title: celery cant find static files in django app during development
body: <p>My django web app loads static files no problem in DEBUG mode with the magic of <code>django.contrib.staticfiles</code>.</p>
  
  <p>However, my celery service can't find the files!  This makes sense, because <a href="https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/2.2/howto/static-files/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Django docs</a> say that <code>django.contrib.staticfiles</code> works automagically when <code>runserver</code> command is used, but celery doesn't use the <code>runserver</code> command, so how do I get celery to access those files in development?</p>
  
  <p>Here is how one of my models gets an static image to use as a default icon:</p>
  
  <pre><code>from django.templatetags.static import static
  
      some_method():
          return static('img/default_icon.png')
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>But with the same code run by celery, celery can't find the image.  Celery says it's looking for the image at "/static/img/default_icon.png" which makes sense because my django settings has: </p>
  
  <p><code>STATIC_URL = '/static/'</code></p>