Making a Buck Without Selling Out is hARTslane’s new course on artists’ professional practice, with hARTslane co-director Cristiana Bottigella and guest tutor Sophia Kosmaoglou, founder of ART&CRITIQUE and co-founder of the Radical Pedagogy Research Group.

We created this course because we recognise that there’s a gap in art education—one that rarely prepares artists for the realities of building a practice in today’s culture industry.  

The art world’s economy is full of contradictions. Artists are expected to be visionaries, provocateurs, and entrepreneurs all at once. We’re told to challenge the system—while also expected to succeed within it. Artists must survive and keep making work within a capitalist economy. That means negotiating visibility, marketing, and income—without selling out.

This course confronts that tension. It asks:

• What does it mean to prioritise artistic integrity over marketability?
• How do you stay connected and visible without getting drawn into competition and isolation?
• What does autonomy look like when you also need to pay the rent? 

This programme isn’t a checklist or a formula. It’s a space to ask difficult questions about what keeps your work going, what threatens to undermine it, and how to protect your autonomy while expanding your networks and building community. You’ll also reflect on what success means for you, and what it takes—emotionally, materially, ethically—to keep your practice sustainable over time.

You’ll get 6 online sessions, weekly activities with tangible outcomes, peer review, written feedback, and collective learning, a workbook to map your progression, resources, tools, and one-to-one tutorials to review your action plan.

Find out more and register on the course page