Extraordinary Creatives

I'm Ceri Hand, and this is Extraordinary Creatives. Thirty-five years in the contemporary art world as a gallerist, curator, commissioner of public art, institutional director, and now coaching artists and creative leaders worldwide to make a bigger impact and earn more money doing what they love.

Over the last eight weeks, we've built a complete commissioning practice together. We've looked at the mindset, the five signatures of under-pricing, the commission ecosystem, the inquiry filter, the chemistry call, the alignment document, paid concept development, the production agreement, managing the making, the delivery, the legacy package. What public art is, the roles you can play, and what changes when the commission is this big.

So, today we're going to cover three things, and then I'm going to leave you with the one sentence that I hope you carry out of the whole series.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Build your scaffold once, then run every commission through it. The artist who thrives isn’t winging it each time; they’ve got a clear structure on the studio wall - they have stopped rebuilding the system from scratch for every new brief.

Run every commission through joy, safety and income filters before you say yes. When those filters are true to you and your practice they alert you early to commissions that look good on paper but still not right for you. Preserving your capacity for work that is truly yours.

BEST MOMENTS

“Saying no to a commission that doesn't pass the filters is not lost income, it's preserved capacity; every no protects the yes you're truly waiting for.”

“Built once, used again and again. The artist who thrives has built the scaffold once and now runs their commission practice through it calmly, profitably, without drama.”

“A process without the willingness to say no is just admin. It looks good on your website, does nothing for your life.”

“The artist who wins commissions isn’t the most talented. The artist who wins commissions is the one who makes it easy to say yes, makes it safe to trust them, and never starts from scratch.”

Want grounded, art‑world‑tested guidance each week? Join my free Beat the Block newsletter and put this commissioning scaffold to work in your own practice by going to https://cerihand.com/subscribe/

EPISODE RESOURCES

Pollinator Pathmaker episode - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/making-ambitious-work-is-never-just-about-ideas-with/id1709105337?i=1000753927961&l=zh-Hans-CN

PODCAST HOST BIO

With over 35 years in the art world, Ceri has worked closely with leading artists and arts professionals, managed public and private galleries and charities, and curated more than 250 exhibitions and events. She has sold artworks to major museums and private collectors and commissioned thousands of works across diverse media, from renowned artists such as John Akomfrah, Pipilotti Rist, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer and Vito Acconci. Now, she wants to share her extensive knowledge with you, so you can excel and achieve your goals.

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Ceri Hand Coaching Membership: Group coaching, live art surgeries, exclusive masterclasses, portfolio reviews, weekly challenges. Access our library of content and resource hub anytime and enjoy special discounts within a vibrant community of peers and professionals. Ready to transform your art career? Join today!

https://cerihand.com/membership/

****

Unlock Your Artworld Network Self Study Course

Our self-study video course, "Unlock Your Artworld Network," offers a straightforward 5-step framework to help you build valuable relationships effortlessly. Gain the tools and confidence you need to create new opportunities and thrive in the art world today.

https://cerihand.com/courses/unlock_your_artworld_network/

****

Book a Discovery Call Today

To schedule a personalised 1-2-1 coaching session with Ceri or explore our group coaching options, simply email us at hello@cerihand.com

****

Discover Your Extraordinary Creativity

Visit www.cerihand.com to learn how we can help you become an extraordinary creative.

This Podcast has been brought to you by Disruptive Media. https://disruptivemedia.co.uk/

The art world runs on storytelling. The story of the artwork. The story of the artist. And one of the most seductive stories of all, the one that says if you got your toe over the line out of art school, your career goes onwards and upwards from there in a straight line.

My guest today, Hettie Judah, has been inside the art world since the early 1990s, as a writer, critic, curator and advocate. And she has written a book that quietly dismantles that story. How to Enter the Art World… After a late start, a first career, illness, raising children, a crisis of confidence, leaving it in disgust…

In this conversation, Hettie shares how the art world's myths are really costing the people inside it, why the relationships that move careers are built in quiet galleries rather than at private views, and what the financial reality of a successful writing and curating life actually looks like. You will leave with a sharper read on the structures around your practice, and permission to stop measuring yourself against a career shape that was never real in the first place.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

The art world tells a particular story about itself - A linear career. A clean upward arc. The right schools, the right shows, the right age. And if you didn't get on that track, or you stepped off it, maybe to have children or it was never offered to you in the first place, the story says you missed your window. Hettie demonstrates that is not true.

