The Craft Mentorship Program is supported by the Visual Arts Craft Board of the Australia Council and is offered annually to support emerging practitioners under the age of 26. The funds for these programs are devolved to the network of craft organisations all over the country and are designed specifically to assist the transition from emerging practice to sustainable career paths. Through these grants emerging craft/design practitioners undertake 3 month mentorships with leading makers from across the country. This Government supported initative is now in its sixth year. Over this time many young craft practitioners have benefited from the possibilities enabled by this grant. The following account by Sean Booth, who undertook his mentorship with acclaimed silversmith Robert Foster, is typical of the far reaching benefits of the program.

For more details on the Craft Mentorship Program contact the craft organisation in your state or territory.

After completing my honours year I was faced with the same challenges many graduates face, 'What now?' I was committed to continuing my art practice and my challenge was how do I best achieve this. There where a number of options open to me but the one constant factor that ran through them all was the need to subsidise my art with another income. The first and most obvious answer was to take a job outside of my training, however this quickly became tedious and a distraction from my art. I revisited other possible sources of income and began to evaluate what jobs my education and training had prepared me for. Around this time an opportunity was pointed that would help me along the path of setting up and maintaining an independent art practice.

One of the first things I did upon finishing university was join Craft ACT the state craft organisation in Canberra where I live. I soon realised this was a wise decision as it gave me access to a world of resources and people who where always willing to help. Part of their role is to help emerging and established artists to be aware of the various opportunities available to them through government funding and various programs.

One such opportunity was the mentorship program which is part of the Australia Council Emerging Artist Initiatives Program through the VACB. This would give me the opportunity to work in an environment that best represented what I desired - an art practice that would pay for itself and, ideally, produce an income to live from.

With this in mind I approached Robert Foster an artist in my field who had achieved this. Robert had established Fink & Co. as a way of furthering his practice and maintaining an income. This had been achieved through commission work and limited run production lines.

I had known Robert socially but had not spoken to him directly about my work. I was interested in gaining an understanding of his way of working on both one-off pieces and products and in particular his method of developing prototypes for production. Limited run production of select items was one of the areas I had been considering for my own my art practice.

It was with this in mind that I approached Robert with a proposal for the mentorship, a program that would develop a prototype and under his guidance take it through to production. One of the many advantages of undertaking the program was to reduce the amount of time and energy needed to learn the theories of product development. Robert was more than happy to participate in the project and I felt the project started there, with Robert and his partner Gretel Harrison's help. The first step in the mentorship was the art of writing a grant proposal. They helped me find and distil the key points for the proposal and how best to present them in a clear and concise way. When we were informed that our proposal had been successful we commenced the mentorship with vigour.

The project quickly evolved and it was decided rather than concentrate on the development of one product it would be more effective to produce a number of prototypes. This would allow ideas to develop from the different prototypes informing and contributing to the conceptual development of future work. Robert encouraged me to expand my material awareness by trying materials I had never used before - pushing me out of my comfort zone.

This challenge went beyond choice of materials - it also questioned my goals and the time frames for the production of each piece. The need to make discissions quickly and be certain of the resolution became key elements in the project. Time was limited and it was a necessity to achieve goals quickly. This helped me realise that, if I was to achieve my desire of a full time practice, some of the luxuries I had afforded myself while at university had to go. As the mentorship drew to an end my exploration occurred quicker and more independently and the prototypes developed during this period were the most resolved and, Robert believed, the most successful.

The discourses between us soon turned away from making and towards motivation and the disciplines of a full time practice. This part of the mentorship became one of the most important elements of my time with Robert. Gaining an insight into what is required of a full time practice was invaluable towards my development as a maker. The ability to continue with your work and the mental toughness it required to maintain such a commitment was a strength I had under-rated. The commitment must be backed with a constant pushing of yourself, taking you out of your comfort zone and propelling you along a line of evolution as a maker. This was the most valuable insight that a mentor could show me, and it prepared me for the trials that lay ahead.

At the conclusion of my time with Robert, I realised my commitment to my work as well as challenging myself was the best foundation for me to start my evolution towards a full time practice. It's this commitment that people look for when encouraging emerging practitioners. What I learned from the mentorship was that the hardest part is not coming up with the concepts but the myriad of distractions that will come along the way.

Sean Booth
February 2005

Sean Booth is a metalsmith who graduated from the Canberra School of Art, Australian National University in 2002. He completed a mentorship with metalsmith Robert Foster over three months in 2003, culminating in a show at CraftACT. 'A New Mark' show cased a series of prototypes developed by Sean as well as several exhibition pieces and a range of hand made hammers. Sean works out of a studio in Mitchell Canberra, which he shares with fellow silversmith Oliver Smith.