Spacetaker is a 501(c)3 professional organization that provides artists and small non-profits access to economic, educational and networking opportunities. Our efforts provide much needed access to information, services and resources for Houston Artists and the community.
Over the past five years, Spacetaker has focused on several key areas:
- Houston Culture Guide: a curated listing of Houston’s everyday art offerings and events - linking involved entities and sponsors, and connecting local artists to businesses and individuals who support the arts. The Guide averages 700 unique visitors (15,000 hits) a day, publishing over 3,000 pages of art content.
- Spacetaker Artist Registry: a broad listing of Houston area artists working in widespread media (from chefs to painters to poets to jewelers to tattooists), fostering mutually beneficial relationships between our city’s artists, arts organizations, businesses, and community at large.
- Winter Holiday Art Market (WHAM): a Spacetaker-hosted event that gives artists an economic opportunity to grow their markets and sell their work at a time of year when additional revenue is often needed.
- The Artist SPEAKeasy: an evening of artist networking where three artists present in an informal atmosphere their creative dialogs/talks/presentations about their work, followed by a question and answer period from which the audience can glean further insight into the artist and the artist’s aesthetic and creative process.
In 2009, Spacetaker entered the next phase of its organizational expansion. We identified three key ways to meet the needs of the Houston Arts Community: the creation of a new website (The Houston Artist Field Guide), the development of the Artist Resource Center and a series of professional development workshops.
Spacetaker’s current stage of development:
The Houston Artist Field Guide is an electronic database of essential information useful to artists, accessible 24/7 on the Internet. Electronically centralizing this information for artists is a key step in providing artists with the resources they need to employ business savvy in their artistic pursuits. Currently, there is no centralized database of this kind in Houston. In an age where artists are expected to act as their own agents, this database is indispensable.
The Artist Resource Center (ARC) is envisioned as a haven for local artists, wherein they may share creative space and capital through the use of common tools, workspaces, and networking events. The ARC already houses education and career-building workshops and classes for the Houston Arts Community. Spacetaker aspires to house a full-service computer lab where artists work and learn together, growing the future leaders of Houston’s arts community.
Spacetaker Workshops focus on subjects ranging from digital imaging to marketing to film making to tutorials in online grant applications. All sessions either educate local artists in business practices or in career-specific techniques. Workshops in financial literacy (in partnership with Amegy Bank) and Web 2.0 Marketing practices are in place for Fall 2009.
