REFLECTIONS ON EL SISTEMA INTERVIEWS WITH THE 3ARTS AWARD WINNERS
THE DATA THAT WILL TRANSFORM OUR FIELD
Celebrating TEACHING ARTISTS #7
Celebrating December 2016
Teaching
Artistry
Teaching Artists Guild Quarterly: Issue 07
Executive Director: Jean Johnstone Membership Director: Kenny Allen
Teaching Artists Guild is a fiscally sponsored project of Community Initiatives.
National Advisory Committee: Glenna Avila (Los Angeles, CA) Eric Booth (Hudson River Valley, NY) Lindsey Buller Maliekel (New York, NY) Lara Davis (Seattle, WA) Kai Fierle-Hedrick (New York, NY) Jon Hinojosa (San Antonio, TX) Lynn Johnson (San Francisco Bay Area, CA) Nas Khan (Toronto, Canada) Tina LaPadula (Seattle, WA) Miko Lee (San Francisco Bay Area, CA) Ami Molinelli (San Francisco Bay Area, CA) Betsy Mullins (Miami, FL) Louise Music (San Francisco Bay Area, CA) Maura O’Malley (New Rochelle, NY) Nick Rabkin (Chicago, IL) Amy Rasmussen (Chicago, IL) Nicole Ripley (Chicago, IL) Sandy Seufert (Los Angeles, CA) Yael Silk, Ed.M. (Pittsburgh, PA) Jean E. Taylor (New York, NY)
THANKS
Teaching Artists Guild would not be possible without funding from these generous organizations:
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Teaching Artists Guild is also made possible through the generous support of our members.
Quarterly: Issue 07 Teaching Artists Guild Newsletter
The Celebration Issue - WINTER 2016 Readers, Glad you’re here. The theme of this Quarter’s magazine is Celebration, and we are celebrating YOU. We are celebrating the arts’ powerful role in sustaining us, and in fostering human development and joy, and the ways YOU bring them to the world. So give yourself a hug. Whether you are a Chicago winner of the prestigious teaching artists awards, or a first time reader of the Teaching Artists Guild Quarterly magazine, you’re fabulous and we are thankful for you. Read on, and glean some tidbits on what’s happening around the United States in the world of Teaching Artists. Notably, in this issue we get a chance to chat with the Chicago winners of the 3Arts Teaching Artist Awards, and talk about some of the information being gathered to help move this field forward. In December, TAG is running its first ever fundraiser, which you can help out with here, at any time of year! We share all the reasons we’ll keep you proud and supported all year long. Also in December, we blogged about the recent tragedy here in Oakland, and we now turn our attention to the ways artists are banding together and the path forward in these communities. In January and February, we will celebrate a couple New Years: 2017 and the Year of the Fire Rooster. We’ll be keeping our chins up, taking action, and taking care of ourselves. What will you be doing? Let us know. We hope to see you. Wishing you peace and strength. In Solidarity,
Jean Johnstone Executive Director Teaching Artists Guild Page 3
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CONTENTS
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BEHIND THE FRONTLINES
Jennifer Carroll of Inner-City Arts shares reflections from life “behind the frontlines” as an administrator working hard to support teaching artists.
REFLECTIONS ON EL SISTEMA
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Learn more about the exciting youth orchestra training movement spreading across the nation.
{RE}FORMING THE ORCHESTRA Read about how a group of six year-olds led a teaching artist to reconsider what a “real orchestra” looks like.
MAPPING THE FIELD Get the lowdown on efforts to collect and display data about where arts education is happening across the nation.
STAGE THE CHANGE
30
A one day conference that could serve as a training ground for the next generation of citizen arts-activists? Read more on pg. 30.
3ARTS AWARD WINNERS Get to know the 2016 recipients of the prestigious 3Arts award for teaching artistry.
THE BUSINESS OF BEING A TEACHING ARTIST This quarter, we bring you 4 powerful self-promotion tips that can help you find more work as a teaching artist.
TEACHING ARTIST INTERVIEW:
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Get to know this quarter’s featured teaching artist: Livia Vanaver, through this insightful interview conducted by Kate Bell .
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A PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACH TO HIRING, ONBOARDING AND EMPLOYING TEACHING ARTISTS
BEHIND THE F by Jennifer Carroll Page 6
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FRONTLINES Page 7
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Passion-driven work I love being able to hire teaching artists. I believe so deeply that the field of teaching artistry is a way for artists to not only earn income, but to directly impact the future, one individual at a time. Teaching Artists help bring the arts experience to learners, enabling them to gain access to the possibilities within themselves. New possibilities unlock new choices and potential. This transformative power of the arts translates into all sectors of society: education, social service, business and community. In many unrecognized ways, teaching artists are at the very frontline of a revolution in education. I have had the privilege of being in the arts education field as an artist, teaching artist and administrator for over 20 years. I have been at Inner-City Arts for 10 years and now serve as Associate Director of Education. Through my experiences, I have learned some things about hiring teaching artists: independent contractors, full time and part time. I have witnessed what motivates a teaching artist to join and succeed on our campus. Whether you are a small organization that is just starting out and hiring your first teaching artist or you are the manager of an organization who employs many teaching artists, it is important to remember how teaching artists are an integral representation the integrity of your mission and how their work impacts the field.
Mission-driven hiring Before hiring the right staff to serve your constituents, it is important to deeply understand your organization’s mission and how that mission plays out in the day-to-day structure of your programs. Teaching artists facilitate learning within that structure. In other words, if the mission is the fuel, your program is the vehicle and the teaching artist is the driver.
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Understanding how a teaching artist can facilitate your mission will give you all sorts of clues for describing describe their role in a job description, where to post the job announcement, what kind of comparable experience you are looking for and what kind of questions to ask when you have a candidate in the room.
“If the mission is the fuel, your program is the vehicle and the teaching artist is the driver.” Mission informs structure and structure informs hiring needs. Let’s take a look how Inner-City Arts hires for some of our programs. At Inner-City Arts, we believe in the transformative power of the creative process and our mission is to engage young people in this process in order to shape a society of creative, confident and collaborative individuals. Our signature K-8 program, entitled Learning and Achieving Through the Arts (LATA) carries out our mission through sessions of arts classes offered during the school day in such art forms as drama, dance, music, visual arts, animation, media arts, ceramics and a Creativity Lab Page 9
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maker space. Studio time is an hour and 15 minutes twice a week for 6-8 weeks. Because we know that this time structure is relatively limited for arts engagement, the classroom teacher is always present and participating alongside the students. This relationship is key to enabling students to make social, emotional and academic connections back in the classroom space and to the curriculum content. Each studio is intended to be a safe space for participants to engage in the creative process to learn about themselves, thus supporting the development of “creative, confident and collaborative individuals.�
How does this structure inform the job we need the teaching artist to do and thus our search? For these programs, we look for those with experience with creating sequential, scaffolded curriculum within a structure where intrapersonal, interper-
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sonal and academic skills are just as important as skill building. Since learners do not necessarily choose the art form that they are engaged in, the teaching artist’s capacity to differentiate the learning within the studio space and be responsive to altering curriculum based on individual and group needs is key. Because our partners are teachers, schools and school districts, we need artists with experience working within a school day context. If they don’t have direct artist in residency experience within the school day, an awareness of the value of instructional time and the inherent educational academic connections that their art form holds is crucial to being able to articulate how building the skills in the art form is directly tied to building academic and social skills. Because these programs make up the bulk of our service and require the most oversight, we tend to hire more full and part time teaching artists for these positions. While our school day programs have a specific structure that requires specific skills from our teaching artists, for our out-ofschool programs, the structure takes a different form. Our Middle and High School Institutes are after-school and weekend classes for students aged 11-20 (middle school through early college) and function as a space for creative youth development. They are offered in 10-15 week increments once a week during the school year. Summer classes are more intensive, offered twice a week. Most of our classes are intended to be taken over the long term, a structure that can enhance the organization’s relationship with the individual youth. Again, the mission is the same--“to engage young people in the creative process in order to shape a society of creative, confident and collaborative individuals,” but the structure changes to serve the developmental needs of the constituents, and thus changes the job of the teaching artist. Because the program operates in the after-school space, teaching artists who serve in this program will have more of a mentor role for youth. Their job is still less about skill building and more about youth finding their voice and feeling the impact of their voice within a safe community. When hiring for these teaching artist positions, I will look for those with more of a social justice background and experience with creative youth development in urban environments. These
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teaching artists will have experience in developing student narrative and activism in community settings, which is the type of skills more appropriate to this program. These job description details, different depending on the program, are ones that we want to directly include in our job announcement, so we can appeal to those with relevant experience. Posting the announcement strategically on sites like Teaching Artist Guild and others that directly speak to field professionals will yield the most candidates. Reaching out to similar organizations for colleague recommendations can also help target the search. Once in the interview, all questions will be directed toward gleaning how prior experiences are relevant to the job we need filled. If the interview goes well, a sample class will be scheduled with a group of students within the appropriate context for which we are hiring. Through direct observation, we can see not only how a teaching artist executes curriculum, but how she creates a safe space with her language and demeanor. If our teaching artists really are on the frontlines, they need to embody the values and beliefs of the work you are doing within the day to day. Hiring practices that have your mission behind it can make the search meaningful.
