9 WAYS AI CAN HELP YOUR CAREER AS AN ARTIST OR PRODUCER RIGHT NOW

There’s a lot of skepticism about AI in the arts about what it means for creativity and intellectual property, but there’s no doubt that AI offers artists and producers unparalleled opportunities to enhance creative thinking and processes and to get many of the necessary administrative and marketing jobs done quicker.

Think about what you’re already doing every day to make, share and sell your work as a professional artist.

Wouldn’t you like to spend less time writing grant applications?

How much easier would it be to not have to trawl through every single audio interview or meeting recording to find that one soundbite that sparks a new creative direction, evidences your impact or ties everything together?

And what about all the time you spend agonising over writing the perfect email, artist statement or the hours lost promoting your work online?

From developing ideas, securing funding, winning commissions, attracting partners and collaborators, generating and detangling contracts, documenting participation and engagement, creating traction around your work, and dealing with customer enquiries, AI can boost your productivity, help you push the needle and generate better results. It can even take some of the leg work out of the early stages of creative thinking so you can jump into the heavy lifting sooner.         

Here are 9 ways AI can help your career as an artist or producer right now:

1. Ideation

ChatGPT is a powerful tool to organise your thoughts and ideas - a real boon for freelance artists who miss out on the sounding board opportunities that working in a team offers.

If you’ve got a creative brief, or an artist call out to respond to, you can use Chat GPT to help you create responses to a set theme. This will enable you to identify areas to explore further.

Here’s an example prompt for Chat GPT for a producer or arts commissioner and the Chat GPT response:

Start by listing out all the things artists could do to help residents in Norwich improve their understanding of climate issues and encourage them to make changes in their behaviour to help reduce their carbon footprint.

List at least 20 things.

Be aware that the quality of Chat GPT’s response is heavily reliant on the quality and constraints of the prompt you provide, so be as specific as possible.

2. Mind Maps

You can also create mind maps to help you visualise connections between different pieces of information. This will make it easier to understand complex concepts and topics and come up with new ideas. Mind maps can also help you stay organised, reduce stress and improve your creativity.

Try Whimsical for its AI powered suggestions to help you build your mind map and beat mental blocks when you’re brainstorming.

Here’s an example prompt and an AI generated response:

What should a documentary film highlighting the effects of pollution on local communities include?

3. Accountability

Anyone who works alone knows the impact that being accountable to someone else can have on productivity and focus. For independent artists and creatives that accountability usually comes in the form of an external force - a client, commissioner or funder, but what about being accountable to your own creative and financial ambitions? Be honest, how often do you truly step into the role of ‘Boss’ of your freelance business? Do you ever work 'on' developing your practice / business rather than ‘in’ your practice / business? 

If you really want to step up a gear in your work as an artist and a creative business owner, try making ChatGPT your virtual boss and accountability buddy. Give it a clear objective and ask it to assign you daily or weekly tasks to achieve that objective across a set period – a week, a month a quarter etc. Accountability is important in this process so check in with Chat GPT each morning. Update it on your progress and ask it to assign you your next To Do List. Give it a try. See how much further you get towards your creative and business goals.

4. Bid Writing

It is entirely possible to conceive and write a grant application with ChatGPT, but I wouldn’t recommend it. It’s important that you are connected to your work and that you have an intimate understanding of the implications of the timeframe and budget connected to your idea. However, ChatGPT can save you significant time and anguish in helping you to summarise and edit your answers. It will reduce wordcount to fit within specific word limits without losing the crux of your answers and suggest timetables for activity plans that you can then tweak.

Here’s an example prompt for Chat GPT for an Arts Council England Project Grant application:

Summarise the following statement in 50 words: This partnership development project is a collaboration between playwright John Smith and producer Jane Doe. The project aims to identify place partners, tour venues, and co-creation/engagement opportunities in coastal towns in England for an upcoming play. The play will tell the story of a comedian and his family in contemporary Blackpool and is a sequel to Smith's 2018 play, Just Like That.

Here’s the response from Chat GPT:

Playwright John Smith and producer Jane Doe are collaborating on a partnership development project aimed at identifying tour venues, co-creation opportunities, and place partners in coastal towns in England for their upcoming play. The play is a sequel to Smith's 2018 production, Just Like That, and focuses on a contemporary comedian and his family in Blackpool.