If you are coming back to your practice, or finding your way in for the first time, or rebuilding after a long stretch away, take this as the invitation. Not to enter someone else's version of the art world. To build the one that holds your work.

Often creative labour is quietly self‑subsidised so the rest of us can have the books and conversations we need – think a £150 fee for an event, from which the writer or artist still has to cover train fares and providing their own books.

BEST MOMENTS

“You can construct the art world you want to be part of …. the structures around artists can be changed.”

“We all need one another…. we all learn from the questions that other people ask.”

“I really wanted the book to feel like you were having a conversation with a friend.”

“I remember them (art works) with my body as well as my mind's eye. I remember them so strongly.”

EPISODE RESOURCES

https://apollo-magazine.com/author/hettie-judah

https://www.instagram.com/hettiejudah/

Hettie´s books - https://www.amazon.co.uk/stores/Hettie-Judah/author/B00E9ZRESS

HOST BIO

With over 35 years in the art world, Ceri has worked closely with leading artists and arts professionals, managed public and private galleries and charities, and curated more than 250 exhibitions and events. She has sold artworks to major museums and private collectors and commissioned thousands of works across diverse media, from renowned artists such as John Akomfrah, Pipilotti Rist, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer and Vito Acconci. Now, she wants to share her extensive knowledge with you, so you can excel and achieve your goals.

**

Ceri Hand Coaching Membership: Group coaching, live art surgeries, exclusive masterclasses, portfolio reviews, weekly challenges. Access our library of content and resource hub anytime and enjoy special discounts within a vibrant community of peers and professionals. Ready to transform your art career? Join today!

https://cerihand.com/membership/

**

Unlock Your Artworld Network Self Study Course

Our self-study video course, "Unlock Your Artworld Network," offers a straightforward 5-step framework to help you build valuable relationships effortlessly. Gain the tools and confidence you need to create new opportunities and thrive in the art world today.

https://cerihand.com/courses/unlock_your_artworld_network/

**

Book a Discovery Call Today

To schedule a personalised 1-2-1 coaching session with Ceri or explore our group coaching options, simply email us at hello@cerihand.com

This Podcast has been brought to you by Disruptive Media. https://disruptivemedia.co.uk/

Artists – most of you who take your first public art commission lose money on it. Not because the budget was bad, but because nobody told you a public commission is not a bigger version of a private one. It is a different job, with a different shape, and the work that does not appear in the brief – procurement, contracts, maintenance, stakeholder hours – is what quietly eats your fee.

By the time you realise what you have signed up for, you are eighteen months in, with years still to run, and no honest way out.

Here is what I want to give you today: the six things that genuinely change when you step from a private commission into a public one; the hidden costs inside the budget that almost no commissioner spells out, and that you have to know to ask about; and the support structure you need around you before you accept the commission, not after, because by then it is too late.

This is for artists invited to apply for their first public commission, and for artists already inside one who can feel the ground shifting and have not yet been able to name what is happening.

This episode is part eight of a nine-part series on commissions. Last week we covered what public art is, the five reasons it gets commissioned, and the six roles an artist might play inside a public commission. If you have not heard that one, it sets the foundation for today, so start here - https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-six-roles-artists-get-hired-for-in-public-art/id1709105337?i=1000776044291

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Public art is not just a bigger version of what you already do – it is a different job, with different time scales, different power dynamics, and a different kind of authorship you step into for decades, not months.

The number in the brief is never just “your fee” – it has to cover engineers, fabricators, insurance, installation, maintenance planning, everyone’s professional time. If it does not, you will be the one underwriting the project with your labour.

Build a small, smart infrastructure around yourself, so you can hold the integrity of the work through years of stakeholders, contracts, and weather, without burning out.

BEST MOMENTS

“Read the brief, do what the brief asks, no more, no less.”

