Category Archives: Work With Me

Supporting Artist Projects

Posted in artist support, Collaborations, Consultancy, mentoring, Ruth Singer, Work With Me by

I’m always looking for new ways to share what I’ve learned the last 20 years or so and to support other artists to do brilliant work. I’ve recently had the privilege to work with Mandeep Dhadialla on a major commission for Leicester Museums. In the hope that this will be useful to others working on similar projects, or commissioning similar projects, I am sharing some of the experience here.

Running or working on a big commission or project can be really daunting. There are unfamiliar complexities in the planning, delivery and even in the negotiation and contracting stage with partners, museums, galleries, funders or all kinds of other people / organisations involved. Then there’s the challenge of planning and delivering participatory work, building relationships and making this all fit into the time available. The creative work often gets squeezed out in all of this development stuff and many artists find it really hard to work solo on a creative project and need someone to bounce ideas off. There are a lot of decisions in this kind of work and whether it’s your first project or your fiftieth, someone to share it with is incredibly valuable. Working alone is tough, especially on a pressured project. I know this from experience – and something I’ve learned and tried to implement in my own work is collaborating with someone or bringing in advice and support to every project, even if I have to pay for it myself.

There are constant decisions and negotiations with big projects and most of us don’t have experience of everything, the expertise to make decisions or the time to fit in all the elements of a major creative project, nor the brain space to deal with all of this whilst also conceiving and producing an original artwork or commission. It’s too much for one person. So here’s where I come in as the extra person. Over the 25+ years I’ve been in this creative sector, I’ve run projects that other people invented and I’ve also created them from scratch and seen them through from vague idea to major exhibition and pretty much everything in between. One of my greatest work joys is mentoring artists and supporting them to work in new ways, find their creative voice and do the kind of work that brings them alive.

To go back to Mandeep’s project, this one, Steam and Seeds, was a commission from Leicester Museums & Galleries to create a new piece of work inspired by Abbey Pumping Station and the associated environmental issues around water usage and treatment (aka sewage!). The finished work, three lino cuts showing the cyclical processes of water management, have been digitally-reproduced large scale and are on display at Highcross Shopping Centre now until 4th June.

I’ve been working with Mandeep for a couple of years on projects and as mentor and she asked me to help her work out what she wanted to say in the application, and in the end we decided that I would also be part of the application as project support / mentor / advisor. It’s hard to find the right job description for this kind of work and it would be different for each person and project. As I’m already mentoring Mandeep, this seemed like the right route, but I also did research into the subject matter (eg consulting my dad about sewage) and gave lots of advice and suggestions about the museum and how they work, as this is my background and specialism. Throughout the (very quick) commission process I was a second pair of eyes and ears, to share thoughts about design, complexity of construction, colours, details and other parts of the creative process. And I was there to support, advise, reign in when needed and encourage creative ambition where that was needed and overall help in whatever way was required to make this a successful project.

Ruth and I have been working together on projects and more closely, as my mentor in my artist practice for over a year. As working on an artist commission was a first experience for me, it was incredibly helpful to have the insight and expertise of someone who understands my approach and method of working. I invited Ruth to support, mentor and advice me as I navigated my way through the Abbey Pumping Station artist commission. Alongside tapping into her specialism of museums and research, her practical and logistical input into the creative side was a very welcomed balance of support helping to reign in my ideas to the very tight deadline – offering visual thoughts and encouragement when needed (during the very long days and nights). What was extra special about working with Ruth throughout all this was the “project after-care” I received. She gently reminded me that it was ok to take guilt free time off to process, absorb and recalibrate after a whirlwind three weeks; her regular, yet not overwhelming, check-ins made that easier to accept. As artists’ we often underestimate how much energy and every aspect of ourselves goes into each project and how that at the end of one feels like we come crashing down, so having Ruth on hand to kindly remind me to look after myself was equally as important as the support I received before and during the project – something I wish project funders would include in their budgets. Ruth’s holistic-like offering was spot on in every way, very little needs to be explained as an overall because she just gets it and that’s where the magic of working with her lies.

