THE 411
ON #ARTSED ADVOCACY
FEATURED INTERVIEW:
CHINCHIN HSU VERTICAL MARKETPLACES FOR TEACHING ARTISTS
HOW THE BARTOL FOUNDATION THINKS ABOUT FUNDING TEACHING ARTISTRY
THE ADVOCACY ISSUE #4
The Advocacy Issue March 2015
Teaching Artists Guild Newsletter: Issue 04
Executive Director: Jean Johnstone Membership Director: Kenny Allen
National Advisory Board: 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.
Teaching Artists Guild Newsletter: Issue 04
THE ADVOCACY ISSUE Hello again! We’re back. Welcome to our first ever Advocacy Issue. Advocacy. WHAT DOES THAT MEAN? I am so glad you asked. Most basically, it is building public support for a particular cause. What is that cause? Very broadly, the role of the artist in society. More narrowly, Arts Education; and more specifically still: teaching artists as a group with specific needs who serve an important role in that society. Here at Teaching Artists Guild we’ve realized that our starting place for the work of advocacy is tied up irrevocably with field-building. Field building, Step 1: Identity creation and network-building. THIS IS A FIELD! There is a thing here! We see that thing, and we agree it exists. We recognize we are connected to it. Everything else is details. Ok, important details! In order to advocate successfully, one needs to be able to identify oneself and one’s place in the system that exists, in addition to knowing what change to effect. When teaching artists recognize their own work as the profession it is, and identify as such, we can stand together under the same umbrella. Even if you are an artist who teaches one day a month, or every day; you have 15 other jobs but if teaching your art, or teaching with art, facilitating community interactions and engagement with art or via art, is part of what you do? Guess what. You are, in whatever part, a teaching artist! It doesn’t have to mean this is all you do; for most of the field, in fact, it isn’t. We wear many hats and do lots of jobs. But you can still name it as part of what you do. Heck, you can even call it something else, as long as we all can recognize the different terms, we can stuff those under that really big umbrella, too. Teaching Artists are an important component in the arts education, and overall arts, landscape, and have our voice and role to play, but it is difficult to do so when we feel disparate and unconnected. Network formation and self-identity are huge. Field-Building also means building resources where there are none, or sharing the ones we know about. It means “professionalizing” the field. That word used to irk me, as it seemed to imply that we needed to corporatize and start wearing ties, or otherwise become something we were not. But professionalization means advocating for teaching artistry as the profession it is, and calling it as such. It also means honoring the work that teaching artists do, and also providing them with the support, services, and resources they need to step up their practice, continue it, balance it, deepen it—— and get dental services at a reasonable rate, too! So that’s what we try to do. In this issue, we’ve brought together some leaders in the field on advocacy in arts education, with a particular lens on the world of the teaching artist. I hope you’ll enjoy this set of articles, thought pieces, and interviews, and that it will inspire you to get active in this world of field building and advocacy. I kinda like it here. And stayed tuned. In the development of this issue, we came across a number of thinkers, artists, advocates, and funders with something important to say on the topic, and we’ll be weaving in those pieces over the next several issues. I’m very excited about this! Warmly,
Jean Johnstone Executive Director Teaching Artists Guild Page 3
Teaching Artists Guild Newsletter: Issue 04
CONTENTS FEATURE STORY ADVOCACY - FOR AND BY TEACHING ARTISTS “Father of the field” Eric Booth leads up through some advocacy tips specifically crafted for teaching artists. Read more on page 6.
ON THE COVER Cover photo: ChinChin Hsu Photo by: Gama Hsu
Featured Teaching Artist Interview with ChinChin Hsu. Go to page 30 to read the interview!
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Teaching Artists Guild Newsletter: Issue 04
THE 411 ON #ARTSED ADVOCACY
An exclusive audio interview with Joe Landon, the Executive Director of the California Alliance for Arts Education. Page 12.
THE BARTOL FOUNDATION ON ADVOCACY
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Part of a new recurring column, this “funder perspective” shows you how one of the top foundations supporting teaching artists thinks about advocacy and more. Page 14.
THE BUSINESS OF TEACHING ARTISTRY
Teaching Artist and Entrepreneur Lynn Johnson discusses vertical markets that teaching artists might consider exploring to expand their practice. Page 16.
KATE BELL INTERVIEWS TEACHING ARTISTS
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Kate Bell is a New York teaching artist who started interviewing other teaching artists on her blog. We love her interviews and we hope you will love them too! Page 20.
WORKING PROJECT UPDATES
Find out about what the social justice teaching artistry workgroup is up to on page 26 and what the teaching artist philosophy workgroup is doing on page 24.
LINCOLN CENTER EDUCATION Reflections from teaching artist Elise May after attending a Lincoln Center Education training for intermediate TAs. Page 34.
FUNDING THE FIELD OF TEACHING ARTISTRY
34
The first-ever summit on funding the field of teaching artistry was held by Grantmakers in the Arts recently. Learn more on Page 41.
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Teaching Artists Guild Newsletter: Issue 04
ADVOCACY
For and by Teaching Artists
by Eric Booth
Teaching artists are proudly passionate and eloquent about their work. But…are we good advocates for teaching artistry? The empirical evidence doesn’t suggest that we are. Teaching artistry remains under-funded and largely unrecognized even as it is heavily relied upon by large sectors of the arts and arts education. Of course, there are many hard realities that entrench the status of the field. However, as individuals and as a field, we haven’t succeeded in changing that standing. Page 6
In fact, the larger field of arts educators in the U.S. (of which we are a part) hasn’t succeeded in changing its status, either—our students average one quarter of the arts instruction time of the average UNESCO nation. Whatever the reasons for these sad realities (and weak advocacy is certainly not among the most prominent), few would argue with the assertion that we can do better. Now is a good time for us to think about doing better as advocates, because there is unusual interest in the field of teaching artistry. Quite possibly, change is in
the wind, and with better advocacy, we can add to it. Is advocacy part of your responsibility as a teaching artist? When I ask that question of teaching artists, rarely do I hear a resounding yes. More often, I hear some nos, and most often, I hear equivocations and explanations, with a timbre of guilt, about being an advocate. Artists who passionately promote the value of their theaters or dance companies often shrug about pushing forward their work in teaching artistry.
