How to review your year 2023 and plan ahead for a successful 2024

The end of 2023 is just around the corner, this is a great time to review the past 12 months in your career as an artist: What goals did you accomplish? What projects found a roadblock?, an exercise that will lead to a more conscious planning of the year to come, starting by defining your artistic, creative, and even business goals for 2024. 

We want to propose to you a creative approach to create your very own “year in review”, and use it as a kickstart to begin mapping out what the next year would look like goals-wise. Keep reading to learn how to review this past year and plan your artistic and art business resolutions and goals for 2024.

How to create your own “year in review” as an artist

A good practice before the year ends is to review the past twelve months, their ups and downs, and what you learned about yourself, your creative self, and the art business in general. To do this, you need to have a deep chat with the person who has all the answers: you! 

Take your trustworthy journal, a notepad, or your laptop and answer these questions:

-What was your biggest accomplishment this year?

-Which project or task did you enjoy the most?

-What project was the most rewarding at a personal level?

-Which project or art piece required the biggest investment of your time?

-How would you define your current state? What would you call this phase of your life and how would you describe it?

-What did you learn in 2023 that you can apply in 2024?

Now comes the data analysis, and this is where a tool like Analytics comes in handy. Apart from your personal overview, with this ArtPlacer feature, you can easily visualize information about how visitors and collectors interact with 3D Virtual Galleries and website integrations. 

What Virtual Exhibition got the most visits? What type of artwork had the most inquiries? Who composes your target audience? Did you reach your sales and commissions goal? You can find all this information with a few clicks and use it to calculate how much you invested in your art marketing efforts and the results this strategy provided. 

Brainstorming ideas: drafting your goals for the new year as an artist

In order to live a creative life you should approach every aspect of it with the same wonder and open mind you have when facing a blank canvas. You are the one drawing this big portrait of what your next year would look like. Before making a list, dig a bit deeper into your desires and needs.

Go through this short questionnaire to bring up new ideas about what goals to pursue in the new year:

-What would you like to accomplish?

-What do you want to express? Is there a particular subject that captures your attention?

-Is there anything you’ve put off because it requires you to move far from your comfort zone? How could you approach it in 2024?

-Is there a piece or a series you’ve always wanted to create but haven’t yet? How would you do it?

-Is there an idea you would like to pitch to an institution, art house, or so on?

-Are there any grants or residencies that you want to apply to in 2024?

-Is there something you want to start over?

-Is there a new medium you want to experiment with?

-What audience do you want to reach?

-What is your main art business goal or art sales for the next twelve months?

Creating new year resolutions as an artist

When one year is ending and the other is about to start, we traditionally write resolutions. These are more than just mere goals, they express the intention of making that idea come to a reality in the next 12 months. To make that happen each resolution should be connected to a concise action. 

For example: If your New Year resolution as an artist is to “sell my first art piece”, this goal should be connected to an action like “promoting my artwork on social media”. And to make it even more precise, give it a time frame: “starting on January 6th I’ll start posting my landscape photography works in room mockups”. 

With this formula, you’ll be able to draft specific goals, with the actions you need to take to make them happen. Now you don’t only have an objective, you have a full plan.

Check this exclusive ArtPlacer Academy recorded webinar where Dr. Yanina Gomez shares “3 tips to stick with your goals”.  Take the lesson by logging into your ArtPlacer account or starting your free trial.

Create your New Year resolutions as an artist

Here are some ideas to ignite that creative spark and draft your own resolutions, adapt them to your own needs and situation:

–Working on your technique: follow exercises to develop a new skill. Think about starting to work with a new tool or medium such as watercolors, or improving your current skills like painting, drawing, or taking photographs.

–Boost your art sales: draft a business plan starting with pricing your artwork and creating an art marketing strategy to promote it to potential clients and collectors.

–Reach a new audience: build a strong social media presence and create your own professional or art business website. 

–Boost your creativity: establish and follow prompts to come out of a creative drought or to keep your artistic mind active.

–Get the job: is there a position where you see yourself thriving in the art industry? It’s time to revamp your resume and aim for that desired job interview.

–Market yourself as an independent artist: create your own path. You can take the reins on how to market your art pieces.

–Participate in an art fair: there are no limits to where you can show your work, now you can design and share your booth layout with teams across the world.

–Launch or strengthen your art business: from marketing pushes like creating a social media plan to promote an exhibition to defining the types of creative content you’ll use to expand your work’s reach. Build a step-by-step strategy to reach your sales goals.

–Book a year full of commissions: if this is your main source of revenue as an artist, you can plan out how to promote your creative services to your target audience and secure that job.

–Apply to a grant or residency: is this the year to get that coveted spot in the program you have been seeing for a while? Time to update your resume and artist’s statement.

These are just a few ideas to get you going: aim high and make the best out of the new year!