Last month, the Arizona Commission on the Arts received an email with the following subject line:
Arizona Commission on the Arts seed grant to see 12X rate of return!
The email was from Linda Essig of Arizona State University’s PAVE Program in Arts Entrepreneurship. In the email she described how she was able to leverage the grant her organization received through our Arizona Art Tank funding initiative to secure additional funding for their Arizona Arts Entrepreneurship Toolkit project. Linda Essig doesn’t just teach Arts Entrepreneurship, she lives it.
Now Linda has launched an online survey designed to gather information about the market for her toolkit and to help guide its development. With additional funding rolling in and market research underway, we thought it was a good time to check-in with Linda on the project’s progress.
Describe the Toolkit project in 2 sentences or less.
The Arizona Arts Entrepreneur Toolkit is a comprehensive collection of digital tools artists can use to support the business side of their creative practice. The toolkit will put resources, step-by-step instructions and templates (e.g. budget templates) in one place, saving artists hours of work surfing the internet trying to find the information they need.
Where are you now in the process of developing the Toolkit?
We are in a phase of planning and development, which is supported by the Art Tank funding. In order to create the most effective product for Arizona artists, we first want to survey them to see what they need and want in such a product. From there, we will build out the various areas of the kit, such as budgeting, social media tools, public art commission process and so on. Over the summer there will be a lot of collecting of information and then writing the instruction and how-to guides that are part of the toolkit. We are fortunate to be receiving a grant from another organization that will enable us to bring the toolkit into production about a year from now.
Both Arizona Art Tank and PAVE reflect what might be interpreted as a major paradigmatic shift among artists in the United States in response to a changing cultural landscape. Do you feel this is an “evolve or die” moment for American artists?
I’m of the belief that artists are natural entrepreneurs and always have been. They create something unique and put it out into the world, which is the essence of entrepreneurial action. So I don’t think there is a paradigmatic shift in that sense. What there is–is a national shift away from centralized foundation and public funding that reached its peak in the 1970’s. There been a slow decline in such funding that became precipitous during the recession. The Pave program pre-dates the recession and is premised on the assumption that artists can create their own opportunities. Doing so, however, requires a bit more knowledge of the business structures underpinning the process of bringing art to audience (or “market”). Part of Pave’s unstated mission is to demystify the business processes that support the arts–that’s what the toolkit is trying to do.
The toolkit you’re assembling will be full of valuable resources all gathered together in one convenient package, but is there one tool already “on the market,” so to speak, that you would advise every artist to acquire immediately and add to their personal tool-kit?
I think the most important skill artists can build is excellence in their own discipline. Without really great art, no amount of business acumen will make it better art (although we can probably all cite examples of work that we don’t personally like that were financially successful). I like Howard Gardner’s definition of good work–work that is excellent, ethical and impactful. If artists make good work and have the skills to connect that work with their audience, they will then have the means to sustain their careers.
What’s the next hurdle for the Toolkit project?
As mentioned earlier, we’re conducting a survey of Arizona artists so we can make the most useful toolkit for them. It would be really helpful if your readers could go to this link and spend just five minutes answering our questions.
Our thanks to Linda for sharing her thoughts and insights. Whether it’s a $7,500 seed-funding grant or five minutes of our time, we think PAVE is a worth the investment!
* Photos by Mike Williams
