Creative Capital is a nonprofit organization that supports forward-thinking artists across the country through funding, counsel, gatherings, & career development services.

Creative Capital serves artists at all stages in their careers, and all across the country. Along with grants, they provide resources on topics like finance, funding, and communications. The workshops they offer are created and facilitated by experts, who often also have artistic practices themselves. (Did you know Megan is a visual artist?)

In 2019 and 2020, Creative Capital asked us to create and lead workshops on how to write an authentic, compelling artist statement. Following the success of those in-person workshops, Creative Capital asked us to develop an online workshop series on making an artist website clear, compelling, and accessible.

We created a custom 4-part online workshop, and had over 160 artists sign up. Over the course of our four 90-minute sessions, we took the artists through a set of interactive exercises. These activities helped them articulate the why (purpose), who (audience), and how (content) of their websites. Our aim was to help them authentically communicate about themselves and their work online.

“It was very well-paced, energetic, and fun! A refreshing and thought-provoking experience.”

— Workshop participant

We also focused on how to make digital content—written, visual, and auditory—accessible to everyone. Finally, we touched on other key aspects of successful digital strategies. We offered best practices and basics around search engine optimization (SEO), analytics, mailing lists, and platforms.

Below is a sampling of slides from the four workshops:

What’s the Point? Purpose, Audience & Authentic Expression
What’s the Structure? Content Organization, User Experience & Digital Strategy
What’s the Technology? Platforms, SEO & Digital Accessibility
What’s the Content? Best practices for written, visual, and multi-media content

Learn more about our workshops & trainings >

A slide from the workshop. An effective website sits in the middle of a venn diagram of three things: a clear purpose, prioritizes target audiences, and authentically expresses who you are.

An example slide for a performance artist. My website purpose: Explaining complex work, enticing people to see live performances, demonstrating breadth of career. My target audiences: Funders, higher education, venues who need to understand my body …

“Taking the time to first center our audience and framing the content around what that audience is looking for has really allowed me to focus on what material needs to be on the website, and to be able to exclude anything that doesn’t fit that mission.”