Teaching Artists Guild Newsletter: Issue 04
That has to change, if the field is to grow. Every teaching artist must recognize and advocate for the value of this work. Relentlessly. At family gatherings, in professional settings, in the grocery store line. Does that sound unrealistic? No profession ever changed its status without the enthusiastic pride and determination of its practitioners. Apart from our ambivalence about our role as advocate, why have we been so unsuccessful as advocates for changing the status quo? It would take a book to answer that question (a book that few, including me, would want to read), but here are a few key misconceptions about advocacy, and then a few key guidelines about how to amp up your effectiveness.
MISCONCEPTIONS • Advocacy is about convincing people of your point of view. More about this naïve view below. • Advocacy depends on your first pitch. It is rare to have anyone change entrenched views after a single encounter. It takes time, repeated encounters, a relationship. Successful advocacy is more about cultivation, about building a relationship, than about a miracle conversation. It takes more than talk—it takes
evidence, first-hand experiences, stories and dialogue, over time. • The content of your argument is the most important thing. Actually, I think three other things are more important. 1. The quality of your listening, so that you connect your views with that person’s understandings and personal interests. 2. Your authenticity; the passion and engaging clarity you have about your work and goals matters at least as much as the arguments you muster. 3. The frame in which the conversation happens—more about this in a bit, because it is the single most overlooked reality of advocacy. • Advocate for your big idea. No, advocate for the impact of your big idea. Good marketing executives know that you don’t sell the product; you sell the benefits of the product. Don’t sell the mop, sell the clean floor. Don’t advocate for teaching artistry—few people care about that—but advocate for the impact of teaching artistry. Pick one key benefit of the work, a benefit that both you and the person you are addressing care about…more engaged school students, expanded audiences, healthy care improvements among the elderly, etc. Etymologically, the word advocate means to call in, rather than our common
usage of to tell about. In calling people in to your understandings, the most overlooked skill is listening. Good advocacy often begins with good questioning—or even before that, establishing a good atmosphere for an honest dialogue in which you can ask sincere questions and get genuine responses. Then come the good questions that surface what that person (or group) cares about and is concerned about. And then you apply the set of strategies that call that person into your views. My most sobering lessons come from my own failures as an advocate. I would hit a group with my best shot—say, a speech to a school district board of education. They would be enthusiastic in response, sometimes with a standing ovation, some tearing up, and many thanking me. And then, within a month, they would vote in a budget that cut arts education painfully. I slowly came to recognize that advocacy is not about changing people’s minds. Advocacy is about changing people’s actions, and people base their actions not on what they think but on what they believe. It is a much higher bar to change what someone believes, but it is the only legitimate goal of advocacy. Otherwise, you have them “feeling and agreeing” with you one week, and taking the opposite actions the next.
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To change what someone believes requires time and relationship. It requires reliable data to satisfy the intellect, stories to establish the personal connection, and personal experience to lodge in the gut. That’s why the “elevator speech” challenge of a concise pitch must contain a story that lingers, a taste of strong objective data, a question that resonates with the concerns of the individual, a metaphor that captures the big picture succinctly, and evident passion and belief.
THE FRAME And it requires one more thing; omitting this one thing is the most common mistake in advocacy. The frame. The frame defines and overpowers the content. George Lakoff writes about this convincingly. He often focuses on politics, pointing to the difference of the leadership frame he sees in conservatives and progressives. Conservatives carry a metaphoric frame of good leadership as a strong, strict, dominant parent. Progressives carry the metaphoric frame of the nurturing, empathic parent. Whatever the information, even the raw facts, that are presented, they are received and interpreted through the frame. For exPage 8
ample, to a conservative, any mention of welfare is heard through the frame of the recipients’ failures and “refusal to act responsibly,” taking advantage of taxpayers. Any mention of welfare to a progressive is heard through the empathic frame of people who need help. In making a point to either side, outside of their frame, nothing can make an impact beyond confirmation of their beliefs or rejection of everything being presented unless their frame is dislodged for the duration of the exchange. The same applies to us in the arts. Most people to whom we advocate carry with them certain definitions of the arts and arts education that serve as the frame for everything we say. You know the standard definition-frames: The arts are a lovely entertainment for an elite who like them, and good for others to visit or dabble with on occasion. Arts education is a lovely enrichment for kids, good for all kids to have a little taste of after the serious business of learning is attended to; and deeper arts education should be available for that small subset of kids who take it seriously as a career. To a listener who holds those definitions as the frame of his hearing, everything you say is heard and judged through it, and more commonly you are not even heard if you are speaking through a different
frame. So the first challenge of advocacy is establishing the frame in which you want the exchange to occur, which usually means changing the frame the listener brings. How do you do that? Here’s an example. Years ago I was to speak at a fund raiser for an arts education organization in Chicago, to maybe fifty high-powered people in a fancy private home. Among them was a conservative man who was running in a primary campaign for a U.S. Senate seat. When he learned I was the speaker, he launched into a series of attacks on the positions he assumed I had (he was right about my views, actually). He spouted all the standard positions, and I realized arguing was pointless because he wasn’t listening. So I paused his barrage and asked if I could ask him a question. I said, “Do you believe every public school student in Illinois deserves a highly engaging school day?” He began to talk again without answering. Again, I asked him to pause and answer that question. He thought about it, with a look of cautious skepticism, as if I were laying a trap. After some seconds, he figured saying no would cause him trouble, and it was not too risky to agree. “Yes,” he said. “Great,” I said, “you and I agree on that. Here’s a second question. Do you think there is
Teaching Artists Guild Newsletter: Issue 04
a direct relationship between the level of a student’s engagement, and the quality of learning that ensues?” Again a wary pause and a calculating scan of his options and potential traps. “Yes,” he said,
“I am sure a kid who is into learning learns more.” “We agree again. Do you know anything about the research on what students find engaging?” Now I had him. He had entered my frame, and I was
introducing objective data, not opinion. I gave him two or three succinct and dramatic research confirmations of the power of arts learning to amplify engagement, and some examples of how it works in
specific Illinois schools. He listened; we talked. I would like to claim a Saul of Tarsus conversion on the spot, but it didn’t happen. However, he took in what I offered, and we had a genuine exchange. New ideas entered his head, and
that never would have happened if I hadn’t brought him into my frame. My frame was arts education as catalyst for engagement of learners. People bring frames to exchanges about teaching artistry. Mostly, they bring confusion about what you are talking about and deem it an arts-fluffy concept of peripheral concern. Many bring their default notions of arts and arts education and add them into the pre-conception mix. Unless you clearly define or redefine teaching artistry in a way that reframes their attention, you can talk for a week and you will make no advocacy advance. Here is the crucial question: what frame do YOU carry about teaching artistry? Clarify it for yourself, and practice sharing your thoughts succinctly and compellingly within that frame. I use several frames, depending on the situation, but please develop your own rather than
NEED RESEARCH TO SUPPORT YOUR ADVOCACY WORK? ArtsEdSearch is the place to go. Created by Arts Education Partnership, this new website is the best place to easily locate research that supports advocacy. Check it out for yourself!
