THE ART PARADIGM:
A FOUR-MONTH IMMERSION
DO YOUR REAL WORK, LIVE A CREATIVE LIFE AND THRIVE
I’ve been living with the question “How can we do our real work and make a living at the same time?” for years now. I’ve been exploring it in detail in my work for the past three years and now I’m ready to walk you through everything I’ve learned about it with a four-month online immersion. I hope you’ll join me to begin 2026 living in the art paradigm and leave the traditional business paradigm behind.
I attended a workshop in Dublin a few years ago and happened to bump into two of my oldest friends from home in the hotel lobby. I was on my way to dinner with some clients and they were on their way to a concert. We hadn’t seen each other in a few years so we agreed to meet in the hotel bar at the end of the night for a quick catch up.
After we returned from dinner my long-time client and friend, Yann decided to stick around for a drink too. My old pals, Aidan and Mark straggled into the hotel a bit worse for wear and engaged in the same line of good natured antagonisation I’ve been familiar with since my youth. I turned to Yann and said, “I feel like I’m taking a client on a night out when I was eighteen.”
Aidan and I have been friends since I was fourteen or fifteen. “We’re like family,” he told Yann, as the night porter brought another round of pints. “We actually are almost family,” I added. “His step-siblings are my cousins.” “Aye, but we’re closer than that makes it sound,” Aidan clarified. It’s true, he’s like family to me. We’ve been in and out of each other’s lives over the past twenty years or so, but through my teenage years he was there for many of my pivotal moments.
Glastonbury 2000
He was there at Glastonbury 2000. I had just turned sixteen and couldn’t quite believe that my parents had allowed me to board a bus in Belfast after midnight with a couple of friends and a lot of drunk men to make the journey across the Irish Sea to the festival in Somerset. During the Troubles very few bands included Northern Ireland, let alone Derry, on their touring schedules. So at age sixteen I had probably only been to three gigs, one of which was to see Aidan’s band play at an under-age venue in Derry.
Aidan and I shared a passion for music. After sneaking loans of my eldest brother’s guitar to learn to play, I finally got my own brand-new blue Yamaha acoustic guitar for my sixteenth birthday. It was my pride and joy but while Aidan was in a couple of bands, I only ever played my guitar in my bedroom or at friends’ houses.
Safe to say that both our tiny minds were blown when we saw David Bowie perform his iconic set at Glastonbury that year. My enduring memory of that festival was standing in line for the long drop toilet at the end of the Saturday night performances, having belted out every word I knew amidst a crowd of one hundred thousand people or more, and feeling every single cell in my body buzzing. As ever, I was stone cold sober, and I had never been more alive. I had no idea what I would do with my life at this point, but I remember thinking, “I want to make people feel like this.”
I was telling friends about this first festival experience earlier this summer and my younger brother interrupted to marvel, “How were you allowed to go?” Our parents were pretty strict when we were growing up. I lost count of the things I wasn’t allowed to do that other people’s parents didn’t seem to bat an eyelid at. So of course, my brother couldn’t compute how they let me go on this adventure at such a tender age. “I think they knew how much I wanted it,” I replied. I think they knew I needed it.
Dublin 2022
At some point in between the night porter asking us to keep the noise down, Aidan started talking about my writing and saying some kind things. He reads everything I post, he said. He regularly broke off to speak directly to Yann, informing him of what I was like as a teenager.
I could tell he was trying to reconcile what he sees of me in my writing and what he saw of me then. I was always a side-kick in my youth, never the main character, and I didn’t have much to say for myself. The only thing I did in public was pass exams. Eventually Aidan came right out and asked, “Where was this Megan when we were young?”
Chicago 2015
It was late spring 2015 when I was walking laps of a hotel parking lot in Chicago with my friend, Peter. An accomplished musician and composer, Peter was considering starting a business around his work. I was at a stage where my business was finally beginning to take off but I felt increasingly out of sync with it. If he had come to me for encouragement he had perhaps not gotten me on the best day. I don’t know how helpful that conversation was to him; all I remember is plunging into my own existential crisis. “I’m not sure I even care about business at all,” I told him.
