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RESOURCE TEMPLATES
Working as an artist in any field requires more than the time and skill to realize your latest project. Artist statements and curricula vitae are just some of the tools you'll need to gain recognition and support for your work. Whether you're applying for a grant, exhibition or a City of Hamilton Arts Award, the following provide useful explanations and examples to get you started.
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Artist Statement - Learn how to write effectively about your creative practice
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Curriculum Vitae - Our step-by-step instructions for creating an artist resume includes examples for artists working in multiple creative disciplines
We look forward to sharing more resources on this page in the near future, such as artist contracts and further guidance on the granting process. If there's a resource that you would like to see on this page, contact us to let us know.
PREPARING FOR AN EXHIBITION: FAQ FOR VISUAL ARTISTS
The Hamilton Arts Council's Visual Arts Committee has prepared this reference guide to answer many of the questions early-career artists have when starting to exhibit their work for the first time. 'Preparing for an Exhibition: FAQ for Visual Artists' is a good starting point for choosing the right institution to show your work, preparing and pricing your work for exhibition, and dealing with some of the more common issues that may arise in your practice.
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Preparing for an Exhibition: FAQ for Visual Artists - Use your computer's PDF reader to view the table of contents and quickly access each topic included in the document.
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Map of Hamilton Area Art Galleries (Google Maps) - Provides listings and locations of Hamilton area art galleries and studios. While we aim to keep this map up to date, please contact us with any new additions or changes required.
RESOURCES FOR BUSINESSES EXHIBITING ART
The Hamilton Arts Council Visual Arts Committee has prepared two documents to assist local businesses such as coffee shops, restaurants and professional offices interested in exhibiting art on their premises. Both provide an overview of important steps to follow to ensure that both the artist and your business share responsibility for a successful exhibition experience.
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Checklist for Businesses That Exhibit Art (PDF) - Provides a step-by-step timeline of the exhibition process, from preparing a call for submissions to managing sales.
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Templates for Businesses Exhibiting Visual Art (Word) - In addition to providing more detailed exhibition considerations, this document provides a framework for creating your own call for submissions and two sample exhibition agreements that cover all common elements of an artist contract.
ARTIST PRODUCER RESOURCE
ArtistProducerResource.com is a public wiki database curated by Generator, where you are free to share and remix any content that you see as long as it is NOT for commercial use and you attribute both Generator and ArtistProducerResource.com. The site is an open source resource, made by artists for artists as a place to share knowledge, resources, tools, and best practices for producing independent performance work in Canada.
RESEARCH PROJECTS
The Hamilton Arts Council works closely with our community to learn more about the needs of the arts at the local level. The following are some of the research projects that we have undertaken with artists, organizations and regional partners.
UNCOVERING HAMILTON'S ART HISTORY 1950-2000
The publication of Climbing the Cold White Peaks: A survey of artists in and from Hamilton 1910-1950 by Stuart MacCuaig in 1986 began the important work of preserving the history of Hamilton’s visual arts community. However, Hamilton’s art history from 1950 onwards exists only in partial records and the memories of artists from this era, some of whom have already died without passing on their stories of this pivotal time. In response to this issue, the Hamilton Arts Council’s Visual Arts Committee invited interested stakeholders in Hamilton’s visual arts community to join an open discussion on how to collect and preserve Hamilton’s art history from 1950-2000 to ensure these stories survive for future generations.
UNDERSTANDING THE CAPACITY NEEDS OF ARTS ORGANIZATIONS
The Hamilton Arts Council was invited by the City of Hamilton’s Tourism & Culture Division to conduct a study of the organizational capacity needs of the arts in Hamilton. As a local community arts council with a mandate to serve and support this city’s arts community, the Hamilton Arts Council bears witness to these challenges on a regular basis, and is uniquely positioned to lend visibility and perspective to the operational practices of arts organizations: not only their difficulties, but also the drive and ingenuity that keeps the arts alive in our city from one year to the next. This community's growing willingness to share in its challenges and successes made it possible for artists and administrators to respond openly to the questions raised by this study, which was reported in turn to the City's Tourism & Culture Division in hopes of finding collective solutions to the challenges faced by arts organizations in our city today.