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how the arts can live in a new future, as the research and development department for the arts—whatever holds your understanding.
assuming I recommend mine. Your belief in your own frame—your ability to improvise within it and to provide succinct support information for it—is what gives it power. With most arts funders, my frame for teaching artistry is that it is the crucial workforce for innovation, new audience development, and expansion of the relevance of the arts— basically, teaching artists as essential personnel to create a better future. With educators, my frame is teaching artists as experts on creative engagement, as creativity coaches, and as catalysts for activating learning in all subjects. With orchestras, I frame teaching artistry as providing the solution to the entrenched survival problems of orchestral organizations, finding exciting new partnerships and relationships with audiences who currently have Page 10
no interest in orchestras. You get the idea. Find your frame. Then pull together the kitbag of advocacy material that will be strong, succinct, surprising within that frame. Formulate the key questions you will ask. A range of stories you are ready to share. A handy précis of research that nails particular aspects of your view. Dramatic examples that clarify. Personal statements that communicate your own passionate conviction in one sentence or two. The next steps you can recommend your listener take, to follow up. Finally, think of a resonant metaphor that captures the essence of your point. This may be what your listener remembers, so you want it to be rich. A teaching artist as the creativity coach for a school, as the pioneer discovering
I can tell you from experience that advocacy feels great when you are prepared and can bring listeners into your frame. It is an improv, almost an art form. In this context, in fact, advocacy is the work of art, and you are an artist in the challenging medium of personal beliefs. I can also tell you from experience that advocacy feels lousy when you are not prepared and unable to shift the standard frame. No wonder teaching artists are ambivalent about the role— they aren’t well prepared. No one is going to prepare you, so you will have to do that yourself. Is it your role? If not yours, whose is it? Is advocacy part of our responsibility as teaching artists? The answer must be a resounding “yes” if we are serious about changing the status quo. We need to frame our future as teaching artists, and call people into that frame.
Teaching Artists Guild Newsletter: Issue 04
Join TAG for a National Conversation on Teaching Artistry! In late April and early May, TAG will be hosting the first round in a series of events across the United States, exploring and presenting on major issues in our artist communities. Join us for light snacks and beverages as we dig in on part-networking event, part-focused conversation, and a whole lotta digging in deep! First series topic: A Balancing Act: Making Art, Teaching, Living, and Learning The Life/Art balance has been a compelling personal topic for many, for significant reasons! If you are a person whose artistic work is also tied into teaching or working with the community, things can get extra complicated. Issues of balance tie directly into personal and artistic identity, compensation, equity, and resources. How to navigate it all successfully? Join us as we dissect, discuss, explore, and present some strategies for this balancing act, aka your life as a working, teaching, practicing artist (and all the other hats you may wear). CHICAGO NEW YORK SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA LOS ANGELES April/May dates and specific locations are TBD- check your email for info soon! If you are not yet a TAG member, sign up now- these events are free! Can’t wait to see you there!
GET UPDATES Page 11
Teaching Artists Guild Newsletter: Issue 04
The 411 on ARTS EDUCATION Advocacy Teaching Artists Guild’s Jean Johnstone interviews the Executive Director of the California Alliance for Arts Education, Joe Landon. They discuss the arts education ecosystem in California and beyond, arts advocacy tips for teaching artists, and lessons from Joe’s career in arts education.
LISTEN HERE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE INTERVIEW: 3:55 5:57 8:00 13:30 “Why do you do what you do?”
Why isolation is a recipe for failure for Teaching Artist advocates.
“What is the greatest hurdle for Arts Education?”
How Teaching Artists can advocate for their own work.
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TI AC
The Third International Teaching Artist Conference
Teaching Artists Guild Newsletter: Issue 04
Best, next and radical
3
practice in participatory arts Edinburgh, 3-5 August 2016
Creative Scotland is delighted to be hosting the ITAC3 conference in partnership with Paul Hamlyn Foundation, ArtWorks Alliance and the conference originators. The Conference brings together artists, organisations, funders and researchers from all over the world to explore key issues relating to participatory arts practice through an inspiring mix of curated conversations, practical workshops, keynote speeches, seminars and round-table discussions.
ITAC3 follows 2 previous International Teaching Artist Conferences, the first held in Oslo in 2012 and the second in Brisbane in 2014. The 3 day conference is a partnership between the previous hosts, Eric Booth, Marit Ulvund of SEANSE, Norway, Brad Haseman and Judith McLean of Queensland University of Technology, Australia, alongside ArtWorks Alliance and current funders Creative Scotland and Paul Hamlyn Foundation.
ITAC3: Best, next and radical practice in participatory arts conference will be a dynamic platform for: actively sharing practice, learning and research in the field of participatory arts; showcasing best and next practice for the host and visiting nations; generating new connections and building energy towards an international community. Booking is now open - with 3 deadlines: 30 January 2016 30 March 2016 30 June 2016
Advance registration Early Bird registration Standard registration
ITAC3 for artists, employers and organisations working in socially-engaged arts / teaching artistry / participatory arts /community arts / arts in education and learning.
Visit the conference website for latest news, programme developments and booking details.
www.itac3.com Funded by Creative Scotland and Paul Hamlyn Foundation, building on the ArtWorks Initiative
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In the course of creating this issue, TAG spoke with several funders from around the country who support teaching artists. We asked them to talk about not just the ways in which their foundation or philanthropy supports teaching artists and/or the field of teaching artistry, but why; what is the overriding philosophy? How does their giving fit into their overall view on arts education, or arts in communities? The conversations were illuminating, and we will begin an occasional series with their responses. First, we hear from Beth Feldman Brandt of the Stockton Rush Bartol Foundation in Philadelphia. - Jean Johnstone, Executive Director, Teaching Artists Guild
FUNDER PERSPECTIVE by Beth Feldman Brandt The Bartol Foundation’s Dance Teaching Artist Group
“Those who can, do …and teach the arts.” “Bring Your Art. Bring Your Heart. Teach.” I am a teaching artist. That’s why there is so much crap in my car.”
