Event Artist

Looking for graphic designers, nannies, illustrators, childcare workers, or actresses / actors. Get paid to be an artist, an actor, and the life of a party!

Our company books over 1,000 events annually throughout New England. We train creative people on anything from face painting to henna to princesses and magic, then provide them with everything they need so we can fill our clients' demand for creative entertainment at events.

NOW HIRING:

ARTISTS – We’ll train you on face painting and balloon twisting! (Future opportunities to learn henna, airbrush tattoos, caricatures, paint night instruction, and more.)

CHARACTERS – We’ll train you as a pirate, fairy, and other characters with face painting and balloon twisting. (Future opportunities to become a princess, superhero, magician, and more.)

CIRCUS PERFORMERS – We’ll train you on stilt walking, juggling, and balloon twisting. (Future opportunities to learn magic, hula hoop performances, clowning, and more.)

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THE DETAILS

• Work is almost entirely on weekends (with some opportunities to work during the week if you want to pick up extra hours).
• We’ll train you and give you all the costumes or supplies you need.
• Gigs are typically 1.5-3hrs long and you get about 1-2 gigs a weekend.
• You’ll get your schedule a week in advanced
• Basically, we assign you to a party on a certain day. That day, you head over to the event, make everyone smile, and have a great time. (Yes, it’s actually that easy.)
• Training takes generally about 8hrs to start in our Farmington, CT office on weekends, plus 2-4 hours of creative homework you’re given.
• The events we assign you to will be throughout CT and the neighboring MA/RI borders. Anything farther than 30min from your home receives travel pay.

THE QUALIFICATIONS

• ARTISTS – 1 year of experience with art or kids, whether it’s in school, on a job, or volunteering. Because we train our own artists, the biggest thing we look for is crafty people with awesome personalities (not necessarily fine-art portfolios).
• CHARACTERS – 1 year of experience acting, singing, or childcare experience professionally or for fun. Must be able to submit headshots (selfies ok). If you're looking to audition as a princess, please additionally submit 2 vocal samples. (Princesses of any race, skin tone, hair type, height, or size are encouraged to apply, although princesses will be cast for best-fit roles.)
• CIRCUS PERFORMERS – Must love kids, be entertaining, and love working with the public. 1 year of childcare or customer-facing experience is required (retail, front of house, etc).

Additional considerations:

• No degree or specific event-related experience is required.
• Past ideal candidates have been students, teachers, moms, and workers looking to supplement their income.
• MUST have some work or educational experience with the arts (like graphic design, illustration, theatre, photography, etc) OR childcare (like in daycare; as a professional nanny; K-12 substitute, para professional, or teacher; etc) even if it's in school or volunteer work
• MUST have consistent weekend availability (no other weekend job)
• MUST have own car and valid driver’s license
• MUST be fun, outgoing, professional and love working with children
• MUST be comfortable working by yourself with good self-management skills (once trained)
• MUST be able to pass a background check against any criminal, child endangerment, or child abuse charges or convictions
• MUST be able to communicate regularly with our office through emails and/or texts (including during the week)

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PAY

• Starts at $30/hr and goes up with experience. Regular raises are built into the job.
• Parties have a minimum of 1.5hrs but average 2-3 hours and artists work around 2-3 parties a week.
• We encourage clients to tip you. About 1/3 of parties tip, and the average tip is $20-40.
• We also have plenty of bonuses and travel pay (which we can explain in an interview).
• Additional weekday work is sometimes available for artists looking to pick up more hours (but is optional).

TRAINING

For your planning, training will take place in our Farmington, RI office over the upcoming weekend with some homework. Training takes about 8 hours in-office (spread out between 1-2 days) plus about 4 hours of practice homework.

Training is unpaid because of federal contracting laws, but you'll start making the full $30/hr tips/bonuses at your first event, which you will get within 2 weeks of being hired. (Our artists find the immense tax breaks you get as a 1099 contractor outweight this one downside, and you can feel free to ask about training, taxes, or pay during an interview.)

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MISC Q&A

I don't have any direct experience as a face painter or balloon twister (etc), but I think I could be good at this. Yup-- we don't require any exact experience, since we train you. People who have done amazing here often have experience in the arts (like graphic design, teaching kids art classes, freelancing as a photographer), acting (community theatre, commercial acting, being a theatre major) or with kids (afterschool teacher, sub/para, camp counselor, or as a parent with their own kids). If you have experience with something related, we'll train the rest.

I don't have a car but I have a reliable parent, friend, or can use public transport/Uber. That's fine right? Sorry, this one is REALLY important to us since a lot of our work is out in the suburbs and your ride would have to wait 90min-3hrs for you. It just hasn't worked out in the past for us, although some exceptions can be made if someone lives in Boston itself.

How do we get booked on parties? We have awesome marketing and customer service people in our office who do all of the office work for you. We'll schedule you, and you just entertain at the events we put you on! (But if you're curious, we have a lot of return customers and are growing through word of mouth--partially because our talented artists are so amazing!)

Do I have to buy anything? How do I get supplies? Nope - you don't invest any money in anything. (You'd be surprised how many people think this job is too good to be true.) We train you how to do this job, and when you're done we hand you all the stuff you need including your log-in to the schedule. You'll keep your supplies at home with you and let us know when you run out so we can get you more.

Why is training unpaid? It's basically an art class. You'll become a 1099 contractor, meaning that we don't take taxes out of your paycheck and that 95% of artists pay less in taxes than if they were a W2 employee. However, the one drawback is that because of federal contracting laws, we can't pay you for training. Our artists all find the long-term benefit of this outweighs a day of training, so we've stuck with it. (If you have any questions about this, please ask during the interview.)

It says full weekend availability - but what about church, temple, sports, community theatre, or my other job? We're happy to make exceptions if you have religious services that you attend. But because event work scheduling is hard, we don't accept applicants who have a second weekend job (or who regularly do community theatre more than one show a year) unless they're planning on quitting it once we offer them one here.

I have good weekend availability, but there's something going on in my life that might require call-outs. How easy is it to call out for a schedule change? It's easy to get time off for life events in advance (for things like vacations, weddings, school finals, graduations). But once our office team has scheduled you for an event, there are almost no circumstances in which you can call out because we've already told a client you're coming. If you have something going on in your life that might mean calling out of work, this isn't the right position for you.

Could this become a full-time job for me? It's extremely unlikely. The growth opportunities here are more focused on learning new skills, getting raises, and putting picking up additional hours. Many artists who start on 1-2 art types and $30/hr are making closer to $40 within a few years, and there are never-ending opportunities to learn here. To make the transition to full-time, however, it would require a position in our office--and our turnover rate is low enough that opportunity is extremely, extremely rare. So YES we have growth opportunities, but it will likely stay your favorite part-time job for a long while.

Job Types: Part-time, Contract

Pay: From $30.00 per hour

Expected hours: 2 – 4 per week

Benefits:

• Employee discount
• Flexible schedule

Schedule:

• Weekends only

Work Location: On the road

Salary : $40