Mandeep Dhadialla

As an artist mentor my key role is to help the artist do their best work, with self-belief and focus. I try to provide a support structure to allow creative growth rather than a plan of how I think they should be doing it. For this project I was also able to have my museum hat on and thought a lot about what the museum would want out of it and what was important for them. There wasn’t chance for a lot of object-based research in this short project but that’s definitely something I would like to bring in more next time I work alongside an artist on a museum project – which I hope will be soon!

So what next?

I want to do more of this please! I have loved this way of working and I think it could work for others. I’ve already been talking to artists about me being part of their funding applications to be artist support / curator / advisor / project producer or any combination of those things. In this project I worked directly for the artist but I think this would be really beneficial for organisations to offer this kind of support to artists they are commissioning too. Organisations have a lot to do and aren’t usually able to provide 1:1 support and may not have access to specialist artist mentoring either, which is where I could come in.

My 1:1 artist mentoring is currently on pause while I catch up with other projects after being ill earlier this year but I will have new slots available from June. For the moment, my Maker Membership is a great way to get some light touch support from me and be part of a supportive creative community.

If you are looking for a creative community with ongoing support and resources to challenge your thinking and take your creative practice further, have a look at my Maker Membership. It’s a monthly rolling membership that you can join any time. I create workbooks, blog posts and videos about all kinds of things including research, creative development and reflection. There’s also a lively community who share their work and their thoughts via the members chat and we meet monthly on Zoom for a group mentoring session which is always really inspiring and encouraging. It’s £25 per month to join with no minimum term. Find out more here.

Freestyle embroidery

Posted in creativity, techniques, textile study space, textiles by

I recently got to revisit this embroidery I made a few years ago to write a post for my Textile Study Space about freestyle, no rules embroidery. The post (for subscribers) is about techniques, experimenting and finding your own style and about knowing what feels right and what doesn’t. I ended up getting very self analytical about what my stitch style says about me, which is absolutely fascinating but also not where I intended to go!

Hand embroidery is a major part of my creative practice these days. I use stitch in pretty much everything I do, but when I started (18 years ago), I didn’t have hand embroidery in my repertoire. I was actively scared of it! There were rules and patterns and the ‘right’ way to do it and none of this was appealing to me. I have always struggled with remembering complex stitch patterns and getting French knots right.  I approach hand stitch in the same way that I approach a lot of my work – I use the technique, materials and processes that are appropriate to the story I am telling. And I make it up as I go along by testing, revising, unpicking and experimenting with my needle. If I like how it looks, then it’s right.

A snippet of the post

Textile Study Space is an online home for all the masses of textile techniques, making and study of historical textiles that I have amassed over the last two decades. I share posts about my work and how I’ve made it, techniques and ideas of how to use them in your own creative work, about materials and about the historical textiles that inspire and fascinate me.  The Textile Study Space is like being in my studio and having the chance to look around at the boxes of samples and projects, textile collections and my work-in-progress. You’ll find stitch and quilting, historic embroidery, printing and appliqué and masses more. It’s just £5 a month to join.

Creative Growth online exhibition

Posted in artist support, Community, creative business, Exhibitions, Maker Membership, Work With Me by

My Maker Membership is all about creative growth – learning new things, looking at your own work in new ways, connecting and sharing with others and taking your creative practice forward. I have invited current Membership to share their work in a new online exhibition focussing on how they have grown creatively through the membership and the community of other makers. I wanted to offer members an opportunity to show their work (some have not exhibited or shared their work at all before), to have a deadline to finish a new piece and to see what the others in the group have been working on. I am so pleased and proud to present a very eclectic but highly creative and thoughtful group of works. Have a look at the exhibition here.

The online exhibition of 13 members work, plus a group project and one of my new pieces of work, is available now until the end of April 2023.

If you would like to boost your creative growth through this group and the support I offer, membership is open to all makers. You can find out more about Membership here.

Stitches That Speak Symposium

Posted in Art Textiles, History, Inspiration, My work, Narrative Threads, talks, Textile History by

On 20th April I’m giving a talk for a symposium at De Montfort University, Leicester. The programme is full of fascinating talks and presentations about biographies through objects. My presentation description is below. The event is free and all are welcome.

