Lesson Description
In this lesson, students begin to develop their business plan. This
task will take place over several lessons. The students will learn
that the business plan provides a road map that will ultimately
help them achieve the goals they established in an earlier lesson.
The
first step will be to develop a business description. For the artist,
this contains not only a description of the business but also a
description of the artist’s work.
Concept
business plan description
Related Subject Area
business
Objectives
Students will:
form an initial description of their work from their own point of
view
analyze art that is produced by others and similar to their own
Materials
The Artist as Entrepreneur notebooks containing their goal statements
art magazines and web sites
Procedure
- Explain that a business
plan is a road map. It provides the artist, or any business owner,
a direction. The business plan should begin
with a description of your business. This statement should answer
the question, “What business am I in?” The answer
should include your product, your market, and in what ways your
product
is different from others.
- Instruct students to
begin by considering their goal statements. Their statements reflect
the type of work they wish to produce. Instruct
students to use their first goal statement as a tool in describing
the type of product they will offer in their business. This could
include graphic design work, such as web page design, commercial
art, or greeting cards. Other students may engage in fine art,
one-of-a-kind works or works with a limited number of prints. Instruct
students
to write their product description on a piece of paper.
- Explain that the next
step is to define their work as distinctive from the work produced
by other artists. Explain that this may be
difficult for high school students who have not yet developed
a body of work. However, instruct students to consider the characteristics
of their work to-date that are unique. This will require an honest
evaluation and some help from others.
- For homework, instruct
students to locate websites or art magazines that contain art that
is similar in nature to their own. Have them
critically analyze the work they find. Instruct them to seek
other artists’ statements
and reviews of the work. This will provide additional insight
into student evaluations of their own work.
- Instruct students to
write brief phrases that describe the subject or theme of their
work in preparation for their business descriptions.
Closure
Explain that as a start to developing a business plan, students have
begun to organize their business descriptions. To complete the description,
they will
further
evaluate
their work
and consider how their work will be presented, such as completed
pieces or works created only when commissioned. They will consider
the audience for their work. Finally, they will evaluate in what
ways their business will be successful in a competitive marketplace.
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