What If You Threw a Collaborative Art Project and Nobody Came?

Well, I did, and they didn’t!  If you’re a regular reader here you know about my project, Motherhood the Crazy Quilt.  The nice folks at Zenith Art Studio agreed to host the workshops and we put them on the calendar and promoted them like crazy.

I thought at least a couple of friends would show up, but no.  That’s when you know you’ve done something terribly wrong.

A younger but wiser artist friend explained where I’d gone wrong.

She said people are terrified of not knowing what to do, not knowing what’s going to happen, that I needed to do a better job of communicating to the potential participants what would actually be happening at the workshops.

And perhaps asking people to speak on taboo subjects while also crafting was too much.  It’s a lot for one artist to manage.  That’s why the grants for the project included an art therapist!

Now I’m re-grouping, trying to figure out how to make another try at this.

I also think I need to show people a finished work before asking them to get involved.  Perhaps that’s too much of a leap of faith, to ask people to participate without showing them what the finished work will look like.

On the good news side, the deadline has passed for folks wanting to mail in a quilt square and at least one is in the mail, headed my way!

I’ll check my P.O. Box tomorrow and see if there are any others.

What do you think?  What could I do better?  Or should I drop the idea of in-person workshops and make it all participate by mail?  Comments are welcome!