Art Practice Mentoring in 7 points: a method that drops you at the heart of your art-making
What is Art Practice Mentoring
Art Practice Mentoring & Coaching is a programme of 1-2-1 sessional work I run online for artists and writers.
How it got going
It emerged as a direct consequence of starting my site Solitary to Solidary Arts Lab during the global lockdown. I had created the Lab to alleviate the isolation while enabling specific exchanges from within art and poetic fields. Beyond the group-work, a need for individual sessions quickly appeared. I responded to it by creating what has since become a crucial and signature focus of a lot of my work: Art Practice Mentoring.
Why mentoring
I called it mentoring because it is a term more familiar to studio practice and manuscript consultation, for many artists and writers, and perhaps a less loaded term than coaching.
But from the get-go I conceived of it as a halfway house between mentoring and coaching, between responsive and pro-active exchanges and more open and receptive listening, between exchanging directly on your project, sharing resources, working out relevant tasks, and literally holding space for further thinking. The question of safe exploration, so crucial to coaching, is very explicitly at play for me here, too. To set boundaries is the only way work can be done while enabling a personal search into one's own, at times less known, processes of making, and what might hold these back.
It means that it involves:
project-led, practical and hands-on
drafts and resources are explored
working methods, practical tools and tasks are discussed
free-lance strategies and professional development.
To this, I add the dimensions of practical and personal time-management and a focus on self-care, including meditative processes. Self-care equips the art practitioner to respond to and impact the world with their work.
These dimensions are becoming really important to bring to a busy and mostly freelance or multi-jobbing practitioner these days. And I believe they can be instrumental in releasing an artist’s project, as well as nurture long-term engagement without running into burn-out or deep stress factors.
Since starting up, and running APM for a few years, I have actually trained up as a coach, and this year I have added Creative Coaching to what I offer. This has a similar starting-point in that it aims to support and enhance an artist’s creativity and impulse, but it is not project-focused. This work can be very transformational; I will get into it in a future post.
Seven points developed for Art Practice Mentoring
This the deal: We work first and last with the project, with its materials, with its artistic and poetic modes and aspirations. It is through exploring these concretely and step-by-step that the art practitioner’s own processes of making and thinking can be manifested in the work. Sometimes, deep or new inroads can also be reached.
The seven points below are both practical, professional and aspirational. It is not always appropriate nor relevant to address all these approaches with a coachee. But I hope it’ll give you an idea of how I plan my overall approach to a set of sessions. I welcome your thoughts and comments.
The project at hand —The focus is based on and through the project the art practitioner brings to the table. And how far they are with it. Sometimes at the very start, sometimes towards completion and seeking ways to place it. This inform the way we will work together.
Triangulation — There is the material, the artist/writer and the art mentor. This triangulation is an essential aspect of these exchanges. It is the material (the project) that leads us into our transactional situation. All exchanges take place with this as our focus, creating a safe and boundaried space for us to look at personal motivation, new skills, and challenges, as part, and through the specifics of the project, as well as moves to place the project.
Practical working tools — it is really crucial to develop an organised way to work. I support this by providing various tools as we go along, from time management to project planning to sharing and exchanging tools and platforms on a regular basis and according to what arises.
Project strategies — if relevant, exploring avenues for where to place the project, how to engage locally or with organisations, also funding applications. Each demand a flexible and inventive mindset, often out of comfort zone. Moves that can allow the work to grow in practical and contextual terms. This is important at present where so much relies on nurturing networks and on being visible through one’s work and contacts. This is professional development for free-lance art practitioners.
Self-care. Art-making is internal and embodied — When the artist/writer is open to it I propose various tasks, loose visualisations, lateral to the project that can assist in supporting the work’s demands and less obvious obstacles. This can vary from daily exercises, free gestural, or punctual research. These are always developed in dialogue with the artist. Both an active work tool and a personal management tools.
Re-sourcing — Getting to ease about one’s art making/writing is an important source of growth, change and personal insights. It can change the way one approaches a project. Finding ways to work with this by activating one’s creative confidence, for lack of a better word, is an enriching process. To be able to slowly get to it and replenish oneself when needed is what I call re-sourcing.
Understanding what is at work in the work — All this can lead to an understanding about one’s ideas around making, one’s fear or joy about success, and where one exists with one’s work in the world. What is actually at work in the work and has supported or blocked a project’s full manifestation.
Personal conclusion: alongside institutions
It certainly has taken me on a journey that demands some training and personal deepening. My long-standing experience with university and art college practice and theory work — as well as the tools I’ve developed to manage my own collaborations and lengthy writing projects — have been an essential help in helping me adapt approaches, resources, shared cultural references and established work methods to my mentoring work. But in other respects they fall totally short.
Fundamentally, this has to do with the intense level of personal demand (internal) as well as the active and flexible free-lance mindset (external) that a project asks of the artist/maker.
This is where a support framework like Art Practice Mentoring, developed and at work from within art and writing practices, yet beyond institutional frames can provide formal give and elasticity to a great number of art makers. It can let in personal and contextual frameworks, while remaining focused on a project in the making. I have seen first-hand how the principles outlined above can deliver. It is not at all easy and a real test of the artist’s commitment. And a deeply enriching process to be a part of.
I hope these points have been of interest. I welcome any comments and additional thoughts!
Creative research: In my next post, I will go into the specific type of creative research that arts-led mentoring can encourage and provide.
Final version: 24 may 25. © Caroline Bergvall Coaching, 2025. Please do not copy, use or edit without reference to where you found this.