When the Conference on Community Arts Education Teaching Artist Pre-Conference kicked off in Philadelphia in November, 2015, the group was asked by facilitator Eric Booth to write a teaching artist bumper sticker. Seventy practitioners, the vast majority teaching artists themselves, came up with many that were funny, inspiring, and heartfelt but these three illuminate in 15 words or less a few essential elements of teaching artistry. • Teaching artists (TA’s) are practicing artists who make their own art and choose to use their knowledge to engage communities in artmaking. • TA’s do this work as an extension of their own passion for the arts that drives them to open this experience to all. • TA’s are often nomadic, itinerant road warriors. Page 14
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The Bartol Foundation supports in-depth arts education and community-based arts programs in Philadelphia and, since 2007, has made it a central part of its mission to support the development of teaching artists in their practice as teachers and entrepreneurs with an eye toward the larger goal of building the field. As a small foundation, we were looking for innovative ways to expand our impact beyond the check by investing in teaching artists as the most direct path to improving the quality and reach of arts education. As the schools and neighborhoods in which teaching artists work become more challenged, the skills needed to provide productive and satisfying experiences become more complex. While skilled in a specific artistic discipline, teaching artists were often inventing their own strategies for classroom management, curriculum development and age-appropriate approaches without being able to tap into the existing body of educational practices. In addition, we realized that the network and knowledge of teaching artists was its strongest resource if we could only help make the connections. A teaching artist maps out her
The Bartol Foundation offers 30 peer-led, hands-on programs each year community project at a Bartol TA workshop, “Idea to Reality.” to over 500 artists, free of charge. Workshops focus on the teaching practice of specific disciplines and encourage exchange across disciplines. TAG’s (Teaching Artist Group) in music, theatre and dance provide the chance for networking and skills sharing. Our three-part marketing series helps teaching artists draft their marketing packet including their teaching artist statement and signature lessons. We tackle budgeting and negotiation of roles when working with community partners. We introduce TA’s in the city to national voices for the field by bringing in guest facilitators from around the country. In the coming year, we are launching the National Teaching Artist Video Library to collect and share one-minute teaching artist tips that will be available online through the Bartol website. Looking back to when we started this program, our goals were modest. We wanted to show artists that community-based arts education is viable way to help sustain a creative life and that there was an alternate path between being a certified/full-time art or music teacher and not teaching at all. The idea that this could become a national conversation was something that we hoped for in sort of a wistful, someday kind of way. The fact that this work is now part of a national movement is an added bonus that we hope will reverb into our work here by directing more attention and perhaps resources to the field of teaching artistry. We continue to think globally and act locally. While we maintain our focus on Philadelphia, we are excited to encourage our teaching artists to join the national movement to build the field of teaching artistry. Beth Feldman Brandt is the Executive Director of the Stockton Rush Bartol Foundation and a poet. More information on the Foundation’s teaching artist programs including the TA Video Library project can be found at bartol.org
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THE BUSINESS
OF TEACHING ARTISTRY VERTICAL MARKETPLACES FOR TEACHING ARTISTS by Lynn Johnson There has never been a better time to be self-employed. Back in the day, when you wanted to share your services with the world, the only options you had were to place a classified ad in the local paper or post flyers around town. At the turn of the 21st century, Craigslist came on the scene and changed everybody’s lives. Suddenly, you could post that classified ad for free in a super dynamic, super responsive space for thousands of eyes to see. With Craigslist, teaching artists like us could not only find jobs, we could also post our services, promote our classes, find work spaces, and discover free/cheap finds to use in our work. Craigslist changed our lives. Now, here we are in 2016 and the internet continues to come to the rescue of the self-employed/entrepreneurial teaching artist with the rise of vertical marketplaces. What is a vertical marketplace? According to smallbiztrends.com:
Unlike Craigslist or eBay, which offer a wide variety of goods and services, vertical marketplaces instead focus on a specific area. There are several advantages to this: you can avoid the madness of a marketplace swimming with unrelated services; having a site dedicated to a specific type of service is likely to have more detailed information for the user; and your product is more likely to stand out and deliver a higher quality conversion rate. A great example of a vertical marketplace that many of us are familiar with is Uber. When you need a ride home, you don’t visit Craigslist, crossing your fingers, hoping you might find someone who might be able to give you a ride. You access your Uber app, tell it where you are, where you want to go, and someone picks you up. It’s very focused and gets you just the service you need exactly when you need it.
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But a service like this is not just convenient for the consumer. It’s also convenient for the worker. I know a theater-based teaching artist who drives for Uber. She likes it because it is a stream of income that she can control when she is between directing and teaching gigs. Unlike waiting tables where you have to show up for shifts that a manager assigns you, when you drive for Uber, you set your own schedule, take as many or as few fares as you want, and automatically get your money deposited into your bank account on a weekly basis. It’s the ultimate in self-employment because you are doing it in collaboration with a high-quality and streamlined process that you don’t have to create or manage yourself. I believe that vertical marketplaces like Uber are the saving grace of the modern teaching artist. As self-employed artists, you have way more control over when, where, and how you earn that extra money while between gigs. If the thought of driving other folks around is not your thing but you do own a car, you can hook up with GetAround, allowing you to make your car available to others for a fee. Or there are sites like Taskrabbit (one of my favorites) where you can get paid to run errands for people - everything from fixing toilets and cleaning out attics to waiting in line at popular restaurants! For those of us who are more entrepreneurial in nature, working to build larger manifestations of our vision, vertical marketplaces may be just the thing to help us launch or grow our businesses. These platforms can help us test our markets, showcase our work, and connect us to just the right customers. Here are 10 vertical marketplaces that every self-employed and/or entrepreneurial teaching artist should check out. I have chosen these websites because our unique skills as people who make and people who teach may be just the right combination of skills to stand out from the crowd and build the business of our dreams.
10 VERTICAL MARKETPLACES FOR TEACHING ARTISTS 1
This is the site to find professionals from a variety of fields. As a consumer, I have personally used Thumbtack to book photographers, videographers, and website developers. Dance and music teachers, vocal coaches, yoga instructors, and acting teachers from all over the country also use this site as a marketplace.
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For those of us who love kids, child care can provide a great source of income. What I love most about UrbanSitter is that it allows your clients to rate, review, and recommend you and, since it’s connected to Facebook, potential clients can see which child care providers are in their social network, thus building trust before they even meet you. Also, the profile page for providers is quite robust, allowing you to really sell your skills. Wouldn’t any parent want to hire a professional teaching artist to work with their kids?!