It had been years since I had touched a guitar but I was surrounded by musicians and artists. I had married my sound artist husband a few years earlier and I watched as he and other artist friends developed their bodies of work. I felt as though I was peering in from the other side of an abyss.
I still had the desire to make work that made people feel something. I had started writing alongside my business but I didn’t know how to turn that into paid work. I was desperately trying to figure out where these two worlds met. And whether I could move from the business side of the fence to the artist side, because I couldn’t shake the sense that that’s where I really belonged.
I spent a long time standing in this space between the business world and the art paradigm. I wondered if it would actually be possible to make money from my real work. I worried that if I left my web design business behind I might never replace that income.
Shutting Off the Voices
I don’t know when I first started thinking of myself as an artist but I eventually did find clarity around how to think about my work, and I left the traditional notions of the business world behind. Initially, I found it necessary to block out the voices of the business paradigm that I carried around in my head. The voices that would ask, “But how are you going to make money?” “Who is going to pay for that?” “What’s your target market with this?
Those voices were so loud and well developed in me I had to shut them off entirely as often as I could. In time, my work developed, I began to put it out into the world, and I started to find confidence in taking an artistic approach.
I worried less and less about the question, “What will generate a profit?” and more and more about the question, “What’s worth doing even if it fails?” It took all my energy to focus on preventing the old gremlins from stifling my creative instincts. I tried to stay laser focused on going deeper and deeper into the work only I can do.
It took time before I was able to monetise my real work, and then even after I began to make money from it, I was still buoyed by income from other sources.
Mid-Pandemic Realisations
In late 2021 I had two realisations that shifted things for me. Late September 2020 marked the point in time when I had been living in London longer than I had ever lived in Derry. I had been waiting for this moment to come for years. I had long anticipated some kind of identity crisis around it all. In the end when the moment came, I barely noticed. We were six months into the pandemic and I had a six month old baby to distract me.
A year and a bit later though, I was walking home from a therapy session when something fell into place. Reaching the point where I had lived away from the place that had formed me for the same length of time as I had lived in it, was nothing to do with my identity.
It was about being able to separate myself from the old systems and old meta-narratives that had been in the water, and finally being able to define my life for myself.
A few weeks later I had another realisation. I looked around and realised that all the outgoings in my life – all my business costs and expenses, the mortgage, nursery fees – the whole shebang was paid for with money earned from my real work. After spending so much time through the years worrying whether it would actually be possible to support myself doing the work I felt compelled to do, somewhere along the line, without me consciously realising what was happening, all the other sources of income fell away until this day when I realised that my business and I were being supported solely by my real work.
In the wake of this realisation I found myself returning to the idea of money from a different perspective. These days I’m interested in defining exactly the role it plays in the art paradigm.
Poetic Pause
A few months after these realisations, I indulged myself in a ‘poetic pause’ in my work for six weeks or so. I tended to my regular consulting clients but outside of that, I intentionally took some time to listen to where my curiosity and my work wanted to go next. For many reasons I had the clear sense of being at the end of one chapter and the beginning of another.
Throughout that pause I couldn’t get away from the term Working Artist. I didn’t grow up with any models of what a working artist looks like and I feel that, in many ways, the journey I had been on for the past seven or eight years had been about figuring out how to become just that.
All that time I spent standing between the traditional business paradigm and the art paradigm I was stuck between the narrative of the starving artist and the money-addicted businessperson. They are two sides of the same coin, both born out of the traditional business paradigm.
Working Artist = Thriving Artist
As I thought about the term Working Artist, I began to define exactly what that means to me. It isn’t just someone who is making their art or being a ‘successful’ artist. For me, a Working Artist is a thriving artist. Thriving is about much more than income or money; it’s about creative fulfilment, richness of work and life, a sense of aliveness and connectedness, as well as the income necessary to support such a creative life.
I began to realise that I had now lived outside of the traditional business world and all of its overarching narratives for long enough that I had mostly shaken them out of my body.