QUESTIONS TO REFLECT ON BEFORE BEGINNING THE HIRING PROCESS: How does your mission play out within the structure of your programs? What needs does that structure call for that a teaching artist can fill? How much experience do you require? What are the “soft� qualities you are seeking in a teaching artist? Who is going to embody your mission?
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Field-driven employment Once you have found the right teaching artist with relevant experience, aligned philosophy and the ability to carry out your programs, what next? What kind of work environment will enable your teaching staff to feel supported so both they and your programs thrive? While you may look to your mission to inform WHO you bring on, it is your organization’s perception and articulation of the job of a teaching artist that can drive practices for HOW you bring them on and WHY they stay. In his Carnegie Hall video What is a Teaching Artist?, Eric Booth has tried to capture some definitions that describe an emerging and shifting field. I find these attempts illuminating and inspiring as our organization tries to move towards creating the optimal conditions in which our teaching artists can work. He has called the job one in which the skills of an artist and the skills of an educator are working together in some kind of energetic excitement. This “synergistic relationship” between perspectives has the potential to “feed” the practitioner and create a “dynamic aliveness” that the teaching artist carries into all areas of their professional (and hopefully personal) life.
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At Inner-City Arts, we want to sustain the field and the professionals who comprise it. We want their work with us to nurture them, a personal touch that has professional edge. To this end, we work towards onboarding processes that set up clear expectations, lines of communication and avenues of support. This means that we take the time to personally bring on all new employees with the following paid onboarding process:
• • • • • • • • •
A campus tour and meet and greet Time to complete paperwork One on one training for payroll procedures Employee manual Curriculum guidelines outlined Time scheduled to go over curriculum paperwork Studio procedures outlined Observations in studio prior to teaching (if necessary) Other training as needed
But what about the other side of the coin—the “artistry?” It is easy with mission driven work to forget the “artist” component of teaching artist. Because Inner-City Arts was conceived inside the creative mind of an artist, it has always been important to Inner -City Arts that our teaching artists be connected to their artistry in a profound way and understand how their art form can be of service to the academic and personal development of their students. In my role as employer and steward for the working conditions of our teaching artists, I want to create processes and systems that sustain this definition of the job. To this end, we have begun by creating paid time for our full time employees to practice as artists regularly. We have instituted specific “Creativity Days” throughout the year in which studio staff get to engage in the creative process on the clock and then reflect with each other on how this informs practice. If we as an organization say that teaching artists need to be connected to the practice of their artistry, we need to make it part of their job. Field-driven philosophy equals organizational practice.
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WHILE HIRING AND ONBOARDING, REFLECT ON: How does your organization articulate the role of teaching artist within the context of the profession? Can you hone that vision into concrete practices for bringing on and employing teaching artist staff? How can your organization be part of advancing and sustaining the field?
Service-driven art Teaching artists are at the very frontline of a revolution in education because when we put teaching artists face to face with our constituents, there is potential for transformation. This is the nature of art and the nature of teaching artistry. As employers, we aim to find those for whom working at our organization is an expression of their spirit, and they let that spirit shine for the people we serve. This is true service: using the best, most vibrant aspects of oneself to create a possibility for someone else. With a professional relationship driven and structured by mission and with hiring and employment practices connected to the field at large, we hope to provide the optimal conditions to sustain this unique and growing profession. Like any good piece of art or any meaningful session with a teaching artist, there is philosophy and thought behind the product. And the same holds true for them their employment. It is the thoughtfulness, idealism and passion of administrators who can make hiring and employment more than just a necessity, but an art form unto itself as well.
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Jennifer Carroll - Los Angeles For 25 years, Jennifer has worked as a performer, teaching artist and program leader. She holds a BFA in Acting from UT-Austin and MA in Educational Theatre from NYU. She is Associate Director of Education at Inner-City Arts, where she also teaches drama. She regularly performs original material in Los Angeles. Page 16
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Reflections on
EL SISTEMA adapted from Sistema Fellowship Resource Center Report (2014-2016) October 2016 by Heath Marlow Chair, Center for Professional Development and Performing Arts Leadership New England Conservatory
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Founded in 1975, El Sistema is Venezuela’s free youth orchestra training program that provides transformative social and musical experiences to several hundred thousand children annually throughout the country. Evidenced by internationally recognized musicians such as Gustavo Dudamel and the Simón Bolívar Orchestra, the success of El Sistema has generated excitement throughout the world, and many programs inspired by El Sistema have emerged in other countries, including more than one hundred in the US. For five thrilling years, the Sistema Fellows Program was a professional training program, hosted by the New England Conservatory, which provided a unique learning experience for fifty remarkable individuals. The highly selective Program, which concluded in 2014, was designed to serve musicians and music educators passionate about creating careers that connect music, youth development, and social justice.
The Program’s goal was to prepare the Fellows to launch, lead and teach in El Sistema-inspired programs. Following their year at NEC, many Fellows have done just that, currently guiding the development of new El Sistema-inspired initiatives in 31 communities across 19 states. In addition, each class of Fellows became the conduit for sharing their knowledge of El Sistema’s complexities—acquired at the source—with colleagues in the field, thereby helping El Sistema’s philosophy become a significant element of the community arts education landscape. Along with their work on the ground, many Fellows are also making important contributions to the national conversation about effective creative youth development. What have I learned through my experiences guiding the Sistema Fellows? Unsurprisingly, working in the El Sistema-inspired music education space is an extremely challenging career choice, requiring passion and commitment in addition to skills such as teaching artistry, program management, and fundraising. From observing Fellows as they negotiate their second, third, fourth, fifth, or even sixth year in the field, I can confirm that sustaining an El Sistema-inspired program’s growth—after the initial adrenaline rush of the first year or two—is even more challenging than starting a program from scratch.
