Craft Forward-ing

[The Justified Sinner]

Apologies for the hiatus in blogging my visit to San Francisco; I had to spend some time in Yorkshire discussing a project which I hope to present here in the very near future.

My second day in San Francisco was spent at the American Craft Council/California College of the Arts symposium called "Craft Forward-ing", an event aimed at students and new graduates with a view to giving them an introduction to the world of business and suggesting ways of actually making money out of craft practice. This objective should be borne in mind...

I walked to the venue from Fisherman's Wharf, following the map to the optimistically-named "Creative District", an area of derelict industrial units under elevated roads. The CCA campus where the event was held is in a converted Greyhound bus depot, and an excellent conversion it is, but the only other signs of creativity in the creative district - apart from the creative use of the word "creative" in the name - was the warehouse given over to "Adobe", and I am not sure that doesn't count as "tech"! To get to the campus, I had to walk through swarms - actually dozens - of street-people aimlessly pushing the shopping-trolleys which house their worldly goods. They must be used to "creatives" wandering about; not one of them acknowledged my presence in any way. I am almost ashamed to say that their lack of attention came as a relief.

When I got to the venue, I met Curtis Arima (from CCA), Brigitte and Chris (from the ACC).

 

 

In brief, only Brigitte Martin and Philip Wood addressed the issue proposed by the theme of the symposium, discussing ways in which they had progressed from education into business. Brigitte talked about the need for PASSION and the importance of being focused on the business aspects as much as anything else. Philip - a very fine and well-known furniture-maker - talked a bit about how his online retail website Citizen:Citizen worked but got a bit lost in the nebulous politics of it all. Additionally, he never really detailed what had made him change from maker to manager/curator. Citizen:Citizen, however, offers an interesting look at ways in which an artist may seek to market small-run multiples in addition to their existing practice.

 

 

The other two speakers were an organisation called "Future Farmers" - Amy Franceschini and Michael Swaine - and Tanya Aguiniga. Both of these speakers were interesting in their own way, talking about their post-art school practices but neither of them offered anything terribly useful to the theme, both of them detailing practices which were either subsidised or which they admitted lost them money. Future Farmers, in particular, were miles from the point and presented us with a fragment of a 1920s Czech play...

On one hand, it was unfortunate that there were not more students in the audience - which seemed to be made up of large numbers of ACC and CCA people -and that the audience halved over lunchtime. The day was of interest to me as an educator and should have been of interest to students in their final years of study. I am not clear why some of the speakers were chosen: Brigitte, obviously, because she runs Crafthaus, Philip because of Citizen:Citizen, but the others... well, I can think to name Boris Bally off the top of my head as being more suitable and if he were too busy or too expensive, there have got to be more.

Perhaps oddest of all was that the reception afterwards was held in a gallery which works as a real-world version of Citizen:Citizen, working with artists to get them to make multiples and selling them. Why wasn't a representative of that gallery invited to speak?

 

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Apart from getting to hang out with Curtis and Brigitte, perhaps the highlight of the day was finally meeting the author of "Ask Hariette", Hariette Estelle Berman. Charming, funny, cheeky, outspoken. Everything you would expect!

 

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That evening I went out for something to eat on my own, wandering about in Chinatown and the Italian quarter, taking photographs. I think that this tailor's shop could learn something from the people at the symposium:

 

 

This is an actual window-display for what appears to be a tailor who is - somehow - still in business!

It is strange how symposia change the way you think about things for a while. I also noticed this:

 

A Chihully knock-off! We all know the problems that Boris Bally and 2Roses have had with counterfeiting and that would have been a good topic for the day's discussion too. 

 

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Ended up having a coffee and some ice-cream before visiting City Lights bookshop and browsing through the endless editions of "Howl"!

 

 

[Brigitte Martin]

Just came across this online: (Marlene) Richey delivers 10 rules for entrepreneurs

http://www.nationaljeweler.com/nj/independents/a/~30527-Richey-deli...

The information is definitely out there and available from a range of reliable sources. Marlene is well known in the jewelry world and a former SNAG Board member as well.

[Brigitte Martin]

For the record, Alexandra Amaro is one of the students in Marilyn da Silva's class who - as I said previously - impressed me greatly. Now you know why.

