These guidelines are dowloadable in Word and PDF versions if you prefer to read them all in one document, or you can access each section on this site.
All visual artists and craftspeople can benefit from support, advice, critique and feedback on their practice, and this is frequently most beneficial when it comes from their own peer group - people working at the same professional level as them. A peer mentoring group is a usually small, personal group of professionals who meet regularly to talk about their practice and seek advice.
When considering setting up a peer mentoring group, it is important to first of all gauge who your peers are; who is at a similar level in their career as you? A professional level can be gauged by factors such as:
These indicators are not intended to be complete - but most visual artists and craftspeople will know of people within their personal and professional network to whom they feel something in common. These people would make up an artists 'peer group', and may or may not be personally known to a practitioner, but probably will be known by reputation.
A peer mentoring group is when a group of practitioners meet regularly to discuss their practices, the state of their careers, or other professional or cultural developments. The groups tend to be supportive and benefit practitioners by allowing them to find out about alternate practices, informal advice and information, and providing a more cohesive social network.
The purpose of these notes is to make suggestions for practitioners who want to set up their own group, to demystify the process of setting up such a group, and provide practical tips based on the experience of others.
To make and run your own group, you will need at least the following ingredients:
The other pages in this article outline these various ingredients.
These guidelines are based on evaluation taken from the Artquest Forum project. Forum is Artquest's peer mentoring sessions for established visual artists and craftspeople.
Forum is an ongoing annual project initiated by Artquest in 2004. It is designed to provide a conceptual space for established visual artists and craftspeople to engage in constructive, rigorous and critical discussion of their work and practice. Forum is the only peer-mentoring project specifically aimed at established artists and craftspeople living and working in London.
The 2004 Forum groups were led by Barby Asante, Anna Best, Shez Dawood, Rona Lee, Nina Pope and Binita Walia. The 2005/2006 sessions were led by Helen Carnac, Andy Harper, Kim Pace, Abigail Reynolds and Becky Shaw.