Welcome Year of the Rabbit, and welcome wonderful readers to an unusual Open Mic Friday! I don’t have a guest post today, so I’m taking the opportunity to ask for your feedback instead.
I began the Open Mic in August, and since then have featured more than a dozen very talented artists in a variety of media/genres. The Open Mic has received enthusiastic press and word of mouth, and has been a pleasure for me as well. But as you may know, I’ve had difficulty finding guest artists every week. I do have a few more amazing artists scheduled to do posts later this month or year, but not that many. I’ve told people about it (via email and in person), sent out a call in the VONA newsletter and on the Art of Hustle site, and asked previous guest artists to spread the word to their friends. I’m not sure I can spend much more time trying to recruit artists, so in the collective spirit of the Open Mic, I’m asking for your suggestions.
My main questions at the moment are:
(1) How can I find more guest artists without taking too much more time out of my week? I think I currently spend about 1-2 hours every week on finding and corresponding with guests artists.
(2) Would the Open Mic suffer if I had to reduce it to once a month, or every other week? I love that people know they can come here every Friday to experience new art, and I’m afraid that breaking that consistency would shrink the Open Mic’s audience.
I appreciate any feedback you leave in the comments! Or, if you prefer anonymity (or just enjoy taking surveys), I’ve prepared a 2-minute survey with more structured questions.
Thank you all, so deeply, for supporting the Open Mic and creative sharing!
satsumabug.com | Lisa Hsia 
I have a suggestion, Lisa. How about alternating weeks with an open forum using a designated subject we can all bat around. It could still be called “Open Mic”, but it could be a discussion and you can pick a subject, or take suggestions. This might take some of these pressure off of finding “talent” every week.
Sherry, I love your suggestion and it sounds like a lot of fun! It’d be interesting to do creativity- or art-themed discussion subjects, since this is ostensibly an art blog… 😉 Is something like “how do you express creativity in your life” too generic? Let me know if you think of any topics!
I like Sherry’s suggestion, too! I’d miss your Open Mic Friday if it wasn’t here in some form. I might suggest questions a bit more specific so no one has to leave the blog to think it over (they might get sidetracked!) Off the top of my head, maybe something like “How do you harness the creative impulse when it strikes at an inopportune time? Does the random note or quick sketch get you back into the groove later, or do you sometimes lose it?”
I like the idea of us all being able to send in ideas for questions/topics that you can choose from.
I LOVE the idea of a creative forum-style post encouraging people to share their thoughts on specific topics. I know in personal emails between you and I, you’ve shared a number of tips that you’ve read in various creativity-fostering books, such as “Morning Pages,” and I’ve always found those to be super helpful. I’d love to read more about techniques like these, particularly if the format encouraged other readers to offer their feedback and personal stories related to utilizing various techniques and/or offering up others that work for them.
Hi Mo! Yes, I love sharing and receiving creative tips too (and I love our emails 🙂 ) and I’m so glad you reminded me of that. I’d love it if the Open Mic could be a resource center as well as a forum!
Hi Ré! Good thought on not having to leave the blog to think it over. You’ve reminded me about my own commenting habits… when I read others’ blogs that pose questions, I’m more likely to comment if the question is superficially easy to answer (so I don’t feel like “gahhhh I can’t think about this right now”) — which usually means specific — as well as open enough that I can end up riffing on it more deeply than I originally intended. 🙂 I like your sample question too! I’ll definitely open up some form of “question board” where you all can send in your suggestions!
WHAT???…..no Diva Cup discussions?….Just kidding. Sorry Katie, I couldn’t reisit. Art themed discussions/creativity would make sense, tho if the subject is too general we might think we’ve said everything the first go-round. I’ll see what pops into my head over the weekend, and get back to you Monday…..This is exciting! I’ve learned so much from reading your blog already. Exploring creativity with your group can only lead to good things.
Sherry, I didn’t know you’re also a Making This Home reader! 🙂 (No, no Diva Cup discussions on this blog… at least not in the immediate future. 😉 )
Excellent point on “if the subject is too general we might think we’ve said everything the first go-round.” That would be so awkward and not fun!
