This mid-year session invites artists and creative business owners to take a thoughtful, practical look at how they price their work—and why it matters.

Pricing is one of the most challenging and often overlooked parts of a creative practice. It’s tied not only to sustainability, but to confidence, clarity, and how your work is valued in the market. This session is designed to help artists step back, reassess, and move forward with a stronger, more intentional approach.

Together, we’ll explore how to:

• Evaluate current pricing and identify where adjustments may be needed
• Understand the true cost of your time, materials, and expertise
• Align pricing with your goals, audience, and positioning
• Communicate your prices clearly and confidently
• Navigate common pricing challenges and mindset barrier

Participants will leave with practical tools and frameworks they can apply immediately, along with space to reflect on what feels sustainable for their individual practice.

Whether you’re refining your current approach or starting from scratch, this session is an opportunity to reset, recalibrate, and build a pricing strategy that supports both your creativity and your livelihood.

Speaker: Lauren Smith-Petta, Senior Director of Education Services, JumpStart, Inc.

Lauren Smith-Petta is an artist, entrepreneur, and entrepreneurship educator based in Cleveland whose creative practice is intentionally interdisciplinary. Her work spans painting, sculpture, fiber arts, sewing, collage, and mixed media, and she spent three years teaching painting at Wine & Design Rocky River. Her creative work has also included a self-produced short film, Rescue Me, a horror-comedy starring her paraplegic rescue dog Winston and featuring her full five-dog pack, which was an official selection at the International Horror Hotel Film Festival.

Professionally, Lauren has over a decade of experience teaching and coaching entrepreneurs, including artists and makers. She designs entrepreneurship education programs at JumpStart, teaches Entrepreneurship 415 at Baldwin Wallace University, and is the founder of Heartland Hounds, a creative consumer brand she built from the ground up, designing the brand, product line, and customer experience.

Lauren holds a Bachelor’s degree in Creative Entrepreneurship and an MBA, and teaches with a focus on sustainability, clarity, and helping artists build businesses that serve their creative lives.