[2Roses]

Many of us in this field have operated (and still do) as apologists for the misguided attitudes of the arts curriculum in this country. To be sure, not ALL schools and instructors are guilty. But you don't have to be a rocket scientist to see that an awful lot of schools and instructors are woefully complacent - we would say incompetent- as witnessed by the obvious results. Our point here is not to bash academics. Its to define the problem and the solution - you are not teaching the skills people need to make a living in the arts.

Solution = teach students how to make a living practicing their art. Is that plain enough?If you don't know how to do this yourself, find people who do and bring them into the schools.

The sooner we stop apologizing for, and complacently accepting the poor performance of our arts institutions the sooner we can implement the solution, which is by definition, changing the curriculum.

Kumbaya!

[Harriete E Berman]

I have two children that recently graduated (undergrad) from college in the last couple of years. Neither knew what they were doing when they graduated (and they were not in the arts.) My daughter still doesn't have a job. For this reason, I am not surprised that the 5 grad student didn't know what they were doing.....

Especially with grad school, the last few months are so filled with work for your exhibition....there is not an extra second. These are also really tough times for getting a job.

So while the lack of job plans doesn't surprise me.... a solid foundation in art business skills in school is a great idea.
Harriete

[Brigitte Martin]

Are there ways of getting out of this situation or are we just putting band aids on larger wounds?

Can anybody point to programs/schools/institutions who teach business skills with a successful student outcome? Does anyone measure this outcome at all? And if so, which parameters are used?

[Jennifer Merchant]

I can certainly relate to the 5 grad students that mostly had no clue as to what they would do when they graduated. I was in the same boat when I graduated with my BFA. We had only 1 class that only very briefly talked about the business of art. It was pathetic. Lucky for me I have a pretty good business sense of my own, but because of the lack of knowledge of how to even go about starting an art business, I was too scared to try it until 5 years after I graduated. If there would have been a symposium like this when I was in school I would have loved to attend! I do think they should consider making something like that mandatory. I would kill for learning opportunities like that now, but when you're in college there is so much going on, and by the time you're a senior you just want to be done, it's hard to focus on real world stuff since you haven't really been a part of it yet.

[Brigitte Martin]

Quoting Dauvit: "....There is no point having a fascinating ramble through someone's creative practice or a philosophical discussion about the role of the robot in creativity when what we have dragged them to the even for is to learn about business, something to which they will probably already have a resistance."....

Resistance to learn about business: In all fairness, I would like to stress that we should not generalize this specific experience and make it sound as if all academic institutions provided similar results, or as if the general outcome of a fine art education is unfailingly like this. This would be very unfair to the students and the professors at many schools and I don't think we mean to convey that in any way. I only met a tiny slice of graduate students at this school for a short period of time, and this was just one symposium event that some of us attended. I had also been told during the lunch break that this specific school (the CCA) does indeed offer professional development information to all their students ! As we all know, simply because you teach real world survival skills does not mean that the student will actually embrace them and follow your advice. These are 20 year-olds with the world experience of 20 year-olds. Many are just so much into being fine artists that there is no way of getting reality into their heads until well after graduation - at which point the message has sunk in with unfailing clarity. The fact is also that a lot of graduate students these days (whether they are in a fine art program or in a different field) have NO IDEA what it is they are going to do after graduation, let alone have been able to line up jobs. We should take this into consideration.

Striking contrast: The day before I visited the grad students, I spent time with Marilyn Da Silva's and Deborah Lozier's undergrads (Metal/Jewelry program) at the Oakland campus of the CCA. That was a REMARKABLY different experience. Both student groups, particularly Marilyn's seniors were attuned to the necessities of the marketplace they would be facing after graduation. We spoke privately and in various small group settings about business related matters (one of a kind work, production work, cost of materials, marketing, photography and so on) and the students were not only eager to hear this, I had the distinct impression that all this had been mentioned to them before, it wasn't a foreign language. Some of them had a very clear understanding of the realities. That was impressive.

I don't want this thread to deteriorate into a bashing of "the academics" - the points either side brings up inevitably are already abundantly clear to all parties and have been discussed over and over.

The question is: are there ways of getting out of this situation?

[The Justified Sinner]

That is a great point. Over here in the UK, there are examples of local government cutting 100% of arts funding from their 2013-14 budgets. Once it is cut, it isn't going back, as we all know. ALL artists have a duty to make it clear that their practice adds value to society and the economy, no matter how unpopular that idea is with artists. We can no longer live in a quasi-socialist/liberal bubble, deluding ourselves that we have a right to funding.