Like Etsy, ArtFire is a marketplace for artists and crafters. You make your work and build your own online store where potential customers can seek you out and start buying. As teaching artists, you grow your audience every time you teach a class. You can use a site like this to share your work with your students and encourage them to support your work just as you are supporting theirs. Crated Crated is another visual art marketplace focused on fine artists. The site has tons of tools to help you drive traffic to your own personal online gallery and they only take a cut of 20%! Are you a filmmaker or media artist? Reelhouse gives you the platform to upload your work for potential viewers who then have to pay to view your work. Isn’t that how it should be? Skillshare I am super excited about the rise of the online learning industry and there are dozens of sites out there to support you to teach your expertise virtually to hundreds of students at a time. Skillshare is a great site for us because their classes are all built around leading your students towards a completed project which can help them build a portfolio for themselves. PopExpert Another learning site, PopExpert is focused on promoting you as an expert in your field. On this site, you don’t just teach classes, you also have the capacity to provide one-on-one coaching and support. Konnektid This site uses the power of an online platform to bring you faceto-face with your students. On Konnektid, you are connected (duh) to potential students in your area. You meet, you get to know each other, and you start teaching.
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Meetup Another very popular site designed to facilitate in-person interactions, folks don’t always think of Meetup as a source of revenue. Sure, many folks use the site as a way to start clubs and groups purely for social purposes. However, it is also a very powerful vehicle for building your tribe and promoting your own classes and events. Peek Finally, I thought this was a fun site and one teaching artists might not consider. Have you ever thought about using your skills as a performer and teacher to lead entertaining and educational tours? Peek is a site that allows tour operators to sell dynamic tours to travelers in their local area. Give it a try. Sign up and post yourself and your work on some of these vertical marketplaces. See what happens and let me know how it goes. Lynn Johnson is the co-founder and CEO of Glitter & Razz Productions LLC, producers of the highly popular Go Girls! Camp. She proudly serves on the National Advisory Committee for Teaching Artists Guild. Follow her on Twitter @lynnjohnson
The Teaching Artist as Entrepreneur A Free Webinar Wednesday, April 13 at 12:00 noon PST
Did you read this article written published in The Atlantic last year where writer, William Deresiewicz states: “The institutions that have undergirded the existing system are contracting or disintegrating. Professors are becoming adjuncts. Employees are becoming independent contractors (or unpaid interns). Everyone is in a budget squeeze: downsizing, outsourcing, merging, or collapsing. Now we’re all supposed to be our own boss, our own business: our own agent; our own label; our own marketing, production, and accounting departments. Entrepreneurialism is being sold to us as an opportunity. It is, by and large, a necessity. Everybody understands by now that nobody can count on a job.” What do you think of this statement? Do you agree or disagree? And what are the implications of this idea on our professional lives as teaching artists? On Wednesday, April 13 at 12pm PST, join Jean Johnstone, Executive Director of Teaching Artists Guild (TAG) and Lynn Johnson, CEO/Co-Founder of Go Girls! Camp for a lively discussion on The Teaching Artist as Entrepreneur. In this 45-minute webinar, Jean and Lynn will discuss: The pros and cons of teaching artists taking on an entrepreneurial identity Stories and models of what it looks like to successfully integrate entrepreneurism into your work What you need to know to build your skills as a Teaching Artist Entrepreneur This webinar is free. Whether or not you can attend the live webinar, please RSVP and you will receive the recorded presentation to watch at your own convenience.
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KATE BELL INTERVIEWS TEACHING ARTISTS ABOUT KATE BELL Kate Bell is a playwright, singer/songwriter, and teaching artist. Kate has been a teaching artist in the New York City Public Schools since 2004, and is currently teaching for Theater Development Fund, Marquis Studios, Brooklyn Arts Council, and Park Avenue Armory. She also has experience working with older adults through Elders Share The Arts and Lifetime Arts, as well as being a 2012 SPARC grant artist-in-residence at Krakus Senior Center in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. In the following interview, Kate’s questions are in bold.
Hello, Rachna Ramya Agrawal! How long have you been a Teaching Artist? I have been a teaching artist since 1988. I started teaching Kathak, a classical Indian dance form, six months after I arrived in America. Kathak is more than 2,000 years old, and is known for its swiftness, sharpness, and emotional content. In the beginning my basic goal was to increase awareness and understanding of Indian music, dance, arts, and culture in America. At that time hardly anyone knew about the art of Kathak in Connecticut. I felt it was my personal responsibility to make people aware of this Page 20
beautiful dance form, at least within the Indian community of Connecticut. I started teaching to some interested students. In 1993, I was selected as a teaching artist for the Connecticut Commission on the Arts, now known as the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism. I started attending the Commission’s HOT (Higher Order Thinking) Schools Summer Institutes and other professional development programs that focused on many innovative arts-integrated strategies for both the schools and the teaching artists. My passion
Rachna Ramya Agrawal
and commitment for teaching started to grow and teaching Kathak became more than merely spreading awareness of this art form. Now the emphasis of my teaching is on appreciation of arts; cultivating respect for other cultures; enhancement of self-awareness, self- esteem, and self-discipline; and using dance as a form of communication and expression. Teaching dance is a way for me to make students understand the “unity principle” in all aspects of life. As a teaching artist, I believe that dance is one of the most dynam-
Teaching Artists Guild Newsletter: Issue 04
ic art forms, where students learn to see their bodies as a vehicle to express themselves. Through their bodies they paint the picture of life and learn to connect with others and themselves. What organizations do you work for? I work for the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism and participate in their residency programs at different public schools. I also work for Arts for Learning Connecticut. Arts for Learning sends me to public schools in Connecticut for both workshops and my performances. In addition to working for the above two organizations, I teach a Kathak course at Trinity College. I am also the Artistic Director of Sumbhaav School of Kathak Dance, where I teach students looking for more indepth Kathak training. What are your current or most recent teaching projects? There are so many projects going on at the same time. One of my favorite projects that I am working on right now is “Bringing the Connecticut Freedom Trail to Life through the Arts.” It’s a pilot program developed by The Department of Economic and Community Development State Historic Preservation Office, Connecticut Office of the Arts, and the State Department of Edu-
