Courtesy Photo
Sonia Davis Guiterrez, founder and president of New Design School, gives a lecture on how to form a professional contract at an Artists Helping Artists event from the Northwest Arkansas Creative Arts Network.
For many artists, musicians, creatives of any sort, there’s always been a stigma associated with their line of work: if they aren’t famous, they’re a starving artist.
That’s perceived to be true, as there’s a big disconnect between the famous and successful and the struggling and unknown. However, there are several levels of success between the two that rarely get the spotlight.
Graduates of arts programs are likely to find jobs and satisfaction, despite few of them becoming wealthy from their work, according to a 2011 national study by The Strategic National Arts Alumni Project. However, more than half of undergraduate alumni said they were dissatisfied with the career advising their art school or college offered, and 43 percent of graduate alumni said the same.
This is where the new, locally produced Creative Exchange Conference (abbreviated to CXC) hopes to intervene for artists, especially entrepreneurs, and provide resources for creatives to build business acumen. The first-of-its kind in Northwest Arkansas, the conference will take place the weekend of Aug. 5-7 at the Fayetteville Town Center and Sunday in Bentonville at 21C.
The conference will host 20 presentations throughout the weekend led by successful creatives from all mediums and backgrounds, many of whom are from the NWA community. Panel discussions and workshops will focus on marketing, funding, accounting, copyright law, building websites and more.
In addition to building business skills, there will also be performances and networking after parties. Included with the price of the ticket, food and coffee will be provided by Onyx Coffee Lab, Panera, The Green Goat, Wood Stone Pizza, and Mangos Gourmet Taco Shop during the conference.
Tickets to the conference are available at creativexc.com. Round two ticket sales are $125 until July 31, and student, veteran and seniors can buy them at a discounted $65. After August 1, tickets will rise to $165.
The Creative Exchange Conference is produced in collaboration with the New Design School by the Northwest Arkansas Creative Arts Network, a nonprofit organization that works to connect and aid creatives in NWA, as well as organize the annual New Years Eve party, Last Night Fayetteville.
“Over the years of doing Last Night Fayetteville, we started having artists who had never filled out a contract before, had questions about contracts, and had questions about marketing,” said Lauren Embree, the executive director of the Creative Arts Network. “We realized there was an opportunity here to bring this idea for a professional development conference back.”
Courtesy Photo
A crowd of creatives seek professional development at Artists Helping Artists event from the Northwest Arkansas Creative Arts Network at the Fayetteville Underground.
The idea came from the success of the Creative Arts Network’s Artists Helping Artists program, which are individual workshops aimed toward professional development.
“The artists really appreciated (the program), and we decided to go ahead and put it in a three day conference format and really offer a concentrated weekend full of learning and professional development for creatives looking to start a creative business here,” Embree said. “You can go and get an MFA and never have taken a business course. You can have all this talent, but you don’t know how to market yourself. That’s where this started coming together.”
It’s essentially a business boot camp for creatives to turn their passion into a career, Embree said.
In addition to the lectures and keynote speakers, there will also be several panel discussions led by local artists and thought leaders to discuss the cultural landscape of Northwest Arkansas as well as the local creative economy. Part of the mission of the conference is to bring separate communities together and provide an opportunity for networking.
“The business community has the really strong desire for artistic thinking inside of it,” said Robin Atkinson, a CXC panelist. “It often doesn’t know how to foster it or bring it in. The left brain thinking doesn’t understand like, ‘How do I get artists in here and practice?’ That’s the sort of thinking that can get two communities to be having a similar conversation.”
One of the 20 speakers scheduled for CXC is David Kersey, a native Arkansan who went on to join the award-winning animation teams at Sony Pictures and Disney’s Pixar Studios.
“I’m looking forward to the opportunity to hopefully inspire someone to chase after their dreams regardless of the magnitude,” Kersey said. “It can be overwhelming to think of all the things you need to accomplish to be successful, but if you break it down to small projects to get from point A to point B, your path becomes more clear. I think the opportunities CXC is providing are incredible. I don’t know of many options for artists to learn, get inspired, and execute tasks directly related to furthering their careers.”
Embree said she hopes the conference will bolster and nurture the creative scene here.
“The idea is to be bringing a level of professionalism to the community that I think we’ll all benefit from,” she said. “These types of events are popping up all over the country right now. We thought this is something we can definitely use here, and the feedback has been phenomenal.”
