Professional Development Workshops

2023 Workshops

Professional Development workshops offered in 2023 included:

Strategic Social Media Marketing with Julie Ogilvie

In this highly interactive workshop, we will perform a deep dive into social media strategy and marketing techniques. You will learn how to balance, and potentially reduce the amount of time you are spending on social media, while increasing its effectiveness. 

Using the provided workbook to tackle your brand strategy, content strategy & engagement strategy, we will complete major pieces of work together. You will leave the workshop with a road map for how to use social media as a strategic tool to engage with your ideal audience, while using play and fun to attract increased sales.

Merchandising Workshop with Fiona Horgan

Fiona Horgan is one of the talented advisors with Lift LC, a local micro-lending and coaching resource in Lunenburg Co. 

Topics covered in this workshop: 

Defining Your Message; Homing In On Your Ideal Customers; Nailing Your Branding; Refining Your Product Mix to Focus on Your Ideal Customer; Building the Story You Want to Tell Your Customer; Setting the Stage – creating an elevated experience on a budget so that your product is the superstar; Product Placement Tricks; and Creating an Emotional Connection with your Customer. 

Crafting Success Symposium
Free for all Craft Nova Scotia and Cape Breton Centre for Craft & Design Members

Craft Nova Scotia and the Cape Breton Centre for Craft & Design present a one-day symposium Crafting Success. Join us for three session to help develop your career and well being.  

Agenda 

  • Session One: Pricing for Profit with Katy Baker
  • Session Two: Product Documentation with Corey Katz
  • Session Three: Art Therapy for Makers with Jacqueline Steudler

Climate Sustainability & the Craft Community with Aleen Stanton

This presentation will focus on climate change and sustainability specifically in relation to the craft community and its various mediums/practices. In addition, it will provide a preview of the work CCTH is doing to plan for climate change and its impacts on culture. 

Bio: Aleen Stanton is a Climate Adaptation Coordinator with Nova Scotia Environment and Climate Change. She leads a team of representatives from the Department of Communities, Culture, Tourism and Heritage in climate adaptation strategic planning. She is also a Research Associate at the Nova Scotia Museum, and her research interests include heritage craft, traditional building trades, and cultural landscapes. 

Re-Imagining Creative Futures: Building Liberatory Arts Spaces
Anti-Oppression Public Sessions, facilitated by Carmel Farahbakhsh

Re-Imagining Creative Futures: Building Liberatory Arts Spaces is a three-part workshop series and discussion space that discusses anti-oppression through storytelling, peer-based learning, and personal reflection. During this digital space, participants will explore approaches to anti-racist curation, responsible and curious storytelling, organizationally care-based artistic practices rooted in disability justice frameworks, address ways to disrupt genre and aesthetic hierarchies within cultural industries, and discuss sustainable methods to intentional cross-practice collaboration. These themes will be grounded in disrupting tokenism in the arts sector, moving beyond defensiveness and fear in creative work, imagination, and accessibility. The aim is that participants will feel supported and motivated to engage in systems change work within the arts as well as more confident in continuing anti-oppressive conversations in their work personally and professionally. 

Three separate sessions were offered on 3 different dates:

Session 1: Foundations to Creative Liberation

This session will focus on building foundations in anti-oppressive and justice-based work that apply directly to the creative community. We will engage with common vocabulary, explore key elements of what sustainable and intersectional change-making can look like, and discuss the importance of building accessible spaces/ entry points within the sector. 

 

Session 2: Reimagining an Equitable Artistic Sector

This session will focus on disrupting tokenism and creating spaces of mutuality, trust, and care within arts spaces/organizations. This space will discuss the radical possibilities of cross-sectoral collaboration and tangible ways to de-silo organizational practices with the hopes of offering resources, opportunities, and support to more creatives/ artists/ makers.

 

Session 3: Sustainable Creative Change-Making

This session will offer examples of how to integrate this learning into personal and professional practices. We will discuss ways to disrupt genre/aesthetic hierarchies within the sector and explore common community dynamics that can be a detriment to offering safer and engaging spaces for all. We will explore the importance of representative organizational procedure, policy, and guidelines and community standards of care and the liberative potential of re-imagination.