From painters to playwrights to puppeteers, many artists have day jobs but dream of making their art a full-time venture. Some struggle with mixing their art, which is deeply personal, with business. Others want to hone their skills in a particular area, such as marketing.
Enter the Artist as an Entrepreneur Institute (AEI), a program offered by the presented each summer by the Broward County Cultural Division. Since 2007, the institute has graduated 377 artists, including 64 this summer, from across South Florida from the visual, performance and musical arts.
The Artist as an Entrepreneur Institute is just one of a growing number of local programs designed to
promote the creative economy. There are art incubators, artist lofts, marketing workshops, an art-education directory, networking groups and grant and micro-credit programs, all designed to spur the growth of an artist ecosystem and keep artists creating in South Florida.
Artists attending AEI spent four Saturdays — about 32 hours in total — learning about writing a business plan, creating a product mix and pricing, copyright and trademarks, business structures, identifying target markets, marketing, social media, raising capital, distribution, accounting and more. There was homework, too.
Photographer David I. Muir discovered during the AEI course that developing his brand is job one. Even though he was busy promoting his new photography book called Pieces of Jamaica, a passion for the native-born Jamaican that is years in the making, Muir says going through the program was time well-spent. He learned about putting together a business plan, received tips on nontraditional funding sources and plans to apply for some grants. But mostly he learned to think of his art as a business.
Besides promoting the book, for sale on PiecesofJamaica.net, and running DAVIDiPhoto.com, Muir has been busy helping to plan South Florida’s first Caribe Arts Fest for Sept. 28-30 at the Las Olas Riverfront in downtown Fort Lauderdale.
“I’m much more sales oriented than I was six weeks ago,” Muir says after completing AEI. “I want to be successful. It gives me tons of motivation for pushing.”
Carol-Anne McFarlane now understands her target customer better since taking the AEI course.
“My work is really direct. It can turn you off or on, depending on how open the viewers’ mind
happens to be,” she says. “The marketing expert answered the questions that I have been struggling with. I felt really encouraged. I began brainstorming new ideas and strategies for discovering my target audience.”
She is producing her “Targets” as large-scale paintings on panels. She was invited to participate in a group show at the University of Kansas City this fall. Seven paintings will be on display there and she is thinking about the different possibilities to take advantage of this opportunity.
“The biggest change I am making in my business is to think of my art making process as a more fully realized manufacture and distribution system,” says McFarlane, who also attended AEI in 2008. “I am really thinking about my next series, the Strip Club Signs, not just making the work, but finding a unique space and time to display the work. I now understand the need for a team in order to bring my
artwork to market the right way.”
Many of these AEI alumni have remained a network. Three artists from the first class — Virginia Fifield, LeeAnna Yater and Jacklyn Laflamme — launched the annual “Doing Business As” art exhibitions to promote the work of fellow AEI alumni South Florida.
Read more about the AEI program in my Miami Herald story here.
(Photos show, at top, a class during the most recent AEi in June; Photographer David I. Muir, who recently took the classes, middle photo; and Carol-Anne McFarlane, also an AEI graduate this summer, with her art, called Targets.)