Artists and arts organizations need to be able to communicate with your community, your audience, your donor network. You can and should use social media, paper mailings, or phone calls but the email list is golden.

When news of Cecilia Giménez’s restoration of the “Ecce Homo” fresco became international news, most people saw a meme and got a quick laugh. The restoration has been called the Beast Jesus or Monkey Jesus and is one of the most notable failed restorations of our time. It spawned internet fame for Giménez and countless jokes and riffs. It also ended up bringing new tourist attention to Borja, the Spanish town where Giménez and her restored fresco lived.

It’s not unusual for an artist to take on a lot of roles in the creative process. You can be a multi-hyphenate director/choreographer/performer, a writer/editor, a producer/host, and much more. In addition to wearing multiple creative hats, artists are often your own project manager, grant writer, fundraiser, PR person, finance department, and social media manager.

Every month, Fractured Atlas provides a list of upcoming grant opportunities for artists and arts-based projects so that you can discover more opportunities to get financial support for your work. As a fiscal sponsor of 4000+ artistic projects, we provide access to grants for artists in every discipline.

Nobody stays at a job forever. If we’re interested in developing healthier work cultures, that has to encompass what it means to leave a workplace. We have to build work cultures that allow us to do better than politely pretending that we’ll all work somewhere until we retire and then out of the blue give our two weeks notice. We have to become more open about job hunting and interviewing.

One of the ways that people (including artists) get the word out about upcoming events, projects, goings-on, partnerships, and more is through PR, or public relations.

Change is hard, including institutional change. And it’s especially in the arts and nonprofit worlds. There is risk aversion, inertia, and the fact that racism and capitalist brutality are features and not bugs.

Robbi Hall Kumalo resists easy description as an artist. She identifies as a creator, a healer, and an educator. She has a decades-long history as a performer for audiences of all ages, but primarily for audiences of young people. Her work combines song, dance, storytelling, poetry, and more. For years, she has toured to different cities, towns, and schools and performed for millions of people. She has worked as a solo artist and in collaboration with others.

Before I really entered the workforce, I assumed that the people I worked with would all be my best, most lifelong friends. Without realizing it, I had assumed that my coworkers would begin to form my core social group as I got older. That hasn’t actually happened to me, but I know why I thought it would.

As an artist, you generally want people to know about your work. But that can’t happen all on its own. The idea that artists are passively toiling away only to be plucked out of obscurity to become the next big thing is a false one. So, if you want people to know about you, you have to tell them. Artists have to, at some level, market yourself.