There are two questions that are on many of our minds these days:

1. How can we create a holistic vision of our interdisciplinary work and lives?
2. How do we extend our creative impulses into marketing our art?

Hi, I’m Lena, and I’m MAD. I do marketing, art and development work.

Marketing. Art. Development: Not separate! They’re all telling the story of who you are as an organization in different ways. Do you find yourself saying that you “wear many hats”?  I think it’s time to move on from this notion. Think about a unified outlook for your personal career and organization if you haven’t done it before.

Marketing. Art. Development: Dangit! Is there a word for this marketing trope? The Power of Three? Did you use periods or commas? Genius at one point. Really overdone. It’s critical for artists working in the marketing and development sectors to apply some of our genuine creative process to these other areas of our work.

Here’s a fun experiment that I came up with while trying to figure out what the heck my current art project was going to be:

Project Divination Tool

I decided that my project plan needed to be a physical object. I made it in about two hours, mostly by instinct and what interests me.

Then, I started making index cards with my To-Do items on them.

What would happen if you worked through your To-Do list at random?

Would everything get done?

Would you spend as much time as you do each day on your Top Priorities, or would something else bubble to the top?

This model of random To-Do lists is a natural fit for an artistic project where the meat of it is the process itself. What if we ran a marketing project like this?

Exhale, please. Pondering this is not the end of your marketing career.

I think doing creative exercises like this would see us quickly move away from tired marketing tropes. If for no other reason than the fact that we had a little fun when thinking about the project instead of getting stuck in the fear of getting it wrong.

I’ve come to realize that I have one hat that goes really well with the rest of the outfit I’ve put together for myself. Every piece of this outfit complements and strengthens the other parts. And best of all, I had so much fun putting it on!

I’d love to discuss these ideas and have some fun with my Project Divination tool while we’re at #NAMPC.

Let’s help each other create beautiful outfits for ourselves and the arts organizations we support. And maybe even have a little fun while we’re at it.

[insert Munday-ArtsBlog3.jpg NOTE: This could be a lead image too. Whatever makes most sense to you.]

Lena Munday is leading the the Roundtable Discussion Marketing, Outreach, + Development: All Rolled into One during the National Arts Marketing Project Conference 2015. REGISTER before this Friday, 10/23!