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A freelance career in the creative arts
A freelance career in the creative arts

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3.3 Choosing the right support for me

As you have seen, there are many sources of support available, and some will be more relevant to your needs than others. The following activity aims to get you started with your research to find the most appropriate support for you.

Activity 4 Research a useful organisation

Timing: Allow about 20 minutes

First, choose one of the gaps you identified in your knowledge or skills in Activity 3 [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] . For example, it might be something about marketing techniques or more specifically related to your idea, such as learning more about a particular artistic process.

Now use your preferred online search engine to research who could help you fill your knowledge gap – it may be one of the organisations you learned about in the previous sections or it may be a completely new source of information. Alternatively, you may prefer to look for relevant books or directories in the library or talk to someone who is currently working in the field you aspire to.

When you’ve identified an organisation that you think could be helpful to you, follow up your findings and work out how that organisation can help you on your journey. Look at their website or telephone them to discuss your needs.

Make a note of the organisation and what you have learned in the box below.

What will you do next to follow this up?

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Discussion

You could also look at the sites of individuals or organisations you admire or aspire to work with, to find out more about how they do things and who they engage. If you can identify which organisations support them – or what projects they are working on currently – that might give you other avenues to explore.

Working in the arts as a freelancer involves a lot of research – researching your idea, researching your competitors, researching the support available and so on – and the more you do it, the more proficient you will become in identifying the correct search terms and filtering the most valuable information.

In the next section you’ll look at the individuals you might reach out to for support.