Sophie Brussaux, Arts Help Founder and Artistic Director
Photo Credit: Irina Litvinenko
The power and value of art is undeniable when you look at the numbers. More than other industries such as agriculture, transportation or warehousing, the arts contribute $763.6 billion to the US economy and employ 4.9 million workers across the country. Yet still, pathways to economic stability and successful careers are not always clear for both established and emerging artists.
Founded on the principle of art making the world a better place, Arts Help seeks to provide clarity and access to revenue streams that artists need to be successful. As the world’s largest art publisher, with a community of 2.5 million members, the organization’s objective is to provide the necessary exposure for independent artists to create awareness for their work.
Arts Help Founder and Artistic Director, Sophie Brussaux, understands the unique challenges artists face today. First dabbling in various forms of art as a young girl, “Ever since I was a little kid I was an artist. My mom made me try all types of art – dancing, playing music and a whole lot of things until I found what I truly love a few years ago,” she recalls. Brussaux eventually recognized her gift as a visual artist; a career that provided her with the opportunity to travel the world exhibiting her work. Along the way, she found within her own career, that artists struggle to overcome similar barriers – recognition of various disciplines, intellectual property (IP) protection, stigmas that art can’t be a sustainable career and access to government funding.
Creating Arts Help is Brussaux’s solution to navigating these career obstacles. “I want to break the stigma of art and what it means to be an artist. Regardless of medium, your art is important and Arts Help is the guidance. Individual growth is the highest hope we have for a published artist.” The nonprofit offers free master classes, partners with large institutions to develop pieces for social change, and publishes content from artists of all disciplines on all platforms. “Arts Help has thousands of art page editors who follow the platform and repost its content, and in this ever-increasing digital world, online exposure has the power to open the artist to a global audience otherwise extremely difficult to penetrate,” says Brussaux.
Here she shares advice for fellow artists on how to build a thriving career and how art is making the world a better place.
The Power of an Artist’s Voice
Typically artists let their creations speak on behalf of themselves, but Brussaux began to see the value in being an advocate for her work and others as well. “As an artist I usually let my art be my voice, as I put my thoughts and emotions into every brush stroke. However, being a spokeswoman of a major platform has allowed me to open up a major part of who I am, as a person, to an audience of fellow artists and like-minded individuals,” she says. Ensuring that her voice would have the ability to make a lasting impact in the global art community was a careful consideration that Brussaux made before taking on the role of Artistic Director. As both an artist and mother to her 2-year-old son Adonis Graham, her vision is to use her position at Arts Help to assist in creating a world where climate change and the environmental degradation of previous generations has less of a lasting impact. “Arts Help is my way of using my art and voice to advocate for two of my greatest life interests; art and valuable global impact” Brussaux says.
While art is one of the universal languages of the world that brings people together, Brussaux also recognizes that work still needs to be done in ensuring that artists and their work aren’t undervalued. “One of the first questions I ask myself is, ‘will my words and representation be impactful?’ As an organization that represents global artists of every discipline, I have to ensure that I am always working as an advocate for art and artists and gage whether it benefits my community,” she states.
Sophie Brussaux with Pope Francis in Rome
Photo Credit: Sophie Brussaux
Art Plays a Fundamental Role in Business
With earnings of more than $370 billion in the US, art plays a meaningful role in our everyday lives. It is common to think of artistry in the entertainment we consume, from music to art galleries but less often people consider the importance of art in business. For instance, a startup tech company seeking funding or a product or service-based business will inadvertently need an artist to work on their visual branding. Everything public-facing of a business – logo, pitch deck, product packaging, website design – require the expertise of an artist. “There is an art to how your business is perceived. With the perception that art is not a viable livelihood, it has been largely noted that artists are oftentimes left unrecognized, found to have their wages undercut, or simply not compensated at all,” says Brussaux. Equipping the Arts Help community with the knowledge necessary to charge what they are worth and excel is a monumental element of the guidance and support the organization provides its members. “We initially engaged with the Art Community digitally on our social media, and now with a solid support base, we will be re-launching our masterclass this fall to further enrich our artists and members. A key focus will be IP protection for artists and we are currently working with the government on rolling out digestible online information that can be clearly communicated to our members.”
Art For Social Change
Using art as a vehicle for taking action on the world’s biggest issues is an important founding pillar for Arts Help. “My co-founder and I were just sitting in a coffee shop, talking about our upcoming projects, and he showed me a video titled ‘We The People’ for The Global Goals. The campaign was for the United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s). The video is a Universal call to action to make the world a better place, by ending poverty and other deprivations by 2030, through global partnerships. Many of the people involved, such as Bill Gates, Malala Yousafzai and Stephen Hawking were not only people I admired, but champions of protecting our planet and ensuring peace and prosperity for the human race,” says Brussaux. That moment led to a meeting with the UN and being awarded by the UN-Habitat Global Advocate for Arts Help’s collaborative “Icons With a Purpose” exhibition at the Toronto Design Exchange Museum. Arts Help defined an icon as exceptional people who are using their wide-reaching platforms to make local and global changes that align with UN’s SDG’s.
Heavily invested in climate change, Arts Helps also partnered with York University, one of the largest Universities in Toronto, representing over 150 countries around the world to build the first ever Climate Solutions Park on 4 acres of land. “We call this Project Climate Change. Our park will have art, inspirational displays and innovative hands-on training opportunities, carefully curated to showcase how to solve the climate emergency,” says Brussaux. Artists as she believes can use their creativity as a vessel to educate, engage and inspire innovation in their audience.
LONDON (AP) — With a few daubs of a paintbrush, the Brontë sisters have got their dots back.
More than eight decades after it was installed, a memorial to the three 19th-century sibling novelists in London’s Westminster Abbey was amended Thursday to restore the diaereses – the two dots over the e in their surname.
The dots — which indicate that the name is pronounced “brontay” rather than “bront” — were omitted when the stone tablet commemorating Charlotte, Emily and Anne was erected in the abbey’s Poets’ Corner in October 1939, just after the outbreak of World War II.
They were restored after Brontë historian Sharon Wright, editor of the Brontë Society Gazette, raised the issue with Dean of Westminster David Hoyle. The abbey asked its stonemason to tap in the dots and its conservator to paint them.
“There’s no paper record for anyone complaining about this or mentioning this, so I just wanted to put it right, really,” Wright said. “These three Yorkshire women deserve their place here, but they also deserve to have their name spelled correctly.”
It’s believed the writers’ Irish father Patrick changed the spelling of his surname from Brunty or Prunty when he went to university in England.
Raised on the wild Yorkshire moors, all three sisters died before they were 40, leaving enduring novels including Charlotte’s “Jane Eyre,” Emily’s “Wuthering Heights” and Anne’s “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.”
Rebecca Yorke, director of the Brontë Society, welcomed the restoration.
“As the Brontës and their work are loved and respected all over the world, it’s entirely appropriate that their name is spelled correctly on their memorial,” she said.
