Short courses, mentoring, coaching and other ways of learningMany arts organisations offer short courses. These might be a day or half day session, a week long opportunity or a series of days or evenings spread over a longer time. These might be arts based courses – on a particular skill or way of working, or they might be courses to help you work better – like courses on setting prices for your work or on marketing your work better. Shape runs a number of courses for Deaf and disabled people. To find out more, you can check out Shape’s projects. This will take you out of the artist’s resource site and straight to shape’s projects (www.shapearts.org.uk/projects/projectdetail/index.asp?view=22) The best way to find out about short courses is to check out local organisations that cover your artform. Lots of organisations advertise short courses that they run or that others are running. To find contacts for your artform, check out the Keeping Going section of this site. You don’t have to go on a course to learn something. There are lots of other ways like attending conferences and events, reading books and talking to people who are already working in the area you are interested in. Coaching and mentoring are two more ways of learning that don’t involve courses, but do involve working closely with another person. Sometimes the words are used to describe the same thing, but usually mentoring is where you are linked with a more experienced person who can pass on their knowledge and experience. Coaching is often more direct, where someone will be more hands on and help you develop a specific skill. Often these types of learning, and others, are called ‘professional development’ or ‘continuing professional development’ (CPD). This is because everyone keeps on learning, even when they are working as a professional artist. Shape has funding from the London Development Agency for a three year programme of CPD for deaf and disabled artists and practitioners. The Link-Up programme (2006-2009) will provide lots of opportunities for Deaf and disabled artists to develop themselves through working with other Deaf and disabled professionals. To find out more about LinkUp, check out Shape’s site. This will take you out of the artist’s resource site and straight to the LinkUp part of Shape’s site. There are organisations and projects that just support disabled people in work, and they often run professional development activities:
There are many arts organsiations in London offering professional development opportunities and support for artists and others working in the arts. CreativeCapital links all those organizations and helps them share information. This will take you out of the artist’s resource site and straight to CreativeCapital’s site (www.creative-capital.org.uk). They have a monthly e-bulletin of events run by their members, which you can sign up to receive. It is also available by post in large print. This will take you out of the artist’s resource site and straight to events part of the CreativeCapital’s site (www.creative-capital.org.uk/events.php). If you are happy accessing text, don’t forget books! It is sometimes much cheaper and more useful to buy a book on a particular subject and to read it than to try and find a course. It all depends on how you learn best. A good place to find books on arts management is SAM’s books (services for arts management). This will take you out of the artist’s resource site and straight to Sam’s books’ site (www.sam-arts.demon.co.uk). To find useful artform specific books, try asking the lead organizations for that artform. Sometime their websites list useful books and articles. To find contacts for your artform, check out the Keeping Going section of this site. 
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