Elaine Rumboll

The Group Exhibition for this course is planned as a collaborative fun event, with selected visual art, jewellery, ceramic art, performance art, installations and screenings on display for one evening (30 November 2007).  The thrust of the event is to have a final get-together where all delegates will have a chance to show their work to their classmates, and to increase their network.

A catalogue of exhibitors will also be loaded onto the blog soon.

See you there, Elske

Open the invite to see the details.

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copyright and copyleft presentation by Andrew Rens, Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike South Africa 2.5 licence

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I have just had the most extraordinary experience. I know some of the people at iCommons and at the request of someone interested in what we were doing in SA re the Business Acumen for Artists came up with the idea of creating an open source on-line learning log for what we were learning on the programme. So I posted a link to the blog and invited anyone interested to check out what we were doing and to comment or at the least, give their insights from other countries. I also thought it would be an amazing way of linking in the aritsts from 15 different disciplines to other like-minded individuals. This evening I saw a post that someone had made which said that they were suspicious of this and that it may well smack of self-advertising. What’s in this for me in terms of my career is beyond me but still it made me think about why Business remains suspicious of entering this open source arena. And I think perhaps, that it may well be for the exact same reason that after reading this I thought, what is the point of sharing if people are only going to look for the underbelly. At least with a going concern, you can be measured on tangible profits and realisable shareholder value. No wonder Big Business is wary of the amorpheous place of giving freely - if the repose is suspicious and laden with undirected, unsolicited vitriole. If the Open movement is really going to succeed, perhaps more care needs to be taken with understanding how to embrace the gifts that those in organised environments give freely. Until then, it will remain a place of watching uneasily from both sides.

Here is the link to the post:

http://www.icommons.org/articles/business-school-course-for-artists-to-succeed#c460

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Tell me… Are you more likely to trust a recommendation from a friend or a marketer? Are you more likely to make a purchasing decision based on expert advice or an advert?

If your answers to the above were “friend” and “expert advice”, then you probably already understand that recommendations are far more credible when they come from a third party.

It stands to reason then that you should probably consider why someone would talk about your work.

Remarkable

Your work needs to be Remarkable. Literally interesting enough that people would Remark on it. And people will tend to remark on subjects which help them connect with other people - unusual, funny, shocking, beautiful, arresting, admirable or some other quality which has a clear affect on the person who experiences it.

This is not a matter of how good your work is; it is about how much conviction it has. Conviction is more important that quality when it comes to ideas that spread.

Social Currency

It is useful to think of ideas that spread as “Social Currency” - they add value to social interactions between people.

Once your art product is a part of people’s conversations, you have earned a very valuable form of attention, for virtually no financial outlay.

Accessibility

The next question to consider is how you wish to channel that Attention. Would you want them to contact you? If so, how would they?

The answer is that once you are a part of the conversation, you need to be accessible in order for people to act on their knowledge of you.

The Web

The internet can help here. Each mention of your work online leaves a digital cookie-trail which can be tracked to it’s origin. Furthermore, each mention online remains there for other people to discover, and so you build momentum.

Blogging
Blogging is a great way to build your presence online. A blog is simply a website that you can very easily create yourself, and then add content such as writing, pictures, videos or audio to.

You can create your own blog at www.wordpress.com amagama.com or blogger.com. These free blogs will give you an address that looks like: yournamehere.wordpress.com. There isn’t much wrong with this, except that it’s longer to type.

But if you would like a cleaner domain (i.e. without the “.wordpress”), then you can get a .com here or a .co.za here. Expect to pay around R100 per month for hosting. The two hosting services I have linked to here contain a section in their control panel called Fantastico, which will allow you to easily put your blog online. If you have any  difficulties, you can contact their Support staff and they will assist you at no extra cost.

Growing Your Network

The next step after creating your blog is getting people to visit it.

Search engines like Google are most helpful for this. When people search for words related to your work, you want to be as near to the top of the Search Results as possible.

Here are four ways to improve the effectiveness of your site on Search Engines (and add value to the people who visit it):

1. Content: Write well about your subject. Explore it from many different angles. The more you talk about it, the more likely you are to use all the words associated with your subject (which can then be found by people searching for them)
2. Links In to Your Site: The more links you have to your site, so your authority online increases. You can ask people to link to you directly (especially sites with related content) or list your site on directories (such as Amatomu.co.za for blogs or a directory specifically for your industry).
Also, make sure that you link to your own site from as many other websites that you use - such as MySpace, Facebook, Flickr, LinkedIn, or any other website you’ve set up.
3. Freshness of Content: New content is often more useful than old content, especially as you comment on news or developments in your work or in your industry. In addition to this, search engines “notice” that you maintain your site well and they rank you higher as a result.
4. Amount of Content: The more content you have on your site (around a particular subject, particularly), the more likely you are to be picked up by search engines. Furthermore, your site grows into a rich resource of information about your topic.