Emotional Repair: personal stories in cloth and stitch

My artist practice is entirely tied up with my first career in museums. Since my Museum Studies MA 25 years ago, I have been intrigued by our reverence for objects and the power of objects both to fascinate us and to embody stories. This has become a fundamental part of my research-led textile practice, in which I often work with historic garments as source or material. My work stems from my museum training of exploring objects from different angles and my passion for textiles and the stories we create around them. My artistic practice is counterpoint to museum practice by considering irreparable textiles as valuable. My work with old cloth is a thoughtful and considered interpretation of conservation and preservation methodologies and practices.

In this paper I plan to present two bodies of work which come from the same core interest in how cloth holds life stories.
Garment Ghosts is an ongoing body of work created from badly damaged and irreparable antique clothing, to which I give new life by remaking. I unpick clothing and textiles beyond repair and the fragmentary cloth is brought back to life through trapping the disintegrating garment between transparent layers, keeping the outline of the piece but also opening up seam allowances and pleats to take the fabric back to its original form.

Imprint is a commission to make a new piece of work inspired by a family textile collection, where I was asked to preserve the garments intact which presented me with an intriguing challenge of working with a textile collection without cutting anything. Unlike much of my work using garments divorced from their humans, I had a clear provenance and stories to go with these pieces. I created an archive box of small pieces telling stories of damage, use, fragility and human experience.

Register on Eventbrite

The Power of Personal Stories

Posted in Criminal Quilts, Inspiration, Maker Membership, My work by

I was thinking yesterday, on a museum visit, of the power of personal stories in heritage and in art practice. I often use objects as my source material but the stories about real, named women are what has made Criminal Quilts so impactful. It’s been important to me all the way through this 12-year long project to emphasise that the women in the photographs were real, troubled women with multiple challenges in their lives, in a harsh system which tried to remove their individuality in prison. Their stories deserve to be told and remembered. My Criminal Quilts book has short case studies of 37 women and I have added extended biographies to my website since the book was written which you can find below.

Agnes Herrity

Fanny & Ada Riddle

Harriet George

Caroline Pulley

Bridget Warrilow

Criminal Quilts is my first self-published book and it’s been a joy to share it across the world. It’s 80 pages full of prison photographs, the background to prison photography and details of the 500+ photos of women in the Stafford Prison archive. It also covers all the textiles I made up to 2018 and much more besides. It’s £16 available directly from me here.

I’ve been asked a thousand times how I got into this project and how I got from prison photographs to the quilts and other work I have made over the years. It’s almost impossible for me to define my long, slow working process, but I have been working on ways to share my research and development processes with others. My Maker Membership is designed to do this: helping other creatives who want to build in more research, meaning and connection into their practice. It’s an online group with resources and workbooks to help you define your practice and a friendly group to share and connect with. Members always tell me just how brilliant it is to find your people – others that understand what you are trying to do with your work and are properly interested in your ideas and want to support you to do your best work. I am really proud of this amazing space I’ve created and I want as many of you as possible to benefit from the support and development it offers. I have some free Find Out More events coming up soon but you can always find info here.

Let’s talk about Maker Membership

Posted in artist support, Maker Membership, mentoring, Work With Me by

I truly believe that connection and community are vital to creativity. It’s hard to be making work on your own without conversations, feedback and inspiration from others. I created Maker Membership, my online community, during the pandemic to bring makers together to share, talk and be inspired. One of the problems of running an online membership is that it’s hard for potential members to know what it’s like without joining first. I’ve been working out ways to share a bit more about the membership so that I can welcome more new members to benefit from the support and community it offers. I’ve got two live events coming up and I’ll be sharing some preview content in the next few weeks too.

Instagram Live

I’m going to be talking live on Instagram on Monday 27th Feb at 7.30pm GMT and you can ask me any questions.

Free online group session

On Thursday 16th March I’m hosting a free trial session of our monthly group mentoring session. There are 8 spaces available in this one-hour session. You can book here. I’ll be doing another one later in the year too.

Would you prefer to read about it?

You can read about the membership here on my website. I know not everyone loves a Zoom call or can access Instagram live. I’ve got a post coming soon on how to find out more and take part in the membership if you prefer to read quietly, not come to Zoom calls. All are welcome!

Any questions?

You can join either of those sessions to ask me questions or if you prefer, leave a comment here and I’ll respond.

Ready to join?

