Build a Business
Around Your ART

DOUBT is a natural feature of the human mind, coded into our psyche since the dawn of time to help us survive as a species. But it’s also the #1 stumbling block for an entrepreneur and/or artist who wants to build a business and career around their art.

That urge to double, triple, and quadruple check our safety in any given moment was INVALUABLE back in the paleolithic period - so we could avoid stepping on a venomous snake that looked like a root, or poisoning ourselves by eating the wrong kind of berry... 

...but that instinct hasn’t evolved to match our current conditions, and the types of stressors we deal with in the modern world. 

Playing the "mental game" as a creative entrepreneur

As creative entrepreneurs, when left to our own devices, we can become our own worst enemy when it comes to making smart business decisions… and sticking to those decisions.

See, it’s not hard to come up with a business plan on your own.

With the...

FFORA Founder Lucy Jones on how to build purpose into your mission-driven business, find mentors, work with investors, and protect your work.

Lucy Jones didn’t set out to have a career in fashion. “When I was younger, I thought it was just a hobby,” she says. After a textiles class opened her eyes to the possibilities, Jones enrolled in the Parsons BFA Fashion Design program and established her path. Her thesis project, Seated Design, which focused on clothing for the seated body, specifically people who use wheelchairs, won her the 2015 Womenswear Designer of the Year award and landed her on the 2016 Forbes 30 Under 30 list.

Since then, Jones has solidified her passion for creating clothing and accessories for people who have disabilities. In 2019, after an educational fellowship with Eileen Fisher and a stint at the XRC Labs accelerator program to focus her idea, she took a leap of faith to launch FFORA (a play on the phrase “fashion for all”), a line...

Your brand is thriving on Instagram.  Your latest TikTok video was a hit.  Your snaps keep everything fresh.

But how do you get some of that love to equal social media traffic to the site where you actually sell your creative work and tell your story?  

Your website is the centerpiece of your digital ecosystem -- the more traffic you drive to it, the more impact it can have achieving the goals of your business, whether that’s to sell your music, offer your photography services, or promote your upcoming book. Your site is your owned domain — you’re not renting it, you’ve built it on your property, and you control all the rules. 

In contrast, building your brand on Facebook is renting that space on Facebook. You don’t have control over design updates, algorithm changes, or what happens at Zuckerberg’s next Congressional hearing. If Facebook's operations are disrupted, you could lose all access to the audience you've built on...

As an artist, making the work is the part that comes naturally, whether that’s illustration, design, music, art, film, performance, writing, photography, or crafts. It’s the part that comes after — the budgeting, strategy, marketing, legal hurdles, and production — that can create roadblocks. 

Today, The New School is thrilled to announce the launch of the Parsons Entrepreneur Academy, a digital platform created to empower creatives to build businesses around their art. Through community networking, masterclasses, and self-guided courses, this program will help you develop the skills you need to turn your creative passion into a successful, sustainable business.

The program emerged from a growing need in the creative industries: access to basic, real-world training that makers and artists can apply to scaling their ideas. The Parsons Entrepreneur Academy’s business resources are made for creatives by other creatives, and speak to the...