Artful Entrepreneurship:
Ignite Your Creative Business
6-WEEK ART BUSINESS INTENSIVE
If you’re an artist, you have a business. We want you and your art business to thrive. In this workshop, artists across the disciplinary spectrum will meet over six weeks to identify our values, strengths, and goals and translate that into a healthy business model. This workshop is ideal for the emerging or established artist or cultural producer who is ready to level-up, make a better living, pay off debt, or pursue new income streams.
In this virtual workshop, you will:
Identify & affirm your core values, mission & goals.
Gain confidence & skills in the business side of your art practice.
Clarify & articulate your business model.
Share knowledge & build supportive relationships with other artists.
Rhizomatic Arts is rooted in the understanding that exchange and partnership on a person-to-person level produce a strong, sustainable community, with each of us personally invested in the success of our peers. We exist to counter paradigms of scarcity and competition with a culture of abundance, connection, and interconnected growth. Our credo is “Work independently, not alone.”
Meets Thursdays from 10am-12pm PT on Zoom. Some content will be recorded, but live participation is important for this Zoom workshop.
Time commitment: Expect to spend 2 hours/week in class, and 1-2 hours/week reading and completing exercises from the workbook. You will also prepare a short art business pitch to present in week 6.
PROGRAM OUTLINE
WEEK 1 - March 14
Welcome, grounding & what to expect
Artist Presentations
“What roots you?” Core values, mission, who you serve & who serves you.
WEEK 2 - March 21
“What do you offer to your people?” Understanding your customers and the needs you fulfill.
“Your Art Business Ecosystem.” Using the Business Model Canvas to envision your art business as a system that delivers your mission to the people who need and value it.
WEEK 3 - March 28
“Marketing = connecting your people with what you do.” Using your core values, business goals, and customer understanding for more meaningful branding and promotion.
WEEK 4 - April 4
“What do you need to earn to thrive?” Personal expenses & cost setting. Understanding systemic precarity in the art world, and what we can do to thrive as a community.
Guest speaker: AMY SMITH is a dance and theater artist, educator, and facilitator. She works to dismantle oppressive structures in non-profit organizations and other groups so that artists and low income folks can achieve collective liberation. She does this through financial well-being workshops, one-on-one work with clients giving financial advice and doing tax preparation, consulting with arts organizations, co-facilitating anti-racism sessions with co-facilitators of color, and as a dance and theater educator. Amy co-founded, co-directed, and performed with Headlong, a dance theater non-profit that transformed into a community arts organization over 25 years. She left Headlong in 2019 to pursue her freelance work. She leads financial well-being workshops through Creative Capital, Assets for Artists, and in many other settings. She holds a BA from Wesleyan University and has been greatly affected by her learning as part of artEquity’s National Facilitator Training and other anti-oppression trainings. Amy wrote the money management chapter of The Business of Art: An Artist’s Guide to Profitable Self-Employment, 3rd Edition (Center for Cultural Innovation, 2020).
WEEK 5 - April 11
“Where is the $ coming from?” Earned, contributed, and hybrid income strategies.
Guest speaker: JEREMIAH OLAYINKA OJO is the Founder and Managing Director of Ilèkùn Wa, an art business advisory firm facilitating & cultivating opportunities for visual artists of African descent to create, sustain and thrive. Over the last decade, Jeremiah has become a sought after arts and culture management consultant, working internationally in artist development, gallery management, and art fair operations. His collaborative work with minority emerging contemporary artists, art institutions, corporations, and collectors has carved a pathway of connectivity for creative professionals throughout Africa & its Diaspora. Jeremiah is also the Founder of Creative Milieu, LLC, a creative professional development enterprise that sources, trains and connects creatives through an integrated online-learning and staffing agency for the Creative Economy.
WEEK 6 - April 18
Art Business Pitches
Celebration of completion!
THIS WORKSHOP IS PRESENTED BY WEST BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT CENTER.
COST: $75
ALLISON WYPER, WORKSHOP FACILITATOR
I am an artist, consultant, and arts entrepreneur with 20 years of experience providing administrative, marketing, and production support for individuals and organizations. I specialize in thoughtful professional development program design, one-on-one coaching, marketing and communications, intuitive website design, and economical administrative systems.
I am a movement-based performance artist with a background in dance, theater, performance art, and site-specific performance. Offstage, I have always been an organizer and supporter of other artists, and that has taken many formal roles, from curator to bookkeeper to workshop facilitator. I founded Rhizomatic Arts in 2014 as a way to formalize the various ways that I support artists under one conceptual umbrella, to claim my space as an independent entrepreneur, and to conceptualize that work as a creative social practice. Through Rhizomatic Arts I facilitate a peer network of artists and lead workshops on art business and collaborative creation. These programs are funded in part by my one-on-one coaching and website design services. I don't think of this work as separate from my work as an artist; it is simply another expression of my practice. I understand artists and their art businesses because I am an artist who cultivated a business model that reflects who I am and what motivates me to help others.
As Artists Knowledge Manager at the Center for Cultural Innovation (Jan 2017 – June 2023), I managed professional development training and communications, including the Business of Art program and CCI's newsletters, websites, and social media. Each year I curated and produced 20-40 workshops for artists in all disciplines and career stages. In total, I facilitated 16 Business of Art bootcamps, and oversaw publication of the 3rd Edition of the Business of Art workbook.
I have taught, produced, and facilitated workshops on art business, creative practice, experimental performance, and collaborative processes at West Business Development Center, 18th Street Arts Center, Pieter Performance Space, Women's Center for Creative Work, UCLA, USC, CalArts, ArtCenter College of Design, CSUN, UC Riverside, Silverlake Independent JCC, Space 4 Art San Diego, Emerson College, Zero1 Biennial, Hemispheric Institute Encuentro, Contemporary Calgary, and the Center for Interdisciplinary Arts Studios in Perth, Australia. I have produced programming for the Cities of Santa Monica, West Hollywood, Sacramento, and San José, California Community Foundation’s Fellowship for Visual Artists, Art Center College of Design, CalArts, CSU Long Beach, Play the L.A. River, College Art Association, Grand Park, and the Hammer Museum.
I have an MFA in Dance from UCLA, and a BA in Theatre Studies from Emerson College.