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Two years since the conclusion of the Sistema Fellows Program, it is remarkable that almost all of the Fellows remain dedicated to the pursuit of social change through music education, even as, for some, their career trajectories have begun to move away from community-based direct service to children. As you can learn from reading their profiles on NEC’s website, more than half of the cohort continues to work “on the ground” in El Sistema-inspired programs, in the US and in other countries. It is evident that the success of this work depends upon the specific people involved. There is very little “stuff”—other than essentials such as instruments, music stands, and snacks—listed in the operating budgets of El Sistema-inspired programs. The motivation, preparation, and perseverance of an individual who enters this field are determinative of success both in organizational leadership and in delivering sustained meaningful experiences to students. To be able to recruit, train, and retain talented and dedicated teaching artists is, therefore, critically important. There is a feeling of fragility in the El Sistema-inspired field, as the success of most programs hinges on the dedication of a close-knit team of special individuals who are giving it their all. As each programming year draws to a close in June, one has to wonder: are they feeling fulfilled and will they be able to continue their efforts at this pace for another year? As with teaching artists, personal sustainability for program leaders and administrators is a significant challenge to be faced. I have enjoyed seeing the differences that have emerged as the Fellows’ El Sistema-inspired programs continue to grow. Yes, we can trace the common inspiration back to El Sistema in Venezuela, but it is fascinating to observe a mission of social change through music expressed in multiple ways, responding to the specific community in which a program is based. Early on, I remember one Fellow explaining to me that he never references El Sistema with his students and their families; he simply refers to the name of his program. After all, that’s what people care about in his community. Some Fellows’ programs are experimenting with curricula that incorporate non-Western music, improvisation, collaborative composition, singing, chamber music, academic tutoring, public service, and leadership development activities for older students. Fellows are finding numerous avenues to explore social change through music, in some cases moving further away from the Venezuelan model and its cultural priorities, and finding unique and personal ways to become locally relevant in Austin, Yakima, Ventura or St. Paul. It is important to mention that not all of the Fellows are working in direct service settings, nor should that outcome be misconstrued as the singular goal of the Sistema Fellows Program. Rather, it is gratifying to see Fellows spreading out into related career paths that will increasingly provide them with platforms to influence thinking across the field, even the sector. For instance,
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Fellows are contributing to national conversations about music education, the orchestra industry, creative placemaking, and social justice. Looking to the future, NEC plans to continue to support the ecosystem that the Fellows have been so influential in creating through the new Center for Professional Development and Performing Arts Leadership. I look forward to being centrally involved in NEC’s efforts to carry forward the legacy of the Sistema Fellows Program, making participation in El Sistema’s promise of social change through music more broadly accessible to musicians, including the teaching artists who are the backbone of every El Sistema-inspired initiative. What does a typical El Sistema-inspired program look like? While there is tremendous variability, based on data collected from 18 programs across the US involving Sistema Fellows, a typical El Sistema-inspired program might serve 200 children, providing nearly 8 hours of free program-
ming per week. These 200 children would be mostly Black and Latino, and they would largely be eligible for their school’s free lunch program. This typical El Sistema-inspired program’s budget might be $375,000. It would be led by one or two administrators—often playing multiple roles both administrative and programmatic—and 13 teaching artists receiving part-time wages—5 or 6 of whom will likely move on at the end of the season and need to be replaced. Please continue reading the Sistema Fellowship Resource Center Report, including specific challenges to the future success of the El Sistema-inspired field, at NEC’s website: http://necmusic.edu/sistema Page 21
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[Re]forming the Orchestra by Andrea Landin These past few months I have been led to question many of my own expectations and acceptations of how, why, and for whom we make music. The catalysts of such challenges have ranged from formal discussions with my colleagues, spur of the moment conversations with new acquaintances, concerts, rehearsals, and, of course, teaching and being around children. Last week while teaching the first grade class at the El Sistema-inspired program at Bridge Charter School, founded and directed by Julie Davis (Sistema Fellow ’12), I introduced a concept that I had started when I was teaching in Juneau, Alaska: sitting in an orchestra. The kids had sat on the carpet for General Music, and stood while playing violin, but this would be their first time sitting in “real orchestra” formation. I prearranged the little blue plastic chairs in the way that I had sat in orchestra since I was not much older than them. The excitement grew as Julie and I built the lesson up, saying that they were going to sit just like a professional orchestra. When the time came to transition, I began to instruct them one by one to get up from the carpet, pick up their violin, and sit in a designated chair. Distracted by the boy who needed to use the bathroom and the girl who kept asking me if I was married, I turned away from the orchestra that was materializing behind me for a few moments. When I looked back, I was surprised and confused. The chairs had been rearranged from the original layout of four sections with two chairs in front and two in back, to one broad semi circle. As the remaining students from the carpet made their way into the orchestra, those already sitting wiggled and nudged their chairs aside to make room for their peers. I started to interject – to say, No, actually, a real orchestra doesn’t look like this, a real orchestra sits in sections – but then I stopped myself. I realized that the kids rearranged the chairs because to them, it didn’t make any sense to have certain people sit behind others, where they wouldn’t be able to see or hear as well, and when there was space for everyone to sit side by side. If this was their natural inclination, why have them conform to something that put some in front of others? We constantly speak of the orchestra as a metaphor for community, and ironically, it was a group of six year olds who had never been in a “real orchestra” who led me to ask myself, What does a “real orchestra” even look like? And more importantly – how could it look? https://andrealandin.wordpress.com/2013/02/08/reforming-the-orchestra/
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Andrea Landin is the Director of New West Symphony Harmony Project, a youth development program whose mission is to enact social change through music by providing low income youth in Ventura, California with tuition free, high quality ensemble based music instruction. Her position includes developing curriculum and programming, strategic planning and partnership building, and overseeing all program sites and teachers. In 2015 she was granted the City of Ventura Mayor’s Arts Educator Award, as well as recognized by the California Legislature Assembly for her contribution to the empowerment of the Latino community. Want to read more about El Sistema? Consider reading Playing For Their Lives, recently released by Tricia Tunstall and Eric Booth. http://playingfortheirlives.com/
This unprecedented worldwide phenomenon is the subject of Playing For Their Lives: The Global El Sistema Movement for Social Change Through Music. El Sistema, a program that began over forty years ago with eleven struggling music students in an abandoned parking lot in Caracas, has grown to include 750,000 children in Venezuela and has sparked one of the world’s most remarkable social initiatives. The brilliant celebrity conductor Gustavo Dudamel, who became the leader of the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the age of 27, is El Sistema’s most famous representative; but for authors Tricia Tunstall and Eric Booth, the heart of the El Sistema story is in the programs that have sprung up in over 60 countries across the world, inspired by the vision of its founder, José Antonio Abreu. “When you put a violin in the hands of a child,” Abreu has said, “that child will not pick up a gun.” Page 23
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THE DATA TO MOVE US FORWARD
I’m an artist, and an enthusiastic collector of information. As such, I love data. Did you know there are at least 4 projects in the state of California alone attempting to map where arts education is happening, and to what degree? Oh yeah. Each of these efforts is a little different with some similar big goals, and notably, all parties are working together. One of them is TAG’s. Here’s a low-down on what’s happening in CA, and across the US in both arts and arts education data collection. -Jean
by Jean Johnstone, with research compiled by Yael Silk
The Arts Education Profile, created by
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LA County Arts Commission’s Arts for All, will launch in 2017, a research project designed to identify the quality, quantity and equitable distribution of arts education. This
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will be the most comprehensive snapshot of arts education in LA County to date. Arts Ed Profile findings will enable districts to consider their current allocation of resources and make data-based decisions for advancing arts education. A robust analysis of countywide data will also help guide the coordinated efforts of Arts for All’s collective impact partners.
Marin County has just built it’s own arts education
data collection project, collection for which launched in November 2016. The Marin County Office of Education and Marin Community Foundation’s MarinArtsEd database is compiling the results in an interactive database, and hope to have the participation of all 87 plus arts and culture organizations which provide these classes and experiences by December 15th, 2016, with an announcement of their findings anticipated in early 2017.
