A thank you and an update

Dear Friends,

As England enters a new month-long lockdown I thought I'd send an update of what is happening here at Draw. We know things are pretty tough for everybody around the world right now, so for all of you locked down in Europe and South America, awaiting election results in the USA and juggling restrictions elsewhere in the UK: we will all get through these difficult times together as a creative community. Speaking for myself, the weekly online drawing sessions have been a life line, giving us a chance to be together virtually and connect with old and new friends here in Brighton and around the world. 

In recognition of the new lockdown, we'll be re-starting our Sunday blog posts to provide you with extra inspiration, starting tonight. These will be accessible to all supporters and will cover a more diverse range of topics than Lance's excellent life drawing tutorials. Don't feel you have to read them as they come out - we are building a long term resource for you to use forever, which you can explore through the Navigator here. 

Thank you all for your generosity and kindness these past 8 months - you have enabled Draw to keep going while so many other places face closure, providing hope (and work!) for all of the life models, artists and tutors that work here. Below you'll find some answers to questions I've recently been asked. 

Stay safe and keep drawing, 

Jake x

P.s. if you have fallen on hard times and are unable to continue to pay the amount you are paying to be part of the Patreon, but rely on the support of the sessions, please let me know in confidence on info@draw-brighton.co.uk and we will find a way to keep you coming. 

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What kind of organisation is Draw? 

Draw is a small independent drawing school in Brighton, UK, we are a social enterprise and all of our profits are re-invested back into our community. We don't receive any external finding and are currently solely supported by you wonderful people on Patreon, here. We have three guiding aims:

• To provide affordable, flexible & safe drawing eduction accessible to everybody
• To provide a platform for creative development and collaboration
• To provide work, training and income for artists, models & tutors

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What can I come to?

Different tiers of support give you access to different sessions and you can move up or down in your support any time by editing your tier in your Patreon account settings. In short if you get an email about it and you can see if on here when you're logged in then you can come to it. Here's what we're currently providing:

Mon: 10am Life Drawing Tutorial Blog (S, P, L)
Wed: 11:30am Tutorial / 1-2pm Online Life Drawing / 7-8pm Online Life Drawing (L)
Thurs: 7-8pmPortrait Club (P, L)
Fri: 10am Photoset release (S=1 monthly set, P=3 monthly sets, L=6 monthly sets)
Sun: 10am New Draw Blog (S, P, L)

Key
S - Supporter Tier (£3pcm +VAT)
P - Portrait Tier supporters (£12pcm +VAT)
L - Life Drawing Tier (£25pcm +VAT non-students, £8pcm +VAT students)

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How is the Patreon money used?

I am a volunteer at Draw (I make my living through selling my books), but all of our team are paid a fair proportion of the Draw income for their work - paying artists is one of our guiding aims. The money raised on the Draw Patreon goes towards running the events and commissioning the image and tutorials that are provided on here - our focus is to distribute as much of our income as possible to the models and artists who most need the work. Each month our Patreon income is currently divided up like this:

• Life Models
  25% of the income is paid in royalties, split equally between the 29 models featured in our photosets
  12% of the income is paid to models who pose for our Wednesday life classes
• Tutors & Artists
  16% is paid to the tutors who write our blog posts and tutorials
  7% is distributed to tutors who make art for our Patron of the Arts supporters
  16% is paid to tutors who manage our online social media and daily communications
• Photoshoots
  7% is put aside for future photoshoots at the Brighton Studio 
• Online Running costs
  13% Online costs (Zoom, Mailchimp, Website, Patreon, Hootsuite fees)
  4% Card processing fees & similar
  

What about the other costs?

You might notice a big grey wedge next to our pie chart - these are the costs for our physical space and bills which are not covered by our Patreon income. To deal with these we are doing the following:

• Vacating all of our old studios and condensing everything into one
• Selling non-essential equipment
• Sub-letting the available corners of our new space while life classes cannot go ahead
• Setting up a new online shop (details coming on our newsletter!)

In the long term we'd love to have enough Patreon supporters to cover this cost too, so do tell your friends if you think they'd enjoy what we provide here! Over the summer we  covered the costs with generous donations from non-Patreon supporters. 

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Will the Draw Patreon ever shut down?

Not for many years, and hopefully, never! As most of its costs are percentage based, no matter how bad things get we won't ever have to close this Patreon, which we are developing as a long-term learning resource. We will continue to run online classes all the while there are restrictions.

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Will Draw close in real life?

We hope not - it depends on how the next three months go. If we continue to receive such wonderful support on here and our online shop launch goes well we will be able to service the costs of keeping our current space. At worst we would have to leave our new space and sell our remaining equipment, but this isn't as bad as it sounds. Draw is not just a room with some easels in - Draw exists in all of our hearts. Everywhere a pencil is being sharpened, there too will Draw be... Also, we have a back up plan that will allow us to continue all of our online sessions as normal without needing a physical space.  I started Draw 12 years ago with £300 and a couple of spare evenings a week; in the worst case scenario, our huge community could support us to re-build from scratch in future years - we'd just rather keep our current space if we can. 

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When will real-life classes reopen?

The current situation is very tricky, but we had planned for it and have further plans for all future eventualities. We are mostly using the weekly briefing from Indie SAGE, figures from the FT and rough impressions of local infection rates from ZOE to help us make forecasts. Life classes are a high risk environment (This article illustrates the risks well) and if we re-open during the pandemic it would be with temperature checks, 2m distancing, improved ventilation and masks. In order to re-open I would require the following criteria to be met:

• Infection levels must be falling across Sussex
• Infection levels must be lower than 100 per 100,000 in Brighton & Hove 
• An effective test and trace programme must be in use nationally

We are keen to reopen as soon as safely possible, but the health and well-being of our community is more important than our wish to do some life drawing. Although it is more expensive for us to run the online classes, it is also much safer and allows us to include the vulnerable members of our group who would otherwise be left out of a return to in-person sessions. 

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Thank you all for your understanding, help and support - you are all wonderful.