The question of what makes an artist 'professional' is often debated. While professionalism in relation to arts practice is a lot to do with attitude and approach, there are certain basic resources you can develop to operate in a professional manner and help you develop your career.

Even a great exhibition or body of work needs to be presented well for people to be interested - good work recorded badly will never lead to more offers for exhibitions.

You can find a comprehensive listing of national, general and specialist interest magazines on Newsstand: Visual and contemporary arts Crafts and design Photogaphy and lens based interest Cultural theory / interest (includes performance / live art) An excellent listing of UK national newspapers is at PaperBoy's UK site.

The easiest and most effective way to grow your own network is to use the network you already have.

So how do you get to meet a curator? The bottom line is we look like everyone else and we rarely wear badges.

This section lists specialist print and design services.

In order to make an effective request to a company, you should first of all think about why companies give; and more specifically, why they should give to you.

Its vital for practitioners to have high quality documentation of their work and exhibitions, whatever form they take.