CREATE CA has partnered with the California Depart-
ment of Education, and the Arts Education Data Project, to show per school and per district, the certified arts teachers working in classrooms. This is part of a five state effort led by Quadrant Research, gathering statistics on dance, music, theater and visual arts coursework. This data project is designed to increase participation in arts education across the state by analyzing and reporting school-level data on arts education courses and grades 6 through 12 enrollment. It provides important information to education leaders, teachers and parents about levels of access to and enrollment in arts courses in schools. However, data related to arts integration, services provided by teaching artists, and (in California) instruction for K-6 students are only marginally available. To address the need for a systematic approach to track these metrics, other projects are assembling additional data that will provide a more comprehensive snapshot of arts education, notably those efforts in LA and Marin Counties, and across the state of California by Teaching Artists Guild.
4
projects in California currently working to map where arts education is happening.
5.8M ($) the amount awarded in 2016 by the NEA to support arts education programs.
~50% of the NEA arts education grantees are located in high-poverty neighborhoods.
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Teaching Artists Guild is developing the CA pilot
of our national resource, mapping where and how teaching artists are working! After a successful Research and Development Phase One last year, our next step is the development of the the user interface. One of TAG’s goals is to come up alongside the Arts Ed Data Project’s reports, providing information about the arts learning K-12 students are receiving in California by teaching artists, in order to create an accurate assessment of its equitable distribution. Another goal is to connect individual Teaching Artists and the Arts & Culture organizations who are serving the public in any capacity (not just K-12), to each other and to further opportunities, increasing the field’s network robustness, towards a better livelihood for teaching artists, as well as better access for the individuals served by arts education. Partnering with the efforts listed above as well as... Does this sort of resource tickle your fancy? Check out these other tools and resources looking at the arts across the US and the world.
Animating Democracy: Landscape Organized by: Americans for the Arts. The Animating Democracy project is a nationwide list of artists, organizations, and projects involved with arts for social change work. The primary purpose of this mapping initiative is twofold: 1) to connect artists and arts organizations with others working toward the same issues in other genres, and 2) to increase public awareness and support of the full scope of the work being done by telling the stories of art as a catalyst for change. Detailed profile listings are categorized as Artist Profile, Organization, or Project. Data can be filtered by social change issue, art discipline, populations of people engaged, or outcome goals of the work.
Sustain Arts organized by The Initiative for Sustainable
Arts in America (Hauser Institute for Civil Society at Harvard
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University, partnering with the Foundation Center and Fractured Atlas). Sustain Arts is a regional project, currently in the Detroit Metro / Southeast Michigan and San Francisco Bay Areas, with plans to include a total of six regions over the next three years. The project aims to connect knowledge and networks, including program leaders, artists, private foundations, and public agencies, to inform data-driven decision making and strategic planning of policy makers, funders, and other stakeholders. Information is categorized into organization profiles, regional participation levels (mapped by discipline and location), and funding data (including graphs and maps showing funding by organization size, arts discipline, or zip code). Their data visualizations are particularly compelling!
Artlook Map organized by: Ingenuity The artlook Map project includes the Chicago metro area, and aims to provide information to schools, teachers, parents, arts organizations, and the community at large regarding arts programming and partnerships in Chicago Public Schools. The mapping tool offers a keyword search as well as filters such as arts partner vs. school category, location, art disciplines, and school level and type. Profile pages include contact information and detailed data reports for each school and program.
Culture Blocks, organized by Social Impact of the Arts Project at University of Penn-
sylvania. Culture Blocks supports people making decisions about place and creativity in Philadelphia’s neighborhoods, providing detailed information to be used for policy development, research, and planning on the neighborhood level. The map includes several data layers, such as cultural participation rate, ethnicity, and other census population data. Alternatively, the user can select up to three specific criteria (such as area artist density, population characteristics, zoning, or others) and the tool will then highlight areas where all three criteria are met. Basic organization profiles can be accessed directly from the map, and more detailed profile reports and lists can be created for a specific area or location.
Geraldine Dodge Foundation has developed Arts Education Data Dashboard.
In their words, “The Arts Education Data Dashboard will enable education organizations to track their individual program offerings in one database and better understand the schools, students, and teachers served. As the Dashboard is populated, you will be able to map outside arts organizations working in particular schools, the programs they offer, the number of students and teachers served, the teachers and administrators involved in arts and arts integration work, and the funding sources supporting this work. You will be able to see who else is working in a school and even learn where teaching artists are work.”
Canada Dance Mapping Study, organized by Ontario Arts Council. The goal of
the Canada Dance Mapping Study is to identify, quantify and describe the ecology, economy and Page 27
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environment of dance in Canada. The study makes information about the wide variety of dance organizations across Canada available and accessible to the public. The map includes schools, dance companies, events, venues, funders, and policy makers, and is searchable by these categories as well as dance type and location. Listings all include basic information on the organization as well as a link to their website.
ARTDATA: Youth Arts Impact, funded by the Laidlaw
Foundation. This map of the Toronto area shows the impact of the arts on youth culture and activity in the city. Focusing on 12 youth arts groups, the map includes detailed information on community partners and affiliated artists for each organization, as well as the impact and participation levels of specific events and activities. A data snapshot for each group showcases the specific reach of their programs and activities throughout the city. An interactive chart shows the connections between sponsors and each arts organization, and a unique ‘art trail’ piece allows the user to trace the history of six specific artists and their work throughout the city. Due to the focused nature of the map content, there are less broad-level filters and search options than other mapping projects, but the data is still very accessible, visually engaging, and easily utilized.
Map of school art programs in Milwaukee Public Schools,
organized by Arts @ Large Arts @ Large aims to connect art to academics for all students through sustainable partnerships with K-12 educators and students, the arts community, and public policy makers, and institutes of higher education. This basic mapping project organized by Arts @ Large shows the location of each Arts @ Large school in the Milwaukee Public Schools. Each school profile, accessed by clicking on the corresponding map icon, includes demographic information about student enrollment, as well as the number of licensed specialists at the school. There are no additional search filters, but the basic information for each school is readily available.
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STEM to STEAM
The STEM to STEAM map shows the location of STEAM supporters on a national and global scale. While the highest density of supporters listed is in the US, there are approximately 200 international profile entries as well, representing approximately ten percent of the total mapped entries. Despite this broad area coverage, a very small percentage of supporters listed have contact or organization info associated with the map profiles.
AAMD, the Association of American Art Museum Directors presents fourteen example maps are on this website, but well over half of AAMD’s US members have been mapped. Each map is specific to one art museum, and shows the museum’s reach across its community: the organizations that use museum services (e.g., schools, universities, human service agencies, etc.); the vendors from which museums purchase goods and services; and individual, family, and corporate members. The maps are combined with explanatory texts, including statistics and anecdotes, making them of interest to policymakers, funders, and stakeholders. The combination of maps and census data allows AAMD museums to pinpoint well-served and underserved areas and make programming decisions accordingly. The maps are not interactive or searchable in their static PDF versions available on the website. There’s more! This World Theatre Map is in development by our friends at HowlRound. And...? Please feel free to add to our collection if you note something missing. We will update you on our own map’s progress as we go. TAG has been studying the projects listed here, and working closely over the last 18 months with several, namely the Geraldine Dodge Foundation in New Jersey, LA’s Arts for All, The Arts Ed Data Project in California, and the Marin County, CA data effort: to partner, share learnings, and align our efforts, to build complementary systems and tools which will move the field forward. The resultant Teaching Artists Mapping Project will be a tool for the education community and for research purposes, but especially dear to our mission: it will enable Teaching Artists and Arts & Culture organizations to better advocate for their work, connect with each other, and realize further opportunities.
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Stage The Change: Theatre as a Social Voice by Elise May
“What you are doing here today is deep and good. This is a movement!� Jeanine Tesori emphatically shared during the opening of her presentation for the 4th annual Stage the Change: Theatre as a Social Voice conference.
