Creative Entrepreneurship Day is a one-day virtual event that includes a keynote, panel discussion, and interactive breakout groups targeting personal branding, grant writing, financial planning, and mental health & wellness for artists.

This year’s theme is The Complete Creative. Focused on developing who we are as artists, diversifying portfolios, and learning hands on entrepreneurial skills, this day aims to help the developing artist create stability in their arts career. Creative Entrepreneurship is for artists of all disciplines looking to develop their skills and further their artistic practice.

Creative Entrepreneurship 2022 will be presented online via Zoom and is FREE for members of Creative Manitoba. Individual memberships range from $15-$25 per year. Click here to become a member.

SCHEDULE: March 12, 2022

10:00am – 11:10am: Artistic Vision with Debbie Patterson

Before the business plan and the promotion and marketing, there’s a brilliant artistic vision with a boatload of passion behind it. This is the fuel that powers your enterprise. Let’s refine it.

11:15am – 12:30pm: Breakout Session 1

Breakout sessions are opportunities to connect and discuss amongst each other in small groups. The conversation possibilities are endless! Come with questions and a desire to collaborate across disciplines and screens.

There are multiple breakouts for each topic led by different artists and community leaders. Please look over the bios below to help you choose which breakout sessions will be the most helpful for you and your career!

Financial Planning for Artists with Chris Enns

Are your finances a major source of stress? In this workshop, we’ll talk about the fundamentals of finance and tax basics for self-employed artists. We’ll work with tools that help connect your money to what really matters, manage money when your income is variable, and strategies to pay off debt/save for the big things you’re working towards.

Grants for Music and Film with Stephen Carroll and Brian Clasper

Are you a musician or filmmaker looking for funding for your upcoming project? Join Stephen and Brian from Manitoba Film and Music to help guide you through the granting process. Together, they’ll discuss where to find funding sources, budgeting and how to write a successful grant.

You’re on Mute – Authentic Branding with Heidi Hunter

What if there were a sneaky way to discover your brand?  What if uncovering the unique position you hold in your artform is as easy as realizing that your brand is waiting and welcoming you. Heidi Hunter invites you to find that mute button and allow your business voice to sing. In this workshop, Heidi will invite participants to grab pen and paper (yep, it’s analog all the way, baby) and approach crafting your brand – not on the keyboard, not in a linear way, but through a sneaky playful manner through mapping, writing, and spiralling into what you do best…being YOU

12:30pm – 1:00pm: Break

1:00pm – 2:15pm: Breakout Session 2

Financial Planning for Artists with Chris Enns

Are your finances a major source of stress? In this workshop, we’ll talk about the fundamentals of finance and how to start building a financial technique. We’ll work with tools that help connect your money to what really matters, manage money when your income is variable, and strategies to pay off debt/save for the big things you’re working towards.

Show Me the Money (Multidisciplinary Grant-Writing) with Charlene Diehl

One of the brutal truths about pursuing your dreams of making art—in whatever field—is that you will have to steel yourself to enter the grant-writing world. In our breakout session, we’ll talk about some of the basic skills and strategies for writing grants: large-scale thinking about your career path, small-scale thinking about specific projects, getting (& keeping) your grant documents and dates organized, thinking carefully about what specific questions are asking of you, making realistic budgets, and handling success and rejection. Hopefully we’ll dispel some of the anxiety, and perhaps you’ll come out the other side with a sense of purpose and even some excitement!

How to Navigate Solopreneur Workloads and the Pressures of Social Media with Cori Jaye

Join artist and mental health advocate Cori Jaye Ettienne for a breakout session to discuss how to balance all that is expected of today’s solopreneur artists steering their own ships, as well as how to navigate the ever-growing stresses of social media and the never ending pressure to “keep up”.