That’s great. New members can join any time, your membership runs monthly from the day you join. It’s £25 each month and you get two months free if you join for a year once you know it’s right for you.

I want to be part of the membership

Freelancing & Finance

Posted in artist support, career, Consultancy, creative business, Creative Producer, mentoring, Money, podcast, Work With Me by

I’ve been working with the brilliant coach Sarah Fox for the last few months, trying to pin down exactly what it is that I want to do with my freelance / consultancy practice. One of the issues of building this side of my work is that I don’t talk about it online very much so people don’t know that I do it! Working with Sarah has helped me define what it is that I do now and what I want to do more of, focussing on supporting individual artists and creative businesses and working with organisations to do this too. So look out for more on this!

I recorded this podcast with Sarah back in early December when I was recovering from Covid and am pleasantly surprised to find that I could string a coherent sentence together! We talk about freelancing and changing careers, about finance and selling our work, about not working for free, about different business models and about my business model based on sharing and collaborating. This conversation was incredibly useful to me in starting to articulate what I want to achieve and what my purpose is. I talked about my Money Manifesto that I was working on… that’s fallen a bit by the wayside with ongoing family things happening this winter but I will get back to it soon.

We talk about how to create and sustain a business built on sharing and being generous, about the challenge of selling our creative ideas, about working for free or not and about the issues of pay in the creative freelance world. You can listen to the podcast below or find and follow the series on your own podcast app. I would love to know what you think. You can also watch the recording on YouTube here too (or below), if you would like to see us both.

The People of 2022

Posted in artist support, career, Community, creative business, Creative Producer, Maker Membership, mentoring, podcast, Projects, Work With Me by

My review of the year through the brilliant people I’ve worked with.

I’ve been thinking about lots of different ideas or lenses to review of 2022. I don’t want to just write a list of things that I have done, or even to list the things I have made. Celebrating success is important but also I don’t want to  be one of those people who just proclaims about how well they have done as that’s neither realistic or inspiring for anyone else. Nor do I want to be someone who focusses on the negatives, because however positive a spin I put on it, it’s just gloomy and I don’t like to dwell. I have made a list of failures and successes for my own private contemplation but I am not going to subject you to them!

In order to work out what angle to use to review my year, I turned to my coaching group for their thoughts. The simple fact that I chose to discuss it with other people gave me the answer – I should review the year through the lens of the brilliant people I have worked with! 

 

Collaboration and working with other people has been a really vital part of my work for years, although it’s only fairly recently that I’ve noticed and celebrated that. The 2020 lockdown was of course a reminder to me of just how much I enjoy and get energy from creative work with others, alongside my own solitary studio practice. I was used to working with groups, spending time in other artists studios, giving talks, going to events, teaching and mentoring in person. I found the lack of conversation and connection around creative practice really hard. I was lucky in that I had ongoing and new projects that enabled me to work with other people remotely in 2020 (on WebinArt and on Textiles in Lockdown) which really made a huge difference to how I felt and what new work I could created. I pursued artist mentoring via Zoom which has become a major part of my work and something that I love, and eventually this also led to my Maker Membership where I get to work with lots of different people and support their creative practice over a long period. I also first created Gentle Goal Setting in the autumn of 2020 and ran it for the first time that winter. (It’s now revitalised into Find Your Focus which is starting this week and open for the whole of January). One of the most important goals I set for myself for 2021 was to connect and collaborate, and it has continued to be one of my guiding lights in how to develop my work.

Once I started gathering the people I’ve worked with this year, I realised it is potentially quite huge, so this is actually a snapshot of the connections and collaborations of the year rather than a detailed list, and I hope one that will be interesting for you to connect with too. 

Podcast & Making Meaning Live Gathering

The most exciting bringing-together of people that I’ve done in a long time was Making Meaning Live which ran online in July and involved three days of presentations and conversations between the artists and creatives and an audience of about 100 people from around the world in each session. It was utterly exhausting and completely wonderful. The recordings of the sessions are still available for free and there are three podcast episodes with edited highlights and the full programme here.

