And why, if you missed it, you are going to want to read this.
On 11th May, about twenty-five artists, makers and creatives showed up to a free online global workshop called Get Your Shit Together.
They came from New Zealand, Mallorca, Cornwall, Devon, Scotland and more. Some were painters. Some were still figuring out what kind of artist they were. Some had been making work for years and had quietly started to wonder why none of it felt like enough. Some had not made anything real in months.
They all had one thing in common.
They were done pretending.
This was not a quick-fix workshop. This was serious identity work. And it required one thing from you: willingness to be honest with yourself.
That was the first thing I said to them when they arrived.
Before we started the real work, I asked everyone to share one word. One word for what they wanted to claim creatively.
They said: Recognition. Cash. Clarity. Confidence. Authenticity. Finding my niche.
Not fancy words, the things artists say quietly to themselves and rarely say out loud.
Then, in the chat, throughout the hour, something else started to come through. The real version. The one underneath the one-word answer.
“I don’t fully know who I am as an artist yet.“
“I am withholding the truer version of my work.“
“I want to be seen, but visibility scares me.“
“I want money and recognition, but I feel shame around wanting it.“
“I have ideas, but I don’t know what to commit to.“
“I don’t want to do this alone any more.“
Does any of that sound familiar?
Because if it does, you were in the room in spirit even if you were not there in person.
The workshop was not tips. It was not a framework with a catchy name and a workbook to fill in.
It was a direct confrontation with the four areas where artists lose their power: desire, visibility, money and authority.
Not in a theoretical way. In the way where you sit with a question and the first answer you give is the one you have been avoiding.
What am I currently withholding from the public? First answer only. No explaining. No justifying.
This question landed hard in the room. Because most artists, when they are honest, know exactly what they are withholding. They have known for a long time. They are just waiting for it to feel safer before they show it.
Spoiler: waiting for safe does not work. Safe does not arrive on its own. You have to build the conditions for it. That is what the work is.
This is the thing I keep saying, and I will keep saying it until it lands.
If your creative practice is not earning what it should, if your work is not reaching the people it should reach, the problem is almost certainly not that you do not know how to sell.
The problem is self-withholding.
Over-polishing before your truth gets a chance to connect with anyone. Performing instead of being present. Trying harder in all the ways that hide what actually needs saying.
Poor sales are a symptom. The root is that nobody has ever taught you how to hold the emotional weight of being visible, valued and paid. How to stand in your work without apologising for it. How to let people see you, actually see you, and not immediately want to take it back.
This is what the workshop was about, and what an hour started to crack open.
Derek was in the room on Sunday. He is also a current Creative Contract client. He talked about what changed for him when we started working together.
He had been painting landscapes and seascapes. Good work. Work people responded to. But in the corner of his first exhibition there was a small group of paintings that were different. Surreal. Strange. More alive.
When we talked about that work, he came alive too.
His biggest shift was realising he had his own voice. That the work in the corner was his work. And that making what he actually wanted to make, instead of what he thought people wanted to see, was not a risk. It was the only honest option.
He has since secured gallery representation. Grown his studio. Multiplied his network. Built the career he was already capable of, once he stopped getting in his own way.
The beginning is not about picking up a pencil. It is about feeling the texture, the vibration, the thing moving through you. You are already further along than you think.
One hour cannot undo years of conditioning. But it can start something.
This is the honest truth about what a workshop can do.
It can create a realisation. It can produce a moment of recognition. It can activate something that has been sitting dormant under the weight of habit and fear and the thousand small ways you have been telling yourself this is not the right time.
But the deeper work, the work of learning to keep choosing from clarity when all the old patterns come back, which they will come back, because that is what patterns do, that work cannot happen in an hour.
The moment you start claiming more, charging more, showing more, being more honest in your work, all the old identity material surfaces. This is not failure. This is the work. And the work needs holding.
That is why accountability, community and sustained support are not a luxury for artists. They are the difference between a good hour and an actual change.
The Creative Contract is my nine-month group coaching container for artists and creatives who are ready to stop going round in circles.
Not through discipline or deadlines. Not through another course or a tighter system or a better plan for getting motivated. Through the real work: identity, desire, visibility, authority, money. The four areas the workshop cracked open, held properly, over time, with people who are doing the same reckoning alongside you.
Here is what nine months includes:
Three hours of group coaching per month, split across two sessions. Four one-to-one sessions with me, organic and bespoke, when you actually need them. One in-person group session. Two NLP sessions. Full access to the Radical Approach methodology. Monthly expert guests covering somatics, human design, gallery work, hypnotherapy, industry positioning and more.
The programme moves through three cycles: unlearning, where we undo the conditioning and find the actual creative voice underneath it. Rebirth, where that voice starts to lead. And then structure, strategy, connection and the building of a creative practice that can hold real ambition.
It is not school. There are no milestones and assessments. It is a held space where you are invited, never expected, to show up. Where the work that comes out is yours. Where the voice that develops is yours.
“Olivia’s leadership is amazing. The group mirrors and listens with honesty. Vulnerability and answering questions together reveals you are not alone. The nine-month commitment keeps getting reflected back, deepening the work each time.“
Barbara, current Creative Contract participant
The next Creative Contract begins in September 2026.
There are six spaces in total. Not because of an arbitrary cap, but because the work requires a room small enough for everyone in it to be genuinely held. Six is the number where nobody disappears. Six is where the group becomes something real.
Four of those six are already taken. Two spaces remain.
If they fill, and the response so far suggests they will, the cohort after that will not begin until 2027. That is not a sales line. That is just the reality of how this works.
Don’t wait until September to change the way you show up. Join now and receive bonus monthly one-to-one coaching with me until the group container begins in September.
If the money feels complicated, tell me. Artists often receive income in chunks and then nothing, and I am realistic about that. If the pull is real and the price is genuinely in the way, that is a conversation worth having.
You can watch the replay.
But I want to say something honest about replays.
The replay gives you the content. It does not give you the room. It does not give you the moment of sitting with a question and feeling it land in your body before your brain has a chance to talk you out of it. It does not give you the live conversation, the chat responses from twenty-five other artists saying yes, me too, I know exactly what you mean.
What I can tell you is this: if reading this blog has made something shift, even slightly, even in the small uncomfortable way where you recognise yourself in someone else’s words and immediately want to look away, that is information. Do not ignore it.
If I trusted my creativity fully, what would I let myself say or sell? What kind of freedom would that require from me?
That is the question we sat with on Sunday. You can sit with it right now.
And if you know that what you need is not more content to consume but an actual space where the real work can happen, The Creative Contract opens in September.
Two spaces left.
Find out more about The Creative Contract HERE
You’re not here to play it safe.
You’re here to create from fire, not fear and build the kind of legacy that doesn’t need validation to be felt.
If this stirred something in you, it’s not by accident.
It’s your creativity asking for more; more truth, more freedom, more you.
