A creative practice, treated like a career.

The Funding Network: Young Artists Centre

The challenge

Young people who make things are usually told it will not pay. Schools teach the craft and rarely teach the business, so students who are good at something creative leave school with no idea how to charge for it. In regional communities there is often no pathway at all.

The Young Artists Centre was co-funded through The Funding Network by Milford and Brian M Davis.

What we did

The Young Artists Centre is a nine-week program that runs across five stages. We ran it for 15 young people in regional Victoria.

First, workshop training. Weekly sessions covering pricing, branding, customers and how to manage money, so a craft becomes a venture rather than a hobby.

Second, mentorship. We match each young person with an artist-in-residence, a working creative who has built their own enterprise and can teach both the craft and the business behind it.

Third, a community showcase. A local event where young artists sell directly to their community for the first time, including a live auction of their work.

Fourth, microgrants, so artists can buy supplies and cover the cost of starting.

Fifth, market access. We partner with local shopping centres and festivals to give young artists free retail space in their own community.

The outcome

15 young people finished with their own creative businesses. The range across the cohort was wide, covering jewellery, hand crochet, painting, henna and custom origami. Much of it was work they had been making for years without ever considering selling it.

The program closed with an auction and awards night, with our funders in the room. Students watched people they had never met bid on work they had made. For most of them it was the first time anyone outside their family had put a price on it.

What's next

The model keeps money circulating locally. Young people earn income in their own region rather than leaving to find it, the community buys directly from local makers, and microgrants are spent on local supplies and stalls.

We are running the Young Artists Centre again and looking for partners who want to back young creatives in places the arts sector barely reaches.