This year I’ve produced the second series of Making Meaning Podcast which has been a joy to make and I’ve had the pleasure of conversations with Helen Hallows, Sharon Adams, Claire Wellesley-Smith, Alice Fox, Michaela McMillan, Mandeep Dhadialla and Gillian Lee Smith, as well as a solo episode, one about my Maker Membership and three highlight shows from Making Meaning Live. Making the podcast is fantastic, I really do love getting to talk to brilliant, creative people about what they do and why they do it. The admin is less enjoyable, but really it’s worth it to have these chats and to share them with so many – which brings me on to podcast listeners as another group of people I have connected with. Podcast audience numbers this year has exceeded all expectations. There have been over 100,000 downloads this year and some episodes have hit 8000 downloads. This is really incredible and I am so honoured that this small, low-budget podcast is having such a great impact. I will be chasing for donations to make another series very soon so I hope many of those listeners will be able to contribute to making more episodes this year as I have some great people lined up. 

Groups 

I’m writing this during one of my regular Tuesday co-working groups with three freelance friends, Emma King, Claire Wellesley-Smith and Wendy Ward (all of whom have appeared on my Making Meaning Podcast in one form or another). I think I started this in 2021 but whenever it was, it has worked out brilliantly. We meet on Zoom, have a chat and then quietly on our own projects for 30-40 minute bursts before breaking for more chat and repeat. Sometimes  it’s more chat than work, but we all acknowledge how important it is to have space to talk about issues in freelancing – problematic employers, funding issues and even stuff in our personal lives which impact our ability to do the work we love. The group has been so valuable to me, both in terms of having work buddies to chat to and the accountability of co-working time so I get stuff done! I’ve made a shift this year so the sessions are focussing on writing, so here I am doing the thing, on the first day back to work. That’s the power of connecting and working with others. 

I also have a great mini group of other artist mentors & coaches with Melody Vaughan and Sharon Adams. This was Melody’s innovation, because she recognised how challenging it can be to both support others and to run a business supporting others and that sharing with others who really understand both aspects is vital. We meet roughly quarterly and talk about all kinds of practical issues, new offers we are thinking about, bounce around problems and ideas and also explore some of the bigger picture stuff about supporting others and the things we would like to learn and develop. 

Sharon is also a member of another group which started working together early this year. At the end of 2021 I applied for funding called Four Nations which aims to bring together partners from the four UK nations and others from overseas. I created a project of artists coming together to talk about artist support and also to be that mutual support group for each other.  We meet online across England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Republic of Ireland, Sweden and The Netherlands and decided to call our project Artist Support Recipes, based on the idea of recipe books which bring ingredients and methods together. The group includes Sharon Adams, Gillian McFarland, Collette Rayner and Liz Nilsson. It’s turned into a supportive and fun collective of brilliant women with great ideas and innovations about how we can be supported as artists, how we can offer support to others and how we think organisations should go about supporting artists. We have also become highly expert in creating food & cooking-related metaphors for artist support! The funding for this project comes to an end soon but the learning and the connections will undoubtedly continue and we hope to offer our findings to organisations and others who want to do better in supporting artists. Working with this group is one of the many things that has helped to cement my decision to focus on supporting artists as my main freelance / consultancy work for this year and beyond.

I also have the pleasure of monthly chats with my European business friends: coach Elin Lööw, artist Gesche Santen and jeweller Daphne van ver Meulen about business and personal development.  We met through a group programme in 2020 and have kept in touch since, and share a lot of the ups and downs of running a business and trying to fit in a life around it. These connections are so valuable and beneficial that I am even prepared to meet at 8am ! 

Working with artists

I made a decision in 2021 that I needed to be working with other artists on my various projects both to share the load and to have a creative collaboration to make it all more fun. I invited Mandeep Dhadialla to work with me on Woodgate Wellbeing last winter and then included her in my funding application for Community Spirit in the Spring / Summer. We had a great time collaborating on this project and then managed to follow it almost immediately with another one in the late summer. I supported Mandeep’s project with ArtReach in project producer role, as well as running one workshop. It was a really enjoyable collaboration and we are looking at other similar partnerships for this year. I’ve written about the project here. All of these projects have really made me think about who I work with an on what basis. Supporting artists with projects is something I really enjoy so I am formalising that work now – so if you need a producer to support an artist-led project, please do get in touch. 