cation. At present, there are eight schools in Connecticut which are participating in this program. There is a team of eight teaching artists who are working on this project and the team is led by a renowned teaching artist, Leslie Johnson. During the fall of 2015, I visited the Edgewood Magnet School with Page McBrier, another teaching artist. Page McBrier is the author of forty-four books for young readers, including the award-winning New York Times best-seller, Beatrice’s Goat. The Freedom Trail designates over 120 heritage sites in Connecticut that represent the struggle towards freedom for the state’s African American community. Page McBrier and I used theater, movement, music, art, and writing to examine the course of freedom in the United States and elsewhere. We worked closely with the classroom teacher and the music teacher at the Edgewood Magnet school. It was a collaborative effort that also supported the Common Core State Standards for the fifth grade curriculum. It was a highly successful and very satisfying residency where the students gained deeper understanding about empathy, tolerance, equality, and freedom by comprehending the story of Amistad. These fifth graders immersed themselves in the subject, especially our compelling investigation of how Americans conceive of freedom and
equality, and how those conceptions have changed over the course of U.S. history, especially for various racial, ethnic, religious, and gender minority groups. Page McBrier and I’ll be visiting another school in the spring and will be working on the Freedom Trail project with eighth graders. Another project very close to my heart is preparing students at the Sumbhaav School of Kathak Dance for the school’s year-end recital. I work with over sixty of my Kathak students on a weekly basis and teach them traditional and contemporary choreography for this recital. I am also truly looking forward to another Connecticut Commission on the Culture and Tourism project which will begin in March, where
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I’ll be collaborating with fifth grade teachers to teach the American Revolution through movement and arts. What’s the most memorable moment teaching you’ve had recently? With the Freedom Trail Project, every day was special and memorable. Freedom is a fundamental human right and it was great to see students so actively participating in all art-based exercises to explore what it means to be free, how free we really are, etc. The same is true with the projects at the Sumbhaav School of Kathak dance. Every class, every rehearsal seems so important and substantial. Each day there is an “Aha” moment and this is what I love about my work. All those moments are memorable when I see sparkles in my students’ eyes that tell me that something has struck the chord within. The great and memorable moments don’t lurk in some shadowy corner… in the art field they are always with us. And we experience them every day. What other creative projects of your own are you working on right now? I am also a performer, writer, and a student of music. When I am not teaching, I am always practicing my dance and music. I spend a lot of time choreographing different
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dance pieces. Right now I am collaborating with an Odissi (another classical dance form of India) dancer and we are creating different dance pieces together, which we will be performing this year at different venues. I am also working on a book project, which is going very slow because of lack of time. But then as they say in India - “bund bund kar ke ghara bharta hai” (a water pot fills drop by drop). 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? In this world of multi-tasking, finding balance between all the things that we do can be overwhelming. I have to thank my Kathak training that has taught me the art of time and energy management. It’s important to acknowledge how much time and energy we have and how to use them effectively. I feel that it’s very important to identify the areas of life that are important for us. For me, my family, my teaching endeavors, my performing career, and other creative projects that I pursue as my hobby are all equally important. I try to make sure that one area is not burdening the others and that I am able to nourish each area, which in turn nourishes me at emotional and mental levels. I truly believe that in order to find
balance in different areas of life, we need to find the components within ourselves that need to be balanced. This is why meditation and contemplation are substantial parts of my life. Meditation helps me stay calm and has helped my critical and creative thinking. I also studied Business Management in college, where I learned the benefits of goal setting, planning, preparing, and reflecting. I set goals for each year, each week, and then for every day. I plan things out, periodically reflect on what’s going on with my life, and examine whether all aspects of my life are working properly. None of this takes too much time. It’s mainly an awareness of what’s going on in my life and an awareness of where I need to be. There are days when I feel overpowered by external circumstances, especially the weeks when I end up working seven days a week and twelve plus hours a day. I simply try to accept my situation and wait for the moment when I can again bring my life back to where I feel calm, creative, and inspired. Also, when I feel overwhelmed, I consciously turn my attention to the fact that I am so blessed to be doing what I love to do. Describe the overlap between your teaching work and your creative work.
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It’s hard to separate my teaching work and creative work since they both involve art, imagination, and creative thought. My creative work inspires my teaching and my teaching gives me opportunity to learn more. I became a better artist after I started teaching. Teaching helps me realize the areas of understanding and practicing my art that need to be strengthened. This is why I am both a teacher and a student. Being a student always keeps me in a state of awe, which is so important for my creative work. Do the organizations you work for actively support and encourage the connections between your teaching practice and your creative practice? Definitely. All the organizations that I work with give me tremendous opportunity to grow as a performer and as a creative artist. For example, whenever I go to a school system to teach, I am given the opportunity to perform so that the students can truly see my creative work and know me as an artist. If you could change one thing about your life as a Teaching Artist, what would it be? There is room for betterment and change in every field that we work. But at this point I feel that there is only one thing that will truly improve
my teaching life: less paperwork. All school projects require a lot of paper work. I forget about energy management as soon as I see a pile of paperwork in front of me.
Jonathan Gottschall, and many more. Online registration will open on February 26th. Details will be posted on http://www.cultureandtourism.org/
Offer any plugs for upcoming teaching/creative projects of your own or of people you admire.
I am really excited about Pt. Birju Maharaj’s upcoming production in New York. He is considered the greatest Kathak dancer of the world, an institution in himself. He is auditioning Kathak students in America for his production, which will have three shows at Madison Square Garden. A few of my Kathak students have been chosen for this production. They haven’t started to advertise it yet, but there should be more information on his website: http:// www.birjumaharaj-kalashram.com/
I have a website where anyone can read more about my projects: www.kathakusa. com The Ted Hershey Dance and Music Marathon is an inspiring event in Hartford on April 9th. The Marathon celebrates the life and work of Ted Hershey, who was a principal dancer with the Hartford Ballet and the co-founder of Works Contemporary Dance. About twenty five very talented dance companies and dance institutions will showcase their work at The Marathon annual dance concert. The details will be posted on The Marathon’s website: http://www.tedhershey.com The 23rd Annual HOT Schools Summer Institute from Connecticut Office of the Arts will take place from July 11-15th 2016 in Hartford, CT. This year’s theme is STORYTELLING: An Artful Journey. The Institute faculty includes national experts and noted artists, such as Gerald Richards, Carmen Agra Deedy, Cindy Myers Foley, Gayle Danley,
Interview by Kate Bell
www.katebell.info
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FIELD BUILDING: THE TEACHING ARTISTS PHILOSOPHY PROJECT WHY DO I DO WHAT I DO?