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The extraordinarily talented Broadway composer of Fun Home, Shrek, Thoroughly Modern Millie, and Violet spoke to the captivated crowd of nearly 600 high school students about being the author of your own life. Her experiential presentation culminated in a spontaneous performance by a student who asked a question and ended up singing and sharing the stage with Ms. Tesori. Magic! Founded by Ruthie Pincus, a Hauppauge High School theatre teacher, Stage the Change, Inc.’s mission is to help students become global citizens through creativity and performance and provide communities with inspirational original performances which can serve as a catalyst for change. STC has a one-day annual conference, co-sponsored by Tilles Center for the Performing Arts’ Department of Arts Education, filled with panel discussions, interactive workshops and student performances. High school and college students can submit original performances which are juried. Several are chosen to be featured at the conference which also consists of a plethora of experiential workshops and a keynote speaker (past years have included Anna Deavere Smith, Sheryl Kaller & Tom Kirdahy, and Joe Norton.) This year’s conference started with incredibly moving performances by Success Academy Charter Schools, Bronx 2 (Alternative Names for Black Boys), Walt Whitman HS Dance
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Program (While Everyone Walks By), Hauppauge HS IB Theatre (The Feminist Club) and Long Island HS for the Arts (More To Do With Beauty). A partial list of the inspiring workshop presenters included Epic Theatre Ensemble, Tectonic Theatre Company, Dance Theatre of Harlem, Teatro Yerbabruja, Nilaja Sun, New York Theatre Workshop and The Moth. In these workshops and others students had a wide variety of experiences including “Exploring Diaspora: Community in Motion”, “Prevention Through the Arts”, “Using Boal’s Image Theatre Techniques to Map a Theory of Social Change”, “Writing an Original Play or Musical with a Social Voice” and more. In “A Conversation with Nilaja Sun,” Howard Sherman, director of the Arts Integrity Initiative at The New School College of Performing Arts and interim director of the Alliance for Inclusion in the Arts, and former Executive Director of the American Theatre Wing, sat with Nilaja Sun, an award winning writer and performer on stage and screen who was featured in the first issue of TAG Quarterly.
“So much of who we are is how we treat each other and how we treat our neighbors” shared Ms. Sun. Using her experiences during Hurricane Sandy as inspiration for her newest work, “Pike St.” which will be in DC (at the Woolly Mammoth Theatre)
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in April ‘17 and Minneapolis (at the Pillsbury House Theatre) in May, Ms. Sun reflected on the importance of remembering to take care of those who need help during a catastrophe; the elderly, people of any age with medical issues and those who are alone.
While social activism in the arts isn’t new to me, I never had anything like STC in high school. Young people everywhere NEED this now. Too often the adult world is not making sense and the next generation is the one which has the chance to make this world a better place. Ruthie shares, “This conference is motivating students to become artistic global citizens who create the world that they would like to live in.” I want to live there, too. Check out Stage the Change at www.stagethechange.org and join us at next year’s conference. I’ll be there! Elise May, a Stage the Change board member, focuses on Community Outreach and Sponsorship. She is also a socially conscious, entrepreneurial Teaching Artist who uses theater to enhance vocal empowerment and communication skills through her educational programs for mainstream, Special Education and ESL students of all ages. www.expressive-elocution.com Page 33
Teaching Artists Guild Quarterly: Issue 07
RHODE ISLAND TEACHING ARTISTS CENTER (RITAC) REGIONAL UPDATE
RITAC & RI DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH PARTNERING TO CREATE STATE ARTS & HEALTHCARE PLAN RITAC’s (RI Teaching Artists Center) latest initiative centers on changing policy around Arts & Health. During the planning year of RITAC, a conference on the topic was held, and the intense interest in the topic by the teaching artists who attended made it a priority in the RITAC plan. Surveys showed that RI’s teaching artists are involved in a variety of healthcare initiatives, from teaching dance to people with Parkinson’s to singing for people in hospice who are in the closing moments of their lives. Based on the ex-
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citement around the topic, RITAC, along with the RI State Council on the Arts and RI Department of Health, are in the process of creating a state plan for arts in health. Authorized by the DOH Director, Dr. Alexander-Scott and Elizabeth Roberts, Secretary of Health and Human Services, the planning process is being run by Stacey Springs of Brown University’s School of Public Health. Evidence from a variety of sources, including teaching artists, is being gathered.
RITAC WORKING ON MINI-DOCUMENTARY Another major undertaking of RITAC is the making of a mini-documentary on the impact of teaching artists in both education and healthcare. The filming is taking place at a variety of locations around the state, in conjunction with the University of Rhode Island, and editing will begin in December.
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RITAC PARTNERS WITH RISD & NEFA TO EXPAND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT & PROMOTIONAL OPPORTUNITIES RITAC is committed through our strategic plan to promote teaching artists and provide professional development opportunities. An important step in fulfilling these goals has been the partnership with the New England Foundation for the Arts. The partnership’s purpose is to enlist and train teaching artists to build successful profiles on Creative Ground, the public database of artists and cultural organizations throughout New England. Additionally, in October, RITAC participated in providing professional development opportunities to over 48 teaching artists statewide in partnership with RI School of Design at the Artist Development Day-- an afternoon of workshops, panels, and collegial dialogue for artists and designers. An orientation/training for new artists on the RI State Council on the Arts (RISCA) teaching artist roster was also held in October. In partnership with RISCA, RITAC is beginning a new ongoing opportunity called “Office Hours” on Tuesday afternoons for a RITAC/RISCA professional to meet with artists one-on-one, by appointment, to discuss ways to expand their practices. Mission - The Rhode Island Teaching Artists Center promotes and supports the positive impact of teaching artists across the state’s various sectors. Vision - We envision a Rhode Island where skilled teaching artists inspire and transform our diverse community. Page 36
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New York City Arts in Education Roundtable REGIONAL UPDATE New York City Arts in Education Roundtable The New York City Arts in Education Roundtable improves, advances, and advocates for arts education in New York City. We are a community of organizations and individuals that shares information, provides professional development, and communicates with the public to promote our work in schools and beyond. Founded in 1992, the Roundtable produces a major annual conference, Face to Face; monthly professional development programs; a destination website; and other activities, in addition to ongoing advocacy and communications efforts. We currently have 970 members, including 106 organizations.
The Roundtable’s annual programming includes regular offerings for teaching artists, including workshops, panel discussions, a Teaching Artist Affairs Committee, and an annual end-of-year teaching artist party. For a calendar of Roundtable events for the 2016-17 season please visit: http://www.nycaieroundtable.org/ index.php?section=events Page 37
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The two-day Face to Face conference, which will be held April 12 and 13, 2017 at the City College of New York, is the largest exploration of arts in education in New York State. Teaching artists of all disciplines are welcome to attend, and we are pleased to offer subsidies for both upstate arts educators and New York City-based teaching artists. For more information or to apply for either of the subsidy programs please visit: http://www.nycaieroundtable.org/index.php?section=nysca_Face_to_Face_Regrant_ Program_2017.
Last year’s conference hosted 540 participants from 141 organizations in New York State and beyond. To see video of Marc Bamuthi Joseph’s keynote from last year’s Face to Face conference, please go to https://vimeo.com/180956589.
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Teaching artists also contribute to the Roundtable’s blog. Recent posts have included a look at diversity in arts education - http://www.nycaieroundtable.org/blog/?p=853 – and a conversation about why teaching artistry matters - http://www. nycaieroundtable.org/blog/?p=962. The Roundtable’s website is a great source to learn about grant opportunities, arts education news, and job listings. There is also information on Roundtable membership and links to the websites of all member organizations. The website is http:// www.nycaieroundtable.org/. You can also connect with Roundtable on social media here: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nycaier/ Twitter: @nycaier Instagram: @nycaieroundtable
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2016
3ARTS TEACHING ARTIST AWARD-WINNERS
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William Estrada Interview by Kate Bell
How long have you been a Teaching Artist? I have been a Teaching Artist for eighteen years.
