Wanting to collaborate with artists is all well and good - but how do you meet artists in the first place?.

Collaboration and other forms of partnership working has always been important in the arts, either working with other artists, practitioners in other fields, or outside of the arts entriely.

The organiser is the main point of contact for the peer mentoring group and organises the members and speakers.

You should decide on a short- or long-term focus for your peer mentoring group and arrange speakers around this theme, or you may decide to simply talk about each members' work, one at a time.

Where you decide to have your meetings is crucial. Find a venue that can accommodate your own preference and cater to the amount of time you have to spend planning the sessions.

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:.

How often you have your peer mentoring meetings will depend on how long one session takes to organise.

To have a clear idea about pricing your work, you need to know what comparable artists are doing. Your peers could be considered as comparable artists to you right now; artists who are at a similar place in their career to you and whose medium is comparable to yours (i.

Your members are the most important element of your peer mentoring group. You should decide on between 10 and 12 artists and craftspeople to make up your group - more becomes difficult to find a venue, and less can make conversation difficult, especially if they don't all know one another.