Being finished with the Holiday Selling Season and not having any major projects lined up for the most part for the the first Quarter of 2010 has seriously freed up my creativity.  This always happens this time of year.  It’s like the “gotta make more stuff, gotta make more stuff” voice in my head finally shuts the hell up and I can actually hear my “you know, it would really cool if you did --blank--” voice can finally be heard again.  I have ideas for new clay work, marketing, craftivism (craft + activism), my studio environment and how to manage all of it.

One of my first steps is that I am seriously thinking I would like to have an intern/apprentice sometime in early 2010 - working with and teaching someone about what exactly I do would be beneficial for me & the student.

Exactly what the intern would help me with would depend on what they were interested in.  But if I had an extra pair of hands to do some office work, then I could get more done in the studio and/or an extra pair of hands in the studio and I could get more office work done.  It would be an unpaid internship, but I could teach someone interested in having their craft or art based business quite a bit about the business end of it all or if someone had a basic background in clay I could pass along some of my knowledge and provide them with the opportunity to make some of their own work using my facilities (although they really couldn’t be looking to make BIG work, as my studio & kiln are on the small size).  Ideally, the intern/apprentice would be interested in possibly having a clay based business sometime in the future.

I’m doing some research right now and here are some of the resources I have found so far on internships in the Craft field:

IndieBiz – How to get an Indie Intern

Intern or Employee? Legal Issues

Max & Chloe Vintage - Call for Intern                (I find looking at examples of other people’s approach to a situation is always helpful in the learning process)

I need to think about all this a bit more, but if you know anyone in the Richmond area that might be interested in an internship/apprenticeship with me, let me know!