Why and how did you become a Teaching Artist? I first started teaching as a Teaching Artist to gain more experience before entering the teaching certification program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. I applied to teach at Pros Arts Studio (now ElevArte) in Pilsen. Once I became a certified art teacher, I realized I really enjoyed teaching various art mediums in different communities. I decided to be a Teaching Artist instead of an art teacher. I felt that it gave me more flexibility and Page 42
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freedom to explore and develop projects with community members around social justice issues, and there was a lot of flexibility about the content I was able to teach and where I could display the work we created.
What organizations do you work for or partner with in your work as a Teaching Artist? Telpochcalli Elementary, Chicago Art Partnerships in Education, Marwen Foundation, Hyde Park Art Center, SkyArt, Urban Gateways, DePaul’s College Connect Program, and Prisons + Neighborhoods Art Project.
What are your current teaching projects? I am currently collaborating with Dana Oesterlin-Castellon at Telpochcalli Elementary School in an after-school program through CAPE called Public Art + Activism. The program is focusing on teaching students how to research and organize, using art as a tool to address issues important to them and their communities.
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Fifteen young people participate; they are third to eighth graders. I am really excited to teach this course! It’s in a series of courses we have been teaching at Telpochcalli for the past few years to help students learn about activism and organizing and how we can amplify the work and discussion happening in the community already. The students are currently working on screen prints to promote people voting in the upcoming elections.
What’s the most memorable teaching moment you’ve had recently? I was screen printing tote bags in West Chicago for Mexican Independence Day in September, and the project was trying to address how we celebrate revolutionary acts but suppress community members questioning contemporary cultural norms. A woman came up to me to ask what I was doing. I told her about my work as a teacher, the work I do in communities as an artist, and why I think it’s important to use art to promote the work we already do to self-organize and educate. She became so excited about the conversation that she gave me a hug and spent the rest of the day talking to others about how art can be used to address culture. I was really excited to talk to her and she tries to attend other work-
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shops in West Chicago or in other Chicago neighborhoods. It was very endearing and powerful to share stories about how art can be a catalyst for new ideas and the reimagining of our communities. The idea that as adults, we can still discover new ways to look at the work we do, at the work we want to do — this is powerful.
What other creative projects of your own are you working on right now? Ten years ago, I began delivering free art workshops on the street in the Little Village neighborhood of Chicago. I would set up a table and attempt to convince people passing by, going about their daily routines, to stop and make art with me. Earlier this year, I received funding through a 3Arts Projects Crowdfunding to build a mobile street art cart. The cart facilitates the delivery of free art workshops in Little Village, North Lawndale, and other communities in Chicago to discuss race, power, and access to culture with community members out on public sidewalks. This past summer I delivered about ten workshops and more than a thousand people participated in the art project. This has been exciting and an amazing opportunity to address ways to collaboratively develop culturally relevant art practices that amplify the creativity already present in brown and black communities and affect change in those communities.
How do you find balance between your teaching and other creative work? What systems or strategies do you have for balancing the many things that you do? My creative work is my teaching. I use Google calendar to manage and schedule the various sites and projects I participate in. I make sure to take vacations or go camping to recharge and deescalate when I am feeling stressed or overworked.
Describe the overlap between your Page 45
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teaching work and your independent creative work. It has taken many years, but the overlap of my teaching and independent work has reached a balance that I feel comfortable with. My teaching informs my arts practice and my arts practice informs my teaching. When possible, students become collaborators in art projects and community members become collaborators in the development of community art projects.
Do the organizations you work for/partner with actively support and encourage the connections between your teaching practice and your creative practice? I lead professional development and/or presentations on my work and the framework that I have created to support the work I do in communities as a model for engaging students within classrooms. I have provided professional development for teaching artists, teachers, and administrators.
If you could change one thing about your life as a Teaching Artist, what would it be? This is a hard one. There have been many opportunities I have passed by, but I really love the work I do. I wish there was more economic stability in the work we do as Teaching Artists. If I could change something about what I do, I would want more financial stability.
What recent accomplishment as a Teaching Artist would you like to celebrate today? I received my Masters in Art Education in 2015. It was a big accomplishment for me and my family. Also, being nominated the Page 46
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3Arts Community Award is giving me the opportunity to imagine and think deeper on how I can work with community members on projects relevant to their lives. The recognition, support, and attention to my practice is allowing me the space and time to reflect on what I want to do, how I can strengthen my practice, and what I need to do to grow as a Teaching Artist.
If you could ask other Teaching Artists anything about their practices, what would you ask? How do you maintain a balance with work, family, and arts practice? How do you balance your finances?
Offer any plugs for upcoming teaching/ creative projects of your own or of people you admire. I will participate in an exhibition called PUBLIC SCHOOL at the Hyde Park Art Center in February 2017 being curated by Jim Duignan and Rachel Harper. I’m also really excited to develop public workshops during the coming winter months, since most of my own practice is during the spring, summer, and fall. Page 47
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Alexandria Eregbu Interview by Kate Bell
How long have you been a Teaching Artist? I’ve been a teaching artist for about three years.
Why/how did you become a Teaching Artist? I was looking for an especially meaningful position after undergrad that could both support and inform my interests as an artist working with public audiences and institutional spaces in the city of Chicago. A dear friend and mentor of mine, recommended me for the position and I ended up at TRACE.
What organizations do you work for or partner with in your work as a Teaching Artist? Page 48
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I work as a Lead Teaching Artist for TRACE (Teens Re-Imagining Art, Community, and Environment) through the Chicago Park District. Our program strives to cultivate Chicago’s artistic and environmental community of youth activists and civic leaders. Using the arts to engage, inspire, and persist, TRACERS create, advocate, and enact positive change for a better world.
What are your current or most recent teaching projects? Recently, the most notable of my teaching projects would probably be my development of TRACE’s Community Curatorial Project (CCP) in which I was able to spearhead this new branch of our program to teach curatorial practices and image interpretation to our teens. The program was composed of interns ranging from fourteen to nineteen years old, and essentially we just spent six months examining, talking about, and creating art. We explored how curation was practiced on multiple levels, and worked alongside visiting teaching artists who later contributed photographic bodies of work on Englewood (our park location) that were later contextualized and curated by CCP. Through the program, our teens took trips to Rhona Hoffman Gallery to see the Gordon Parks photography exhibition, and got to speak with museum level curators at the Field Museum to discuss the work of Malvina Hoffman’s sculptures.
What’s the most memorable teaching moment you’ve had recently? The most memorable teaching moment for me thus far was putting together the final exhibition that TRACE held at the Art Institute of Chicago in partnership with Kaleidoscope during the summer of 2015. Our TRACERs had spent the season documenting our community at our park in the Back of the Yards neighborhood through photography and collage-making. Later, the TRACERS had the opportunity to learn professional mounting and exhibition display techniques, and they applied those skill sets to a culmi-
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nating event which remained on view for several months at the museum. Just seeing how proud my teens were of their work and being able to share it with a wider audience was incredible. Taking my teens to see the Kerry James Marshall exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art (in partnership with their Teen Creative Agency program) definitely comes to a close second though.
What other creative projects of your own are you working on right now? To be honest, I’m focused on taking a pause from undertaking any creative projects right now. However, I would say that on the horizon is traveling to Nigeria next year to continue my research for the Finding Ijeoma Project, which essentially re-imagines my art practice by investigating my ancestry through my father’s legacy and learning Igbo practices, both contemporary and traditional. I also recently completed a residency in Iowa City with the Center for Afrofuturist Studies where I spent time developing ideas for a new curatorial project that I will be embarking on in 2018.
