When we started holding our Bootcamps virtually, after years of giving them only live at conventions, we thought it might be nice to start a little Facebook group, just so people taking the class could interact a little. We figured it would mostly be a place where people asked us questions as the teachers, and we could answer, and then the questions would be someplace where everyone could weigh in from their own experience.
Boy did we underestimate the power of the community that formed around these Bootcamps! There are lots of Art groups that are social spaces online, and lots of Art Critique groups, but there’s really very few places that you can go and ask questions of a group of like-minded creatives all working on the base of knowledge, and all focused on Art Business and Creative Careers. Not that people aren’t nice in the group! But this is a working group first, and we stay on target. Anytime there’s a question a bunch of folks from the community have usually weigh in, before the admins can even see it, which is lovely.
And yes, we eventually did add a Crit channel too.
The group honestly got so rich (while Facebook has gotten so…unhelpful) that we moved it to a more powerful platform in order to have more functionality, topic channels, a much better search, and more. Usually, to support the cost of this functionality we change $10/month. But during this quarantine year, when we are all starved for community, and there are no cons and live events to meet people, we want everyone to have a place to workshop their art and promotion.
You can join for free (indefinitely until we’re all out of quarantine) on our Gumroad page.