The Benefits of Artistic Communities
One of the most valuable tools available to artists is often overlooked. This tool is common to artists of all ages, background, craft, and experience level. It is a simple tool, and easily forgotten despite its importance. This tool is the artist community.
Engaging with and embedding yourself into an artistic community provides support, shared knowledge, and opportunities. All of which are vital – particularly to practitioners beginning their creative journeys. However, no matter what stage you are at in your artistic career, having a mutually supportive community can be game changing.
Support comes in many forms. Simply having an understanding group to share problems, frustrations, or new concepts with can make a world of difference. Creating in a vacuum is challenging. Connecting with other artists can open up new avenues of inspiration – as well as providing vital encouragement to keep going.
Shared knowledge is key to the strength of artist communities. Alongside artists, you may meet other professionals in the creative sector such as curators, educators, and critics. Through nurturing these networks you will gain insight into your local art scene, feedback on developing your practice, and a base of supporters. Creating a strong network enables you to access opportunities you might not have considered alone. Through artistic communities you may discover new venues to exhibit and sell work, gain access to creative studios or workshops, and learn about upcoming competitions or new funding bids. All these resources will help you reach your creative career goals.
Meeting fellow artists can lead to future collaborations. Diversifying your community to connect with artists working in a variety of mediums may expand your own mode of practice. Shared learning is integral to artistic communities. Seeing what forms of promotion and venues work for other artists will inform your approach to creating and marketing artwork. To new artists especially, this learning is invaluable.
Fellow artists will be your most loyal fans. By sharing your work and goals with other creators, you will meet people who can help share and promote your output. Cultivating this following may increase sales and footfall at exhibitions and showcases. Inviting other artists to these events can create a buzz around your work that will encourage engagement from the public both in the exhibition space and online. Remember, this support is mutual and only builds as you support fellow artists in your community.
So, how to find a creative community? Engaging with local arts events is the quickest way to meet other local creatives. This can include signing up to workshops run by artists, visiting local art galleries, attending exhibition openings, or entering local competitions. Having a social media profile on Instagram or Facebook can help you stay in touch with members of the community. Curating and managing an online presence allows you to promote work through blogs, newsletters, or social media posts. Researching local artist collectives and groups is an excellent way to discover creative opportunities in your area. Creative networking groups such as Artists of Essex can help you form an artistic community by introducing you to other artists, promoting your work online, creating personalised selling platforms, and running workshops to take you to the next level of your artistic career.