Metal New Artist Network

About Metal New Artist Network

Over the next few years Metal is looking to further develop a programme of support for early career artists, those in their first few years of defining themselves as an artist. Though not exclusively, we are particularly interested in how we can help early career artists who live or work in our host cities of Liverpool, Peterborough and Southend on Sea.

To sign up :

Click here for a registration survey for Metal New Artist Network and receive our booking info / newsletters.

Through this process, we invite you to have your say about how we should develop our future programme, and help us shape our offer to make sure we get it right.
By registering via this survey, you will be signed up to Metal New Artist Network newsletter.

This FREE network is focussed on supporting early career artists.
Early career artists can include:
● those who are aged 18+ in their 1st to 4th year of creative practice, post-student status (if applicable)
● those who left school and did not enter Higher Education but still keep up a regular creative practice
● those who have recently graduated in the past three years
● those who have entered the arts later in life after pursuing a different occupation and are within the first four years of this.

The artist will have reached a critical moment in their career development, have limited track record of creating and presenting full work and will require a particular kind of support in order to maximise their potential and to propel them into the next phase of their development. When we say artists, we mean artists from all disciplines; theatre, visual art, film, music, writing or a mixture of some or all. We realise this can be a particularly difficult time where artists can face many barriers to keeping up their practice.

Metal are particularly interested in supporting artists from diverse backgrounds, with unique personal perspectives to offer.
If you’re unsure whether you fall into the early career category please get in touch with the site most local to you.

Aged 16-19?

Click here to register for our younger artists network and receive workshop booking info.

What we currently offer:

Information sharing
A monthly newsletter bringing together opportunities for early career artists from across the UK, prioritising our 3 locations.
Each newsletter will include details of our next training / networking opportunities, what will be coming up from Metal and, where appropriate, local and national cultural partner offerings, a creative challenge and the occasional introduction to relevant artists.
To sign up for the newsletter and other opportunities listed click here.

Networking:
One section of the online training workshops is dedicated to networking with artists from each of the Metal sites. Within these networking sessions are opportunities for artists to share what they are up to, share the results from the bi-monthly creative challenge and offer support to each other.
In addition to this, each of our sites hosts a physical, quarterly networking event. Future Network (Peterborough), Future Station (Liverpool) and Future Park (Southend). Each varies according to the location but they are FREE and it is an opportunity to meet and find out about other creatives.

Training opportunities – talks and workshops
Over the next year we will be piloting a number of free online talks and workshops focusing on the mechanics of starting your career as an artist.
It’s a chance to hear from experts and peers and ask for advice. We programme these speakers based on the responses from the registration survey, in which we ask for your input on the training themes you’d like to be explored.
Each workshop will be summarised in a top-tips video from our guest speakers, which you can see on the Metal TV page.

Future Network Shorts:
A monthly virtual event co-programmed by our teams across the UK (in Liverpool, Peterborough and Southend). This programme takes inspiration from our existing quarterly networking meetings at our sites.
On the last Thursday of each month (across the course of a year), we invite 6 x artists to host 10 minute sharings of their work online, delivered across a mix of virtual platforms.
We look forward to performances, conversations and experiments from artists across the UK, with a wide range of art forms being showcased digitally. For further details on this programme, and how to submit your ideas, click here.

Residencies
At Metal we refer to an artists’ residency as time away from your usual environment, at one of our venues, to focus on developing an area of your practice. They provide a time of reflection, research, presentation and/or production. For us, the focus for the residency is led by the artist.
Find out more about our Time and Space residencies here.

Access to seeing work in the making:
Metal hosts artists of all disciplines who are creating work. Often these artists are keen to share their work in progress to a small, invited audience (scratch sharings) to get feedback on what works, what doesn’t. It’s a great chance to see work, network and find out about other artists’ practice, even if it’s not your art form. We will send invitations for scratch events within our Metal New Artist Network newsletter, received by all who register to join.

Training archive :

Films

What 2 Do Online with Travis Alabanza.
Click here to watch Travis’ top 5 tips of creating a presence online as an artist.

Getting Paid with Kei Maye and Emma Edmondson.

Click here to watch Kei’s top tips for how to get paid as an artist or designer

Worksheets

Kate Genever Souvenirs: For those who couldn’t attend Kate’s workshop just download this great PDF – it offers inspiration and creative activities on postal art and collage

More top tips videos and resources coming soon.