Supporting Yourself as an Artist: A Practical Guide

Now available in a newly revised second edition, the highly-acclaimed Supporting Yourself as an Artist remains an essential and invaluable resource for artists of every kind, including painters, filmmakers, poets, and playwrights. The author, Deborah Hoover, demonstrates how any artist can develop a network of individuals, organizations, and information resources in his or her own community and beyond.
Hoover outlines a clear, step-by-step approach that enables artists to identify sources of support and obtain assistance. Going beyond the task of providing just another list of funding sources, she also focuses on the most common problems confronting independent artists--finding the appropriate funding sources for a particular project, writing proposals, requesting funding by phone or in person, dealing positively with rejection, and more--and discusses the best ways to deal with them. Drawing on a wide range of individual experiences, Hoover illustrates how some artists have obtained contributions of equipment, while others have received assistance with their income taxes or legal questions, and still others have located low-cost printing services.
Based on more than three hundred interviews nationwide, an extensive range of documents, and Hoover's experience as an arts administrator, this handbook offers firsthand accounts which treat this subject from corporate representatives, patrons of the arts, arts administrators, and artists themselves. Drawing on eight years of research, fund-raising experience, and work with artists, Hoover also recommends specific ways to strengthen support for individual artists. For this new edition, she has brought references and appendices up-to-date. She has also extensively revised and supplemented several sections to include discussions of new means of financial support available to artists.

About the Author:
Deborah A. Hoover, formerly Executive Director of the Council for the Arts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is currently a cultural advisor for the Gambian Cultural Committee.