SAF CONFERENCE and beyond ...

Yesterday I went along to the Southwark Arts Forum to take part in their conference THE ART OF MAKING MONEY
It was really interesting and I wanted to share  the list of excellent speakers, together with their websites so you can have a look yourselves:

The Speakers:

• Alex Chinneck – Visual Artist and Designer – His large public work has been featured in The New York Times, The Guardian, BBC and Dezeen Magazine. The London-based artist also runs a successful Furniture Design business..Alex was honest and fun, and his work is AMAZING
• Lucy Day - Lucy is an independent Art Curator working in partnership with Day + Gluckman curatorial partnership.  She also works as an external consultant for a number of organisations including a-n - the Artists Information Company. Lucy had a lot to say about the great work that A-N does; I'm such  supporter of A-N myself.
• Johnny Martin FD – Financial Director - is known for his “cool and straight forward approach” and has helped thousands of entrepreneurs nationwide understand business numbers and jargon. Wow, Johnny really cut the crap and made finance seem, well, COMPREHENSIBLE!
• Gillian McIver - Canadian artist and film maker based in London. Co-founder of the award-winning artist-run organisation Studio75, focusing on curating and creating opportunities for artist development.  Well, that would be me...
• Victoria Sin – Illustrator Designer - Sony, Paloma Faith and Vice Magazine amongst the list of clients of this entrepreneurial student, who is regularly commissioned work and sells her art-work online to her strong customer base. Such nice work!
• Claire Meredith - Speaker, Writer and Coach. She works with individuals who have an ‘itch’ to live in adventure; challenging, encouraging and inspiring them towards their best lives. She regularly presents the fortnightly Creative Hub podcast, Hatch. Claire talked about self-confidence - why we need it and how we can have it.

I can't pretend I could tell everyone how to make money but I hope I told them how to avoid wasting money. In my talk I emphasized that an artist's life plan (I prefer that term instead of "career") is totally individual, but that most things can be done if you set yourself the talk to using your creativity to find a way to do them. Alex's talk pretty much fit with mine in that sense, though his work is very different.
I certainly met some interesting and dynamic folks at the conference; I think SAF are doing a great job.

 windy wet day in Peckham Rye, but totally worth the trek out to get there: