New: The Artist-in-Residence program for Artist Strong

If this project resonates with you, please apply through this link.

If there is someone you feel should take the leap to show up in this way, please forward today’s post to them? I’m excited to normalize the creative process with you.

Warmly,

Carrie

Transcript of video is here:

I sent out an email and a message to our Patreon community last week that talks about the reframe that I’ve had… understanding just what exactly Artist Strong is. 

Usually when I talk about Artist Strong, I say it’s an art education platform and that I’m an art teacher, but I took a course called The Marketing Seminar. And in it, it made me realize some of the larger goals that I’ve had with Artis Strong and some of the things that have kind of naturally bubbled up and come through our community. 

That’s made me understand that it’s not just a community. It’s not just an art education platform, but it’s really a movement of people who are committed to this larger idea of the importance of art in our lives. And if I see it as a movement, it’s not just about me showing up every week, giving people feedback, there are implications. 

If it’s a movement, it’s many of us and how can I celebrate and show up and, and uplift, and showcase all of you, wonderful humans who are part of this movement. That’s become this kind of niggling question in the back of my mind that I’m trying to address. 

So one of the first steps towards doing I’m announcing, I’ve reached out to some people individually, and I’m gonna be announcing to the whole Artist Strong community by the end of this month that I’m going to host digital art residencies.

So if you don’t know what a residency is, an artist residency, typically speaking, is this physical place where an artist goes away from their home life and lives for like a week, for example, or for a month, some residencies are three months or even a year. And they get to be in that new environment to show up and really focus and hone in on their art. I’ve also recently seen a few people hosting what they’re calling a digital residency. And one of the ones that I’m thinking of, they host it through Instagram and artists show up and talk about their work in context of the theme of their account. 

I realized one of my bigger goals here is to normalize the creative process, not only for professionals, but also for hobbyists and people who enjoy making art, because they’ve just returned to it for example, later in life. 

I want everyone to feel permission that the way that they approach their making, 

that taking breaks in between making, 

that sometimes making is hard, no matter what your skill level, 

that all of these things are normal. 

And I thought the best way I could do that was to encourage people, to show up and share their journeys through a digital residency, through our blog on artist strong. 

The concept or idea behind our Artist Strong residency is you will make a commitment to some kind of project or to maybe finish a course. Maybe you signed up for Self-Taught to Self-Confident with me, and there’s one unit you really wanna focus on. Well, that can be your commitment. You can then spend the month working on that privately in your own studio space. Yes, your dining room table. And then every week on a day, you decide, you can show up and post an article on the Artist Strong blog that shares the process, shares where you’re at. 

It’s not about finishing a project in a month’s time, depending on the nature of your project. There might be much more to do, but it’s an opportunity to start talking about your art in a safe community space to share it with others who have genuine interest in what you’re doing and to create accountability for you to follow through on those activities. So you start showing up for your art the way you really want to. 

I really hope this gives you permission to show up and share your art in a different way. Be brave and share it with a larger community. I will be posting in my weekly emails, I will be sharing things that the artist residents are doing in a section in the email now. So people can go and take a look and you will be able to link back to your Instagram or to your websites, whatever you have, if you want to be building an audience online  you can link to all those things in your posts. 

I shared two examples. One could be a project idea that you have, that you’re going to work on through the course of the four weeks. It means you’re going to need images of your art or process things in process that you’re working on so people can see what you’re doing, and you’re going to need to write or record video and talk about it. 

So some people might choose for format to speak on Instagram and then embed that Instagram video into their blog post. Other people might want to write because they feel like they can edit and adjust the way they want to. There is no real  minimum on your word count, but I say anywhere from 250 to less than 2000 words per post. 

The idea is, is you can show up in a format that’s comfortable to you, but to talk about that project, for example, or to share and talk about  the focus you have on the module that you really fell behind on in Self-Taught to Self-Confident that you’ve decided you want to commit to and follow through on. 

It’s really important to me that this residency is for all kinds of creatives who are wishing to realize some kind of goal for their art. That is the focus. How can I help you achieve or realize more of your goals? So I’m creating this residency where you have to show up publicly and you have to talk about your work and I will help edit your posts.You’ll just draft them in the WordPress account. And then I will review and edit them before they go live.

Those will be the steps that help you start showing up and feel more confidence to show up and take new risks and do new things with your art. So you don’t have to have a unique voice yet. For example, you don’t have to be an established professional artist though I welcome people who are at the professional level as well, because we all have projects we wish to realize, and that is the goal of this residence. 

Additionally, I’m hoping there’s additional benefit to you on top of the fact that you’ve shown up for your art in this way, that you’re speaking about it, that we’re showcasing people in our community. 

And also that it becomes something you can put on your creative resume. If you are interested in exhibitions, showing your art and potentially other residencies, having a CV as an artist that says you’ve done a digital residency, even if it’s not a physical residency, still shows the kind of commitment you made to a project and how it was realized. That’s going to help them see you and your art more. And it helps build that authority for something like other residencies  or exhibition opportunities for you to have that on your resume.

There will be an application process. Right now, as of now, this could change. There might be an application fee, but right now there is none. It is free to apply and it doesn’t guarantee that I can work with you. It depends on how many people I choose to take every month. I’m not sure about my numbers yet. I’m gonna explore that in the months to come and  we can plan far out. So just keep that in mind for yourself so you can plan ahead. So I really hope you’re as excited about it as I am. 

You can use the link in the chat to sign up or message me. If you watch this as a replay and you need access and if you have any questions don’t hesitate to ask. I think I’m going to book six months at a time. I’ll release applications for the residency either quarterly or twice a year. So this is kind of for the next six months, maybe even for the first two months of the new year. Keep that in mind. 

I hope that gets you excited about this new idea. There are going to be some other things coming up in the works to try to help drive this notion of us being a movement so that we all feel greater empowerment to show up and speak our voice in our truths and, and try to do something that helps change the narrative about what art is and why we show up for.