I was able to return to thoughts and questions about money from firm ground. I was no longer unwittingly and unconsciously swept up into a story about money that was handed down to me. Artistry and money were no longer seemingly conflicting poles within me.
Ever since that realisation I have been able to go deeper into the work only I can do and think about money at the same time. It can be incorporated into the creative process. If I own it rather than it owning me, I can use it to enrich the body of work just like any other creative tool, material or constraint.
We are so often misled into thinking that business and art or money and real work must be considered separately. People will often tell me about the project that brings them alive before I see the light in their eyes dim as they say, “But, you know, I need to think about the business angle here,” or “But, I should be sensible and figure out the strategy behind what I’m doing,” or “This is all great and all but I have to work out how to make some money with it at some point.”
The question of money should not be the hand that snuffs out the light of your real work. It can be different. There is a way to unashamedly do your real work and thrive.
“There are No Jobs in Derry”
In the second episode of the sitcom Derry Girls, when one of the girls suggests they get jobs to raise money to go on the French trip another replies, “There are no jobs in Derry. That’s all you ever hear anybody say.”
Anyone in my family who had a passion for music, photography or poetry did it as a hobby on the side. My whole life the family has been supported by small businesses.
Both of my grandfathers ran their own businesses, and my dad started his business a few years before I was born. This is a common story in Derry. My mum was once talking to my husband about my grandfathers both being businessmen when my father interjected to point out the difference between the idea of a middle-class businessman and the reality of their fathers. “They had to make jobs for themselves because there were no jobs for them.”
I realise now I’ve ended up doing the same thing but for different reasons. Some people can make their art within someone else’s organisation, I’m sure that’s true. But it doesn’t seem to be true for me. My business is there to serve my creativity and my real work. This is the gift having my own business offers me.
Now that I understand why I engaged with business I can come at it in a way that supports my work, rather than following existing stories about what a business should be and what a business owner should aspire to.
It’s Not About Other People
A few years ago I walked into the living room to find my then five-year-old daughter hunched over my blue acoustic guitar. “I’m playing dad’s guitar!” she announced. “That’s my guitar,” I told her. “No, it’s not. It’s Dad’s,” she insisted. He’s the only one she’s ever seen do anything with it.
The calluses on my fingertips have long since softened and I never did form a band, but I have realised a couple of things since that night in 2000 when I declared to myself that I wanted to make people feel the way I felt watching my favourite bands in a field with a hundred thousand people.
I have learned that, while often a side effect of my work, it’s not really about making other people feel that buzz of aliveness. It’s about enabling myself to feel that alive on a consistent basis. That’s what our real work is for, first and foremost.
A few weeks ago, I spent a Friday night at the pub with two friends. It was a work meeting about a project we’re creating together. The topic is something that is very alive for me right now. We talked about our work and our ideas for the experience we are designing. Over the course of the evening the shape of something new emerged as we found the natural harmony between each of our bodies of work. I don’t know what it’s like to be in a band, but this feels pretty close.
Living a Creative Life
I have never been clearer that I am not so much interested in creating a successful business as I am in living a creative life and being well supported and thriving in it. Business is a part of that but I come at it from a very different angle than I used to.
At this stage in my work I’m interested in helping people become Working Artists. To me, being a Working Artist means doing the work that only you can do, creating a rich body of work, having a sense of aliveness and connectedness in your work, and having the income necessary to support such a creative life.
I’ve spent the past three years working on all this with my one-to-one clients, walking them through all of my thinking around what it means to take an artistic approach to everything in our working lives, including money, pricing, and getting paid.
This work has allowed me to internalise the truth that I can leave the business paradigm behind forever. I can best live my life, do my work, and get paid by staying firmly rooted in the art paradigm. And so can you.
If that sounds like something you’re interested in I’d love to have you join me for a four-month immersion in the Art Paradigm.
The Art Paradigm: A Four-Month Online Immersion
In the Art Paradigm I’m going to be exploring everything I know about what it means to be a Working Artist. We’ll be going deep on the question “How can we do our real work and make a living at the same time?”
