From July 12th to 15th the Great Northern Arts Festival successfully returned to Inuvik after a year-long hiatus due to COVID-19. The Department of Industry, Tourism and Investment (ITI) was excited to help welcome back artists and public alike by sponsoring the returning event.

In a normal year, the festival lasts 10 days, but due to last year's cancellation, this year’s event was scaled back to 3 days and was geared more toward artist professional development.

To that end, ITI hosted a full-day workshop that focused on methods and mediums for selling artwork. Consisting of eight videos and a workbook that follows the video content. Topics covered included portfolio creation, artwork pricing, social media, in person sales, e-commerce website creation, online marketing, and the role of the gallery and retail store.

The series, which was designed by ITI, proved to be a success. “The objective of this workshop is to get more artists ready to sell their artwork,” says Johanna Tiemessen, the Manager of Arts Programming. “The material outlines the various ways they might want to sell their artwork and focuses on developing the skills that they need to do that effectively. In particular, we hope it will help more artists move to selling online, but also help them to do that successfully.”

By the end of this year, ITI Economic Development Officers across the NWT will be trained to deliver this content in a workshop setting for artists in their communities, and the series will be accessible directly to artists enabling them to work through the materials on their own.

The Great Northern Arts Festival is a long time staple of the Beaufort Delta region and ITI is happy to see its return.  ITI’s sponsorship of the festival is one of the many ways, the department is proud to be able to support northern artists.