Andrew Tanner - Selling Winning Designs

Andrew Tanner held a great seminar for us last week talking about his career as a designer of contemporary ceramics and the relationships he's built with manufacturers and retailers.

He offered us some useful hints and tips:

• When at trade fairs:
• If you're at a fair aimed at wholesalers make sure you know what your minimum order is and be prepared to negotiate
• Make sure that your wholesale price includes the cost it takes to make the item plus your profit margin
• Work out the recommended retail price. Buyers will typically use RRP = Wholesale Price x 3. Think about if this is how much your product should sell for?
• Have a story about your product to sell to the buyer: Why is it different? Why would their customer want it? This is what the buyer will use to sell your product to their customer

• DO NOT court retailers!!! They will find you not the other way round.

• DO court the press!!! PR is the key, learn to write good press release and get good photographs. If you're going to spend money on marketing, photographs should be key

• His book 'Batch; Craft, Design and Product' has an section written by Barbara Chandler, Design writer for the Evening Standard on how to write an effective press release

• If you only have one option on photography use white crop out images for your work

• Twitter is great for free publicity and information

• Places like the UKTI can help you get selling abroad and sometimes have pockets of funding.

• The BEDG can provide match funding for stands at foreign trade fairs. 

Creative Leicestershire has lots of information sheets on low-cost marketing ideas, writing press releases and getting the public to your stand. Visit our resources section for lots more information 

Running Successful Workshops

Rachel Phelps ran us a really great seminar last week on Running Successful Workshops.

The seminar focused on creating Authentic Learning experiences for your participants. Authentic Learning uses activities were participants learn by 'doing' rather than by listening and uses real-world situations to help solve problems.

She gave us some useful tips and got us to take part in activities that could then be used in our own workshop settings.

Some of the tips she gave us were:

• Have lots of different activities to help understand how people learn. Some prefer to move around whilst others may prefer to sit at a table.
• Be prepared to deviate from your plans to fit in with how your participants learn
• Keep a logbook for what went well and what didn't 
• Make sure to keep it real for you and your participants
• Always get feedback and build on it
• Set out your plan into a learning framework by; 
• Framing your aim into a question
• Put it into a timeline
• Break it down into units/objectives
• Evaluate and assess the session

Cultural Olympiad Funds Scheme

Leicester City Council are pleased to announce our Cultural Olympiad Funds scheme, a one off funding scheme to provide small-scale financial support for arts and heritage projects in Leicester city that support Leicester's 2012 Cultural Olympiad programme.

  

If you would like to apply for funds, please complete the attached form and email/post it to us at the contact details at the end of the form, by 29 November 2011.

Guardian Culture Professionals Network

This month has seen the launch of the Guardian Culture Professionals Network.

It contains lots of informative articles, blog posts, live chats and jobs relating to the arts and heritage sector.

It's free to sign up and you will receive weekly updates, event invitations and networking opportunities.

This week it has an article on Tony Hall, Chief Executive of the Royal Opera House and advice for people wanting to break into theatre

Find out more and sign up at http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture-professionals-network

County Hall Armed Forces Memorial

Leicestershire County Council is in the process of commissioning a new memorial to commemorate men and women in the armed forces who lost their lives in service since 1945. Creative Leicestershire is managing the commissioning project.


After an initial selection process, which attracted 70 submissions, five artists and designers have been commissioned to produce proposals for the memorial, which will be located in the Quadrangle at County Hall in Glenfield,

The five design proposals can be seen at the LCC website at http://www.leics.gov.uk/memorialcommission

A decision on the artist to be commissioned for the memorial will be made in December, with unveiling planned to be in 2012.

All views and observations about the proposed designs are welcome between now and 10 December. There is a response button on the webpage.

The Creative Leicestershire November eBulletin is here!

Packed with lots of jobs, information and opportunities for those working or interested in the arts, design and media sector.

This edition has information about:

Workspace and Studio space in Leicester


Funding for training and mentoring opportunties for women working in Radio


Upcoming seminars and networking events from Creative Leicestershire

You can see the ebulletin here but make sure you sign up to recieve the monthly newsletter straight to your inbox

South Asian Dance symposium

The British Arts Festivals Association conference is taking place at Phoenix Square in Leicester this week. And last week, Leicester was host to the national symposium for South Asian Dance, organised by the Centre for Indian Classical Dance. CICD was set up in Leicester in 1981 by Nilima Devi and has a huge legacy of great dancers including the upcoming Aakash Odedra who is currently having a piece created for him by Akram Khan. Great debate and dance was had at the symposium and this is Amina Khayyam doing the welcome dance. She is photographed by Kajal Patel, the Leicester-based photographer who had a bursary from Creative Leicestershire a couple of years ago. Do look at her work at www.kajalpatel.com