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Jobs: Think ahead for creative careers

For increasing numbers of people, their art is their passion; whether it’s drawing, sculpting, painting or graphical design; fashion, writing, acting, film-making or even designing games and websites. However, turning your art into a career can be difficult.

The creative industries are notoriously hard to break into so freelancing is common, although this can be tricky – especially when you first start out. The best way to get ahead is to start planning early, put together a portfolio or show-reel of your best work and make the most of the opportunities available to showcase your talents.

The best way to get ahead is to start planning early, put together a portfolio or show-reel of your best work and make the most of the opportunities available to showcase your talents

Get involved
Uni is a great place to be creative, even if you’re not doing an arts course. Societies and the SU will have an outlet for any artistic urge you might have, and if they don’t why not start your own.

There are loads of competitions across the arts world to encourage people to get involved, both within uni and at a local and national level. Just taking part can help you to hone your skills and put you in contact with loads of like-minded people with whom you can share ideas and learn new things.

Winning is added kudos and will look fantastic on your CV, as well as adding some extra weight to your portfolio. For more information, ask your tutors or lecturers, get in touch with your local arts council or search online.

You can try submitting your work to your favourite newspapers and magazines too. There’s no guarantee you’ll get lucky but you might get some useful feedback.

The internet is your friend
The internet is the ideal place for you to show off your skills, whatever your talent may be. An excellent place to start is the exposure section of the yougo website and is a good chance to get feedback on what other people make of exploits. You could always add your work to your Facebook or MySpace profile too and show off your talent to your friends. Better still, upload what you do to Exposure on yougo. You never know who'll be looking.

BBC Talent is a great portal for writers and performance artists and could be an ideal way to break into the media industry and get your art to the masses. You might even get on the TV or radio. The web is awash with galleries and marketplaces for your artistic ability as a quick search will testify, but here is a whirlwind tour of some of the more popular options.

The visual arts
For visual artists (Painters, sculptors, graphic designers, photographers, illustrators etc), the web is a perfect way to put together a portfolio of your work that can be seen by millions. There are plenty of places that’ll let you upload pictures of your work and maybe even make some money through selling it. The famous Saatchi Gallery has a section on its website Saatchi Online titled ‘your gallery’ that allows you to upload your work and sell it free of commission, as well as chat live with prospective buyers and other artists.

Other sites include deviantART that combines a cross-media platform (including written word, music and film) with a social network, allowing others to comment on your work and share ideas and techniques.

There are also various image-bank sites where you can upload your photos. Flickr, photobucket and photoshelter are all popular, the latter allowing you to offer your photos for sale as stock images.

Music
There are plenty of options out there for musicians too, although MySpace is perhaps the best known after the successes of Lily Allen, Kate Nash and others. Jamendo lets you publish your music under Creative Commons licenses and even accept donations via paypal while iJigg lets users rate your tunes with the most popular moving higher up the chart.

Film and animation
For film-makers, actors and animators, YouTube is by far the best known means of getting your work seen and if you make something good, it might even ‘go viral’. It’s all too easy for your film to get lost among the ‘man gets hit in crotch with football’ clips though, so some clever tagging can really help. Alternatives include Veoh and blip.tv.

Fashion and crafts
If you’re into making clothes, jewellery, crafts or little decorative doodads then Etsy is a place where you can show off your wares and make some cash from selling them, although if you’re not yet ready to part with your creations you could always just take some photos and use one of the online photo repositories listed above.

The written word
For prospective authors, several of the publishing houses are setting up their own social networks where you can publish your works and find out what readers think of your writing. You might even get published too. HarperCollins is set to launch Authonomy soon and other publishers are likely to follow closely behind. For writers of short stories, 1000keyboards is a way to get feedback on your work and communicate with other writers. For all types of writing, blogs are an excellent idea, allowing you to get your point across to a broad audience.

Multimedia
As well as deviantART mentioned previously, there are plenty of multimedia outlets for what you produce from social networks such as cre8buzz to online magazines, for example Platforms Magazine .

These are just a drop in the ocean compared to what’s available out there on the web so be sure to take a look and find the option that suits you best. Starting early and getting your work out in the public arena is not only a good way to raise your profile (and maybe even a bit of cash), it'll also make you stand out to future employers as someone enthusiastic and passionate about your art.

Making good use of the channels open to you will demonstrate initiative, creativity, commitment and commercial awareness all of which are highly prized by employers. The internet is a great way to get your work seen but you should ensure no one can use it without your permission. Creative Commons licenses are an easy way to do this and allow you to choose who can use your work and how.

Related links
Show off your talent in Exposure on yougo
yougo jobs channel
TARGETjobs

Luke Micallef
TARGETJobs.co.uk