I am sure that all the speakers add value to society and the economy in their own way but it was the inability of some of them, especially Future Farmers, to quanitify or even to define that value which made the talk less-than-useful within the context of the event.

The problem for education is just around the corner. Already it is easy to cut arts courses on grounds of efficiency; there are almost no glass courses in Scotland any more; the music course at my own institution is nearly completely gone and; most ludicrously of all in a country which boasts a fine tradition of Tweed-making and weaving, there are no hand-loom weaving courses any more, all cut and replaced by cheaper, easier-to-deliver courses (such as Computer Graphics, to which I have absolutely no objection but it is an easy opt-out for institutions to deliver, not always well). It is just a question of time before the managers start cutting at other high-cost courses which have difficult-to-measure success rates. Speaking again from the UK point-of-view, we are already being told that the next round of funding will be dependent on us being able to prove that graduates go into employment. Scary stuff.

Unless we actually get them into employment.

Harriette is absolutely right. It is essential to get students to events like this. I do believe that you can teach entrepreneurship: it requires a set of skills with much in common with creative industries but the events have to be suitable for the students. There is no point having a fascinating ramble through someone's creative practice or a philosophical discussion about the role of the robot in creativity when what we have dragged them to the even for is to learn about business, something to which they will probably already have a resistance.

And just in case anyone thinks that I am knocking the art schools for complacency, I am not: I think that this starts earlier, in the school system broadly. I was really lucky to have been a part of a "Young Enterprise" group at school: there were 10 or so of us and we set up a business to make and sell items within the school and at enterprise fairs (my little group did belt-buckles; another made sweets). We had to do projections, accounts, sourcing, everything that a real business has to do and we got a tiny amount of start-up capital from the school. It was up to us to make it work. It was a brilliant project but it seems to me that this is something which should not be limited to a dozen students from a school of 1200 pupils. My own - admittedly unpopular - view is that business studies/entrepreneurship should be taught as a core subject in school.

[2Roses]

How very different an experience was our education in the arts from what we glean in our discussion with educators and schools today. A recurring chorus from educators, heard again from a very prominent and popular academic member of our field just last week, is that the instructors have no responsibility to teach students how to make a living in the arts. Contrast this with our own education wherein our instructors and mentors insisted and expected us to make money with our art while under their tutelage. The point is that Brigitte's experience with the five graduate students should be seen for what it is: a contemptible and utter abrogation of responsibility on the part of these student's instructors and the school they attended. Without question the students themselves display a remarkable disregard for their own well being, but how were they allowed to get through graduate school as such?

Without an ongoing foundation in entrepreneurial thinking, can anyone expect that a singular event of 4 hours will have much, if any, impact on students within the context of six-plus years of formal training?

A recent US Government study revealed that arts students graduate with the largest amount of student debt compared to all other fields of study. More debt than law students and medical students. Conversely, that same study showed that arts graduates entering the work force can expect very, very low starting salaries with the potential, on average, to make $40,000 per year 10 years after graduation.

Connecting the dots, no one should be surprised that schools are cutting such poor performing programs. The only surprise is that art departments across the nation just can't seem to connect the dots.

We applaud Brigitte and the other organizers of this event. You are doing something, which is helping build momentum for the craft pendulum to swing in a more positive direction.

[Brigitte Martin]

In light of the great points Harriete just made:

The day prior to the symposium, I had been invited to meet with 5 graduate students in one-on-one conversations, something I had looked forward to. Of those 5 students, only 1 had a grasp of her situation after receiving an MFA in May and she had a job already lined up in her field (BRAVO). Another student to graduate in May told me she had applied for a teaching position but that it was a long shot and that it was unlikely she would get it. When I asked her what her plan B was she looked at me as if I was the Antichrist.

Of the remaining 3, one had another year until graduation and therefore enough time to think about this, the other 2 had no clue about what it was they were going to do after May. And with that I mean they said that they hadn't thought that far ahead yet = 2 months. They were still completely enthralled with their thesis projects and had no room to think of anything else.

All of them would have greatly benefited from attending the symposium and wrapping their heads around the idea that a teaching job probably wasn't waiting for them, however, only the student who had already lined up her job did attend. The others were no shows.