How do you find balance between your teaching and other creative work? What systems or strategies do you have for balancing the many things that you do? It’s tough. These last couple years of doing this, I’ve started to pick up on my workflow and understand that things for me sort of come in waves. I’m not one of those artists who makes work year-round, but rather someone who spends time in research, traveling, and exploring different disciplines for about half the year, while being in the studio for about a quarter to one third of the year. Chicago definitely has a schedule of its own, where summers and falls seem to be the busiest times of the year, and winter and spring are a bit slower. Identifying that fact and having the capacity to work pretty independently with a flexible schedule as I have for so long helps, but I’m still learning and figuring it out as I go. Being a Teaching Artist is demanding no matter what, but it’s Page 50
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especially challenging if you’re someone who is invested in your students and their success beyond the classroom. I can’t do it all, but I try to remain an open and transparent source for my teens with as many resources and additional opportunities as possible. It’s important for me to know when it’s time for me to step back too, so I try to keep that communication up to date with my staff and co-workers as well.
Describe the overlap between your teaching work and your independent creative work. Above anything else, what I love about my job is that it has really taught me (and is continuing to teach me) how to make art happen outside of the white cubes and gallery walls that I’ve been used to. I’ve had to troubleshoot how to make art accessible to more audiences in unconventional settings, and the knowledge that I’ve gained in learning how to talk to folks and work with people has been extremely informative to my studio practice. The conversations that take place there and the value systems are usually pretty different than the agenda of the contemporary art communities, and I find it important as an artist to be mindful of that.
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Additionally, there is a vast range of resources that the Park District has that frequently go overlooked or under-utilized, too. As I continue to spend time in the parks, it’s been really awesome thinking about how to harness those resources not only an educator, but as an individual who is interested in seeing artwork spill over beyond the museum, gallery, or higher learning institutional spaces.
Do the organizations you work for/partner with actively support and encourage the connections between your teaching practice and your creative practice? If they do, how? I would say so. TRACE encourages this best by supporting my vision for curriculum and partnerships with our seasonal programs. Usually the folks that we end up partnering with are people and organizations that I’m curious about working with as an artist, and the art projects we focus on, although spearheaded by the teens, sometimes reflect my larger and personal concerns in the studio.
If you could change one thing about your life as a Teaching Artist, what would it be? I often find myself getting frustrated with how hard Teaching Artists have to work, without the appropriate support to do their jobs. There seems to be little security in working as a full-time Teaching Artist, and the way that the system is currently set up, it feels like it banks on our failure. Some of the hardest workers that I know are still underpaid or paid extremely late, and they’re operating without budgets, or scrambling to get work season to season. It’s sad. And I don’t know how to change it; I just wish that I could. I guess to fully answer this question, I would just say that I wish the cultural appreciation of the arts could be valued on a deeper level, Page 52
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beyond simply meeting numbers and end-of-the-year reports. I would like to see more support for the people who put serious labor, time, and care into making sure those objectives are met.
What recent accomplishment as a Teaching Artist would you like to celebrate today? One of my students recently asked me to write her a letter of recommendation so she could apply for a scholarship for college. It was a super-surreal moment to find myself in this position, because not too long ago, I was the one who was asking my teachers (and still am) for letters of support. I can’t fully articulate how much it means to me to know that my students trust and value me enough to advocate for their futures in this way, but it means a lot.
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THE BUSINESS OF BEING A TEACHING ARTIST Self Promotion “Life-Hacks” for Teaching Artists by Kenny Allen
Hey Teaching Artists, Kenny here. I’m the Membership and Marketing Director for TAG, and I’m here to share some lessons I’ve learned from the marketing world that are particularly relevant for teaching artists. As a freelance marketing consultant, I’ve worked with a lot of small business owners and other freelancers looking to increase their income. I’ve learned that no matter how good someone is at their actual business, if they are a 1-person operation, marketing is usually a blind-spot. It makes sense, after all, you became a teaching artist to be able to practice your art, teach others, and make an impact in the community. You didn’t become a teaching artist so you could waste hours on the computer trying to figure out how online advertising works. The first step to solving any problem is to admit that it exists. So, let’s just say it: marketing yourself doesn’t come naturally to you. Given that, what little tweaks to your normal business routine can we make that will dramatically increase the amount of work you book? Here are four of the top lessons about self-promotion that I’ve learned from working with freelancers and small business owners. I hope they will inspire you to take your self-promotion efforts to new heights.
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1. Get the right tools. You only need a few, good quality marketing tools to get started. Best of all? You can get all of them for under $200. If you don’t have it already, get thee a personal website! Squarespace and Weebly are perfectly fine for your first personal website. You can even use ___ to create a website in less than 2 minutes based on your LinkedIn profile. Once you have a website setup, get yourself some quick business cards from moo. com. They have clean, artistic, and professional designs waiting for you, and their customer service is unmatched. Next time you’re at a gallery
reception and someone asks “how can I contact you?” You’ll just hand them your shiny new card with your new website address on it. Next, a few professional social media pages can be useful. If you’re not a big social media person, start small, and start where you are most comfortable. If you can setup a professional teaching artist page on Facebook and use that to regularly talk about the work you are doing, sharing your challenges and celebrating your successes, then work will find you more often. If you haven’t already, make sure your LinkedIn profile reflects your desire to get more work as a teaching artist. Lastly, a powerful online tool
that takes a minute to set-up is a proper email signature that advertises the work you do as a teaching artist. Try out this email signature generator to get up and running quickly.
2. Get over that shyness thing you have. I often work with clients who are really motivated to bring in more income or work for themselves, and they are willing to work very hard for that income, but at the same time they are afraid of true exposure. The most common roadblock for freelancers and small business owners? They are afraid of marketing to their own network. Let’s do a quick analysis - how many of the following questions can you say “yes” to? Have you bragged on social media lately about your work as a teaching artist? Does your LinkedIn profile include information about your work as a teaching artist? Have you reached out to people in your LinkedIn network for recommendations? Page 55
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How many of your family and friends know what you do for work? If I asked about you, would they use the term “Teaching Artist?” Are you blogging about the work you do? Are you sharing these blog posts on social media?
3. Join Forces Alright, once you’ve worked through that thing you have with shyness, it’s time to turn your self-promotion up by joining forces with others. An easy first step here? Join the Teaching Artists Guild (join for free, here), and fill out your profile. Add photos, tag yourself according to the work you do, and browse the member directory for other teaching artists working in your area. Next, try linking up with a regional cohort of teaching artists. If you’re in California: TASC, if you’re in New York: ATA or NYCAIER, if you’re in Washington, STAN, Rhode Island: RITAC, etc… make an Page 56
effort to participate actively in these communities. Ask for help, lend advice if you can, but most importantly… just show up and participate in the discussions!
4. Work Your Network Lastly, the most powerful thing you can do to book yourself more work as a teaching artist and increase your income is this: work your own network. I’m consistently amazed by two things: 1.) how many people are willing to help if we just ask, and, 2.) how few people are willing to ask for help from the friends and connections they have online. If you have built and nurtured the
right network, something as simple as an email or a post to social media can help you find your next job. Try using a template like this, created by Jenny Blake, to craft the message. What if you don’t already have a 5-star network in place? It doesn’t take a rocket-scientist to build a better network. Start by borrowing the book Never Eat Alone from your local library. Then start connecting with your local arts council and local leaders in the school district, community centers, etc… (based on where you’d like to do your teaching artistry work.)
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Support the work of Teaching Artists Guild today.
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I Interview Teaching Artists #6:
Livia Vanaver by Kate Bell
How long have you been a Teaching Artist? I have been a Teaching Artist since 1973.
What organizations do you work for? I began working with National Young Audiences, partly as a research project, as well as implementation. Warren Yost gathered a very fine and eclectic group of Teaching Artists from all the different performing arts disciplines, including dance, film and video. In movement, there was Janet Eilber for modern dance, Jon Har-
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vey for mime, and me; I specialize in multi-cultural dances from around the world. Later on, I worked with Project Impact in New Jersey, and was on the first roster of ArtsConnection in New York City. I also worked at the Lincoln Center Institute in its early days, and facilitated several of their teacher training weeks in Rochester, Binghamton, and Albany.