We’ll spend four months diving into this question and more. If you enrol early you can get started with the materials I have ready for you in December, and begin your immersion before the year is out. As ever with my work, the program is structured so that I can get to know you and your work, and you can get to know the rest of the group too. We’ll explore the specifics of your work and the challenges you are facing. This won’t just be about listening to some interesting ideas; I’ll be supporting you to apply what we’re talking about to your own work. We’ll talk about how you sustain yourself so that you can sustain your work. The program is designed to give you the lived experience of the art paradigm. My hope is that by the time we finish in April you will have begun to know some of this stuff in your body, not just in your mind, and you will be moving clearly in the direction of the thriving, creatively fulfilled and fully expressed human you were born to be.
Some of What We’ll Explore Together in The Art Paradigm:
What it means to be a working artist
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What working artists do
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Money and art metanarratives: Identifying the stories that are unconsciously controlling your relationship to your work and money
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The role of rhythms and cycles in the life of a working artist
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The role of money in the art paradigm
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The path to uncovering your deepest work
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Discovering the way to build your body of work that is unique to you
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The paradox at the heart of being financially and creatively supported by your real work
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How to think like a working artist
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Why many working artists don’t get paid directly for their work and what they get paid for instead
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Different ways that working artists I know approach their work and get paid
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How the money-addicted businessperson and the starving artist are two sides of the same coin and how to step out of that paradigm entirely
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What people are really paying for when they engage with anyone who is taking an artistic approach to their work
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Why “how will I get paid for this?” is not an applicable question in the art paradigm and what question we should be focused on instead
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The psychic link between creative collaboration and being a working artist
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What it looks like to take an artistic approach to sales and marketing
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The nuts and bolts of running a business in the art paradigm way
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Behind-the-scenes of how I run my business, including the support I get from tech, collaborators, mentors and support people
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The Format
There are five phases to the program. Beginning in December, and ending in April, each month has a different focus to move us through the journey.
PHASE ZERO: PREPARATION (DECEMBER)
December is all about preparation and getting grounded in the art paradigm. I’ll share video and audio content that tells you all about how I define the art paradigm and what my understanding of it is.
EARLYBIRD WELCOME SESSION AND PRIVATE COMMUNITY
It’s been crucial for me to think of the art paradigm of a place I can go, so I’ll share that story with you too. We’ll also have a Welcome Session for the earlybird enrolees and I’ll open up the Art Paradigm private online community. The community platform will allow you to communicate directly with me and the rest of the group for the duration of our time together.
This whole programme is designed to be an ongoing conversation between us so that we can all settle more firmly into the art paradigm. Exchanging messages and sharing in the private community will allow us to keep the conversation going in between sessions. It will also allow you to ask me your questions in real time and get a response.
DECEMBER SCHEDULE
Fri 12th Dec
The Art Paradigm Orientation Videos and Audio become available.
These videos will explore topics including, What is a Working Artist? What is the Art Paradigm? Grounding Ourselves in the Art Paradigm, and My Journey Into the Art Paradigm.
Watch/listen to this material at your own pace before we kick off the live portion of the program on January 8th.
Fri 12th Dec
Private online community goes live. You’ll have support from me (and the rest of the group) in the online community throughout the four-month immersion. I’ll respond to questions in community asap but always within 48 hours (within my working days of Monday to Thursday)
Tue 16th Dec at 8pm UK / 3pm ET / 7am Fri Sydney
Earlybird Welcome Session on Zoom
PHASE ONE: IMMERSIVE LEARNING (JANUARY)
OPENING CEREMONY AND LIVE CLASSES
January is when we officially kick off the four-month immersion in the Art Paradigm. We’ll begin with an opening ceremony on January 8th. Over the next few weeks we’ll have three 90-minute teaching sessions where I’ll walk you through everything I’ve come to understand about the Art Paradigm and what it looks like to unapologetically take an artistic approach to work and be fully supported by that work. I’ll also share the infinite questions I’ve discovered along the way.
