overview
The Artists Club is built on the educational philosophy of Len Metcalf, and works on the modern concept of Positive Reinforcement, Positive Behaviour Interventions and Supports. It comes from a lifetime of experience as a professional educator, facilitator and practicing artist.
Creatives in particular grow quicker in an encouraging and supportive environment where people are actively told where they are going right. Criticism is kept to a minimum, and when it is given it is specific and is constructed in a meaningful way. It is always balanced with positive encouragement.
community building
A creative community grows around healthy, supportive and encouraging converstaions.
Conversations are easily started by asking questions. People love to respond to questions that arise from their art. Statements about what attracts you to linger on an artwork will also often start conversations too.
We don’t have likes, and ask you communicate your interest and love for a work of art through words, rather than a like button or love heart emojis. Words are more powerful. This stops us getting a dopamine hit from likes and dissuades us from posting content to collect likes.
An engaging conversation about your work is educational, while it is also encouraging, supportive and rewarding. This gives us a much more sustainable boost in our enthusiasm to be more creative.
We encourage you to make yourself a cuppa, then watch the video included on this page and to read more about the Artists Club below.
video: the power of the positive
In this 18 minute video, Len delves into his own past to illustrate how effective positive feedback can be. It is an essential watch to help you engage with other Artists Club members to create the learning environment that will help us all grow.
supportive feedback
Here at Len’s Club we put a lot of effort into ensuring that our learning community is healthy and encouraging. Much of the communication, other than the visual or audio visual content, is through words. Thoughtless words can destroy sensitive artists, whilst carefully constructed ones can be the encouragement we unexpectedly seek.
We work from a positivist viewpoint. We help and support others. When we give feedback we construct it with thought before communicating. We never give criticism or negative feedback unless it has been explicitly sort by the artist. We weight feedback in a ratio of 3 to 1, in favour of positive to improvements or suggestions. We ensure our feedback is very specific.
We have a page dedicated to feedback. Before embarking on giving feedback on someones artwork make sure you study our feedback page.
Feedback and comments that don’t adhere to our positivist philosophy will be removed.
what next?
Now that you’ve learnt about the philosophy behind The Artists Club, head over to the introduce yourself group to say ‘hi’. You will find this is a very welcoming and supportive community, so please don’t be shy to post a bit about yourself and some images of your work, be it photography or another genre of art, or a mixture!
connect
While introducing yourself, you may have seen someone post work you love and you’d like to see more of what they create. To see their posts in your news feed you can follow them. Or, you may have made a friend, or discovered someone you know. Connecting with them by clicking on their name and clicking the green ‘connect’ button, then them accepting the connection, means that their posts will now show up in your news feed and that you can message each other within The Artists Club message system.
Joining a group will mean posts to that group will show up in your news feed.
Following a discussion, either in a group or a forum will mean that those posts will show up in your news feed.
groups
We have two types of groups. Interest groups and challenge groups.
Interest groups are spaces where you can focus on particular topics such as abstract photography. There you’ll find others who are also interested in that subject and in the group you will be able to share images and discuss ideas. Initially there aren’t many groups, however, if there is enough interest in a particular topic then admin will create a new group for that topic. You will need to join a group to be able to interact and post in it. Simply click on the ‘+ join group’ button.
Challenge groups are run by The Artists Club and can be identified by the swirly logo. There is usually a challenge or exercise to complete and a set period of time that it is running for (of course, there is nothing stopping you from going back to past challenges and completing them and posting your results). You have automatically been added to the weekly creative challenge group head on over and have a go at the current weekly challenge!
discussions
The inspirations tab is a collection of forums containing information designed to inspire your creativity, promote discussion, to aid learning and promote the sharing of ideas. To share your images it is best to join a relevant interest group.
Artists discussions contains a plethora of information on individual artists which is continually being added to. While we post information here, you are welcome to jump into the discussion and add your own resources, favourite images/artworks, ask questions etc. to any of the artist threads.
Techniques discussions is where we can discuss different methods for example printmaking, printing photos, using a particular software package, abstract photography. It is a place to ask questions and post tips.
Approaches discussions is that often overlooked side of creativity and will deal with subjects such as mindset, ethics and creativity itself.
ethical behavioural guidelines
We have created an extensive code of conduct for The Artists Club, no doubt it will be further expanded as we continue to grow. The basis of it is simply around being an ethical participant in a creative learning community. We ask you treat others and their artworks with respect and sensitivity. We have a zero tolerance policy.
Please read our code of conduct, and abide by its requests.
The Artists Club code of conduct can be read here.
finally
We hope you enjoy your time in The Artists Club, it is meant to be fun, encouraging and to help you to grow your creativity.
If you have any questions, get stuck, get lost or just want to say ‘hi’ to someone who knows their way around, please reach out to @theartistsclub @clair or email [email protected].
You might also be able to find the help you need here on our help page.