Artist Inc KC Spring cohort 2022 wraps April 25
On Monday, April 25, 2022, I will be in the blackbox theatre at Charlotte Street Foundation, sharing the business of my art.
But it won’t be just me.
In the last eight weeks, I have been privileged to join with 23 other artists in “Artist Inc“. This program created by the Mid-America Arts Alliance strives to ensure that artists have the skills they need to be the businesspeople they are.
Artist INC provides cutting-edge training seminars that address the specific daily business needs and challenges artists of all disciplines face.
Limited to twenty-five participants per seminar, artists gather for one night a week for eight weeks to learn business skills specific to their art practice and apply those skills cooperatively with their peers.
— Mid-America Arts Alliance
I didn’t take a lots of Instagram-friendly pics while at this eight-week workshop. But I participated like my life depended on it.
Even though I have marketing skills and I’m fairly business-savvy, does that mean that makes it easy to translate my “business brain” to the work I do exclusively as an artist?
I had to give a great deal of time and thought during these last 8 weeks about, frankly, what I was even doing in this workshop (FRAUD!) and what my work is “supposed” to look like going forward.
In addition (on a personal note), I wondered why I was driving to Midtown every Monday while certain family issues felt like they were more important.
This is the message artists receive every day, all the time: this work is not really important.
Yet, we know from a business standpoint (strictly!) that art is at the heart of thriving towns, the best schools, the longest-lived societies, to name a few. Artists make the music and film that we identify ourselves with culturally, and they design and create everything around us.
So I guess at some point I can give up considering myself a fraud… and turn some of that marketing mindset towards myself.
I want shout outs to my co-writers, Jen, Erin and David, who encouraged the WWKC group to apply. I did, and I got in.
And a special big hug of thanks to Program Specialist Kathy Liao who listened and heard me, and encouraged my presence — whatever the hell that mess was going to look like that particular day. Each of us needs to hear that no matter what is going on in our business life, that life goes on and there’s space for all of it.
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If you visit this post after the event, I will try to ensure I share my voiced-over Workshare here, or any video that may exist. Thanks!