16 April 2019

Our Enterprise Works programme for Artists, in collaboration with the University of Bath, has recently come to the end of it’s first pilot, as mentioned in Olly’s blog, and we’re grateful to Angela Hill and Cathryn Crane, two of the wonderful participants, for their reviews which are shared below. We’ll be running this programme again later in the year so if you are interested in being the first to hear about those dates, please register your interest by emailing us at artists@creativityworks.org.uk

Angela Hill, The Art of Curiositree:

“I saw the Artist’s Social Enterprise Business Course offered by Creativity Works and I thought this could be the key to the confidence and business knowledge that I lacked. Excited and daunted I signed up.

My work as a teacher has gradually squeezed out my theatre-maker-artist-self and taken over!  It has been easier to earn a living by teaching than by relying on theatre projects to support my family financially. I am now ready to dip my fingers back in the paint, thanks Creativity Works, and get people in my community outside and creative.

The course was an absolute pleasure in itself – spending the time with 12 artists focused on helping each other and themselves to move forward in their careers was great.  It was a positive and inspiring environment in which to learn: relaxed, focused, interactive and energetic. There were continuous opportunities for the participants to share their experience or ideas, whether it was on tax or social media use, this kept every element of the course both relevant and clearly related to artists’ businesses as opposed to other types of business.

So my venture The Art of Curiositree begins.  I am creating an outdoor arts project, inviting children, families, elders, community groups, schools and businesses into woodland spaces to make art, theatre, dance, cook on the open fire, enjoy the wild and escape the screens.

I am building the website now, so watch this space, meanwhile, contact me on idyllic.education@yahoo.co.uk for more information.”

---

Cathryn Crane, MoonMaker Arts:

“I signed up for the Enterprise Works course hoping to learn more about the experiences of individuals working in the arts. I did not expect to feel so inspired by it that I would leave raring to put into practice an arts social enterprise of my own. My background is as an Art Psychotherapist but I have been working in arts admin for the last few years. When I moved back to live in my home town of Warminster, I really wanted to be able to bring my skills and experience of art therapy with me for the benefit of the local community that I grew up in. Making a step change in practice to go back to working independently felt like a huge and difficult thing to do but this course really broke down all of the steps for me in such a way that it felt not just manageable but exciting.

Since the course I have created MoonMaker Arts which takes its name from a colloquial term for the people of Wiltshire. I will be offering therapeutic arts classes in Warminster and the surrounding area for a variety of groups of people. I haven’t felt quite so alive in years as I did going through ideas with Stacey and Ollie. I even think that the module on tax returns may have saved me enough in a single year to have covered the cost of the entire course. I am now building something that I have dreamed of doing for a long time.”

For more information, follow Cathryn on Instagram at @moonmakerarts or on Facebook at @moonmakerwilts