This took a few seconds to generate. It's not perfect. We’re still six words over, and we haven’t replaced all instances of ‘and’ with ‘&’ yet! Another two minutes of tweaking from me and voila! A fifty word summary ready to paste into an Arts Council Project Grant application:

Playwright John Smith & producer Jane Doe will collaborate on a partnership development project to identify tour venues, co-creation opportunities, & place partners in English coastal towns for a new play. A sequel to Smith's 2005 production, Just Like That, the play focuses on a contemporary Blackpool comedian & family.

5. Artist Statements / Proposals / Concepts

If you’re just looking for some help to refine an answer or shorten or expand a paragraph that you have written for an artist statement, proposal or concept narrative, try WordTune, a brilliant app and extension for Chrome and Microsoft Word that helps you to put your thoughts into words with clear, compelling and authentic writing.

6. Understanding Contract Clauses

All arts funding, creative commissions and partnership agreements come with contracts. If you need legal help to help you comprehend the meaning behind the clauses, AI can summarise in non-lawyer language to help you understand the implications of each.

You can ask Chat GPT to explain each clause to you as if you were an 11-year-old so that it gets rid of all the jargon and legal speak.

If you want a complete review of the terms of your contract, Legly is an AI powered contract review platform. It lets you upload two documents for review for free every 90 days.

7. Automated Meeting & Interview Insights

If you're writing for a publication, or you’re an artist who works with communities, or who creates verbatim theatre or sound projects, you may need to record interviews that support the development of your creative work.

If you’re a producer, you may work with lots of partners and have lots of meetings and workshops which need to be transcribed and the key points shared in follow up communications.

Tldv.io is an AI powered meeting recorder for Zoom and Google Meet. It lets you video record, transcribe, timestamp, highlight and share your online meetings easily. You can mark key moments as they’re happening and with one click share the highlights with others as video clips, transcriptions or notes. This is a game-changer for producers because it removes so much admin time. It also makes conversations around complex issues or key details much easier for others to access. This means there can be no misunderstanding or misinterpretation, which can often happen when people are summarising statements or actions agreed in the meeting minutes.

It’s also a game-changer for artists and writers who may have to interview ten different people for a piece of work. This is because it negates the need for you to trawl through each recording to find the specific soundbites that you want to use. Tldv, - which is internet slang for 'too long; didn't view' - will give you back hours of your time.

8. Promoting Your Work Online

SEMrush is a digital marketing tool that uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) algorithms. It can help you with your digital marketing efforts by providing insights and tools to optimise your online presence, reach more people, and grow your audience through:

Search Engine Optimization (SEO): SEMrush can help you optimise your website and improve your search engine rankings, which can lead to more visibility and traffic to your site.

Keyword Research: The tool can help you identify popular keywords and search terms related to your artwork and creative projects. This can help you create content that resonates with your audience and attracts more traffic to your website.

Social Media Marketing: SEMrush can assist you in identifying the most popular social media platforms for your audience and the best times to post. This information can help you to create engaging content that resonates with your followers and boosts your social media presence.

Competitor Analysis: The tool can help you analyse the marketing strategies of other artists and competitors working in the same discipline or geographical area. It can help you to identify their strengths and show you how you can capitalize on the gaps in their marketing campaigns.

9. Customer Service

Tawk.to is a free live chat software that you install on your website. It is a brilliant way of enhancing your website’s accessibility and opening up your work to a much wider audience. It allows you to monitor and chat with visitors on your website, respond to support tickets, and create a help centre to empower your customers to help themselves. Here’s how:

Customer Engagement: Tawk.to enables you to engage with their website visitors and fans (yes, fans!) in real-time, answer questions, and provide support. This can help you build stronger relationships with your audience and increase engagement on your website.

Sales and Marketing: Tawk.to can help you convert website visitors into customers by providing them with personalised recommendations and offers. You can also use the chat platform to promote your creative projects and events, and drive traffic to your social media pages.

Audience Insights: Tawk.to provides you with insights into your website visitors' behaviour, such as their location, the pages they visit, and the time they spend on the site. This information can help you tailor your marketing strategies and content to meet your audience's needs.

Automation: Tawk.to has automation features such as chatbots, which can help you respond to common queries and provide support 24/7. This can help you save time and streamline your customer support operations.

Overall, Tawk.to can help you build a strong online presence, engage with your audience, and increase your sales and marketing efforts by providing a seamless and personalised experience to your website visitors and fans.

The AI tools mentioned above are just a taste of what’s out there now and what is currently being developed. If you’re curious about AI and how it could impact your creative business and practice, I encourage you to dip your toe in the water with some of the tools listed here. See what works for you. And if you try any of these out, I would love to know how you get on. Message me on any of the Good Creator social channels and let me know. I’ll share some of the results on social media.

