business skills – Luann Purcell Jennings

I’ve just started reading The Death Of The Artist: How Creators Are Struggling to Survive in the Age of Billionaires and Big Tech by William Deresiewicz (order here in paperback after 2/1/22 – DON’T get it from Amazon for the very reasons he writes about). It’s an amazing and terrifying book. For a moment I thought, “He’s saying everything I want to say so maybe I don’t need to write my book after all.” But I quickly realized that (1) not everyone would want to read his 368 pages and (2) my book is for a different audience anyway. So I’m still writing it. But I plan on quoting him extensively. 🙂

Deresiewicz’ premise is that the basic financial exchange between audiences and artists has been broken by the internet, and (among other results) the common assumption is now that the arts are supposed to be free (or at least cheap). There are many reasons why that is an incorrect and dangerous assumption, but the main one is that art is not, and never will be, free TO MAKE. So why should it be free to consume?

Here’s an excerpt from the (very rough) first draft of my book, about #1 of the three points in Luann’s Arts Business Paradigm. Since this paradigm is so much at the core of everything I talk about, I will get to #2 and #3 eventually here in the blog. But I tell my students that, even if they remember absolutely nothing else that I ever say to them, remember:

Art is not free.

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Ruby Lerner, founder of the arts funding organization Creative Capital, has written a terrific post called “The Art School of the Future” on Creativz, my new favorite arts blog. I encourage you to read the whole post, but here’s a highlight:

“If I were designing The Art School of the Future, I would integrate art theory, practice and technical training with a professional development curriculum. This would start with strategic planning, goal setting, work/life balance, and time management. The Art School of the Future would also teach financial literacy, encouraging young artists to build good financial habits early in their lives and careers. And we would spend a LOT of time on communications — verbal communications, presentation skills, negotiating, marketing, outreach and PR. We would teach artists community engagement skills — how to reach the audiences they most want to reach, and who to partner with to make that happen. We would teach strategies for working collaboratively with other artists. Continue reading ““The Art School of the Future”” →