What are your current or most recent teaching projects? With my company of dancers and musicians, The Vanaver Caravan, I work with K-12 students creating world dance residencies and World Dance & Music Festivals/Celebrations in schools. I am most often called in to work with third graders, as that’s often the grade when the children first study the regions of the world. Learning dances from different cultures helps students relate to their mandated social studies curriculum in a visceral way. They learn to love movement and joyfully express themselves through cultural dance. I have created interesting choreography that is rhythmic and challenging for the students and very appealing for the community. The children work hard and with self-discipline to learn different dances from beginning to end. The process of learning the dances culminates in a community concert full of color and pageantry. They all learn songs from their chosen counPage 59
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tries as well. The teachers then expand and weave the work I do into fully creating another country’s culture in their classrooms. The template for the work I do today began with a residency in the Beacon City School District, about 80 minutes north of New York City. I was asked to create a third grade multi-cultural dance festival for all four schools in the district. The teachers met with me and my husband, Bill Vanaver, who is the music director of our company. We had a lengthy preparation time to design a program that really worked for each school. We are going into our 27th year of the Calico Ball (Communicating and Learning Cultural Origins By Appreciated Lore and Legacy). Pete Seeger lived in Beacon and he loved participating in the Calico Ball every year and was an avid supporter when the district funding dried up. This is a very successful project and we are in certain schools and districts annually and are considered to be part of the curriculum. Students look forward to doing this project when they become third graders (as do their parents). We often are funded by the PTA or the Arts Education Foundation in the district. For younger grades, I focus on story-dancing and enacting tales, books using cultural movement, and creative dance expression. I focus on teaching the elements of dance and then explore style and feeling.
Livia Vanaver, Teaching Artist since 1973, and still going strong.
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What’s the most memorable Teaching Artist moment you’ve had recently? Truthfully, there are memorable moments everyday: epiphanies, great rewards. I often struggle with getting the children to enjoy the process of learning a dance (which may be difficult for them) as much as they enjoy performing it. Today I was working with a very difficult class that has a hard time focusing. I worked with them for an hour and then it was time for recess. One of the boys said out loud, “Let’s practice our dance instead of going to recess.” Then he took a vote and the whole class voted to continue practicing! That was astonishing to me, as the dance is challenging and so is this class. I have seen children who do not necessarily excel at their desks become the “stars” or the leaders of the dance.
What other creative projects of your own are you working on right now? I’m working on creating a full-length concert of original dance featuring twenty of Pete Seeger’s songs. It’s a walk through Pete’s
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life and America. The choreography is rooted in several styles of dance, including swing dancing, clogging, South African bootdancing, modern dance, and percussive dance. It utilizes archival photos and video images projected on a screen behind the dancers. The music is arranged by Bill. There is a school version of this show, too. Now I am trying to book it in as many places as possible. It’s called Turn Turn Turn!: Celebrating Pete Seeger in Dance & Music. We have been very close with Pete and his family since 1972. It was originally Pete’s idea to do this concert in 1995. We did it once with Pete in ‘96. Almost three years ago, when we heard he passed away, we put all of our other performance projects aside and focused on recreating TTT.
How do you find balance between your teaching and other creative work? I actually find teaching a deeply creative expression for myself. Each class is different and the creative part of me that is called up in teaching tastes like the same part that goes into the studio and makes a dance. The Vanaver Caravan is a vehicle for my creative work and I seek performance opportunities to balance my teaching.
What systems or strategies do you have for balancing the many things that you do? Page 62
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Good question. I have a morning meditation practice, go to yoga early in the morning as often as I can, with an amazing teacher, walk my road (I live on a beautiful mountain road with a little waterfall at the end, near Woodstock). I practice remembering to be grateful and present. I don’t really have a system per se. Trying to stay close to myself creates a balance to do whatever is in front of me.
Do the organizations you work for actively support and encourage the connections between your teaching practice and your creative practice? If you are speaking about the schools in which I work, I think the teachers welcome bringing creativity into residency teaching. Often in professional development workshops teachers ask “How can we teach with more creativity and humanity?” Making these connections to learning is so much a part of what I try to do.
Can you describe your work with the ALL Teacher Renewal Program in more detail? Were you participating in the program as a teacher, or do they bring you in to lead a workshop in dance as a part of the program? The Academy for the Love of Learning has a Leading By Being program where I did a training in 2002-04 for their Teacher Renewal Program. I then helped to develop a similar program in my own local school district with director, Aaron Stern. I use much of this work and philosophy as a basis for the work in the world I do today. I have been on their part-time faculty as well helping to facilitate workshops. Page 63
Teaching Artists Guild Quarterly: Issue 07
If you could change one thing about your life as a Teaching Artist, what would it be? = I would love to do a professional development training for dancers who are interested in Arts Education, cultural dance, creative movement and learning through the body, to do the multi-cultural work we have developed over the past forty years. I would love to see this work done all over the country and the world.
Offer any plugs for upcoming teaching/ creative projects of your own or of people you admire. I am finally writing a book about creating world dance and music celebrations in schools. This will be a wonderful handbook and guide to schools and communities to explore “bringing the world into your community� and preparing young people to realize their global citizenry. It is a collaboration with one of the music teachers I collaborate with, an administrator, and one of our teaching artists. We are working on booking a tour for Turn Turn Turn. We also have a beautiful holiday show called Into the Light, that we perform in November/December in collaboration with Arm of the Sea giant puppet theatre. We will be performing at Queens College December 18th at 3 PM and have other bookings (check our website : vanavercaravan.org). Also, Teaching Artists who wish to train with us can contact me, as we wish to expand our pool of Teaching Artists.
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Kate Bell is a writer, theater maker, musician, and Teaching Artist in Brooklyn, NY. Kate seeks to understand the field of Teaching Artistry more deeply through her “I Interview Teaching Artists� series, which is featured in the TAG Quarterly, and on her blog: www. katebell.info.
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THE JOURNAL IS BACK! We’ve got company, and we couldn’t be more thrilled! The scholarly Teaching Artists Journal is back, having been picked up by New York University, who will house it from here on out. Still published by Routledge/Taylor & Francis, the chief editor is Amy Cordileone, PhD, a Clinical Assistant Professorat the Program in Educational Theatre, in the Department of Music and Performing Arts Professions at NYU Steinhardt.
We are so happy to welcome back the Teaching Artists Journal. Their focus on both the research, theory, and practice of teaching artists, as well as the celebration of achievements in the field, and the ability to share field-specific artistic, educational, and psycho-social insights with theorists and practitioners within broader areas of study, are vital to the continued development of the field. We can’t wait to read what’s next!
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BECOME A MEMBER OF TEACHING ARTISTS GUILD TODAY!
Teaching Artists Guild (TAG), a fiscally sponsored project of Community Initiatives, is a member-driven organization committed to the professionalization and visibility of artists who teach. We are the voice of the teaching artist, communicating the depth and breadth of work that teaching You can support our work by becoming a Free or Premium member. Our membership provides Teaching Artists with the tools and resources they need to take their career to the next level.
MembersHIP BENEFITS: TAG Careington Card – comes with big discounts on Dental, Vision, Alternative Health Providers, Tax, Financial, and Legal services, LASIK Surgery, Pet Medications, Online Shopping, Identity Theft, Child and Elderly Care, and Concierge services. Need we say more? These services are not insurance.*
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Free access to the TAG Job Board. Featured placement on the TAG Member Directory Placement on the Teaching Artist’s Asset Map Free access to the TAG Events Calendar Free and discounted in-person and online professional and social events and • Discounts to businesses and organizations in your area that provide you with the tools & experiences you need to enhance your art (shows, admissions, supplies)
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