Five Reasons Why Investing in Continuing Professional Development (CPD) is Important for Freelance Creatives.

If you’re a freelance artist or creative, investing in CPD can often feel like a stretch too far. Taking up an unpaid shadowing opportunity, getting some peer coaching, or participating in a course or residency, costs.

It’s easy to feel that the loss of earnings from taking time away from work outweighs the benefits of learning. First, there's the cost of the course or programme. Then factor in the extra time and associated costs of transport. And don't forget re-arranging your life and family commitments. The real cost of CPD can feel inaccessible for many

What’s the alternative? Maybe you’re happy to learn by doing on the job. Perhaps there’s a colleague or peer you could ask for help. You could read books or articles online. You could listen to podcasts. Or you could Google it. There’s a YouTube video for everything, right?

These are all acceptable alternatives to more formal, paid in-person training and coaching. Will they catalyse great leaps in your thinking and mastery? It's unlikely. They’re designed for you to acquire knowledge and skills at an incremental pace.

If you’re on the fence, here are five reasons why Continuing Professional Development (CPD) is so important and what it can do for you:

Keeping up with changes:

The world is constantly evolving and changing. The same goes for the creative industry and arts and culture professions. CPD enables you to stay up-to-date with the latest developments, trends, and technologies in your field of creative practice and expertise.

Enhancing skills and knowledge:

CPD offers opportunities to improve your skills, learn new ones, and deepen your knowledge. This can lead to bigger/better/ more commission opportunities. It can spark new collaborations and partnerships, better job performance, and career progression.

Meeting regulatory requirements:

Some creative professions require you to engage in CPD to maintain your license or certification. Failure to do so can result in penalties or even losing your license.

Demonstrating commitment to professional development:

Participating in CPD demonstrates a commitment to personal and professional growth. This is always attractive to commissioners, clients and employers.

Networking:

CPD events and activities provide opportunities for you to meet others in your field, exchange ideas and build relationships.

I set up Good Creator, to meet the professional development needs of creative freelancers, like me. People who want to develop their practice, improve their knowledge and skills, grow their impact and income, and meet other creatives. People who can’t afford the time or financial investment that traditional CPD offers need.

Over the next 12 months Good Creator will be offering a whole range of free and paid live, on-demand and self-directed CPD events and courses.

If you’re a writer, artist or theatre-maker, you can start to access some of our free learning opportunities right now. Head over to The Sessions page on our website to view our current programme of free, online events running from 30th March – 24th May 2023 in partnership with The Dukes Theatre, Lancaster.

Announcing Series 3 The Good Creator Sessions

The Dukes Theatre, in partnership with online professional development platform, Good Creator, announce their third series of The Good Creator Sessions, a free, online lecture series for artists and theatre-makers.

Beginning on the Thursday 30th March 2023 with a one-off session from award-winning poet, playwright and curator, Inua Ellams, on adapting stage writing to tv and film, the series will return again after Easter from 19th April, to run every Wednesday evening for six weeks.

Whilst Inua Ellams’ session is supported by Film Hub North through the BFI Audience Network, the ongoing collaboration between The Dukes Theatre and Good Creator, which began in 2021, receives support from Lancaster University as part of their commitment to working with external organisations to provide professional development opportunities for their students. It has already attracted over 300 people to its live online and in person event programme from across the UK and around the world, including, Canada, Greece, Germany, North America and many more.

The programme for series three will explore how to work at the intersection of creative arts. It will look at how to drive innovation in creative practice whilst maintaining creative, mental and emotional integrity and ensuring care for audiences, and consider questions such as: 

·       What happens when we push ideas out of their comfort zone? 

·       How can we scale our imagination so that our ideas have impact outside of our usual delivery space and audience pool? 

·       What are the benefits of working at the intersection of different industries and/or in different environments and market spaces?

·       How do we protect our creative and intellectual integrity when working with partners in other industries and ensure care for our audiences?

·       How do we maintain our confidence and wellbeing in times of transition, change and growth?

Each 75-minute session will be rich with information and experience from professional theatre artists and creatives who will share their work, their process and their vision to help artists energise their thinking and take actionable steps to build and develop their careers in theatre and the arts and break new ground in their practice.

