LOCAL PARTNER: Center for Cultural Innovation
www.cciarts.org

CREATIVE COMMUNITIES PROJECT
Business of Art: One of the Center for Cultural Innovation’s (CCI) core program areas provides knowledge-building for artists that can lead to greater self-sufficiency, focusing primarily on improving artists’ business competency as self-employed individuals and small business enterprises. In 2002, CCI launched “Business of Art”, an entrepreneurial training program for artists in Los Angeles that combined traditional business training curricula established for women and minority entrepreneurs with specific arts-related career and business development information pertaining to artists in all disciplines. LINC support helped CCI evaluate this pilot program, leading to the development of a new curriculum which now consists of 7 workshops covering issues such as career and business planning for artists; marketing and self-promotion; budgeting and financial management; and the funding environment for artists’ work. Additionally, artists receive counseling and mentoring opportunities with field experts in business and the arts. CCI has expanded the “Business of Art” to reach artists in San Francisco/Oakland and Marin, and soon to artists in San Jose. CCI commissioned a companion “Business of Art” publication to make its training information more widely available. It was released nationally in April 2008.

ABOUT CENTER FOR CULTURAL INNOVATION
The Center for Cultural Innovation was founded in 2001 with a mission to promote knowledge sharing, networking, and financial independence for individual artists and creative entrepreneurs by providing business training, grants and loans, and incubating innovative projects that create new program knowledge, tools, and practices for artists in the field. CCI serves artists in all disciplines throughout California, and maintains offices in both Los Angeles and San Francisco. CCI believes that by linking the natural creativity and tolerance for risk of artists and creative entrepreneurs to the latest business tools and practices, and by helping to connect them to new financial resources, and to one another, CCI can give artists the knowledge and economic independence needed to bring their work and ideas into the marketplace, and establish a new voice for artists based on their collective clout.

To learn more about LINC, click on the links below to download a text-only brochure or a map of LINC's activities.