Thank you and everyone for helping the blog evolve. 🙂 I love it!
Making this Home is a favorite of mine — and that is how I found you, Lisa. Katie linked to you and showed some of your craft work, which I fell in love with. And speaking of Katie — she is spending the winter in an uncomfortably cold house in the Rockies. I wonder how she gets motivated to move away from the warm stove to work on her lovely journals…..Anyway, I digress. I love the suggestions Re has come up with for discussion topics on Open Mic. I think as we go along ideas will continue to flow. Foremost, I want to remind you that this is your blog, so don’t do anything that doesn’t resonate with you personally. Brainstorming is fun, but you are the boss:)
Aha! One of life’s mysteries solved! 🙂 Thank you so much for finding me through that post, Sherry! I never imagined it would result in such a happy friendship. 🙂 Katie and her blog are certainly inspiring.
Thank you for the reminder to stay true to myself. 🙂 So far I am really excited about the new direction for the Open Mic, but yes — if it ever feels like the blog is no longer serving me, that will be a warning indeed!
It’s the evil secret of contribution-based creative work: getting artists to contribute is often the hardest part. I was involved in a few early electronic art scenes, and we used to struggle to gather enough material for anything worth publishing.
Themes do seem to help a little bit, as does some advance publicity for folks who are coming up. I noticed that when we (or others) had something coming, anticipating it was almost more draw than just providing it straight up. People are strange beasts.. So maybe asking a featured guest to provide something at least a week in advance, then basing your theme on that. Then announce the theme and the upcoming artist as a teaser at the start of the week, with an open call for similarly-themed pieces that will appear in a separate post the same day?
I do hope you can keep it up! It’s a relatively thankless job, but the lurkers always outnumber the speakers 🙂
Foldedflat, thank you so much for the encouragement! I am so glad to read your experience with contributive creative work, because this is my first time with it and it’s immensely reassuring to know that the periods of are silence are not just because of me. I mean, I knew it wasn’t just me because everyone was so supportive of the concept, but still, one can’t help wondering. 🙂
Good thought on teasers and what one of my former dance teachers used to call “previews of coming distractions.” For a while, when the blog’s format was a little more structured, I had a better idea of what I’d be doing on the blog later in the week, but right now it’s pretty loose. But this will be a really good thing to keep in mind as the blog continues to evolve. 🙂
I’ve never been involved in an online art forum like this before, so it’s great to hear your input. I have found that publicity is the hardest part about anything to do with a blog. I have very few “friends” on Facebook, yet every so-called social media expert says it’s a wonderful tool for this sort of thing. It is absolutely useless for me, considering that any time I link to a post or Open Mic Friday they ignore it in favor of Twitter-like comments to each other about what they’re about to eat for breakfast, bible verses (!), or myriad announcements that so-and-so “likes” whatever. Personally, I think Twitter is useless if you don’t first have a few friends who would want to follow your every move. I’ve got my thinking cap on, though. This is a puzzle that I want to work out.
Ré, I agree with you on publicity. When I went to Anthem Salgado’s ““Art of Hustle” workshop during the summer, he said he wasn’t going to talk to us about social media because that’s just tools. If we don’t have a compelling story to tell (that is, the story that will make people want to read/visit us and see what we’re all about; Tara Sophia Mohr‘s About page serves that purpose for her), people won’t come, and that’s that. I have 359 friends on Facebook and yet my posts still average somewhere between 10-30 views a day, and even those numbers are I think because I have lots of writer and artist friends who check in on the blog from time to time. The readers who don’t know me are more rare. So far, I’m happy with how things are, considering that my blog started out as a pretty directionless personal journal, but over time I will want to grow those numbers of readers I haven’t met in person, and I think Anthem’s right that the key to that is to develop my “story.” Having an About page and articulating my personal mission statement will help with that, and I think the new Open Mic discussions will help the blog’s mission evolve more too.
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