I’ve also had the pleasure of spending time in person with Kathryn Parsons this year, as well as seeing her new moths work on display. We had a mini retreat together in the summer to talk about art and landscape and making a living out of a research-led practice. We are planning another retreat before too long to continue to cook up ideas for another artists group (it seems that I cannot have enough!). 

I’ve also been co-mentoring with Gillian McFarland, who I collaborate with a lot, and we took a really inspiring week’s retreat in the autumn, which you can read about here. Conversations with other artists who get what I do are worth their weight in gold (if you can weigh a conversation?!) and I am really lucky to have so many creative friends to talk to. 

Other People and connections

Alongside many brilliant artists, I’ve also had the pleasure of working with other professionals this year, firstly at the start of the year, Louise Jones-Williams, Director of Llantarnam Grange where I showed my Criminal Quilts exhibition for the last time in the Spring. Louise has been fantastically supportive of my work for a number of years and it is always a pleasure to spend time with her. We had a live-streamed conversation for the exhibition launch in February and then in March we recorded in person for my Making Meaning Podcast which you can listen to here. 

In the Spring I also worked with Josslyn and Evelyn of Peace of Green on the Woodgate Wellbeing project and we’ve been talking about doing more together in the local countryside in the coming year, which will be great. I also got to have a long chat with Jemma Bagley and see the Loughborough Wellbeing Centre which is really inspiring and another place I hope to work with before too long. I also had some great, supportive and inspiring connections with volunteers, library and venue staff and volunteer co-ordinators during my Community Spirit project in the summer. It’s a shame that was only a short project as I made some really positive connections, but that’s often how things work in the community arts field. I’ve reflected on my volunteering experience here.

I also did a great bit of research and facilitation with ArtQuest earlier this Spring, working with a group to discuss ideas about improving the equity of open call artist opportunities. I loved doing this work and working with ArtQuest and the experts they brought into the discussions, and it’s really inspired me focus on more artist support consultancy work.

I didn’t end up working with Clore Leadership this year, as I wasn’t selected for their visual arts fellowship, one of the disappointments of the year for me, although I was pleased to get through to interview. Instead I decided to work with the fantastic coach Sarah Fox to help me work out the next steps I want take in my consultant / producer / freelancer work. I started Sarah’s Lasting Impact programme in September and it’s been fantastic. With her support, and the others in the group, I have started writing more about things that matter to me and sharing my thoughts more widely. I’ve written this autumn about textiles and having something to say (which seems to have created a project!) and the start of a series about artists and money which I will continue this year. I’ve also really clarified the kind of consultancy work I want to do in the future and started making steps towards making this happen.

As always, I have loved supporting others through mentoring and it’s such a privilege to be part of the creative journey and hear about all the exciting projects happening with my mentees. Some of the people I’ve supported this year include: Jennie McCall, Tzipporah Johnston, Carol-Ann Savage, Lucie Bea Dutton, Carole Miles, Phiona Richards, Jenny Beattie and Sarah Trowsdale, and Mandeep Dhadialla whose feedback I have shared here.

And last, but not at all least, I have the pleasure all year round to work with the wonderful humans in my Maker Membership, some of whom appear in podcast episodes 17 and 24. We’ve had some great online sessions over the year as well as a small group of stitchers getting together in the spring to create work and have conversations about our feelings about the invasion of Ukraine. The group continues to be a wonderful community and such a great space to connect and share. I am so happy that I created this space and that it supports so many in their creative journey. 

If you would like to spend some time reviewing your year and thinking about what you really want to do next, my Find Your Focus course is open now. The five week course begins with a holistic and mindful review of the year to help you plan what you want more of in the coming year. The course is open for the whole of January, with new lessons released each week. Find out more here.

Find Your Focus

Posted in artist support, creative business, mentoring, Work With Me by

Neutral textile background with the words Find Your Focus Online Course with Ruth Singer 3-31 January 2023

The world is pretty distracting at the moment isn’t it? Creative practice is pretty distracting too. Confusing as well. It’s all too common to find ourselves wading through too many ideas and not knowing which to concentrate on, or struggling to know what ideas are worth pursuing. Running a business and keeping moving forwards with creative practice is even more complicated. There are so many potential projects, ideas, collaborators, ways of marketing, types of selling, different products and oooh that new shiny thing over there that is tempting us away from the stuff we’ve already started.

