Collaborations across artistic disciplines, sponsored and supported by museums, galleries, art journals, and art supply companies, are in a unique position to leverage and catalyze change.
Artists love to collaborate. So much of creative work is intensely personal and isolated, and the hours of working alone, concentrating on one’s own ideas, can be lonely. Artists who work together in community, especially on a project that many care about and that has benefits outside their own narrow area of focus, bring a great deal of creativity and joy to the work.
A successful collaboration involves a working group to make plans, share ideas, and bring in team members. Some will be involved in marketing, some in communication or fundraising. After initial plans are made, including major partners, the goals of a collaboration, and a time line, artist participants are recruited from across the worldwide collective of creative people.
A museum, gallery, or nonprofit that can obtain exhibition space can work on plans for public exhibition. Professional art organizations can make plans to jury work, if the plans call for a jury; inclusive art exhibitions, in which all comers are welcome, are a great venue for sharing creative work.
A theme that is offered to artists across disciplines makes for unique exhibits that are very popular with the public. Themes range from social justice projects, such as preventing human trafficking, to quirky ideas, such as comic book art through the ages. The goals of the collaborative can be both communication, awareness, and fundraising. Fun art exhibits that have a fundraising goal usually have an auction or sale associated with openings, and are especially popular when they exhibit across disciplines.
Themes and goals can be related without being the same; a goal of raising money for books for a girl’s school in Africa might have a creative theme in the book arts; a goal of raising awareness about child labor in the cocoa industry may be most effective with art that directly reflects the awareness goal.
Successful exhibits with an international theme can, with financial support, tour galleries across the world. Sponsorship of a successful collaboration is usually easy to obtain, but for a beginning work group, consider art supply companies and university art programs as sponsors.
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