So I was told to write what I know, and every great author writes about what they know, what they believe, or what they think to be true. William Shakespeare wrote about love, death, revenge, grief, jealousy, murder, magic and mystery and Jane Austen wrote about unremarkable people in unremarkable situations of everyday life. By no means am I crediting myself to be a great author, nor will I be writing a book about grief, jealousy or murder.
However, before every great masterpiece, comes the creative process. As humans, I believe we need to be less attached to the final product, and we need to be more focused on playing, creating, getting messy, building, inventing and discovering. I know that this is the space where ideas are born, where geniuses are made, and where artists are raised. So with all that said, welcome to my blog, The Creative Process.
I think blogs get a bad rap, but, in reality, they can hold an abundance of information. The blogger takes part in research, experiences life, and then in turn, they share their findings with us. We’ve learned a lot from blogs by reading them for entertainment, fashion news, new restaurant recommendations, and health and fitness information. This particular blog was created for a few purposes: research, education, experiences, and artistic findings. Secondly, to help spread creativity in your communities, your schools, and within your children’s lives in a very practical way, and lastly, so that you understand the voice and the heart behind Raising Artists.
I would like to shed some light on my experiences and hardships of these last ten months as an entrepreneur, as well as relay to you some of the beautiful moments.
Raising Artists was initially a workshop-based, mobile art company. We never saw the need for brick and mortar because we would travel to you, your homes, and your schools. However, my father (whom I’ll quote from time to time, as he’s a fellow entrepreneur) said to me six months into us developing this company “Alessandra, you guys need product!”. We knew what he meant, and we knew he was right, but truth be told, we didn’t have the time. We were busy building curriculums, conducting market research, creating content for posts, booking school workshops, building school workshops, still working my side hustle and just trying to get our name out there. We truly didn’t have time to build products, to start looking for packaging or investigate shipping prices. Raising Artists was way too new of a company for us to outsource or hire anybody at that moment in time, so we put that otherwise brilliant idea on the back burner, with what seemed like a million other things. This pandemic, however, created the space and time for us to develop these products because we were no longer in schools, we were no longer conducting art therapy workshops with our seniors, and we were no longer in your homes teaching your children in a physical capacity. Side note: when these realizations had sunk in, I spent days struggling with the situation and hours crying over it.
Our whole business was based on physical contact, which means being there with you and guiding your child in building their creativity. I got really present, and asked myself “how can we creatively shift this business and still be relevant and still stay afloat? How would we be able to survive?” Product looked at us in the face, and in Dad’s deep and somber voice said “Alessandra, I am the answer!” We already had some sort of idea on how to assemble the idea of product, we were already building birthday parties packages and loot bags , if you will, so to branch out and construct individual packaging was not a giant leap. It was however, a different step. We were now looking at execution, packaging, finding consistent products to purchase on the market, boxes that are eco-friendly, and how to affordably ship and deliver as we waltzed into spring. My father always says, “the eye eats first”. Knowing this, we could not skimp out on boxes, and we didn’t. We ordered, designed, tested, played, created, built, invited and then the next step, pre-recorded video tutorials.
Helen Keller once said, “alone we can do so little, together we can do so much.” I knew we had to get the band back together after taking a few months off. So like any great captain, I called in the marines.
Nicole has a knack for technology so she was in charge of editing all of the pre-recorded videos tutorials. Then we got Anthony because he is a genius when it comes to sketching. Jordan crunched numbers. Don’t forget Sam, who can only come on Tuesdays and she’s conjuring up magic potions with Rita for our art kits like crazy scientists in the lab. Santina and Terri usually come in the mornings, sit on opposite ends of the table like masked bandits, as we packed those pom poms, jewels and other loose parts in teeny, tiny bags. Then Anna, with her organizational skills and system, helped save the day and colour-coded our boxes with dots. Yes guys, those dots that you see on the side of the art kits, that was all Anna and I! Let’s not forget the lovely Rita (my business partner) who basically does it all, trying to keep us in line with budgets, inventory, making sure we hit deadlines, all while serving drinks. Needless to say, together we can do so much.
As we created these packages, the team was back together but this time in a different capacity; in shifts, in masks, and at a social distance. Raising Artists was back on its feet – but in a different form. I truly didn’t know if this was going to work, yet I trusted my gut, I figured out a way (no matter what), I found the support of my business partner, team, friends, clients and mentors, and we ran with it. We are now dancing into June, and just like that we have officially launched “Creativity Unpacked“, artistic education right to your door; our first ever art kits. What was the secret? Do not be afraid to fail.
Raising Artists was back in your homes, not physically, but now on a screen. Also, when the parents of our budding artists send me photos of their children, watching ME on their screens, I get exhilarated every single time! I think of how much I loved Art Attack growing up, and now I am teaching your children art on what is essentially a tv! Someone pinch me, please!
COVID-19 killed 80 % of our business, but it will never kill my spirit. “COVID-19 happened to my business and my business didn’t fail”. When all of that started to resonate with me, that’s when the projection of upward motion started, and we began to thrive. Are we making as much money as we were last January? Absolutely not! I had to stop judging myself according to last year’s numbers, I had to take perfection off of the table, and be gracious with myself. I flipped the coin, looked at the positive and understood what we did do, which was that we created another streamline of our business. We expanded in a way that we never knew we had time for, we added another pillar to this grand adventure. So maybe when things go back to some sort of normal, we will now have product and workshops. We’ve simply just gotten bigger when it seemed like we would only get smaller. This was a very long ten-month lesson that I had to learn. I know I’m stubborn, I know I hold myself to an extremely high and sometimes impossible standard, and sometimes it takes me a little longer to come to terms with something, but when I finally do come to terms with it, I’m determined, I have grit, I’m ready to run with it and nothing stops me – well, except a worldwide pandemic of course, and then I’ll just creatively shift, again.
About that… Let’s be real, I never took the word “pivot” seriously – so I made up a new phrase for the action: “Creatively Shifting”. Please borrow it, say it, and even do it. It’s because every time someone used the word pivot, I instantly thought of Ross Gellar of the sitcom “Friends”, with a giant couch in his hands yelling “PIVOT!”. Are you picking up what I am putting down?
In conclusion, I can and will go on shamelessly promoting our art kits, because if I am not our biggest cheerleader, how can you be? The best feedback and compliment I ever got from a parent pertaining to an art kit was, “I love these kits because they are so open ended, and both my children express themselves differently. My one child is an A-type personality and wants to follow the instructions, but if my other child with a creative wild spirit wants to create their own masterpiece, the pieces in these kits are so diverse that they are BOTH able to do that.”
That was always the goal, to translate who we are, our ethos, our vision, our mission, our creative process into these art kits that are delivered right to your door. Nevertheless, that’s not all, my educational background in child psychology and a billion hours in class taught me a few things, the purpose of these kits couldn’t just be arts and crafts, they had to be more…
But more of what?
That’s for another blog post.
Until then,
The Art Teacher