Do you struggle to find the right focus for your creative energy? Keep trying different things in the hope that this is the ‘right’ one? Want to do all the things and not concentrate on just one at a time? I really do understand. My early years in creative practice were pretty messy. I wanted to do everything even though I didn’t remotely have the time. I wanted to experiment and try new things but I also wanted, desperately, to be proficient and skilled and really expert in one thing. It’s all a bit much.

What I’ve learned in the 17 years I’ve been doing this is that focus is absolutely vital in making a success of a creative practice or business. You can’t do everything. And the thing(s) you focus on have to be the things that are most important to you, not what someone else told you should do.

That’s really what Find Your Focus is all about, honing in on the things that really matter, the stuff you love and want to put all your energy into, not what distracts you and that you think you ought to be doing instead.

Work at your own pace with this online course

I’ve created Find Your Focus from my Gentle Goal Setting course, workbook and live workshops over the last couple of years. After working with lots of people and doing the gentle goal setting process myself three times, I have refined and expanded it into a wider course looking at identifying your focus points or guiding lights for the year to come.

Over five weeks of online video courses, plus two workbooks, we will look at your creative core values, review the year in a realistic and gentle way, dig into what matters to you most, why you do what you do and how to single out those areas of focus that will be taking you forwards into the new year.

You’ll work at your own pace through the video lessons and workbooks but with accountability and reminders through the weekly course emails. There are two workbooks to download and keep too which you can refer back to whenever you start to lose your way. They include printable sheets of your key focus points and help you break down each focus into achievable goals and action steps.

I honestly find this process so valuable and have loved sharing it with many of you over the last few years. I hope this version of Gentle Goal Setting – now Find Your Focus will help many more in being gentle with ourselves and our plans while also achieving the things that really matter.

Find Your Focus starts on 3rd January with a pre-recorded video lesson and four more each week until 31st January. You can join any time.

If you find you want more support there will be a discount code for subscribers of the course to book 3 or 6 sessions of 1:1 mentoring with me.

Artist Mentoring

If you are feeling a bit at sea with your creative practice, I’m here to help. I’ve created my mentoring programmes after years of working with and supporting artists and really understanding the challenges of creative life. I’m on your side to help you figure out the meanings and the reasons behind your creative practice and how to move forwards. Find out more here.

Working for free

Posted in artist support, career, Consultancy, creative business, Creative Producer, mentoring, Money, Theory and debate, Work With Me by

Artists and freelancers regularly get asked to do unpaid work for organisations and institutions. In this blog post I discuss one of the common scenarios, share some thoughts on how things need to change and suggest some actions you can take.

Photo by kevser on Pexels.com

Should I say yes to unpaid work?

This is a perennial complex problem for those of us working in the arts and one I regularly want to moan about. So instead I’m giving it some thought and offering some alternatives to approaching this thorny question. Opportunities to give away your artwork, time, expertise, knowledge, potential earnings and wellbeing are bountiful. The creative world is full of ways for you to not earn any money. Finding ways to do the opposite and make an income is one of the greatest challenges of creative practice.

There are some things in the sector that pop up again and again which involve working for free and I have been thinking a lot about about how to make these decisions for yourself and how to try and make changes in the sector so this happens less.

There is no one simple answer to whether or not you choose to work for free as it all depends on:

  • where you are in your career
  • what you are being asked to do for free
  • your own financial situation
  • the financial situation of the organisation offering the thing
  • what else you might get out if it

The main thing to remember and to focus on is exposure does not pay the bills. Artists cannot live on goodwill. Those of us that have to make a living cannot keep being undercut by those who can afford to work for free. What ends up happening is those who need to earn a living say yes to unpaid things because it’s presented as ‘good for their career’ and they don’t have the confidence or leaderships skills to say no and why.

Choosing to work for free is a different thing – writing a speculative application, a proposal, responding to an open brief, donating work for a charity etc is a matter of choice. The problem really is when artists are asked to do work which really should be paid, such as running events, providing design or creative work or giving up their time & expertise to help a funded organisation do their job. It’s the latter I am focussing on here.

