Answering in the moment: Five tips for a creative project
Playing around at Salzburg Global Seminar, photo by Herman Seidl.
I was lucky enough to spend about an hour in an Instagram Live conversation with my friend Maria Galea on Monday. Maria and I met last fall in Salzburg, Austria, as members of the Salzburg Global Seminar Young Cultural Innovators Forum. Maria has been working on launching a new network for visual artists in Malta called Artz ID, a platform for connection and resource-sharing, which is near and dear to my own work and interests. I was supposed to head over to Malta this fall to lead some workshops on strategy and development, but we all know how that story is playing out.
So instead we chatted online about creativity, about network and value, about what we need and what we need to be building in this moment. You can watch the whole conversation here, but there was one part that I thought I would pull out and expand for a post. We had planned the first half of questions, and then spent the second half riffing and taking questions from viewers, and in that portion, Maria asked for five tips for artists looking to launch their work. It’s not a response that I had prepared, but the list that came together in the moment felt both like it got to the heart of the topics we were discussing, and a good reminder as we navigate these tumultuous times.
Don’t try and be everything to everyone. It’s easy to get pulled in directions that move you away from the things that you really want to be doing, so focus in on what you love (or in an organizational setting, your core mission and values) and make that the basis for your decision-making. This isn’t to say do only one thing – having a variety of skills can make you more valuable and engaging, and many people starting their own projects or businesses don’t have the luxury of saying no to opportunities. But in knowing the how and the why of your work, that is a clarifying filter for you to focus.
Set realistic timelines. We can be so cruel to our dreams by not giving ourselves the timelines to succeed. There is a book that I love and recommend by choreographer and educator Andrew Simonet called Making Your Life as an Artist, which has a section charting his income over 13 years. Being a waiter paid most of his bills at the beginning, and over time, most of his income came from his dance company and other arts projects. That timeframe doesn’t undercut ambition, it gives it the structure to succeed and grow.
Remember the Pareto Principle. The Pareto Principle, or the 80/20 rule, is an observation that holds true across sectors and scales, namely that 80% of a phenomenon comes from 20% of the actions. In computing, 20% of bugs cause 80% of crashes; in sports 20% of exercises have 80% of the impact. As you are building an audience, 20% of that audience are likely to result in 80% of your sales or engagement – those people are your evangelists and core supporters, so find, connect, and nurture them. Having deep connections with a smaller group can be much more fulfilling and stable than a broader reach of weak connections.
Be curious about things outside your discipline. I flagrantly borrow from Steven Johnson’s Where Good Ideas Come From on a regular basis and the concept of “the adjacent possible” is one of my favorites. (Johnson borrowed it from Stuart Kauffman, so it all comes around.) If you’re looking for inspiration, don’t look to your own field. If you’re looking to do something different, don’t look to your immediate peers. What you are looking for is probably happening in some way in some other sector, and it’s definitely already happening in the natural world. Push yourself outside of your own practice to deepen your own work.
Find your people. We’re in a time when we need each other more than ever, and so finding and connecting with people who can support and nurture our work is critical. This isn’t a strategic or a tactical choice, that weights each transaction with what it might do for your career or project. We need to be building a culture of exchange and recognition as we come out of this moment that is posing existential crises, necessary reckonings, and big questions about what we do next. Find your people, whether in the place where you live or online, and stay engaged to build for the future.
There are many more tips, highlights, or other things that could be shared here, and I’d love to hear what’s resonant with you. One of the themes of the conversation was that focus on exchange and building together, and how we have to ask for the things that we want. I always want to be a part of building connections and strategy around creative, ambitious, projects and organizations. If that's what you're working on, drop a line!