The artist’s work as a practice and business

The Art of Start-Up is an effort that focuses on building the artist’s business 

The reality for most of the graduates from artistic educations is that they get a working life as self-employed: they get to run a self-employed business – either alone or with others. They are also met with a number of legal requirements, such as the requirement to register their company with a CVR number when they have a turnover of more than 50,000 – which corresponds to approx. DKK 4,000 per month before tax.

For many, it can be a challenge to think about artistic work holistically: something that must function as an artistic practice as well as artistic activity.

During the education, we can help the students to see and develop the connection between practice and business. For a company that is not deeply rooted in the artistic base, it will hardly be a sustainable work – and vice versa. Therefore, the ENTRE program offers presentations to all teachers, where we review the overall issues related to the infrastructure of the artistic work.

The Art of Start-Up is also offered as a course locally at schools.

The Art of Start Up is hosted by Pernille Skov. Pernille is the head of the art schools’ joint knowledge centre CAKI, where she has worked for the past 10 years to strengthen the knowledge base for entrepreneurship in art educations. She is also a consultant in a number of career programs, including Statens Kunstfonds program ‘The young artistic elite’, she runs her own business and is continuously involved in various projects with cultural entrepreneurship.

COURSE

The course is based on the question of how to organize and structure a professional practice and realize a holistic work-life, where the artistic and creative practice is in accordance with work.

How can you build the organization and infrastructure that best suits you, and what options do you have for registering your practice with the authorities?

The course also includes topics such as bookkeeping, tax, VAT and the special artist VAT we have in Denmark. We also talk about how you can develop revenue streams and professional relationships in a customer/client base. See an example of a course plan:

The Art of Start-Up