“There is no ‘right’ way to make art. The only wrong is in not trying, not doing.”
Having a creative block is something that happens to all artists at one time or another. Whether you are a writer, illustrator, mixed media artist or photographer, most Creatives at some point in their careers have encountered this. One way to help with this block is to connect with other Creators by seeking out or joining a local creative community.
As a photographer, you may be starting out and need to learn the basics of lighting but the youtube tutorial just isn’t cutting it for you. Perhaps you want to learn new ways to improve your workflow or try a different editing style. Maybe you are a model and want to learn how to expand your poses or you want to know how to secure more contracts and increase your marketing skills.
Whatever you decide to label yourself, beginner or professional, being part of a creative community may help you to tap into other Creator experiences’ and learn from them.
When we started our creative community, we had local meetups weekly and noticed how quickly we all started to learn from one another and grow. Within a year, many of the people in our group started to find their own unique style and help one another out with all aspects of their creative endeavors. Their marketing, technical skill and style all grew twice as fast as those who were not in the group and trying to develop themselves on their own.
But perhaps you do not have that creative community around you, what do you do then?
You start building your own community of Creatives.
A popular tool to develop your community is either Facebook Groups or the meetup app. The apps allow you to invite all your friends that you know in your area to join the group. After you start getting a few people in, meet up regularly and always ask people to invite their friends.
The more friends you bring in with similar interests the quicker it will grow. Eventually, you will have more than enough people to start doing meetups, drop-ins and perhaps start organizing workshops with professionals teaching the newer creatives.
We began building our Creative community the same way in Victoria, BC and we were able to grow to over 800+ people within a very short time just through word of mouth and social media. One thing we learned was that the value of the group is correlated by the time and effort you give to the group.
Moderating, engaging and providing your own content helps foster a healthy community that everyone benefits from.
For example, if you were to start building your own community of like-minded individuals you could start building traction by uploading content that you have produced yourself to the group, this encourages growth and community participation.
When people start to feel like they are apart of a community and feel safe sharing their own content, they will organically invite other people into the group you have developed, simply because they feel another person would enjoy it just as much as they do.