Workshops to nurture youths in creative business

REGIONAL Arts Victoria and the City of Ballarat Youth Services team have collaborated to support fresh visual, performing, musical and gaming talent as they build artistic careers.

A series of Young Creatives in Business workshops was launched last Thursday at the Art Gallery of Ballarat. Classes through the year will cover pain-free finance, setting up a business, crowdfunding, partnerships and positive mental health practice.

Tabitha Rickard, council’s youth engagement and events officer said the sessions are designed to nurture and unleash potential, giving young people tools and a solid, sustainable base for long-lasting, successful practice.

“We want to uplift and support the emerging artists, our young people who are the now and the future of our community, especially in creative arts. They’re worth investing in,” she said.

In the last five years, an expectation for artists to supply high quality images of their work has increased, and Instagram has “levelled the playing field” as a valuable tool for makers to attract collectors.

RAV community arts worker, Malcolm Sanders said last week’s initial workshop had a focus on iPhonography, run by Sarah Weston from Craft Victoria.

“It’s the very simple and basic skills you need, and cost-effective ways, to photograph your artwork in an artful way to present it online, whether that be online for marketing, on Etsy or in funding applications,” he said.

City of Ballarat mayor, Cr Ben Taylor officially launched the series and said his team is proud to provide this opportunity to 12 to 25 year olds.

“In this day and age, people are looking to discover what they can do differently, especially artists or creative people, designers…” he said.

“It’s about education and learning, engaging people and giving skills to people to get better at what they do. Hopefully through it, we’re creating small businesses to grow into large businesses.”

The program is inspired by previous series, Skill Up.

“I presented that series, aimed at creatives wanting to develop their industry skills… Good finance practice, marketing, how to set up your business,” Mr Sanders said.

“We had about 200 people attend those classes, but it was an older market of people, so I really wanted to see a younger demographic involved.

“We’ve got a lot of young creative people in Ballarat, so we wanted to find a way to support them. This second suite will be running, in essence, the same workshop, with a different emphasis for young people at the very beginning of their practice.”

To express interest visit linktr.ee/ballaratyouthservices.