Getting creative

"I have enough confidence in my own ability," says Silva, who lives in Hanover. "I'm comfortable enough promoting myself. I feel I can hopefully be successful at this."

Silva is among a growing number of career changers or laid-off workers who are seeking new lives in the arts. Schools and continuing-education programs do not know how many of their participants actually switch careers after taking courses, but they say they are seeing a rising demand for classes in photography, graphic design, bookbinding, and painting.

Many schools had prepared for the demand even before the economic downturn. Boston Center for Adult Education moved into a new facility on Arlington Street this month, which allows the school to offer more classes and enroll more people. The New England School of Photography is adding more entrepreneurial courses to help career changers, veteran photographers, and hobbyists improve their business acumen. The North Bennet Street School - a North End craftsmanship program that teaches locksmithing, bookbinding, and furniture making - added 39 courses to its spring and summer curriculum.

"This is the place of second careers," says Miguel Gomez-Ibanez, the school's director, who years ago transitioned from being an architect to a graduate of the school's furniture making program. "We do get those people [who think], 'Well, if I'm not doing what I was supposed to be doing, maybe I should be doing what I really want to do.' "

In this economy, some people are shifting into areas they are passionate about. Kevin Hopkins, 31, of Medford is a software engineer who was laid off in December at a medical device company in Bedford. Hopkins had already used two weeks of vacation last fall to take a course at the North Bennet Street School on how to use woodworking hand tools. This month he started the school's three-month intensive furniture making workshop.

"I felt like, oh, when would I get a chance to take the three-month intensive?" says Hopkins. "It worked out well that I'll have some time." Once the workshop has ended, Hopkins plans to start searching for software jobs. He's well aware that fledgling furniture designers don't make much money. But he hopes to turn his newfound furniture-making skills into a semiprofessional option he can do on weekends or in the evening.

Classes at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in jewelry making, painting, and digital photography are filling up earlier than usual this spring, says Debra Samdperil, SMFA's director of continuing education. "People are valuing being in touch with that part of themselves through this hard time," she says.

Lisa Kos of Waltham is working on getting her certificate in graphic design from SMFA. In college, Kos majored in computer information systems and until last year had worked in the technology department at Management Sciences for Health, a public health organization in Cambridge. Although the company sometimes allowed her to do more creative work, the main part of Kos's job focused on the technical side. Last May, after being worn out by a yearlong project redesigning a website, Kos decided to leave the company. Instead of letting Kos go, though, Management Sciences for Health kept her on as a freelancer, giving her the graphic design projects she craved.

Kos is about three courses away from getting her graphic design certificate. At the moment, she's focusing on launching a graphic design business with Kathleen Fulton, a friend she met at the first graphic design class Kos took at SMFA in 2005. "We're going to try to collaborate on each project together," Kos says. "Every time you bounce ideas off of different people you improve."

Samdperil says exploring the arts helps people in career limbo whether their interest lies in the creative or business fields. "It kind of keeps things in perspective, in terms of what's important in their lives and also gets them to think creatively about their situation," she says. "The skills you learn in an art environment or art class are more transferable in terms of creative thinking strategies. . . . It's not just business skills and more practical thinking. It's how you think about your life."

The staff at the New England School of Photography also thinks it's important to provide non-full-time students in its program with the business skills its full-time students get. Last summer NESOP introduced the class that Silva took to help him develop his entrepreneurial skills. The class, called "The Leap," is being offered again this spring.

"Regardless of the economic times," says David Katz, NESOP's academic director, "people always get married, people always have babies. They'll always want pictures of those things thankfully. It allows professionals in those businesses to remain strong."

Although Silva expressed interest in commercial and editorial photography, he will also make forays into wedding photography and portraiture. He discovered his love of wedding photography by volunteering to do some jobs he heard about through word of mouth.

"It ended up being a lot more fun than I thought shooting weddings would be," says Silva. "I started thinking, maybe I should do this for a living? I might as well do something that I enjoy doing and I get personal satisfaction from."