A Way For Artists & Creatives to Collaborate, Share & Build Influence?

How does an ’emerging’ artist, designer, musician, photographer, film maker or fashion designer find fellow artists and creatives to collaborate with? How do you even get a shot at working with big established artists or brands? Is there a way to grow your audience and spread your art in the process of trying?

Talenthouse describe themselves as “the artistic home for creative talent… an influential online community where artists and creatives can express their passions, collaborate on unique projects with leading artists and brands, share their work and grow their influence.”

As I write, they are an open community of 1.7 million artists & creators with a combined reach of nearly 700 million and, they’re growing fast. Founded in 2009, Talenthouse have a great team, and have raised some handy (nearly $20 million) investment along the way.

How it works

Any artist or creative can join (for free) and setup a profile to showcase their work and link out to their own website, blog, social profiles or what have you.

Any member, established artist or brand can setup an ‘invite’. An invite sets out what’s wanted. The person ‘hosting’ the invite selects the winner plus runners-up. Members of the community or anyone visiting the website or via shared links on Facebook or Twitter get to vote on submissions.

The winner, runners-up and the so-called Peoples Choice qualify for rewards and recognition. Rewards could be cash prizes or other perks, plus potentially the most valuable thing of all: exposure and attention.

Some random invites I looked-up just now included Miley Cyrus asking for graphic artwork for a new merchandise hoodie. The winner to be chosen by Miley Cyrus will receive a cash prize of $1,500, a feature on her website, a featured post on her social network that will reach 26 million fans and other goodies. Green Day are doing something similar for the cover art for their official Facebook page.

Another example is for a trailer for the Santa Fe Film Festival. The winner will get their trailer featured as an official festival trailer, featured on their website, on high profile blog posts by Tom Maguire and Melissa White, VIP passes and the list goes on. The runner up and People’s Choice also get some serious exposure.

Here’s a short video of comic book artist Stan Lee on Talenthouse:

What it means

Each ‘invite’ and the submissions it attracts is in effect a contest. This means that the artists and creatives who take part are doing the work in the hopes of winning, being a runner-up or attracting the most votes to become the People’s Choice.

There are two ways to look at this. First, you could say that up-and-coming artists are being exploited since the chances are they will not be rewarded for their work.

The counter is that everyone who enters are choosing to take part under their own freewill. Also, there is a real possibility that a currently ‘unknown’ artist will get noticed, earn massive exposure and attention. This in turn could well open doors to previously undreamt of opportunities.

At the very least, there’s a pretty good chance that anyone who can demonstrate some real talent within the Talenthouse community will be able to find more people to collaborate with as well as to grow and deepen the relationship with their own audience. And that my friends is what it’s all about.

Now it’s your turn. Take a look around the Talenthouse site yourself. Is this something you’ve tried or would consider trying? What do you like about it? What don’t you like?