Craft Marketing Program
Kentucky Craft Marketing Program Co-Sponsors Art and Craft Business Seminar

Artists and craftspeople are invited to attend a two-day workshop, Craft Business Today: Assess Your Goals and Plan For Success, on August 12-13, 2005, Berea College, Berea, Kentucky. This annual event is sponsored by the Kentucky Craft Marketing Program, a division of the Kentucky Arts Council, and the Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft, with assistance from The Kentucky Guild of Artists and Craftsmen, Berea College, and the Artisan Center at Berea.

The workshop is a series of sessions to provide artisans a step-by-step approach to planning, assessment and, in turn, helping identify resources so that they can “be the artists”.  The sessions, which apply to both craft and visual artists at all levels, include business and product planning, utilizing resources, licensing and reproduction issues.  Nationally known speakers are glass artist Milon Townsend from Hilton, New York and Alisha Vincent, public affairs director for the Rosen Group, Baltimore, Maryland. Kentucky speakers include Sarah Culbreth, Tater Knob Pottery (Berea), Ann Wingrove, Completely Kentucky (Frankfort) and Geoff Carr, a photographer from Louisville, among others.   

            “Craft artists find these workshops incredibly useful,” says keynote speaker, Alisha Vincent, who counsels craftspeople on their business plans at shows and conferences around the country. “Artists can be guaranteed that their competition is networking, branding and using technology to get ahead. My question and challenge to each of them is: ‘How will you keep up?’ Today’s craft businesses must do more than make quality work at affordable prices. To be successful, they need to use all the tools and resources that are available.”

          A distinguished craft artist will be honored with the tenth annual Rude Osolnik Award, presented for outstanding contributions to the Kentucky craft community, at the dinner on Friday evening, August 12, 6:30 p.m.  Previous recipients are: Alma Lesch, Emily Wolfson, Arturo Alonzo Sandoval, Homer Ledford, Joseph Molinaro, Stephen Powell, Byron Temple (posthumously), Tim Glotzbach, and Lysbeth Wallace. Osolnik was a woodturner known the world over for his unique woodturnings and long-time teaching at Berea College. This workshop and other related artisans assistance programs provided by the Kentucky Craft Marketing Program are prime examples of its efforts to increase economic opportunities to Kentucky craftspeo­ple by assisting them in developing as craft professionals and in marketing their work. In 2000, Kentucky’s craft industry had annual sales of 252.4 million dollars and an additional economic impact on the state of 148.7 million dollars from out-of-state sales.