2:20pm – 3:35pm: ‘Nurturing Your Arts Career’ Panel Discussion with Allison Yearwood, Jorge Requena Ramos Roken, Erica Daniels and Joanne Roberts

Join Allison Yearwood, Joanne Roberts, Jorge Requena Ramos Roken and Erica Daniels for the ‘Nurturing Your Arts Career’ Panel. Closing out CE Day, our speakers discuss their personal journeys through their artistic careers including arts administration, entrepreneurship, and how they diversified their artistic portfolios.

3:40pm: Closing Remarks

Presenters and Breakout Group Leaders

Debbie Patterson is a Winnipeg playwright, director and actor. Trained at the National Theatre School of Canada, she is a founding member of Shakespeare in the Ruins (SIR), served as Theatre Ambassador for Winnipeg’s Cultural Capital year, and as Artistic Director of the Popular Theatre Alliance of Manitoba. She was the Carol Shields Writer in Residence 2012 at the University of Winnipeg and Playwright in Residence at Theatre Projects Manitoba in 2013/14. She served as Artistic Associate at Prairie Theatre Exchange (PTE) from 2012 to 2018.

She was honoured with the United Nations Platform for Action Committee’s 2014 Activist Award and the Winnipeg Arts Council Making a Mark Award in 2017. She was twice shortlisted for the Gina Wilkinson Prize. She is a proud advocate for disability justice through her work as founding Artistic Director of Sick + Twisted Theatre.

She lives a wheelchair-enabled life in Winnipeg and in a cabin on the shore of Lake Winnipeg with her partner and collaborator, Arne MacPherson.

Chris Enns is a certified financial planner (CFP) and opera singer. He has spent the last 10 years as a performing artist and learned the hard way that ignoring money doesn’t really work. He is the founder of Rags to Reasonable – an advice only financial planning firm that specializes in working with creatives and people with other non-traditional financial situations.

Stephen Carroll is the Music Programs manager for Manitoba Film and Music.

Stephen achieved international recognition as a member of the JUNO-nominated band The Weakerthans (Epitaph/Anti Records). After joining the group in 1998, he managed all of the business affairs and helped steer the group to fame. In 2009 he began managing the Manitoba band Imaginary Cities and went on to form Empirical Artist Services Inc. Most recently, he served as the General Manager of the West End Cultural Centre. Stephen was awarded Manager of the Year at the Western Canadian Music Awards in 2013, after garnering nominations for the award the two previous years. He is also active in the local and national arts community as a volunteer, mentor for artists, and jury member. Stephen was a member of the Board of Directors for FACTOR and currently serves on the Board of Manitoba Music.

Brian Clasper is the Director of Film Financing & Tax Credits at Manitoba Film & Music, managing all production investments, emerging talent & micro-budget grants, development loans and industry support initiatives while overseeing the analysis and policies of the Manitoba Film and Video Production Tax Credit.

In this capacity, he has participated in the investment of scripted and factual feature films, television series and documentary programs. Brian joined Manitoba Film & Music in 2008 where he began as a Location Services Coordinator before shifting over to programs to become the Development and Tax Credit Analyst where he reviewed the agencies’ Development Loans and processed applications for the Manitoba Film & Video Production Tax Credit. Brian is a graduate of the University of Manitoba and Capilano University where he studied film.

Renaissance woman Heidi Hunter, has been a multi-disciplinary artist all her working life. Over the past 40 years, she has worked in visual arts, theatre, dance, music, TV and film. An ‘artist’s artist‘, Heidi is a gifted, experienced teacher and marketing consultant, but most importantly a forever student. She breathes in creativity in all she does, and enjoys a rich and colourful life working out of her Runs with Scissors Studio, west of Winnipeg Beach, MB.

Charlene Diehl is a writer, editor, teacher, and performer, and since 2003 the Director of the Winnipeg International Writers Festival. She has published essays, poetry, non-fiction, reviews, interviews, and several chapbooks. Her book Out of Grief, Singing: A Memoir of Motherhood and Loss (Signature Editions, 2010) was shortlisted for two Manitoba Book Awards. Also a lover of jazz, she was the associate editor of dig! magazine for a dozen years, has performed original poetry with her own jazz ensemble, and now produces the Izzy Asper Jazz Performances series. In 2019, she received the Winnipeg Arts Council’s Making a Difference Award.

