#creative venture

Connie Rutledge is an Adjunct Faculty in the Arts Entrepreneurship Department. Besides teaching at MCAD, Rutledge is also the coordinator of the 2019 Arts Entrepreneurship Competition. In this interview she shares with us part of her story as well as what the competition is all about and how to apply! 

4 Questions About Connie: 

1. What is you academic training and professional background?

I have a bachelor’s degree in sociology and a master’s in public affairs, but all of my business training happened on the job. I’ve worked with entrepreneurs all of my life, starting with my parents. After college I worked with a small market research firm in the high tech space where I learned to manage the operations of a small business while also learning how to do market research. After that, I worked in venture capital and at a tech start-up for a time, and then moved into higher education and developing experiential coursework for students interested in entrepreneurship.

2. Do you have a creative practice you do professionally or for fun?

I do several things that I consider creative, but don’t come close to what I consider true artistry.  I love to cook and experiment with new foods, and I have sewn since I was in elementary school.  I used to make more clothing, but now I tend to do more usable items like quilts and bags.  Last year I developed a product I called the Cat Coaster and sold that at a local shop – totally fun combination of my love of textiles and felines.

3. What class(es) are you teaching this semester and what are they about?

This semester I am teaching Arts Entrepreneurship Essentials, which is a one credit course that takes place over two weekends.  It’s an intensive introduction to basic entrepreneurial skills, so we will cover everything from understanding your customer’s needs to developing a marketing strategy to making sure the business is financially sustainable.  It’s a great option for anyone who wants to see if running their own business is something they would enjoy.

4. What do you enjoy about teaching at MCAD?]

The students! The MCAD community is full of curious and creative thinkers and I enjoy a good discussion, so the students in all of my classes have been extraordinarily fun to work with.  Additionally, it’s been a great opportunity for me to learn more about businesses in the arts and seeing how they are similar and not similar to technology businesses.

Let’s Talk 2019 Arts Entrepreneurship Competition!

-What is a Creative Entrepreneur?

I’d say that entrepreneurs are creative problem solvers. It’s relatively easy to recognize problems in the world around us, but entrepreneurs are the ones who see a novel way to solve a problem and have the tenacity and creativity to figure out how to bring that solution to the world. I think artists and designers have a unique place as creative entrepreneurs because their skills are so well suited to building connections through understanding and empathy. Throughout history, artists and designers have forged new paths that engage people with the future and all that is possible.  Combining those skills with a pinch of financial education and strategy builds a Creative Entrepreneur!

-What is the Arts Entrepreneurship Competition? (The purpose/who it’s for/related events/classes). This section is to elaborate on the competition to help people understand what it is.

The Arts Entrepreneurship Competition is the first time the Arts Entrepreneurship department has held a school wide competition for business ideas. The goal of the competition is to tap into the rich creativity on campus to build ideas that generate economic opportunity for artists and designers, build community and that are sustainable, both financially and environmentally. I believe the future of business is mission driven, and this competition invites all MCAD undergraduates to explore that future.  In addition to the Arts Entrepreneurship Essentials class that I mentioned, we’ll be holding two mentoring events for people who have entered the competition. In other words, we’re here to help you polish your idea and think through the business challenges.  The deadline to apply is February 1, but the competition itself is April 5 from 5-7p.  It will be a fun and fast paced event and I encourage everyone to come and listen to the great ideas that will be presented.  Plus, the audience gets to vote on their favorite and that favorite gets an award!  Which reminds me, we have amazing cash prizes for the top three ideas presented!!

-How can someone apply or learn more about the competition?

The best way to learn more is to go to the competition website at mcad.edu/aecompetition.  There’s a video there to walk you through the application process, as well as a lot of information on what to include in your application.  We’ll be updating the site through the semester on mentors and any other informational events.  People can also contact me directly with questions at [email protected]. The deadline to apply is February 1.

-What are the goals and plans for the competition and it’s future?