WORKING IDEAS OF THE ART PARADIGM
The heart of my teachings in the Art Paradigm are what I call the Working Ideas of the Art Paradigm. Beginning on Monday 12th January I’ll make and share a daily audio recording (usually somewhere between 5 and 15 minutes long) discussing one of these ideas. You’ll receive an audio each weekday until February 6th. I invite you to begin each weekday by listening to the Working Ideas of the Art Paradigm audio to continually ground and re-ground yourself in the art paradigm.
There will be an opportunity for Q&A at the end of each teaching session and you’ll have access to me in the private community platform in between sessions. All classes will be recorded.
JANUARY SCHEDULE
Thurs 8th Jan at 7:30pm UK / 2:30pm ET / 6:30am Fri Sydney
Opening Ceremony. We’ll come together on Zoom to connect with the group, get to know each other a bit, and set the scene for our work together.
Wed 14th Jan at 4pm UK / 11am ET / 3am Fri Sydney*
Session 1 | Evolving Metanarratives, Progress and the Role of Grief in the Art Paradigm/Questions for Working Artists
Wed 21st Jan at 4pm UK / 11am ET / 3am Fri Sydney*
Session 2 | How to Think About Money and the Role it Plays in the Art Paradigm/Getting Paid as a Working Artist
Wed 28th Jan at 4pm UK / 11am ET / 3am Fri Sydney*
Session 3 | Naming, Intimacy and Language/Pricing Your Work/Using Tech and Business Tools in the Art Paradigm
Beginning Monday 12th Jan
Working Ideas of the Art Paradigm: Daily audio recording (every weekday) until Feb 6th.
*All classes will be recorded. If you’re in Australia, New Zealand or any other time zone that makes it impossible to join the classes live, I am happy to host an extra live Q&A session at a better time for you.
PHASE TWO: LIVING IT (FEBRUARY)
February is all about living what we’ve been learning. We’ll begin February with the final Working Ideas of the Art Paradigm daily audio messages and the first of our regular tutorial group meetings. The focus for this month is to get out there and do your work. I’ll invite you to incorporate what we’ve been discussing into your existing work, or to begin something new to put what you’re learning into action.
TUTORIAL GROUP MEETINGS
We’ll have twice-monthly tutorial group meetings throughout February and March. Each participant will be assigned to a small tutorial group and twice a month I’ll lead a session where you can check in with your group. Over our time together you’ll get to know your group members, their work and their creative processes. During the tutorial group sessions I will encourage you (although everything in my work is always simply an invitation) to actively apply what we’re learning to your work. You will have space to think about how you can lean more into doing the work only you can do and get paid while doing that work.
OFFICE HOURS SESSIONS
Alongside tutorial groups we’ll also have twice-monthly Office Hours sessions. These sessions are optional but available to anyone who would like to come together to ask me questions, share any insights you’re having or developments in your work. These sessions will also be available to use as ‘making hours’ where you show up to the Zoom as an accountability measure, say hi, and then mute your mic and use the time to focus on your real work. You might choose to have your speakers on to listen to any conversation happening or you might choose to turn the sound off and just focus on doing your work.
The combination of the tutorial group meetings, office hours and the ongoing private online community space is designed to make it easy for you to make progress and be supported to think through any small and big challenges that may arise along the way.
FEBRUARY SCHEDULE
Mon 2nd/Tue 3rd Feb
Tutorial Groups (date/time will be confirmed after registration)
Tue 10th Feb at 8pm UK / 3pm ET / 7am Fri Sydney
Office Hours Session (60 mins)
Wed 18th Feb at 8pm UK / 3pm ET / 7am Fri Sydney
Office Hours Session (60 mins)
Mon 23rd/Wed 25th Feb
Tutorial Groups (date/time will be confirmed after registration)
PHASE FOUR: DEEPENING (MARCH)
The focus for March is to continue to practice approaching your work from an art paradigm perspective, all with my support and the support of our community. My hope is that you’ll leave our time together with the lived experience of taking an artistic approach to your work and getting paid while doing your real work. Perhaps in a small way. Perhaps in a big way.
