icing
Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us
fantastically illustrated ~ understand how to motivate different skills
talk by Dan Pink, illustration by RSA Animate
Cockpit Arts: How to write an artists’ statement
by Abigail Branagan
As a creative practitioner one of the most useful marketing and communication tools you can have is an artists’ statement. This is for a number of reasons. Although people will interact and interpret your work in their own way, they will still want to find out why the piece was made and about you – the artists/maker. This is particularly true of potential customers!
Artists’ statements are often a standard requirement when applying for grants, residencies, selected fairs, events, exhibitions, etc. When you submit an application it may be assessed by people who are unfamiliar with your work therefore your statement provides useful context and also helps support any visual documentation you provide.
When you’re selling your work through a shop or gallery your statement provides useful information to sales staff who are dealing with customer enquires. The information from your statement can also be useful background for journalists, curators or writers who are interested in covering your work.
Lastly it also provides you with a valuable opportunity to reflect on your work. By writing about your practice, you have the opportunity to experience and evaluate your work from different perspective.
So where do I begin?
As writing an artists’ statement is quite a personal and, often, reflective exercise don’t feel you have to start writing your final statement right away. Ease yourself into the task gently by doing a few practice runs. This way you feel that you can write whatever you like, without being under pressure!
Here are my top tips to help you along the way:
- Think about the audience for your statement
Are you writing for people who are familiar with your work or those who have never seen it? Are you writing for the general public, a selection panel, or a potential buyer? Is the statement for a website, a catalogue, exhibition, etc? You may need to alter the tone or length depending on who you statement is targeting. - Read what other artists and makers have written.
Looking at other artists’ statements is a great way of deciding what you do and don’t like and helping you to determine your style of writing. - What information should be included in an artists’ statement?
It’s your statement – so you get to decide what to include. For your statement to prove a useful tool, however, you should consider including material that addresses the following areas:
a. Purpose: What do you make and why do you make it?
b. Materials/medium: What materials do you use and how do they reflect the above ‘purpose’?
c. Inspiration: What inspires or drives your practice, what are your current areas of interest? - Do you use first or third person?
There is no rule about whether to write your statement in the first or the third person however, third person is more commonly used. It can often be easier to write in the third person as it can help you to create ‘distance’ between you and your work. - Avoid jargon
Try to keep your language clear and simple, and vary your sentence length to add interest. - Try to keep your language positive, not tentative.
Avoid using words and phrases like “I am trying to …”, “I hope to” as this could read as if you feel your work has not been successful. - Your statement is not a complete biography
Avoid too many chronologies of events, unless they are really relevant or if you have been asked to provide the information. - Write first, edit later
While you are organising your ideas, don’t worry too much about spelling, grammar, punctuation or layout. Writing and editing are two very different processes, and best undertaken separately. - Less is often more
After your first draft go back to your statement and edit out any waffle and repetition. - Use a spell-checker
However don’t forget to read through for spelling, grammar and punctuation mistakes that might have been missed. - Ask someone else to read it through: ideally, you need two people to read it for you – one who knows your work, and one who doesn’t. The person who knows your work will be able to tell you if you have written a statement that does it justice, and the person (who doesn’t) will be a good test of how clearly your statement communicates to new audiences.
Once you have written one generic statement that you are happy with use this as a basis to create several other statements that vary in length and purpose so that you have them to hand for all your marketing needs.
We regularly run workshops on marketing and sales If you want to find out more check our Making It workshop and seminar programme.
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About the author:
Abigail Branagan is the Business Development Manager at Cockpit Arts and provides specialist training and one-to-one coaching in the areas of marketing, selling, and manufacturing. She has first-hand experience of the market for craft having been Marketing Director for a critically acclaimed retail space in central London. Abigail has also worked for support organisations such as Hidden Art and the Crafts Council where she project managed Collect 2006. She regularly writes about design and craft for industry magazines and resources.
Are your sketchbooks prisoners of logic?
Do you use your sketchbooks to set aside random ideas in order to concentrate on more resolved work, or are your sketchbooks the goal in themselves?
Over at the Design Observer Observatory, Designer Jessica Helfand discusses how she let go of the notion of clarity in her sketchbooks and became more productive. Read the article here.
Inspiration for the weekend ~ Walk with Giants
Walk with Giants is a series of audio walks on the Johnnie Walker website. You can hear Richard Branson, Ranulph Fiennes, Ozwald Boateng, John Hegarty, Lewis Hamilton & Amyr Klink talk as they walk, retracing their journey through life.
Worth downloading and listening to as you stroll around the same locations ~ especially:
John Hegarty recaps his advertising career as he strides around Soho. How he was young and angry, the connection between fear and inspiration, what his advertising philosophy is and what he learned about business from playing tennis.
Ozwald Boateng walks along Savile Row covering his learning experiences and design values, surviving closure and inspirational clients.