We hope to expand the competition to graduate students and maybe even alumni in the future.  Our goal is to create a vibrant community of entrepreneurs and their supporters so that any MCAD student curious about how to build a business will have the resources to learn techniques, evaluate opportunities, and start their own venture.

So I've been spending a lot of time trying to hone my skills and really get ready to launch this thing. I've been been much of an artist, but I have been pushing myself to draw something on a daily basis. In addition to working on creating things with my hands, I'm also re-learning how to create in Illustrator. 

Over the past few days, I've learned the basics and how to create shapes to play around with. That brought me to wanting to try to create fonts and play with typography.

Now, I'm pushing myself to create an actual thing from start to finish. From idea to finished product. From the sketchbook to the computer. 

And so that's what I did.

1) Deciding on something and getting something down

2) Adapt and keep playing

3) Refinement and color

4) Make it digital

Hello all! It's been a bit of a journey to get this far, but I'm so excited about where we're at and what we're doing. 

"And what is that?", you might ask. Well now... I'm finally taking the steps to turn a half-fleshed idea into a real venture! 

On that note... Welcome to Pindecency.com, my new home for my enamel pin business. 

There's so much to do and design and get ready, but I'm real excited about it all! I spent today getting some basic branding done and the site slightly more designed, so I'm feeling pretty accomplished so far. 

Well, amidst all the rather soul destroying news from our page recently, I do have a small bit of good news. Today I had a couple of lovely ladies come into the shop who were very interested in what we're trying to do and said that they'd put the word around for us. As they said, 'When you're getting started in Watton it can be tough, but once people know you, you're sorted.' From what we've seen of Watton and other villages like it, this is very true. There is a fantastic communal vibe. We've both been welcomed very warmly by different shop owners during set up, which shows that community spirit is very much there. However, while that community spirit is still 'warming up' so to speak, we are still desperately in need of rent. Now, we are not in the least ungrateful, we have already received very generous donations from Josee Tisdale, Victoria Bartlett and a mysterious benefactor, Joanna Weston. As things stand though we have £150 and we need £430 as a bare minimum (my apologies for miscalculation previously, I thought the rent was £450 when it's actually £430). That means, of what we have, there is still £280 left to generate.

As I know that the world of social media is extremely fast paced, I will give you another break down of what we're offering:

A £10 donation will get you either a framed photo poem or a decoratively bordered poem for you to print off and frame yourself from Ash, as well as a psychic reading of your choice, using whatever tools you wish me to use and that includes a 'forecast of the year' or a 'creativity reading' the latter being something we offer as one of our services anyway but you can get completely FREE. Depending on which you choose, a pledge with a photo poem reward will need to include postage which would probably be around £5-10 bringing the cost of the pledge to £15-20. The first option of a penned poem to print off and a reading obviously requires no postage at all as everything can be emailed.

£50 will get you a FREE framed postcard and print from our resident artist, V.J. Bartlett. The postage for this is likely to be at a guess between £5-10 which would bring the cost of this pledge to £55-60. (though if people pledge this amount we can put up a post detailing postage once properly researched when rent has been sorted)

A pledge of £100 will get you a FREE session of one of our business services, which are: Ghost writing, copywriting/editing and proof reading. Once again, the results of these sessions require no postage and can be emailed.

Finally if you're feeling REALLY generous, a pledge of £280 will get you anything of your choice from the first three pledges (within the limits stated) PLUS a FREE short story from our resident short story writer, the Dreamweaver, Tim Anderson.

As I said, hopefully, once we've gotten over this first hurdle people will warm to there being a new shop in town and business will take off, BUT if you want us around to be able to participate in that lovely community spirit with us, you need to help us now.

If you can, please do, and if you can't please still like, share, etc.

paypal for all pledges is [email protected] or [email protected] if that doesn't work. The email for requests relating to pledges is the same at [email protected].

Well, this is what it says on the tin really.

I wanted to take this post as an opportunity tell you about the ‘human face’ of Leaves Of Dreams and also to ask for your help.

