Members

We hope you will use this website throughout the year. Add it to your bookmarks and visit regularly for News Updates and Messages where you will find comments, ideas, opportunities, events, and items for sale and wanted. If you want to post your own messages, just sign up for a message board account - it's easy and it's free.

Contact details for your local area coordinator and the management team can be found here on the website. If you are unsure who to contact, please use General Enquiries.

The Downloads page has many useful items that you can download and print including application forms, letterheads, arrows and posters.

In addition to your guide entry you have a personal web page that will remain online for eleven months. Your web page has it's own news update facility where you can add information such as as forthcoming exhibitions etc. Your updates will also be shown on the home page for a limited time. For an extra fee, you can extend your web page with additional text and images. For more information, download the application form for Extending your web page from the Downloads page.

Our entry fees do not cover all the costs. SEOS is grateful for support from local authorities and other funding bodies, and advertisers.

We strongly recommend that you keep in touch with your local area coordinator and follow the advice on opening your studio in Rules, Guidelines, hints and tips (available on the downloads page). SEOS covers a very wide area and there is a limit to what the management team can cover, so local initiative makes a big difference to the success of your opening. When you apply for local publicity please let our publicity officer know (contact details can be found on the Management page). SEOS will be sending out general press releases promoting the event as a whole but would appreciate the additional mailing of press releases by artists. The publicity officer also has a media contacts database and can offer you support and contacts with your press releases.

We are not a promotional company. We have a limited budget for 'general' advertising and cannot be responsible for the promotion of each individual entrant. We need the support and promotion of every participant if we are to become known and recognised by the public as one of the finest ways to experience art and craft in the South East.

Public Liability Insurance
In the past we have obtained PLI for up to £1,000,000 for artists on the days they are open. Although every endeavour will be made to obtain PLI in the future, this is by no means certain so artists are advised to check their own insurance before the event. Whether or not we have been able to obtain PLI will be published in the member’s Newsletter and posted on the website message board. The PLI will not cover openings or other events at other times of the year. It covers accidents caused by negligence, for example leaving something on the ground over which a visitor trips and injures himself. An artist would deal directly with the insurer, not through the management team, and there is a £250 excess for damages paid by the claiming artist.

Open Studio Tips

• Be seen, be found - use all your supplied posters and create your own personalised posters. Use all your direction arrows and print more if necessary (available on the downloads page). On fast roads use two or three arrows together.
• Keep your visitors - offer drinks and be available.
• Get publicity - use Parish magazines, local papers and ask shops to put up your posters.
• Personal invitations - and private views pay off.
• Collaborate with other local artists - ask them to supply directions on to you, have joint posters and publicity.
• Promote Guides - check they are in local libraries, put them in local attractions.
• Promote yourself - no one else will, have a visitors' book.
• Be a good SEOS participant - fill in visitor forms, at the end tell your Area Coordinator how things have gone, above all be there at your stated times.
• Be careful - make your environment safe, warn of unavoidable hazards.
• Visit other studios, and most of all have fun!