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Enjoy the weekend and let us know where you favourite places are to think… post a comment below
Win a place at Cockpit Arts incubator
Cockpit Arts has new award to help an established designer-maker grow their business, profitability and profile. The recipient will be awarded a place at a Cockpit Arts incubator for a year, with a package worth £4,000. This includes studio space, business and professional development services including on-site coaching as well as a range of selling and promotional opportunities such as Cockpit Arts Open Studios events.
Call for entries is open until 1st March 2010. You can download an application form here.
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TIP: the reports in MyCake will be useful for demonstrating your business finance
MyCake subscription offer – free business consultation
It’s thrifty season at MyCake and we’re offering you a free one-to-one financial management consultation worth £100 if you sign up for an annual subscription before 31st January 2010. You don’t have to wait for your free trial to end or for your renewal date.
If you’re making plans for 2010 or reviewing your business then this offer is perfect for you. Your meeting will be with our own Sarah Thelwall, business development consultant for the creative industries. Sarah’s particularly keen in ensuring that folks match their business models to their personal business style and to the stage and structure of growth they intend to reach.
The offer is open to all users who wish to take out an annual subscription. The subscription will start from your normal free trial end date or your renewal date, so plan ahead now and make savings.
Annual subscription costs £137.50 excluding VAT*
Here’s how to get the offer if you’re a paying user of MyCake
Sign into your account and click ‘Extend Subscription’ on the dashboard, then select ‘annual payment’. If the extend subscription button is not visible on your dashboard it’s because you’re not within 3 months of renewal so instead email marion@mycake.org and she’ll take you through it manually.
Remember that you get a month free when you choose to make an annual payment!
Here’s how to get the offer if you’re new to MyCake, in your free trial or if your trial has expired
Sign up for an account and arrange a payment before the 31st January 2010
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* Tip: subscribe or renew before end of 2009 to make a greater saving before the VAT changes up to 17.5% on 1st January 2010.
A note for monthly subscribers, your monthly payments will increase from 1st January 2010, due to the new VAT rate.
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And here’s a sneaky heads up - subscribe to the blog today to be sure not to miss our festive Christmas giveaway later this month.
A Christmas dinner for female internet heroes
We went to the BIG Kitchen Dinner that the Next Women organised for Women’s Enterprise Day last week and we can’t recommend them highly enough. The next opportunity is on 16th December and it’s booking up fast…. read the piece and find the link to book at the bottom.
What do creatives read for business insight?
Just one of those questions that one asks occasionally! We thought we’d ask our network of Creative Entrepreneurs and see what they said and share it with you, afterall if there’s no obvious answer we’re probably all on the hunt for useful sources of business insight, answers to questions about how to run your business better etc.
Here’s a selection so far, comments on the back of this postcard please!
- paper based magazines – what’s coming up here is mostly about creative inspiration – Elle Deco, Icon, Wallpaper, Living Etc – with a smattering of locally published stuff such as The Crack (Newcastle based kinda like TimeOut)
- email newsletters & blogs – these are much more likely to be creative industries specific – Designweek, Design Sponge, Design Milk, Dexigner, Apartment therapy, Swiss Miss, Josh Spears, Notcot
- online forums – to answer business questions – interestingly the etsy forums are coming up quite high on the list as it is creatives answering each others questions and making recommendations of products, services and solutions
- social networking sites – again some creative industries specific ones here – everycreative, mydeco, interiors talk, t-shirts & suits
Interestingly no-one’s mentioning business books and few of the trade press are getting a mention either!
We’ll add to this post as answers come in so do share your thoughts 
Why send Christmas cards to clients?
There should be a clear reason shouldn’t there? I’m hoping it’s not just a case of following tradition.
Christmas cards in a business setting are an opportunity
- to make it personal
- to remind your clients that they matter to you
- to get your brand in sight of others
- to show off your talent as a bunch of creatives
Buying someone else’s card design or sending the Christmas round robin email doesn’t quite make the cut as a good alternative to your own work.
This year have a crack at designing your own or commission something unique. It’s up to you whether your brand, products or services appear in the image on the front of the card. Done well it works a treat (humour often plays a role here), done badly it’s just a bit naff – I mean, seasonal Google logos work well but few others pull it off. We’ve worked with Rose and the crowd at Workshop letterpress.
I for one give pride of place to the handmade artists’ cards I receive and all the really well designed ones and I try to hide the cheap nasty ones at the back somewhere. If your clients do this too where do you want to be? Complimented and at the front or forgotten at the back?
design stirs lust but high-class customer service lasts
Following on from Sarah’s hotel experience in ‘Don’t over promise, do over deliver’, I spotted Graham Button’s guest post for Fast Company about his designed experiences. After being let down by a different design led hotel he said goodbye - “They blew it, by paying the stylist more than the staff. All form, no function. Bad design.”
Are our designed experiences letting us down? Have you designed your customer service delivery with the same care and attention as your product? Are you designing for profit? Let us know what you think.
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