“Public commission budgets sound large and often aren't by the time you have to account for everything they have to cover.”

“You'll need public liability insurance, often at significant levels of cover.”

EPISODE RESOURCES

Episode 7 of commission series – https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-six-roles-artists-get-hired-for-in-public-art/id1709105337?i=1000776044291

HOST BIO

With over 35 years in the art world, Ceri has worked closely with leading artists and arts professionals, managed public and private galleries and charities, and curated more than 250 exhibitions and events. She has sold artworks to major museums and private collectors and commissioned thousands of works across diverse media, from renowned artists such as John Akomfrah, Pipilotti Rist, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer and Vito Acconci. Now, she wants to share her extensive knowledge with you, so you can excel and achieve your goals.

**

Ceri Hand Coaching Membership: Group coaching, live art surgeries, exclusive masterclasses, portfolio reviews, weekly challenges. Access our library of content and resource hub anytime and enjoy special discounts within a vibrant community of peers and professionals. Ready to transform your art career? Join today!

https://cerihand.com/membership/

**

Unlock Your Artworld Network Self Study Course

Our self-study video course, "Unlock Your Artworld Network," offers a straightforward 5-step framework to help you build valuable relationships effortlessly. Gain the tools and confidence you need to create new opportunities and thrive in the art world today.

https://cerihand.com/courses/unlock_your_artworld_network/

**

Book a Discovery Call Today

To schedule a personalised 1-2-1 coaching session with Ceri or explore our group coaching options, simply email us at hello@cerihand.com

**

Discover Your Extraordinary Creativity

Visit www.cerihand.com to learn how we can help you become an extraordinary creative.

This Podcast has been brought to you by Disruptive Media. https://disruptivemedia.co.uk/

Ninety-six per cent of Black British adults don’t swim regularly. That's the statistic from the Black Swimming Association that my guest came across while she was deep in research about bodies of water / about what they hold, what they absorb, what they promise.

Phoebe Boswell is a Kenyan-British artist whose work has been shown at the Venice Biennale and in major institutions and collections worldwide.

In this conversation, Phoebe talks about her latest large-scale commission for Art on the Underground, we move through scales of blue, now running alongside the escalators at Notting Hill Gate and Bethnal Green subway stations in London. She shares how she works with communities without extracting from them, why she stopped painting for twenty years and what brought her back, and what she has come to understand about figuration, freedom and the responsibility that comes with the work. You will leave with a deeper sense of what it means to make work that holds rupture and joy at the same time - and the courage it takes not to resolve them.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Phoebe holds two things at once - A figurative practice that she describes as lovemaking - a sustained attention to the body, particularly the Black female body, as a way of truly seeing. And alongside it, a refusal to stay in the language of identity alone.

Making work that holds rupture and joy at the same time isn’t a flaw to be fixed. It’s a way of working: that stays true to pain, history and politics while refusing to let go of tenderness, nuance, and beauty.

Phoebe’s approach to figuration, community and public space asks us to think more deeply about how we see who we work with. What we owe the people in and around our work, not just as subjects or audiences, but as co-holders of meaning.

BEST MOMENTS

“Art became a way of coming back to myself… it was a process of trying to re-see the self that had been kind of shattered. It was proclaiming myself, reminding myself that I’m still here.”

“Art is this place for me to sense, to taste, or to test the borders of my own truth in a way that I don't think is always possible in real life. I think you go through seasons.”

“Trust the porous borders between your projects. To return to what you left, changed. And to keep making work that is for the people in it, before it is for anyone else.”

“I don't want to be free off the back of anyone else.”

EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.phoebeboswell.com/
https://www.instagram.com/phoebe.boswell/

HOST BIO
With over 35 years in the art world, Ceri has worked closely with leading artists and arts professionals, managed public and private galleries and charities, and curated more than 250 exhibitions and events. She has sold artworks to major museums and private collectors and commissioned thousands of works across diverse media, from renowned artists such as John Akomfrah, Pipilotti Rist, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer and Vito Acconci. Now, she wants to share her extensive knowledge with you, so you can excel and achieve your goals.