“It is important to be able to describe WHAT we do as teaching artists. It is equally important to be able to describe HOW we do our work—what is our practice? And perhaps what often goes unspoken is the importance for all of us, as individuals and as a field, of being able to articulate WHY we do what we do.”
How do we identify and articulate our personal teaching artist’s philosophy and how can it support excellence and sustainability in our individual practice as it contributes to the field as a whole? This is the question Jean Taylor, actor and Lincoln Center master teaching artist, posed to me back in mid2015. She was grappling with both the sense of a collective “why” of teaching artistry, and the way articulating our purpose and beliefs serve us as artists and teaching artists, particularly. In the Teaching Artist’s Manifesto, we declare what we do, where, for whom, towards what. We begin to suggest that there may be a collective “why”. Page 24
by Jean Johnstone
Jean Taylor and I decided this would be a particularly important and engaging topic to delve into together and bring to a national convening of teaching artists (November 2015 at the National Guild for Community Art Education pre-conference day focused on teaching artists). We were joined by Nicole Ripley from Writers Theatre in Chicago. Together, our goals were to build out a workshop on identifying one’s own personal teaching artist philosophy, which Jean Taylor had been working on at Lincoln Center Education; and to build out a Thinker’s Wall as a reference and touchstone for artists working in the community and teaching; and finally, working from both of these grounding places, begin to
pull together a working document much like the Teaching Artists Manifesto, a companion piece which attempts to describe the shared beliefs which inform this practise of ours. We posit that: Our personal TA philosophy is informed by: • Our actual experiences • Our discussions and observations with colleagues • Encounters with philosophers/thinkers inside and outside of our field • Shifts in the worlds/contexts within which we work • Our depth of knowledge and current work in our art form (art making)
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We brought the first draft of a workshop to the National Guild conference in November, and ran through it with a group, who helped brainstorm the Thinker’s Wall further, and who have volunteered to help us as we move forward in development of a community response to these questions. The Thinker’s Wall will be a resource online at the TAG website as well as at Lincoln Center Education, available for anyone to reference as they think about their practice. We are eager to run the workshops with more teaching artists, examining their practice and values to arrive to a sense of clarity around the great big “why”. In the meantime, I wonder:
What is your personal philosophy for your work? How did you arrive at it? What informs what you do? Respond to us here! RESPOND
WE ARE TEACHING ARTISTS. schools • theaters • concert halls • museums • wellness centers
WE WORK WITH: correctional facilities • families • businesses (and other partners)
TO MAKE THE ARTS ACCESSIBLE TO ALL, REGARDLESS OF CIRCUMSTANCES OR “TALENT.” TO PROVIDE OUR COMMUNITIES WITH innovation • critical thinking • curiosity QUALITY ART-MAKING EXPERIENCES joy • understanding • self-expression empathy, • awareness THAT STIMULATE: TO EMPLOY THE ARTS AS A MEANS OF BRINGING COMMUNITIES TOGETHER
CELEBRATING THAT WHICH MAKES US JOYFUL,
CALLING OUT THAT WHICH WE WANT TO CHANGE. WE ARE STORYTELLERS. WE ARE OBSERVERS. WE ARE PERFORMERS.
WE ARE WRITERS. WE ARE CREATORS. WE ARE DESIGNERS. WE ARE MAKERS.
and...
WE REPRESENT ALL ART FORMS.
WE ARE STRONGEST WHEN WE ALL WORK TOGETHER.
Thus, we pledge our commitment to: BUILDING STRONG, PASSIONATE, AND ENGAGED NETWORKS OF TEACHING ARTISTS
WHO ARE READY AND WILLING TO BOTH CONTRIBUTE TO AND BENEFIT FROM THE POWER OF OUR COLLECTIVE WORK. PROMOTING FAIR AND HIGH QUALITY STANDARDS IN THE FIELD. ADVOCATING FOR WAGES THAT ENSURE TEACHING ARTISTS
CAN MAKE A LIVING WHILE DOING THEIR WORK. MOBILIZING AND SUPPORTING THE LEADERSHIP OF TEACHING ARTISTS
AT THE LOCAL, REGIONAL, AND NATIONAL LEVELS TO MAKE CHANGE HAPPEN IN THE COMMUNITIES WE SERVE.
SHARING
resources • research • news • opportunities projects • curriculum and stories from the field.
PRODUCING AND SUPPORTING NATIONAL EVENTS, CONVERSATIONS,
AND CONVENINGS THAT ALLOW TEACHING ARTISTS TO
LEARN, CREATE, PLAY, AND WORK TOGETHER
TOWARDS COLLECTIVE ACTION.
JOIN US. HELP US MAKE THESE GOALS REAL. Page 25
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TEACHING ARTISTRY
& SOCIAL JUSTICE by Tina LaPadula and Robyne Walker Murphy
We eagerly accepted an invitation to co-lead a social justice track for a national convening of teaching artists. Our planning took shape through a series of email volleys and phone conversations. Commiserating coast to coast and sharing heartbreak over the current state of racial oppression, anger over education injustice, and feelings of marginalization in social justice work as it relates to the arts. There is a common misconception that social justice education is just for children of color in urban areas. Many teaching artists and arts educators have said to us, “That sounds great, but I don’t teach that demographic”. To this we ask, “Is there a demographic that doesn’t need to understand inequity, privilege, and oppression?” There can be no oppressed without oppressors.
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We’ve also both encountered a persistent argument that social justice practices and classroom strategies only makes sense in certain genres of art making like hip hop, or in “community arts” settings. We feel these distinctions are often used to maintain a classist and racist narrative in the art world hierarchy. To this we say, “How can any teacher, (whether they teach break dance or ballet) be effective if they haven’t unpacked their culture, identity and privilege and considered how their perspective affects their teaching and their students?” As we dug deeper into our frustrations we teased apart 2 strands of social justice teaching artistry that each of us practiced. We schemed and dreamed and outlined a plan. An invitation to our fellow teaching artists also seeking inspiration and hope. A goal to rally some like-minded troops and amass shared knowledge and resources and demystify once and for all social justice education for our arts education peers.
“How can any teacher, (whether they teach break dance or ballet) be effective if they haven’t unpacked their culture, identity and privilege and considered how their perspective affects their teaching and their students?”
