An art collective is a group of artists-visual, music, performance-who pool their resources to promote each other's work and help to develop each other's craft. There are financial, promotional, and creative benefits to forming an art collective. The drawback of pooling artists together is that most every member of the art collective is going to have to compromise in some way, and there will inevitably be some internal politics to deal with. Your main challenge is to find the happy medium between benefits and drawbacks.
Instructions
1. Be an artist yourself. Create works of art. You can be a visual artist, musician, performance artist, conceptual artist, or anything else. You can also be a combination of these modes. You can go the fine art route which involves intensive training and concentrated practice. Or you can go the "outsiders and others," naive art" or "folk art routes" each of which trumpet the naturalness of the novice.
2. Make friends, acquaintances, and associates of your colleagues. Exchange contact information with people whose artistic expressions you admire. Stay in touch with your art colleagues and stay apprised of their recent doings.
3. Come up with a goal for forming the art collective. Do you want to throw an art show, or many shows? Put on a concert? Stage a theater production? Crash a mainstream artistic event with the aim of disrupting the dusty institutions of the art world? Whatever your goals, be they traditional or rebellious, you must make sure they are clear and concrete.
4. Approach your colleagues in the art world with your goals. Ask them if your goals appeal to them, and whether they would be interested in pooling resources with you to make your ideas come to life. Be specific when speaking to your art colleagues. No one wants to join some nebulous art bureaucracy unless there is a good reason to do so.
5. Hold a meeting with your art colleagues with the aim of achieving the goals you have all agreed upon. Adjustments to your plans will inevitably need to be made, depending on the aims of the individuals attending the meeting. Try to come to some consensus regarding your short-term and long-term goals. Remain open to ideas, and keep porous borders between your art collective and the outside world. Nobody wants to feel trapped inside. As they saying goes: "If you love someone, set them free. If it was meant to be, they will return."
6. Divvy up the tasks and financial backing. If you intend to throw an art exhibit, for example, you will need select a gallery, pay for it, curate the exhibit and design the layout, drive around from place to place collecting installation materials, create a plan for promoting the show opening, buy refreshments and hors d'oeuvres if necessary, and so on.
7. Don't lose sight of the goals of your art collective. If your chief goal is artistic purity, try your best not to "sell out" by changing your art to make it more marketable. On the other hand, if your goal is to turn a profit, you may have to compromise on your artistic principles. There is nothing wrong with this if it is what you want.
8. Use the full power of the art collective to everyone's advantage! There is great financial, promotional and creative power to be derived from forming an art collective.
