Exhibiting your art for the first time is worth the nerves
We have enjoyed a summer filled with a plethora of Open art exhibitions in Manchester and across the UK. The Royal Academy may be the most famous, but Manchester has its own well-known open exhibitions – Manchester Open at HOME, the Castlefield Gallery Open, and closer to home the AWOL and Comme Ca Open exhibition.
BUT – I’m happy to say our very own annual Student Open Exhibition is just around the corner and now is the time to get ready. Let me inspire you to be a part of our event;
Give yourself the chance to enjoy the surprisingly powerful experience of seeing your own artwork on a wall.
If you have put in the effort and time attending classes, filling sketchbooks or experimenting at home, the transition from making artwork privately to exhibiting can feel like a momentous step. If you have not exhibited before you will have mostly been focused on the process of learning and making. Your work probably sits at home on a table, propped against a wall, or lives its life stored in a portfolio, or the closed covers of your sketchbook.
Being part of an exhibition changes the relationship you have with your art.
STUDENT QUOTE: “Massive thanks to Brian for including our student work in the AWOL Open Exhibition. It’s very exciting to see your work on display and feels validating as an artist. The whole event was inspiring and a perfect opportunity to share ideas.” Tony 2025
Give yourself permission and allow your artwork to leave the safety of its storage space and become an opportunity that other people can encounter, an experience others can remember. Our Annual Student Open Exhibition on 10th October is your opportunity to give your art the opportunity to be seen alongside other people’s work and become part of the wider creative conversation that happens in our AWOL studio.
For a first-time exhibitor, this can be both exhilarating and a little nerve-racking. It can also be one of your most rewarding experiences.
Change from being an art-maker to an art-sharer
Much of being a beginner is about exploration – discovering new materials, learning new techniques, and experimenting with new styles and ideas. You probably find that your art keeps changing and you may have no clear idea as to ‘what kind’ of artist you are. This is all part of developing and growing and discovering your own personal art style. It should be embraced and enjoyed.
Eventually, though, something begins to shift. As well as reaching forward trying to master and ‘become good’ you start to accept the ‘now’ and that whatever art you are making is OK, it is a stage on your path of learning and creative growth. And this is worth celebrating.
This is an important part of becoming an artist, and allowing yourself permission to share and exhibit your work is another step to growing your creative-confidence. Henri Matisse’s said that “Creativity takes courage”, which I think captures something fundamental about this stage of your creative journey. Making your artwork requires courage, but so does allowing other people to see it.
And remember, sharing and exhibiting your art does not require perfection! Embrace Salvador Dali’s advice “Have no fear of perfection, you’ll never reach it.” Courage doesn’t mean waiting until you feel completely confident. It means accepting that the work will never be perfect and allowing yourself to share it anyway.
This is the ethos behind our annual Student Open Exhibition – join us and be part of something bigger, be part of the growing creative community at Creative Art Courses and within AWOL Studios. Your artwork on the wall doesn’t define you, it simply represents a point in your creative development.
STUDENT QUOTE: “I submitted and had some work displayed at this year’s Student Open and it was a real treat to both attend as an artist, and to see everybody’s work on the wall where it belongs! Events like this are really valuable as a safe and friendly catalyst for focus and a sense of achievement, especially if you find yourself intimidated by the art crowd and struggle with ways to share your work (like me). Already looking forward to the next one!” Naomi 2025
Submit your entry
Submit your entry and join us for our 2026 Student Open Exhibition takes place on Saturday 10 October, from 1–7pm, at Studio 516, AWOL Studios, Hope Mill. Email submissions close on Monday 28 September
The opportunity of seeing your own work differently
Your artwork may look very different when displayed away from the place where it was made. Exhibiting creates distance.
Once you see your artwork displayed on the wall (whether framed or not) surrounded by other artwork, you will see what was familiar to you, differently – a colour may appear stronger, a composition may seem clearer, or a particular mark or texture may stand out differently. You may even recognise qualities in your work that you hadn’t consciously noticed before. Exhibiting encourages a more objective relationship with your own work and can reveal potential for future art.
As Edgar Degas observed, “Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.” This is another thing that being part of our exhibition offers you – a chance to discover how others see your artwork; and this helps you grow your own understanding of what you are trying to achieve through your art. You know what you intended when you made the artwork, but the viewer brings their own experience, associations and interpretation to it. Your artwork may be communicating to others in ways you hadn’t anticipated – and this can be powerfully enlightening.
Choosing work is part of becoming an artist
Choosing to be part of our exhibition introduces another valuable creative discipline – editing.
Selecting work to exhibit means looking back over what you have made and deciding which pieces you want to submit. This process can reveal much more than simply which painting you like best.
