Creating Agency for Artists: Enabling the Critical Skills That Lead to Financially Rewarding Arts Careers
In what other industry are people trained without a pathway towards a rewarding financial career? Artists are the visionaries, idea generators and makers. Many choose their profession based on passion. They develop their skills to be inwards looking, self-reflective and able to perceive the nuances in the world around them. They tell our stories and enrich our lives. Artists train in creative and technical proficiency, mastering their skills over years. However, most artists are not educated in commerciality, in entrepreneurship, or indeed, encouraged to have agency over their own careers. It would be inconceivable for a lawyer, a nurse or an electrician to remain unpaid for their work, but for many artists, this is the norm. Here, we propose a solution, where more artists have the skills to design and execute an art practice that provides them with reliable income and empowers true creative agency.
Artists are more than creators; they are entrepreneurs shaping their own journeys.
To truly succeed in the modern economy, artists must transcend the conventional role of solitary creators, who hand over the reins of their careers to agents, including public funders, grants providers, galleries and online marketplaces. Instead, embracing entrepreneurial principles and understanding how to thrive in a competitive and ever-changing environment enables artists to develop financially rewarding creative careers, where artists hold the power to shape their own journey.
This shift requires a departure from the status quo, where many artists grapple with limited autonomy, lack of business knowledge, and struggle to design a fulfilling career. They often support themselves in other careers while working on their arts in an ad hoc fashion. By enabling artists with critical business skills, they will be more able to address some of their current challenges, including overcoming a lack of reliable income and designing a sustainable career that is right for them.
We have a right to fair and just remuneration for the work we do. Our work is a vocation — we do it because we love it — but that is also true for electricians and for nurses. Yet we would think it intolerable that an electrician or a nurse is not paid a fair wage. I cannot remember the last time an electrician came to my house solely because he or she was ‘passionate’ about their work.
Christos Tsiolkas and Clare Wright, Revive 2023
For artists to achieve agency over their careers, they need entrepreneurial skills that are specific to arts careers, delivered in language that artists will relate to, and using cases studies relevant to their practice. Traditional business training is not enough as artists have a different starting point to other entrepreneurs. Necessary skills for artists include understanding their unique competitive advantage, understanding their niche and customer, designing marketing strategies, developing commercial channels, and effectively managing their finances. There is already a clear entrepreneurial path that other artists have taken towards commercial success. There is an opportunity to enable artists with these critical skills so they might design their own career path.
Empowering artists: research backed arts business education
In 2022, Sarah Daly, a professional artist, entrepreneur, and PhD researcher conducted a global research project investigating how artists created financially rewarding careers. The Artist Success Project focused on artists earning between US$60,000 - $250,000 per annum. Critical skills areas that empowered artists that were revealed in the research were:
Be a Business Owner: Successful artists are more likely to see themselves as business owners and set up the systems and structure to support their arts practice.
Know Your Unique Offer: Successful artists are more likely to understood why their art was unique and valuable in the market and could easily articulate it.
Know Your Ideal Art Buyer: Successful artists are more likely to know the specific audience that are most likely to buy their art, and know how to attract them.
Invest in Your Email List: Successful artists are more likely to curate an email contact list of potential art buyers and communicate with buyers on a regular basis.
Price For Your Niche : Successful artists are more likely to benchmark and price their art correctly to appeal to their market.
Marketing for Art Sales: Successful artists are more likely to perform marketing activities with a direct connection to sales.
Developing Business Relationships: Successful artists are more likely to use commercial relationships to grow their audience and art sales.
Creating Your Career Vision and Plan: Successful artists are more likely to have a clear vision and plan for their art business, and are confident in implementing it.
Responding to insights from the Artist Success Project, Sarah Daly has designed an educational program specific to visual artists. Over 500 students from locations including Australia, California, Germany and the United Kingdom are already applying knowledge from her research.
Find out about the Full Time Artist Formula online course.
Learn how to Discover Your Ideal Art Buyer
Understanding who will love and want to purchase your art is fundamental for designing your art career. If you are an artist and want to start investing in your career, here is a FREE WEBINAR that you can access to learn more, including:
Learn how to discover who other artists you respect are already selling to
Visualise and articulate who your Ideal Art Buyer is
Be able to describe your Ideal Art Buyer and target them in your art marketing.
Be confident in your next steps towards success as a Professional Artist.
The Discover Your Ideal Art Buyer webinar is under 60 mins, is action based, delivers real outcomes, and includes a worksheet that will help you focus on what counts.