Louise Hick recently graduated as a mature student with a 1st class honours degree from the University of Cumbria in illustration. She used her newly acquired skills to start a successful career as a self-employed artist who makes and sells her wares across the North East of England and further afield through various shop outlets, fairs and markets.
In 2024, Louise decided to broaden her business to include the facilitation of small scale, relaxed and engaging workshops based in the market town of Hexham.
Louise had some confidence issues around her work: She regularly fell into a psychological pattern whereby she doubted her accomplishments and has a persistent, often internalized, fear of being exposed as a fraud, despite evidence of her competence. Classic imposter syndrome.
In addition, Louise suffers from reoccurring debilitating migraines leaving her unable to pursue regular employment.
Louise’s income from selling her work does not sustain her family economically and she needed to add another revenue stream.
Louise came up with the idea of facilitating workshops to the many customers of her work who admired her style, her nature, animal and folk inspired illustration type pottery. However, Louise wondered if she could overcome confidence issues and could have the feedback from her first courses that what she is offering is not only professional and of high quality and nurturing in its facilitation style – but also exactly what her clients want.
The main obstacle was to finance the provision of free taster workshops to gauge group size, venue, type of projects which are achievable and facilitation style as well as confidence building with very small groups for Louise. The Test the Market Grant allowed Louise to buy the resources and hire the venue for facilitate a string of test workshops at no cost to the clients and thus limited pressure on it needing to be “perfect”.
The Taster workshops were very well received by all participants giving Louise an important confidence boost and idea of set format around her future workshop offering.
One client reflects: “Thank you, dear Louise, for such a thoughtfully prepared workshop this afternoon. It felt like such a treat – what a blessing of an afternoon.”
Another says: “I loved it! So lovely to be with you all and thank you Louise for guiding us so skillfully through the process! So calming.”
Louise is currently working on releasing a full schedule of workshops, knowing what, how, where and when she should be running these events in order to generate positive feedback and repeat booking.
“The support I received from NBSL has enabled me to test the market for my ceramic workshops. It was fantastic to talk the idea over with Linda, whose knowledge and advice really helped me think through that side of my business. Having the financial assistance allowed me to invest in the equipment so I was able to run the taster workshops with confidence and professionalism. It has definitely helped give me the boost I needed to develop that branch of my work”
— Louise Hick, business owner, rural entrepreneur and artist
Louise lives on a self-built, off-grid smallholding on the outskirts of Allendale with her partner, two teenage daughters and a playful menagerie of animal friends see some of her work on Instagram