You may begin to notice themes – the things you tend to do again and again. Certain colours keep appearing, or you repeatedly draw particular subjects, or use the same material techniques. Reviewing all your artworks may reveal, for example, that the ones you like the best are the spontaneous and expressive ones, while other pieces reveal a growing interest in structure and composition.
Sometimes the art works you favour and select to exhibit are not be the most technically accomplished thing you have made. It may instead be the art work that feels most personal, most experimental, or most representative of where your creativity is heading.
Learning to recognise these qualities is an important part of developing your artistic voice.
Finished doesn’t mean perfect
Stop! Just to make sure you are not caught in the spiral of creating, experimenting and researching. Although this spiral is fun, exhilarating and joyous – getting caught up too much in the vortex and can cause you to never feel your work is worthy of showing. It requires a pause, take a breath, temporarily just stop! Without a reason to stop, your artwork can remain permanently unfinished, with always another adjustment, another colour to change, another area that could be developed.
An exhibition provides this natural point of completion and will encourage you to have to decide that the work is finished enough to share. Stop!
As artists, we rarely reach a point where we believe every piece is perfect. Instead, we learn when to stop working on something and allow it to exist as it is.
Our Student Open Exhibition provides an opportunity to get comfortable with this idea. It can also help you break the habit of endlessly comparing your work with an imaginary standard of perfection.
The purpose of exhibiting is not to prove that you have mastered everything. It is to show where your creative practice is now.
The inspiration of seeing other artists’ work
Perhaps one of the greatest pleasures of being a part of a group exhibition is discovering just how differently people respond to the creative process.
Whatever your focus may be – colour, tone, expressive marks, landscape, abstracts, the figure – there is no single correct way of doing it. For developing artists, seeing and learning from other people’s art should be a liberating and confidence-boosting experience. It can help you to stop looking for the one “right” way to make art and start paying closer attention to your own creative instincts.
Seeing other people’s work can also provide the spark for new ideas. A particular choice of mixed-media, an unusual composition or an exciting use of colour can stay in your mind long after the exhibition.
The experience of exhibiting should be a regular part of your creative journey.
Art as a social experience
For most of us, making art is quite a solitary experience, particularly when your art making takes place at home in the spare room, kitchen table, conservatory, or bathroom.
Being part of an exhibition has an important social dimension to it. It is your opportunity to meet people who are also making things. This is your opportunity to chat about materials, ideas, frustrations and discoveries with people who have a similar shared experience. This is particularly important for adults who are returning to art after many years away or if you are one of the many people who struggle with the idea of calling yourself an artists.
Our annual Student Open Exhibition is a supportive exhibition that doesn’t create a hierarchy between the experienced and the beginner artist. Our studio provides a shared space in which everyone’s creative journey can be shared and celebrated.
Be a part of Manchester’s creative community
The 2026 Student Open Exhibition takes place on Saturday 10 October, from 1–7pm, at Studio 516, AWOL Studios, Hope Mill, on Pollard Street.
Students who have previously attended a Creative Art Courses class, course or art group can submit up to three artworks for consideration. Email submissions close on Monday 28 September, with final display numbers confirmed after submissions close according to the available wall space.
AWOL Studios Open event
Our event coincides with the annual AWOL Open Studios event, providing an opportunity for you to explore the resident artists and creative practitioners working throughout Hope Mill.
The AWOL Open studios event offers a glimpse into the reality of how artists work outside the home — working studios, individual practices, different approaches to making, and a community of people committed to creative activity.
If you choose to exhibit in our exhibition, it means that your artwork will be shown within a much broader creative environment.
If you choose simply to visit, it provides an afternoon of looking, discovering and connecting with people who work in diverse ways within the wider creative industries – fine art, design, photography, ceramics, craft, fashion, and a whole lot more.
Your first exhibition doesn’t need to define you
There can be a temptation to think that exhibiting carries a certain weight. Once something is on a gallery wall, it can feel as though it needs to represent who you are as an artist. It doesn’t.
If this is your first time exhibiting, think of it as simply a snapshot of where your creative practice happens to be at this particular moment.
Your work may change considerably from this point on. Your interests may shift. Your materials may change. You may discover a completely different direction. Your first exhibition isn’t a final statement. It records a moment when you were making, experimenting and developing.
Consider artist and writer John Berger’s observation, “The way we see things is affected by what we know or what we believe.”
Being part of our exhibition can change the way you see your own work because it changes the context in which you encounter it. If you have been making art quietly, tentatively or simply for pleasure at home, this can be a significant moment. Grab the opportunity – we are here to support you.
