Business Overview
Jill is a successful engagement and multi-media artist-in-residence who has worked on performative projects and pop-up installations and has been widely exhibited in the South-West and beyond.
Isla started working with Jill through a Rural Enteprise scheme when she reached a crossroads in her career and needed an overview to identify possibilities for development to grow her business, explore new opportunitites and further her artistic endeavours.
The coaching support brought Jill from being a community based social engagement artist into a multi-media artist/maker with studio practice and a commercial focus.
Delivery
Isla leaned in to Jill’s personal style and by using mind-maps and visuals Jill produced a fabulous table-cloth business plan which brought all her ideas into focus and highlighted target areas, like the need to spend less time on delivering different projects in different settings and more time in the studio. She developed collaborative projects, exhibitions and engagement opportunities to show her work and to promote herself as an artist.
How we did it
Jill and Isla’s coaching relationship started as a Rural Enterprise support delivery and continued through to private coaching; Jill transitioned and transformed her thinking to embrace a commercial leaning that allowed her to gain perspective as a commercial artist without losing the essence and authenticity of her work.
Over a 2 year period the coaching meetings were monthly or bi-monthly to fit around Jill’s commitments and bursary travels. Between meetings Jill fulfilled the actions which she established as her targets at each session and which ensured the momentum and commitment to the coaching journey.
Working in partnership
Jill met and overcame obstacles to thinking of herself as a business through taking a different perspective in the coaching sessions. Working with Isla she was able to build resilience in managing the inevitable peaks and troughs of her business and is looking forward to identifying more commercial opportunities including workshops, talks and illustrations.
Jill speaks of her practice having transformed and flourished and the coaching having allowed her to recognise growth and development and that the advice that came through is still invaluable.
Achievements
Jill was challenged with being unsure about whether she wanted hard outcomes; as an artist she found talk of business plans, projections, targets, and market sectors ‘faint-inducing’! The knowledge Jill gained during the coaching gave her the confidence to see where her place was in the art world; she found the courage to step away from paid project work in order to develop her studio practice developing a new body of one-off artworks which led to a travel bursary to Italy awarded by the Bristol RWA. Subsequent support led to funding advice, organising and managing an artist-led high profile one-year public project, interactive artist residencies, installations and workshops.
Jill moved into a commercial mindset while keeping true to her artistic self and building a flourishing practice, picking up on new avenues and areas of professional development with income potential.
Quotes
“Isla proved to be an excellent listener, insightful, wise, perceptive and with a warm sense of humour.”
“I believe you meet different people at different times in your life, and meeting Isla was critical to me seeing my work, process and practice from an overview. I found being sponsored to talk through ideas and ways forward a 10 out fo 10 experience.”
Jill Carter – Multi-media Artist