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It’s pretty difficult to find the proper footing in a pandemic-ridden world, especially with the new financial challenges that arose over the past two years. Luckily, many young individuals have demonstrated resilience by opening their shops for prints, stickers, and more.
Youth-owned small businesses are coming to fruition, but the art world, in particular, is nurturing the creativity of many aspiring artists across several mediums. This exponential growth of shops is assisted by the rise of social media, particularly platforms like TikTok and Instagram. Since these platforms are so widely used, small business owners can rely on them for marketing and networking. The use of social media for marketing is inexpensive and efficient, as purchasing advertisements is no longer necessary to build a following.
In addition to platforms used for marketing, more creatives are using platforms to display and create their material in different ways. The evolving digital world doesn’t require coding experience from users to make their websites due to the influx of sites that do so for them. Other creatives have production teams and lots of equipment for printing on products. Although many individuals are creating their work that way, there is no perfect way to go about creating a shop and putting one’s work out there, with the multitude of options to mix, match, and choose from.
Not only is outreach accessible, but so are the materials many artists are using to create their shops. From the very first pencil to the newest models of apple pencils, art forms around the world have evolved with their materials. Now that there are more digital options, artists now have the choice between physical products and resources such as print-on-demand websites. In addition to the accessible and, for the most part, affordable digital resources, artists have no need to fret over expensive materials as much as they might have decades before.
The onset of the pandemic and quarantine in 2020 easily provided many individuals with more leisure time to fill. This period presented an opportunity for creatives of all different mediums such as paint, digital art, sculpture, culinary arts, music, and many more to present their work to the public and begin to sell their pieces. From 2020 to 2021, there was approximately a 24% increase in small businesses. Despite many businesses closing and the increase in unemployment, the creative world continued to persist.
Seeing creatives thriving during a time of adversity is refreshing. Their work is beautiful and they all prove to be passionate about their craft. The young artistic entrepreneurs of today are a demonstration that there are alternatives to employment that align with one’s interests, and the grueling tests of the real world won’t succeed in stifling creativity.
Sources:
Written by Ruby Moran
Edited by Jacob Escobar
Cover page by Yifei Wang
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