Relationships

Remember that relationships are built over time. When you first start building your online presence, it can seem like it is more effort than it’s worth. However, as continue to engage with people through this medium so your network will expand and more people will join the conversation around the work you do. At this point, the work and time that you have put in initially will start working for you, and you will see better rewards on anything you do to build on it.

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, concerned citizens can change the world. Indeed it’s the only thing that ever has“. - Margaret Mead

By Dave Duarte, Huddlemind Labs
*The Market for Something to Believe in, pic from Hugh MacLeod, Gaping Void

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Jane Notten, MD of Rothko gave an insightful talk on the origins of PR, and tactics and methods which are applicable for practitioners today.

Below are her slides. If you can’t see them, click here to download them.

In the talk, Jane encouraged us to be proactive in managing our own PR and to consider more a way of doing business than an isolated task.

Any questions you have, feel free to pop them in the comments here.

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Two weeks ago Elsbeth Donovan spoke about this article (attached). Although not completely centred around funding the arts, there are some foundations that are listed that might consider arts programme/training programmes (present and future) that are tailored to and furthers their cause. The Mail and Guardian is advertising a supplement that is specific to funding the arts during October - so I will watch out for it and post it as soon as it happens.

Here are a few more foundations/organisations that I know of that you can also contact:

www.act.org.za - they supply huge funding to many projects. It is closed for this season, but get ready for next (2008/9)! Make sure you fill in their forms correctly and hit their deadlines otherwise they will not consider you.

www.dac.gov.za - not sure how you find out about their funding, but you can find out what they have funded here: http://www.dac.gov.za/projects/asdy.htm

www.dti.co.za - sections that might be of interest are: the SMME button (look under Integrated Small Enterprise Development strategy), and under Offerings button (look at Incentives and development finance)

www.cwci.co.za/CWCI_Grants_02.htm - an EU Conference, Workshop and CULTURAL INITIATIVES Fund. available to South Africa.

www.nfvf.co.za - only for film, look under the funding section, they will fund training, development and production

http://www.idc.co.za/Media%20and%20Motion%20Pictures.asp - they fund both motion pictures and publications - but do expect their money back.

If you get an angel investor, they can also get tax offset for any film investment they make. SARS allows this under Section 24F of the Income Tax Act. Get more info from www.SARS.gov.za

I have also asked Mike Auret to give us his list of funders - and I will post it to the b-log as soon as I get it.

If you know of any other funders, please post it up to the blog.

See you on Monday!

Isla

The Art and Business of Giving

The foundations’ contact list

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Hi

I was reminded after the work you had all done on your business plans these last couple of days about the importance of Grief in the creation of extraordinary work. It is only after you have grappled with things to the extent that it feels like surfaces have been disrupted and transformed that you are truly beginning to emerge in a place of tremendous discovery and Joy. This poem, one of my favourites, is a talisman for you on that Journey. E 

The Well of Grief by David Whyte 

Those who will not slip beneath  

the still surface of the well of grief  

turning downward through its black water  

to the place we cannot breathe  

will never know the source from which we drink,  

the secret water,  

cold and clear,  

nor find in the darkness  

glimmering the small round coins thrown away  

by those who wished for something else.  

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We are in the third week of the Business Acumen for Artists programme. One of the most critical leverage points for Business which has emerged from this process is the way in which multiple forms of artistic expression can help to invigorate organisational thinking. We ran a process last week at the UCT GSB called the Think Indaba where we used visual process facilitation to help delegates to visualise Africa in 2012. The findings were profoundly positive not only because it allowed executives to start thinking through another medium but also because of the pride which emerged at the end of the process and what they had created together. What this brought up for us in terms of the BAA was how rich a deposit the language of creativity is for business - imagine being able to document a journey you go on with your EXCO through represented images, melodies, and even theatre that they create by means of a guided facilitated process together!  Consultants are so often looking for the next big thing to differentiate their offerings in the market. I for one, after having seen the extraordinary success of this tool am all for the tracing of multiple creative disciplines into the texturing of strategy and multiple perspectives so crucial for business value creation and sustainability. Try it - you might even surprise yourself at the results. 

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I am suddenly inspired by the idea of a group multi-media exhibition at the end of our programme. The complete project I am working on is HUGE and will only be realised in 2010, but a slice, a snippet could well be part of a Sharp Artists exhibition (We’ll have to think of a sexier title - “Business Acumen” isn’t very sticky.) At tea time tonight I went scouting for a site for my performance art piece for the exhhibition(shot gun on the eucalyptus trees near the parking lot)… can’t you just see our work being, hung, projected, shown, sung… PLAYED all over and around the community centre for one juicy night?

Thank you to all for the rousing “Happy Birthday”. I’ll miss ya’ll next week as I’ll be working. If you are up for a night of excellent, thought-provoking, challenging theatre. Don’t miss my production of The Tricky Part opening at the Baxter Theatre on 11 September and running till the end of September. (not quite sure about blogg protocol - is it ok to use it for shameless marketing?) Jacqueline

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