Measuring & ascertaining growth as an artist or creative in the industry in Africa

Measuring & ascertaining growth as an artist or creative in the industry.

For quite a while now, I have pondered the concept of growth and development in my personal as well as career life. More often than not, we find ourselves at a cross road or in a dilemma regarding the next move in different stages of life often due to one main challenge. The challenge of being able to properly evaluate our progress and measure or ascertain the growth or development in different settings of our art life or craft development stages.

Recently, I posed the question to a group of artists on how they ascertain growth in their music career and interestingly I got a great view from one of the artist. Mitch D, a Kenyan hiphop recording artist asserted that he has experienced growth and his view is informed by the growth in “support and audience numbers”, which he shied from calling fans. I couldn’t agree more with one of his parameters of growth as an artist.

Growth which is simply defined as a process of increasing in size could be a multi-faceted concept for an artist or creative. The artist has to continually grow in different facets such as “ ability to create, ability to impact or influence with his music or craft, ability to better manage his art or music as a business in the marketing, sales and delivery aspect, ability to master consistency, ability to perform better, ability to be more versatile and with longevity, ability to be able to work with other fellow artist, corporate & non corporate brands as well as the community.

In my view, achieving growth in all these areas of course would not happen overnight, neither would it happen without a plan or strategy to achieve this skills and abilities as an artist or creative. These for me would be parameters or key indicators that one is growing as an artist or creative ( designer, photographer, deejay, model, dancer, vixen, poet and other creatives) and consequently if one assesses themselves in any of those regard and can actually say their ability in those areas has increased; then that’s growth.

Its key to always celebrate small accomplishment and steps signifying growth in these areas. Its also imperative to “not try to force growth, but rather work on removing the things or stumbling blocks that prevent the growth happening in your life” these could be habits or routines or influences among others. With a goal to achieve proper evaluation, its important also to take the 360 approach, where you can involve others such as your team, some of the consumers of your art and other stakeholders as to enable you get an all round picture of your progress and growth in your art. As you work on consistent growth, remember the only consistent factor in the equation is yourself and everything therefore, is dependent on you, more than it is on anybody else in your growth process.