Being Self-Employed

Today it had been planned that I would give a lecture at Angel Row Gallery about my experience of being a self-employed artist. It was part of an event called 'Don't Panic, Picnic' organised by Stand Assembly as part of the Accelerator professional practice programme. I had been offered a fee of 100GBP.

I hadn't yet planned my talk, so spent almost the entire morning preparing it and creating a PowerPoint presentation. I finished around 14:00, just 10 minutes before I had to leave the house to go to the gallery. The event was not very well attended. There were talks from business venture people, the Inland Revenue, myself and some other artists. My talk went well and my joke about 'having more spreadsheets than I do friends' was met with a giggle.

Afterwards the Inland Revenue man jokingly offered me a job - this made me laugh considering how desperate I was to find one, and also because I was secretly hoping he would be impressed by my efficiently kept records.

Straight after the event, we ran to The Dragon pub to catch the end of the Germany vs Argentina quarter final. It went to extra time and then Germany finally won on penalties. We had some of the buffet and then left early to tidy and install Jon's new shelves in his office.