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You are here: Home / Archives for sustainable creativity

10 Ways to Remain a ‘Starving Artist’

October 9, 2013 by Steven Sparling 4 Comments

1. Give it away for free You’re probably sick of it, right? I mean you’ve spent hours/days/weeks/months slaving over it. Perhaps it’s been a struggle to bring this piece of art to life – looking at it might remind you of the sleepless nights or the painful doubts it caused you. So just get rid […]

Filed Under: creative entrepreneurship, Financial, List Tagged With: Artist, business, Creative Business Planning, Creative entrepreneur, Creative Entrepreneurship, Creative Industries, finance, marketing, sustainable creativity

Rejection Sucks – 3 Ways to Cope When the Gig Isn’t Yours

June 14, 2013 by Steven Sparling 2 Comments

Image by Rebecca One of the hardest things about what we do as creative entrepreneurs is that we don’t produce widgets. I’m sure there are some widget makers who care very deeply about their widgets, who put loads of effort into making the best widgets they can, who invest deeply of themselves into their widgets. […]

Filed Under: creative entrepreneurship Tagged With: coping, creative career, Creative entrepreneur, Creative Entrepreneurship, rejection, sustainable creativity

Wise words from George Bernard Shaw

May 19, 2013 by Steven Sparling Leave a Comment

A life spent in making mistakes is not only more honourable but more useful than a life spent doing nothing George Bernard Shaw Do you think it’s a coincidence that Shaw wasn’t frightened about making mistakes and also managed, in his lifetime, to write more than 60 plays, 5 novels, reams of music and literary […]

Filed Under: creative entrepreneurship, Workspace Tagged With: C, creative business, creative career, Creative entrepreneur, Creative Entrepreneurship, Creative Industries, George Bernard Shaw, risk taking, Space, sustainable creativity

A Creative Career -vs- A Creative Life

May 2, 2012 by Steven Sparling Leave a Comment

One of the concepts that I want to explore on this blog is how to be creative for your entire life. What I am calling “creative sustainability.” So much of our creative training, whether art school, drama school, music school etc (and since I went to all three, I think I have an idea of […]

Filed Under: creative entrepreneurship, Uncategorized Tagged With: sustainability, sustainable creativity

Weaning off the Teat

April 27, 2012 by Steven Sparling Leave a Comment

One of my portfolio of jobs is that I teach singing at the London College of Music. This is a three year musical theatre training programme and I teach students across all three years. The current graduating class started with me last year and I have been teaching them now for two years. This year […]

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: creative life, music, singing, sustainable creativity, Teaching

Sustainability: How taking time off can HELP your creative practice

April 17, 2011 by Steven Sparling Leave a Comment

Sustainability

One really hard lesson that I am trying to learn (rather unsuccessfully) is about sustainability and pacing. You see part of sustainable creativity is how do you pace yourself to avoid burnout. Sustainability and habits (especially bad ones) I have got into really bad habits of working seven days per week. This means that I don’t […]

Filed Under: Sustainable Creativity Tagged With: creative business, Creative Business Planning, Creative entrepreneur, Creative Entrepreneurship, planning, sustainability, sustainable, sustainable creativity, Time Off

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Recent Posts

  • The Mindful Freelancer: Nine Attitudes for Thriving in the Creative Economy – Part 1 – Non-Judging
  • Pivoting When You Don’t Know Where the Other Foot is Going to Land
  • Help! My Child Wants to Go Into The Arts
  • Confidence Doesn’t Exist. Quit Chasing It.
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