Last week I attended a FREE seminar on Artistic Entrepreneurship sponsored by the Staunton Creative Community Fund and the Staunton Augusta Arts Center. The seminar, which was held in the beautiful R.R. Smith Center, was very well attended--I was sitting up front so didn't get a head count, but all the chairs in the room were filled and I'd say there were at least 40 people there.
It turned out not to be terribly relevant to my current work. As a fiction writer, the extent of my entrepreneurship is trying to get people to buy my book, and while that does require some creativity, it doesn't involve a lot of the things that the seminar discussed, like setting up an LLC, having studio insurance for visiting patrons, developing a business plan, hiring employees, etc. I could imagine one day having a writing-related endeavor that might involve some or all of these topics (I've already experienced the writer's consignment arrangement with retailers that bears some similarity to the deal artists and craftspeople sometimes enter into with gallery owners), but not at the moment.
Still, it was interesting, and the material was relevant to almost everyone else who was there--craftspeople working in every conceivable medium, painters, sculptors, designers, gallery owners. Quite a variety. Thanks to SCCF and SAArts for hosting the seminar!
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