I am tired of watching artists and arts organizations live on leftover scraps.
Mind you, the organizations and agencies aren’t cheap with the patrons and board members with the big bank accounts. They are cheap with the artists, without whom their passionate interest would not exist.
Artists, in turn, grow to feel they are not worthy of more.
Don’t get me wrong. Frugality isn’t inherently bad. In fact, it can be good.
I don’t believe in spending for spending’s sake or in extravagance.
But frugality becomes detrimental when it feeds the notion that we are not worthy of more.
Many of my clients develop this sense of unworthiness that is perpetuated by the very organizations that were created to serve them.
I confess that I behaved similarly in the past.
For years I have been writing about how artists can show that their work has value. But I continued to allow the organizers who hired me for workshops to do things “on the cheap,” and I was doing the same with the workshops and events I organized myself.
How can I save money? was my modus operandi.
My first workshop, in 2003, was held at an office building that a friend managed. I recall my parents (!) picking up and delivering boxed lunches to the group.
At a much later workshop, I ran my team ragged making coffee all day long – trekking repeatedly to the kitchen on the other end of the building. Coffee! Because I didn’t pay for a venue that had food service.
No more.
I began attending
