Ind-E-Focus

You close your eyes. It’s now or never. Take a deep breath, this is what you live for, this is what you love. Everything you have worked for, all the tears, the ups and downs, the emotions, the passion; you let it out. A clean beautiful note cuts through the troubled silence and fills the air. Another follows, and another; an aria, an expression of how much it means for you to be right here, right now. There is no fear, no pain, no distress, there is just the moment; and all eyes are on you.

A moment like that is a long time in the making. It starts with the dream and with time it comes into focus until you reach that one brilliant shining moment, when you can see the entire process stretched out in front of your eyes. If you want to make it happen, you have to start now.

Begin by getting to know yourself, and the people you will be working with. Being an Independent Artist is extremely demanding. You need to know how to get the best out of yourself. Do you work best during the day or at night? Do you work well with some nice music or do you need complete silence? Think about your strengths, weaknesses and pet hates, and share them with your group. Everyone is different, you will need to be able to fit together different personalities and working habits like a jigsaw puzzle. It is complicated, but if you take this step before the pressure is on you will all be able to pull together as a team, instead of falling apart at every deadline.

The next step is to start getting your ideas down on paper, make a plan of where you want to be and research all the steps you have to take to get there.

This is the beginning of a business plan.

As boring as it sounds, your business plan is vital. It helps people who don’t share your dream, at the very least understand that it can become a reality. It also helps you keep your ideas grounded and focused, as it is often easy to go off on tangents and lose sight of your goal when you get excited about your work.

The most important thing to remember as an Independent Artist, is that time is your best friend and worst enemy. Time really is money. You may have deadlines to meet, or rehearsal space that is only available for use in unsociable hours. Make sure you plan ahead to make the most of the time you have.

But even more importantly; DO NOT RUSH!! The process is equally, if not more important than the end product. Take the time to get things as close to perfect as humanly possible. An extra day of considering the risks can save you a week when that risk finally turns into a problem and you are forced to deal with it head on.

Similarly, take the time to consider not just your performance audience, but also your peers and corporate audiences. Your project needs to look well developed from as many different angles as possible. An audience at an art gallery or cinema may not care about your business plan. But the people who will be financing your work won’t care how good your idea sounds, if you can’t prove that it will work on paper.

Give yourself the best possible chance of success, learn from your mistakes and be realistic, not everything will be possible on your first project but after you have made a better name for yourself new doors and avenues will begin to open up.

Being an Artist is all about expression. Expression of how you feel, how you think or what you believe. Being an Independent Artist involves being in control of that expression and being a part of Ind-E-Focus is about sharing that expression with the world.

We want to know about the lengths you went to in order to succeed, we want to know about the good and the bad times you have had on your journey of creation. Every one of your successes and failures can potentially help and inspire another Independent Artist, so share them.

Create an Ind-E-Focus which can double up as an electronic business plan. Use our resources to develop it further. Create news bulletins to let everyone on Ind-E-Focus know about your progress, and when/where your work can be seen.

Make an impression on the world of Independent Artists.

Your art is Ind-E-Mand here,

Ind-E-Focus; Eyes on the Independent Artist.

Continue to Ind-E-Structible.