Alex O’Toole, founder of Good Creator, said,

“Quality, affordable and accessible professional development can be hard to find when you’re a freelancer. It’s always a choice between earning and training, and in today’s climate, it’s a choice that most of us can’t afford to make. Often the development opportunities available are expensive, located miles away, or they’re part of a residential, or they’re held at times that simply won’t work for artist parents or carers.

Good Creator aims to bring genuinely interesting and useful development opportunities directly to where the artists and creatives are, regardless of their level of expertise or personal circumstance. The Sessions are part of that offering, and I’m delighted to be working in partnership with The Dukes once again to offer an exciting and accessible option for theatre makers.

With each new season of The Sessions, we’ve added more value to our online events by building in extra support that people can access on their own terms. As well as a recording of each session that can be watched back on demand, attendees also receive a supporting document written by the lead artist for each session, a list of reading recommendations connected to the theme of the season, a curated playlist, and a subscription to The Make, our quarterly newsletter.”

Karen O’Neill, CEO of The Dukes, said,               

“The Dukes is excited to be working with Good Creator and Lancaster University once again on another season of the Good Creator sessions as part of our wider talent development and creative learning offer. Working with a range of artists and creative professionals these sessions provide insight for students and theatre-makers looking to enhance their work and gain knowledge about different ways of working within the creative sector. They also provide a chance for emerging artists to connect and learn from their peers.”

Following the Adapting Stage to Screen session with Inua Ellams from 6pm – 7.30pm on Thursday 30th March The full programme of online sessions in this series includes:

-          Developing a Safer Way of Working with award winning writer and performer, Alexandra Donnachie, who appeared in the BBC’s Suffragettes with Lucy Worsley, from 6pm – 7.30pm (GMT), Wednesday 19th and 26th April 2023.

-          Collaborating With Knowledge Experts: Adding Value, Authenticity and Integrity to Art & Performance with award-winning theatre director and Inside Theatre app designer, Beck Gadsby, from 6pm – 7.30pm (GMT), Wednesday 3rd May 2023.

-          How to Scale Your Creative Work Through Partnerships with writer and performer, Liz Richardson, from 6.30pm – 8pm (GMT), Wednesday 10th May 2023.

-          How to Make Work About Tricky Topics with theatrical trauma consultant and forensic psychologist, Dr Julia Langley from 6.30pm – 8pm (GMT), Wednesday 17th May 2023

-          How To Use Immersive Technology in Theatre with award-wining theatre director and Inside Theatre app designer, Beck Gadsby from 6pm – 7.30pm, Wednesday 24th May (GMT) 2023.

All sessions are free to attend, but tickets must be booked in advance to secure a spot.

Tickets for all sessions are available to book now.

View full details of the whole programme.

THE SESSIONS RETURN FOR SPRING 2023

Good Creator’s partnership with The Dukes continues with a new season of The Sessions programmed for Spring 2023.

Once again, we’ll be using The Dukes’ stage and cinema programme as a jumping off point to create a six session online series of inspiration and professional development support that connects to a wider theme.

With each new season of The Sessions, we’ve added more value to our online events by building in extra support you can access on your own terms. As well as a recording of each session that you can watch back in your own time, you also receive:

• ‘Ten Things’, a supporting document written by the lead artist for each session

• a list of reading recommendations connected to the theme of the season

• a curated playlist of tunes to get you in the zone

• subscription to The Make, our quarterly newsletter

Aside, from being completely free to access, one of the best things about The Good Creator Sessions is the diversity of thought and experience the platform. Not only do you get to learn directly from creative practitioners from a wide range of backgrounds and experiences across a wide spectrum of topics, you’re also in the ‘virtual’ room with people in the audience from equally diverse contexts. People you have never met before, who are asking the questions that you also wanted to ask AND questions might never have thought to ask.

It’s a place that sparks new and more expansive thinking. A place to find new connections and creative cues, and a way to access different conversations.

If you’d like to be part of a global creative community with a generosity of spirit, a shared curiosity and a genuine love of learning, please join us next season.

To be in the know when details of Season 3 of The Sessions are released, sign up to our newsletter.

Good Creator Nomainated For an EVA Award

We’ve got some proud news to share. Good Creator has been nominated for two EVA Awards, the North West’s most prestigious business awards for women.

Good Creator has been nominated for Best Creative Industry Business and Best Solo Business. Our thanks and appreciation to our anonymous nominator. No creative woman (or man) is an island and this nomation is a testament to the power of creative collaboration. We’re proud to collaborate with The Dukes and Lancaster University Institute of Contemporary Arts to bring you The Sessions.