Key Skills:
Working with a public facing organisation
Problem solving
Working within the public realm
Managing a budget
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Working with a public facing organisation - Art in Crisis is an annual festival run by the charity Crisis that celebrates the creative works of its members, this year ArtHalo (the non-profit organisation I am currently managing) collaborated to run a program of 15 art sessions and an exhibition of work. This project was particularly ambitious as we not only held an exhibition at RISEgallery but in 2 external exhibition pods in the centre of Croydon. The aim of the exhibition was not only to show case the works of artists affected by homelessness but also to raise awareness of the problem and the breadth of people it can affect. Working with Crisis has been an excellent learning experience as I was able to work with many different departments and get used to the different requirements that a large charity has.
Problem solving - Working with many different groups to achieve a single goal proved to have its challenges but I feel that I over came variety of obstacles and my problem solving skills have benefitted greatly. Within the project there were a lot of things that I had not done before
so it was an invaluable opportunity for professional development, the first new task I had to complete very quickly was writing proposals, I will continue to improve on this as it is an important skill for many different areas within an artistic career.
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Working within the public realm - I learned a lot about the running of a large scale project within the public realm, large groups of people and the legal requirements of working in public spaces, I was also able to improve my social media and marketing skills whilst continuing to run the art sessions and safeguard vulnerable people. In addition to this I think I have gained further logistical and project management skills, and the exhibition allowed me to develop as a curator making use of 2 interesting external spaces as well as the gallery space.
Managing a budget - In order to achieve this project I had to submit a proposal to the local Business Improvement District asking them to support us with funding from their community impact budget, this proposal was successful so we were able to finance the external exhibition spaces. Once all the funding was secured I had to manage all the revenue streams which ended up being a several thousand pound budget, I was able to keep track of all spending and stick to the budget.
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I am pleased with the success of the project and the partnership between Crisis and ArtHalo has continued, the project itself is still ongoing as we are now looking at giving the pods a second life by sending them to a refugee camp either in France or Greece.