched on and connected world.
As self-managed entrepreneurs, artists develop and manage own professional relationships.
To do this they must continually work at communication skills so that they can:
• conduct negotiations to identify realistic solutions to contractual issues
• establish and maintain contractual relationships through regular contact
• share industry information with colleagues and peers
Artists must be entrepreneurial in nature, always seeking out ways to
• identify opportunities to maintain and enhance work performance
• seek feedback and integrate constructive advice into own work performance
• stay current by reading industry information
This may sound daunting but because they are well skilled in the area of self-management over a period of time and with specific focus a system will emerge whereby artists can :
• prioritise work tasks
• work within deadlines
• monitor own work and introduce strategies to improve performance
The nature of the artistic enterprise is always problem solving whether an artists is a sculptor, performance artist, jester or serious opera singer.
Artists love a good challenge and thus they are always moving towards refining a capacity to:
• identify and plan for factors affecting completion of work tasks within deadlines
• recognise and resolve workplace issues when implementing new technology

Resources:

Innovation Skills Industry Australia. CUVIND401A Communicate effectively with arts professionals. (2012) Au. Gov•

Innovation Skills Industry Australia. CUAIND301A Work Effectively with Arts Professionals. (2012)