**
Ceri Hand Coaching Membership: Group coaching, live art surgeries, exclusive masterclasses, portfolio reviews, weekly challenges. Access our library of content and resource hub anytime and enjoy special discounts within a vibrant community of peers and professionals. Ready to transform your art career? Join today!
https://cerihand.com/membership/

**

Unlock Your Artworld Network Self Study Course
Our self-study video course, "Unlock Your Artworld Network," offers a straightforward 5-step framework to help you build valuable relationships effortlessly. Gain the tools and confidence you need to create new opportunities and thrive in the art world today.
https://cerihand.com/courses/unlock_your_artworld_network/

**

Book a Discovery Call Today
To schedule a personalised 1-2-1 coaching session with Ceri or explore our group coaching options, simply email us at hello@cerihand.com

**
Discover Your Extraordinary Creativity
Visit www.cerihand.com to learn how we can help you become an extraordinary creative.

This Podcast has been brought to you by Disruptive Media. https://disruptivemedia.co.uk/

Artists if you've ever been invited into a public art commission, here's the thing nobody tells you. Most of you assume you've been asked to make a single artwork.

A sculpture, an installation, a piece. You usually haven't. There are six different roles you might be playing inside that project, and getting the wrong one means you've quietly accepted a job you didn't sign up for. Worse hours.

Different fee structure. Different scope. The same brief, with you doing the wrong work inside it.

This is the most expensive mistake that artists make in public art. And almost nobody is told the roles even exist.

Here’s what I want to give you today: the five main reasons public art gets commissioned, the six roles’ artists are actually hired to play and how to recognise which one you’ve been invited into), and one question to ask any prospective commissioner that reveals in 30 seconds whether they’ve properly scoped the project or are asking you to finish their thinking as well as the work.

This is for artists curious about public art who haven’t yet made the move, and for those already working in it who’ve felt a commission go quietly wrong without knowing why.

This episode is part seven of a nine-part series on commissions. The first six cover everything from mindset and pricing through to the legacy package - the foundations you need before you take a single enquiry into public art. If you haven’t done so yet, hit follow so you don’t miss an episode.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Understand which role you've been invited to at the start of the conversation.

Ask yourself which of those five commission types is closest to what you make already and how you work - that tells you which kind of public commission to be looking for.

If you’re new to public art, treat temporary and meanwhile work as laboratories. They’re lower risk for commissioners, and they let you test how your practice behaves in public

BEST MOMENTS

“Done well, a single public commission can shift the trajectory of an entire practice. Done badly, it can swallow two years of your life and leave you broke, exhausted, and quietly furious.”

“Sometimes it's worth recognising you might not be able to be all things in public art.”

EPISODE RESOURCES

1st episode in series - https://open.spotify.com/episode/3GoxWpKkkdZQE9pvvrGSNt

HOST BIO

With over 35 years in the art world, Ceri has worked closely with leading artists and arts professionals, managed public and private galleries and charities, and curated more than 250 exhibitions and events. She has sold artworks to major museums and private collectors and commissioned thousands of works across diverse media, from renowned artists such as John Akomfrah, Pipilotti Rist, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer and Vito Acconci. Now, she wants to share her extensive knowledge with you, so you can excel and achieve your goals.

**

Ceri Hand Coaching Membership: Group coaching, live art surgeries, exclusive masterclasses, portfolio reviews, weekly challenges. Access our library of content and resource hub anytime and enjoy special discounts within a vibrant community of peers and professionals. Ready to transform your art career? Join today!

https://cerihand.com/membership/

**

Unlock Your Artworld Network Self Study Course

Our self-study video course, "Unlock Your Artworld Network," offers a straightforward 5-step framework to help you build valuable relationships effortlessly. Gain the tools and confidence you need to create new opportunities and thrive in the art world today.

https://cerihand.com/courses/unlock_your_artworld_network/

**

Book a Discovery Call Today

To schedule a personalised 1-2-1 coaching session with Ceri or explore our group coaching options, simply email us at hello@cerihand.com

**

Discover Your Extraordinary Creativity

Visit www.cerihand.com to learn how we can help you become an extraordinary creative.

This Podcast has been brought to you by Disruptive Media. https://disruptivemedia.co.uk/