Cori Jaye Ettienne is a visual artist, teacher, mentor and mental health advocate from Winnipeg, Manitoba. Her artistic practice consists of vibrant surrealist, pop-art paintings that she utilizes to spread positive messages to the community. Cori Jaye has been featured on CBC and CJOB Radio, CTV and Global Television and many podcasts speaking about her career as an artist and the importance of following your dreams. She leverages her background in Marketing, Graphic Design and Digital Media to promote the power of positivity, using social media platforms including Instagram, Facebook, and Youtube as catalysts. In addition, Cori Jaye conducts social media literacy workshops, as well as private mentoring sessions, to help share knowledge about how to navigate the ever-growing online sector. Currently, she is creating online classes for the Winnipeg Art Gallery, combining her love of painting and teaching, while staying connected to the community during these unprecedented times.

Allison Yearwood is an alumnus of the University of Winnipeg, with a political science and business administration degree, and brings a fresh focus to the business of arts administration. Allison returns to her hometown, Winnipeg, from the Banff Centre, where she was Program Manager at the Indigenous Arts Department. Previously, Allison served as Art and Business Manager at Yamaji Art, an Aboriginal art centre in Australia, and was the General Manager of Collective of Black Artists in Toronto. Allison was the Programming and Events Coordinator at the Northern Life Museum & Cultural Centre in Fort Smith, North West Territories, and was the first non-Indigenous staff member at Urban Shaman Gallery in Winnipeg. Allison advocates for racialized and disenfranchised groups to decolonize institutions of power from the ground up. She is exceptionally skilled on issues of equity and a powerful and transformative voice for anti-racism action. Allison is a proponent of equity justice in media and digital production and has acted as program manager for digital art residencies at Banff Centre. Allison’s institutional critique articulates the creation of safe spaces for underserved communities within the institution. Currently sitting on the boards of aceartinc. and Spiderweb Show.

Erica Daniels is Cree/Ojibway from Peguis First Nation. She is a proud mother, a multi-award winning documentary filmmaker and entrepreneur. Erica established her media company, Kejic Productions, in 2017 and became a full time entrepreneur fulfilling her passion to share the stories of her community. She started her journey through a program called Just TV, a multimedia program for at-risk youth in the inner city of Winnipeg. Through this program, Erica was able to better her life and gain extensive skills in the media industry.

Along with her passion for storytelling, is her passion to work with Indigenous youth in her community by reconnecting them to their culture and identity. Erica currently runs a cultural program at the Broadway Neighbourhood Centre and mentors youth in video production. The beauty of her culture continuously inspires her work and motivation of sharing the knowledge of her elders for future generations.

Joanne Roberts has built her career through fiercely advocating for a more inclusive and equitable arts industry. In 2020 she won the prestigious Emerging Filmmakers Pitch Competition at Gimli Film Festival and has since been regularly releasing works in various mediums that challenge and dismantle societal norms. A frequent collaborator with CBC Creator Network, she has broken through the glass ceilings that previously prevented Filipinas and Franco-Canadians from achieving mainstream success, and attained national recognition as an award-winning, powerhouse storyteller. joanneroberts.ca @reporterjoanne

Jorge Requena Ramos is a multi-disciplinary artist who grew up in Mexico City and now calls Winnipeg Manitoba his home. He has done extensive work as a film director, playwright and television producer. He became the Artistic director of the WECC after spending a decade amongst performers, travelling across Canada, the US and Europe with  his band “The Mariachi Ghost”. This experience helped him develop extensive relationships with musicians and the music industry at large. In his tender at the WECC he has overseen the development and growth of WNTRPTN ( winterruption) a festival that celebrates life in a winter city even at -40 below.  He has also helped the WECC transition into an Anti-Oppressive strategic plan that will see their programming and practices  reflect the truly diverse fabric of Canada.