From facing closure to being shortlisted for three top national digital awards – What a year for Create! art school
Mar 23, 2021
So, a year ago, we got the news that my business was going to have to close. I'd spent three years building it up, gave up a 'sensible' job in a school with all the benefits that brings….and took a calculated risk, and set up my art School.
I'd become a really lovely successful and supportive local business with communities of people coming together to create art. And when I heard that I'd have to close, I was just devastated. And my daughter, I remember telling her, and she absolutely wailed and cried because she knew how much it means to me and the family.
Also saddened by events were my loyal clients, dedicated to classes, coming along and meeting every week. They had had that sense of community ripped out from under them.
We had to close very quickly but was just as quickly given hope as my customers assured me that they wanted to carry on. So I had to find a way that was accessible for the people that come to my classes.
So, in the end, we set up classes via Zoom, and each week I would put out some resources for them to get from my website, an example of what to draw or paint, a template and some ideas sheets.
Then we had to muster the materials. I was creating packs for people to come and collect from my doorstep; this meant everyone had everything they needed to carry on the classes.
After a few initial teething problems, like people not knowing how to use Zoom and issues with the supply of materials, we had successfully hurdled our first barrier. I'd managed to keep my studio groups together, communicating our images created in a class WhatsApp group, so people could see what each other were doing and give helpful advice and support.
And we've not looked back.
In June 2020, I launched my first video course called Watercolour: the basics, so people could complete a course at home in their own time and learn to paint. Now I have ten courses like this available for people to buy and access at any time.
What I started to realise was that more people needed some support. People were missing a sense of wider community, human contact and a creative outlet. And not everyone had the money to do classes. So I decided to build an online Art School community on Facebook called "Create! Art School Club" and encouraged anyone interested in art to join.
In just a few short months, we have nearly 700 members, lots of active participants in our beautiful and welcoming international art community.
Through free weekly live classes, art challenges, seeing the work of other people, it's inspiring others. People just keep finding out new things about art and themselves, and the group is the biggest sense of community and support. Everyone's been so kind to each other, and friendships are forming through it.
I luckily had a bit of coronavirus money from local government, which I've put back into developing my digital business. So I've been able to develop my website, to make it more accessible and integrate the hosting of courses on it.
I've managed to employ two people, a marketing expert and a cameraman/video editor, who have both provided me with invaluable help in pushing the business forward and developing it in ways I couldn't have thought about doing before.
I have two primary age children, aged five and seven, who have been on the journey with me. They think it's pretty cool that their mum runs an art school, and I'm on YouTube. But having them at home for months at a time has also had its challenges. My incredibly supportive husband and I have had to be quite creative with our time, and both worked a lot of late nights. Homeschooling had to be prioritised over business admin, exercise and "me time". So it has been tough.
Looking to the future
I can see the online art community building steadily over time. And a shift in mindset has had to happen: my business is now 90% online. I will still run face to face classes, but this has now become almost a secondary part of the business.
Through this whole year of coronavirus, I realised we've managed to help people that wouldn't normally come to our classes. It's awoken the idea that art IS self-care.
It's an outlet, it's a freedom, it's a release from the day to day stuff. It's giving yourself some time to just do something absolutely for yourself. It's totally mindful and really, really relaxing. That process of just picking up a pencil, a piece of chalk or a pen is lost in today's modern technology-saturated world. Somehow it's assumed that it's not needed. But it is needed… it's needed more than ever. To get back to physically making something and making something beautiful.
So a year on, I've been shortlisted for three digital awards: Digital Woman of the Year, Digital Product of the Year, and Digital Mother of the Year and I'm chuffed to bits that my little business is now growing on an international scale!
We also featured in the West Bridgford Wire: read the full article here.
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