I took a risk in Melbourne in ‘93 setting up a shopfront studio for my rather fledgling art/ design practice in Collingwood after returning a few years before from London.
It was definitely passion led, although I had, a year previously, done a business plan for a very small initiative that got me going. Despite all the odds and lack of admin expertise I had a fabulous ammount of community interaction happening that kept the doors open over 4 years. In hindsight I should not have been so doubting of the project …but it felt tough to hang in there being compared to other more mainstream businesses and at times I lost focus, allowing the odd negative message to define the project instead of recognising that to even exist for over 4 years as a going concern and to have cultivated a lively alternative art venue was a success in itself. 12 years later and dont I know that now!

I say BRAVO to any creative artisan/ artist/ designer who has the courage and energy to start up a project up and run with it…for it is very much in the doing that you really learn… you discover the absolutely wonderful community spirit of support for such ventures and what you will learn will take you far. It was easily the most interesting and rewarding of times, despite being the most challenging.

Frankly…there is so much bleak conformity and of the ’shopping mall/ franchised high street’ mentality out there that begs for this whole other layer of creative (business) activity to burst forth to counter it. There’s no time like the present…and maybe the point is to notice what is seriously lacking in the mainstream and really home in on filling the gaps with loads of creative thinking, rethinking and reinventing. I think one has to really engage with one’s community to discover what’s missing…what people could be hungry for…through experimentation and trial and error. Its a bit of a to-ing and fro-ing relationship… the authenticity of one’s own creative project and yet relationship with and discovery of others and what speaks to them. this is where much learning takes place I suspect…. finding a unique audience….building on that. Connection is required… dare I say conviviality and openness. Going beyond the known…in any number of ways.

Its a long-considered suspicion of mine that saving all one’s creative enterprise for the gallery wall can at times, for some, be a rather narrow pathway and an oversight that may hinder one’s exposure to valuable experiences that can only add to the long term, slow unfolding of a vocation in the arts.

Some may well find their feet early and spectacularly…and we can only wish anyone in this position well! But, for many, it is a much slower apprenticeship and the road is long and winding. This is not to say that what comes from this journey has to be necessarily inferior or otherwise…rather… the more circuitous unfolding may ultimately become part of the richness of that particular artist’s story and work.

Well done you for championing the endless possibilities that exist for creative people to be creative… the ground is shifting and its good to hear reports from all over…and to recognise that this is an open moment…all things are possible!