I hadn’t updated this blog for a couple of weeks because of the holidays but also just getting on with the shop and frankly we’d hoped that would be going better than it is, but as things currently sit we’re not even going to make it through our first month unless we can make the rent.

We started in early December and had our first three weeks and then it was Christmas so not much point in opening. In that time we’ve done as much advertising as we can, but unfortunately footfall has been incredibly low.

You may wonder why I feel the need to justify why we need help etc. Well, the fact of the matter is, that as we are both neurodiverse we have been both raised in such a way as to feel that we have to justify when things haven’t worked out and furthermore have invariably been made to feel as though things not working out is our fault, even when as in this case it’s not.

 On top of that, we both feel bad asking for money for similar reasons to the above, but needs must, as they say. It would also be fair to say that we feel bad for being in the position of having started a business from the point of having a low income as that’s ‘not the done thing’, as seems to be what people think. 

In a nutshell, we as two neurodiverse people with ongoing physical and mental health issues have started a business as it is the best way for us to make money to get by on/make a living. I’m terribly sorry if I appear to be rambling. I hope this post is fairly coherent, but given that we’ve both spent today feeling intermittently depressed, this is the first time I’ve been able to actually face getting onto Tumblr to post things and my brain is still so scrambled that I was almost about to write ‘face’ in the place of ‘brain’ just then... ¬.¬

Anyway, I’m sure you get the picture. Putting aside my own feelings of awfulness at having to ask for money, as I said, I want this post to be about putting a ‘human face’ to our business and I suppose part of that is acknowledging that everyone struggles with things sometimes.

In actual fact, our current feelings tie quite well into exactly why we feel our is business and general idea is needed. Both of us feel that the standard ‘professional image’ i.e. suave, sophisticated, completely organised and independent etc doesn’t help anyone and only serves to make people feel miserable and isolated because in truth I don’t think there is anyone in the world who hasn’t ever felt alone and in need of connection. As such, what we want to do is move away from ‘professional image’ while keeping professionalism, i.e. behaviour that befits a business; being polite, helpful and so on, towards building a ‘creative community’where people feel able to express themselves and because of the communal aspect can feel connected and valued as the true nature of people is being interconnected and interdependent which is of course the anithesis of ‘professional image’ and shows how frankly unnatural most business models are.

I hope you will forgive my further rambling, but I feel I make some good points nonetheless. With that said, how are we hoping to get rent etc?

Well, the amount we need as a minimum is £500. Aiming higher, £1000 would be great as it gives us rent and a little money to get in new stock (along with obviously that being provided by our artists, designers etc. Which is of course the other thing, we have a whole bunch of people depending on us to sell their work for them and we would HATE to let them down as well as seeing our dream fail.)

(Please note: As we can only ship/post within the UK we can also only accept UK pledges.)

A pledge of £10 gets you a FREE tarot/rune reading or a personally penned poem. The poem will be decoratively bordered so that you can print it out and frame it if you so wish. In both cases poems and the results of readings can be emailed to you, so no shipping/postage is required.

A pledge of £50 will get you a FREE framed print and postcard from our resident artist, V.J. Bartlett. We would expect shipping/postage to add £5-10 to the cost of the pledge, making it between £55-60.

A pledge of £100 will get you a FREE session of one of our business services, which are: copywriting/editing, ghost writing and proof reading. The results of these sessions can be emailed to you, so once again no need for shipping.

If you’re feeling REALLY generous, a pledge of £500 will get you any of the things of your choosing (within the limits stated) from the first three pledge rewards, PLUS a FREE short story from our resident short story writer, the Dreamweaver, Tim Anderson. With the cost of delivery probably being £5-10 we would expect the cost of the pledge to be between £505-510.

Thanks for taking time to read this post and if you are able to donate or even share to those who can, you will have our eternal appreciation as well as what we hope are some interesting and innovative rewards! :)

Pledges can be sent to paypal at [email protected] or if that doesn’t work, [email protected].