We’ll continue to have twice-monthly tutorial group meetings and twice-monthly Office Hours sessions through March. And conversation will continue in the online community to support you as you do the courageous and vulnerable work of living and working whilst firmly rooted in the art paradigm.
MARCH SCHEDULE
Wed 11th Mar at 8pm UK / 4pm ET / 7am Fri Sydney
Office Hours Session (60 mins)
Mon 16th/Tue 17th Mar
Tutorial Groups (date/time will be confirmed after registration)
Mon 23rd Mar at 8pm UK / 4pm ET / 7am Fri Sydney
Office Hours Session (60 mins)
Mon 30th/Tue 31st Mar
Tutorial Groups (date/time will be confirmed after registration)
PHASE FOUR: INTEGRATION (APRIL)
CLOSING CEREMONY AND ONE-TO-ONE CALL
April is all about integration. You’ll continue to be supported by me and the rest of the group through the online community and then we’ll all come together on Zoom on April 16th for a Closing Ceremony. After 20th April, you’ll have a 30-minute one-to-one call with me to debrief on your experience so far, solidify your insights, and talk about your intentions, plans or what you might need going forward, whatever that might look like for you.
APRIL SCHEDULE
Thurs 16th April at 9pm UK / 4pm ET / 6am Fri Sydney
Closing Ceremony and Integration Session
Mon 20th – Thurs 30th April
At some point in this period you’ll have your 30-minute one-to-one Integration Call with Megan (date/time will be confirmed after registration)
START 2026 IN THE ART PARADIGM
As I was turning thirty I thought I had figured out what I wanted to do with my life. I thought running my own web design and marketing agency was it for me, and my goal was to make that business as successful as possible. I’m now just the other side of forty and spending the past few years figuring out some more of my shit and watching my peers jostle for position I realised my focus has changed drastically. Now, what I want more than anything is to live a creative life. I still have a business, obviously, but the purpose of my business efforts is to get my work out there and support me financially so that I can have the ability to follow the spark of aliveness in my work.
I’m excited to begin 2026 firmly rooted in the art paradigm surrounded by a group of people who are doing the same. If you want to do the work only you can do and be supported while you do it I’d love to have you join us for The Art Paradigm. Registration is open!
Join me for the Art Paradigm:
A Four-Month Immersion
We begin on December 12th for early enrolees. The program runs until the end of April. Places are limited.
Registration: $2495 (or five monthly payments of $499) / £1925+VAT (or five monthly payments of £385+VAT)
(Feel free to email me on hello@meganmacedo.com if you have any questions)
WHO IS THIS FOR?
The Art Paradigm is for people who are interested in taking an artistic approach to their work and being supported financially and creatively at the same time. If you are building a body of work first and foremost – or you want to – then the Art Paradigm is for you. If you have questions around how you can make money and unflinchingly do the work only you can do, the Art Paradigm is for you. If you ache to be in community with other people who are taking an artistic approach to every aspect of their work and waving goodbye to the traditional business paradigm, the Art Paradigm is for you.
It doesn’t matter where you are on your journey, only that you are willing to take the next small step, and the next one, and the next one. You don’t have to regard yourself as an artist or connect with that language to join us in the Art Paradigm. I will encourage you to find language that fits you and define your work for yourself.
If you want to move away from the relentlessness of the productivity paradigm and find a more humane way to approach your professional life whilst also doing the work you were meant for, then the Art Paradigm is for you.
I should also add that this is not intended to be the kind of program where you can be a passive observer. Whilst you will always be in complete control of how much you choose to share and how much you choose to interact, we will come together as a community. You will talk to your fellow participants. We’ll share our work, perspectives and conundrums with each other. Teaching sessions will be recorded but the whole thing is designed for us to go through it together in real time as much as possible.
“I don’t think the marketing world really has a name for what Megan does. Maybe it will in a few years.”
– Perry Marshall, author of 80/20 Sales & Marketing
Join me for the Art Paradigm:
A Four-Month Immersion
We begin on December 12th for early enrolees. The program runs until the end of April. Places are limited.
Registration: $2495 (or five monthly payments of $499) / £1925+VAT (or five monthly payments of £385+VAT)
