Our Intern, Thomas Bagshaw, shares the insight he gained from our guest speakers at last week’s Cornerstone Arts Festival. If you couldn’t make it to our careers talks here’s what you missed…
Turning your Art into a Business hosted by Caroline Jones
This session explored turning your art into a business and becoming an entrepreneur, looking at the ‘creative graduate’ and linking this to the ‘creative business’.
Caroline made her audience aware of the relevant funding and options for starting up a business in the Art sector. The funding comes from the European Union Regional Development Fund.
Main Points
- Caroline discussed her concept of ‘The Head-Heart Syndrome’. This is where your heart wants to do one thing, but your head is telling you another. In this talk she spoke about the balance of maintaining an equilibrium.
- Caroline emphasised that Marketing and Finance are the 2 most important factors when starting a business and believes you cannot successfully thrive without these 2 parameters.
- Get Yourself a Mentor! Mentors relevant to your industry have proved very beneficial in Caroline’s experience. She advises that everyone looking to start a business should liaise with a mentor relevant to your industry.
- Personal Branding—Get yourself recognised! Getting established in the art industry seems like a key factor for wanting to succeed in this sector.
- The more established you are = the more work you will get.
What our student attendees had to say…
“I found the session very useful as I was enlightened with the key aspects of using art as part of a career. I like that all the information in the PowerPoint was given to us with all the websites and connections”
“What I found most useful was the information on how to set up an online professional profile and how this can enhance my work. I would like to set up a professional Instagram account”