Over the 17 years I have been self employed, I have done plenty of unpaid work and I still chose to do some now, but only if I don’t feel exploited by the organisation and when it is otherwise beneficial for me. I choose not to work for free when it is mainly beneficial to an organisation with paid staff.

I do consultancy work for organisations on artist support and development activities as well as offering mentoring, training and business support to artists and creative businesses in partnership with organisations. Please get in touch if this is something your organisation would like to develop.

In the last few months I have been asked to be on a selection or jury panel for open exhibitions, both run by organisations with local authority funding support and salaried staff. With exquisite irony, this is exactly the thing I have been writing a report about for Artquest – for which I have been paid a professional consultancy fee. The report I’ve written is about artist Open Calls and making them more equitable and fair for artists. There’s a lot in this project about unpaid labour for artists, about paying fairly, about appreciating the value that artists and freelancers bring to an organisation, and paying them fairly for their work, including those on selection panels. So in both these cases, I have declined to do the work. In the first case I asked about fee as it was not mentioned and then declined in a vague way citing busy on the day. But more recently I’ve tackled the issue headlong and said why I can’t do the work for free, that I understand their budget restrictions etc and why it is important to value artists time.

My own work in my Narrative Threads solo exhibition 2015

In both cases I’ve felt vulnerable doing this and sad not to do the work – it’s something I would really enjoy doing, but I have to practice what I preach and not take on unpaid work in order to (hopefully) further my professional relationships with the organisations involved. That’s the issue I’m weighing in the balance every time I consider some unpaid work –

Will there be other benefits to me in doing this?

What is the non-financial value to me in this transaction?

Is there a value to me in this transaction at all or is all the value benefitting the organisation?

Why should I give up several hours of my potential income-generating time in order to benefit their open call exhibition? They are not charities. The people asking me have salaried jobs. Would they do it for free?

1292 Foodbank Visits in 18 Weeks, Ruth Singer, 2020. Hand stitch on cotton.

Its really important to remember that it’s not the fault of the person doing the asking, it’s the fault of the structures they work within who expect freelancers and artists to work for free. There is a pervasive culture of creatives working for free, an established, but unspoken rule that artists will do stuff for free because we need to further our careers and being helpful to organisations who are the gatekeepers of exhibitions and other forms of paid work is seen as necessary.

As a result of this culture of unpaid labour, it falls to me, as the unpaid artist, to explain to them, to pass on to their managers and budget-holders why they shouldn’t ask artists to work for free. If you value my professional expertise in this project, I deserve a professional fee.

I freely admit I didn’t know or think about this properly when I was employed by an organisation. I employed artists but I did expect them to travel across London and come to an unpaid meeting to discuss the 2 days of paid work. That’s not fair. I know that now and I point it out to organisations as often as I can, where they haven’t already addressed it (some have).

In conclusion, the most impactful thing we can all be doing about this is talking about it rather than hiding our frustrations and disappointments and letting bad practice continue unchallenged. We can sign up to campaigns like the brilliant Paying Artists. We can also make conscious choices about what we do for free, rather than just accepting it as the way things are. If you feel able to share, I would love to hear your thoughts about when you are asked to work for free and how you responded.

If you are struggling with this issue, I suggest starting with this: record all the unpaid work you do in a project or in the development stages of a project with an organisation. You may not do anything with this but it is so useful to have some data. If you feel able, you could share it with the organisation and just say “This is the amount of [additional] work I did unpaid in this project, if I was charging, this would be £££ value.” Making our unpaid work visible is a great first step in opening up the conversation.

This is the first in a series of blog posts tackling money issues around artist and freelance practice. I’ll be sharing more soon as this stuff is really important for us to talk about and for organisations to be aware of, and ideally, act upon. Please share this post or my social posts to try and get the message across. It would be great if you wanted to write your own post addressing some of the issues and how you approach working for free / getting paid for your professional expertise. I would also love to hear from organisations about what you are doing on this issue! You can get in touch with me here.

My new Find Your Focus course starts in January. It covers core values, a realistic review of your year, looking at what matters most and then working on how to build in more of the good stuff and less of the stuff that’s not taking you forwards. The course is delivered through 5 video lessons starting on 3rd January, fresh and ready for the new year.

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