Creative Career Management
A resource sheet: for artists navigating stuckness, change, and the long arc of creative careers
‘Stuckness’ shows up all the time in counseling and coaching with artists. It might feel like stagnation, confusion, a creative block, or a deep sense of being caught in a no-win situation. Often, it feels like a giant knot — one that can’t be forced open but might soften with time, attention, and a widening of perspective.
In our work at The Green Room, we don’t promise quick fixes. We’re more interested in creating conditions for mental and emotional flexibility: learning to move in new ways, try new patterns, expand the repertoire of options. As the movement educator Moshé Feldenkrais put it, “The more ways you have to do the things you know, the freer your choice is.”
Career development for artists is rarely linear. It often involves detours, self-questioning, and the uncomfortable task of redefining success over and over again. That’s why we developed our Creative Career Management workshops — to support artists in moving through uncertainty with clarity, connection, and creativity.
We focus on three main areas:
1. Clarifying values, visions, and goals
We often begin by helping artists reflect on what deeply matters to them — not just in theory, but in the concrete details of their daily lives. A simple exercise, like imagining a typical workday five years from now, can be a useful tool. This is not intended to create the perfect plan, but to notice what feels meaningful, what’s missing, and what kind of working life you hope to build.
These reflections help identify core values — what you want your work to stand for — as well as goals that support those values. Visions don’t have to be fixed. They can change. But naming them is a good place to start..
In uncertain times, it can feel risky to think about the future. Plans may shift or fall apart. But avoiding the question altogether can lead to drift. Taking time to explore values and direction is less about a closed-fist control and more about staying connected to what matters, even when the path is unclear.
2. Building networks and structures of support
Artists often work alone — sometimes by choice, sometimes by habit. But creative careers aren’t sustained in isolation. We need feedback, encouragement, co-thinking, challenge, and care. We also need solitude, reflection, and space to hear our own voices. The balance is different for everyone.
In today’s noisy world, both community and solitude are endangered. Nora Bateson writes beautifully about the loss of everyday forms of togetherness — and about the need to co-create new ways of collaborating, of “finding a way” together:
“People need people and people have no idea how to live with people. The ways in which community was generated in the past have slipped away. The farm, religious ceremonies, moving water, taking care of animals, making music, raising children, tending the elderly … In the midst of finding ourselves, we lost each other. Now in this time of tumultuous, rapid change there is a need for another sort of collaboration, one in which improvisation is the basis. No one knows what chaos is coming next, or when or how to respond... To get through these times a morale that underpins communal relationships must be nourished. This morale is a willingness to be flexible together, to be creative together, to ‘find a way’ where there is need. People need to find a way.”
In our work, we support artists in creating networks that feel nourishing, honest, and reciprocal. And this is not just for artistic projects, but for the whole winding, beautiful process of being a creative human.
3. Cultivating the conditions in which creativity can thrive
Creativity needs care. It needs routines, interruptions, sparks, and space. It needs courage in the face of fear, and discipline even when motivation is low.
Choreographer Twyla Tharp is known not only for her rigorous creative output but also for her commitment to discipline and routine as foundations for artistic work. In The Creative Habit, she describes how fear often arises at the beginning of a creative process — and how identifying those fears clearly helps reduce their power.
She names five recurring fears that block creativity:
People will laugh at me
Someone has done it before
I have nothing to say
I will upset someone I love
The finished work will fall short of what I imagined
Rather than avoiding these thoughts, Tharp faces them directly — and moves forward anyway. Creativity, in her view, is not the product of inspiration alone, but of sustained attention, daily rituals, and the courage to begin despite discomfort.
This perspective reminds us that creative work doesn’t emerge from ideal conditions. It grows out of structure, persistence, and a willingness to keep going in the presence of doubt.
At The Green Room
At The Green Room, we accompany artists as they navigate crossroads, crises, reinventions, and longings for something different.
We offer:
Individual sessions in English or German — online or in person
Tools for naming what matters to you and shaping goals that fit
Support for moving through stuckness with creativity and compassion
Guidance for building sustainable careers without abandoning your values
Whether you're at the beginning of a new chapter or reimagining what your work life could be, we’re here to support you.
Helpful Resources
The Creative Habit – Twyla Tharp
Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention – Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Essential Feldenkrais – Moshé Feldenkrais
Author: Heather O’Donnell - psychologist, artistic-systemic therapist and founding director of TGR The Green Room