6 months after our initial chats began, we came together in Philadelphia at The National Guild for Community Arts Conference in November 2015, and a collective of arts educators combined forces to Center the Work of Social Justice and Teaching Artistry and embark on a project to illuminate both the social justice components of effective teaching artistry, and the pedagogy of social justice arts education.
We kicked off the day long workshop with community building and reflection rooted in teaching artist history and current efforts to address oppression (ie. the Black Lives Matter movement). Our work together was split into 3 segments; part personal challenge, as we encouraged ourselves as artists and educators to assess our own practice, cultures and identities, part discussion and agreement on definitions and vocabulary for shared understanding, and a round up of resources and strategies that inspire us. Tina outlined essential social justice practices that are foundational for a every teaching artist’s personal work and for use in the classroom. She lead the team of collaborators through a series of activities before discussing the merits and effectiveness of each strategy. A cultural backpack activity designed to spark dialogue around the visible and invisible aspects of our classrooms and communities was experimented with first. An identity wheel adapted from “Voices of Discovery” at Arizona State University was utilized, requiring participants to self identify regarding race, class gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, etc. and discuss identities we think about “most or least often” in our lives, and in our teaching personas. A guide for interrupting, naming and framing oppressive situations came next, as we focused in on scenarios from arts classrooms. Lastly, the group was introduced to Arts Corps Social Justice Framework for Teaching Artists, a helpful series of questions teaching artists should ask themselves before, during and after classes or residencies to ensure we are thinking critically and through and SJ lens about the role we play in the art experiences of the students we teach. To highlight important components of social justice pedagogy, Robyne used an article by Marit
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Dewhurst’s, “The Inevitable Question: Defining Features of Social Justice Art Education”. In it, Dewhurst defines three “dimensions” of social justice pedagogy: connection, questioning and translating. Dewhurst also provides the following strategies for social justice artmaking: Collaborative, Reciprocal and Contextual Planning; Student-Driven Projects; Relevant Reflection and Critical Questions. Next, we examined a exemplary social justice unit created, led and facilitated by a visual arts teaching artist from the DreamYard Art Center, Carla Repice. Repice’s unit “Misrepresentations in the Media” brilliantly demonstrated how an educator used both the three dimensions of social justice pedagogy (connection, questioning and translating) along with the strategies for social justice artmaking to create a powerful project that challenged high school visual arts students to think critically about their world, analyze the media they digest and respond through their art. As a group, we were able to use this real life example from Repice’s unit to reflect back on Dewhurst’s piece. We wrapped up by committing to ongoing work as an social justice teaching collective, and by crafting a plan for accomplishing our ultimate goal: collaborating on a crowd-sourced site that celebrates best practices, practitioners and projects from all over the country that can serve as beacons, inspirations and resources for expanding the work from the margins to the mainstream. Our time together was fast and impactful. Teaching artists are really good at inspiring and mentoring each We wax philosophical other. We wax philosophical and feel passionately that and feel passionately that social justice is teaching artistry and that social justice education is good teaching. It is teaching that in- that that social justice is troduces multiple perspectives. It requires that teachers teaching artistry and that and students learn from one another and that teachers social justice education is create curriculum that is relevant to the lives of those they are teaching. It teaches young people to use the good teaching. very creative habits we care about in the arts, to think critically about the work and question the information they receive, to reflect on how things are, and to imagine new and better solutions. And so we’re beginning to build the thing, a massive resource for ourselves and each other. With a variety of topics and tools related to:
● ● ● ●
Personal and Classroom practice Pedagogy-basic terms and definitions Lesson and unit plans, assessments and project examples from the field Video clips / tips and TA reflections
We’re talking to TAG about helping us host it and we have plans to continue the exploration of social justice education via video chat sessions. We’re excited to dig into the work and disseminate it far and wide. We’ll check back with a progress report soon. For more info or to share resources contact Katie Rainey krainey@communitywordproject.org. Finally, we want to get a HUGE thank you and “shout out” to our fellow “instigators”.
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STAY TUNED!
THE FULL COLLECTION OF SOCIAL JUSTICE TEACHING ARTISTRY RESOURCES WILL BE AVAILABLE ON THE WEB, SOON. To be notified of when these resources are online, join the TAG email list here. If you have a resource you’d like to have added to the collection, be sure to share it with Katie Rainey krainey@communitywordproject.org Over the past 2 decades Tina LaPadula has poured much of her creative energy into teaching artistry and equitable arts access efforts with Seattle Public Schools, Centrum Arts, Power of Hope, Seattle Children’s Theatre, and especially with Arts Corps, the award winning arts education non-profit she helped found in 2000. Tina revels in building spaces for diverse communities to create and learn together and regularly facilitates workshops on social justice and arts learning for various arts education organizations and national conferences. Tina is the former co-chair of the Association of Teaching Artists, she runs the Seattle Teaching Artist Network, and is a faculty member for the WA State Teaching Artist training Lab. As a performer, Tina has worked in Seattle, New York, London, and Pennsylvania, and is profoundly grateful for the teaching artists that supported her curiosity, skill and self expression. She credits her early work at the YWCA for teaching her the fundamentals of youth development and illuminating the need for quality arts learning for all young people. Robyne Walker Murphy is the Director of Membership Development and Engagement at the National Guild for Community Arts Education. Prior to the Guild, she served as the Director of the DreamYard Art Center in the South Bronx for seven years. During that time she helped lead the organization through the development of arts and social justice programming and community engagement initiatives. Under her direction, DreamYard Art Center was recognized by the White House as one of the top 12 out of school programs in the nation. Robyne accepted the award from First Lady Michelle Obama at a White House ceremony. Robyne is the founder and host of the monthly twitter chat series “Unapologetically Flyy: Conversations on Love, Culture and Movement Building (#flyychat).She lives in Ditmas Park, Brooklyn with her husband, Tarik and her son, Ras.
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FEATURED INTERVIEW:
TEACHING ARTIST, DANCER, COLLABORATOR: CHINCHIN HSU Photo 1 Page 30
Teaching Artists Guild Newsletter: Issue 04
This quarter we spoke with teaching artist ChinChin Hsu about her career, the inspiration behind her work, and her tips for other teaching artists. What do you do? I am an artist mentor/ teaching artist with Performing Arts Workshop and a dancer/collaborator with Margaret Jenkins Dance Company in the Bay Area. Why do you do it? Moving my body in space through time has nurtured my ability to problem solve, be aware of surroundings, be sensitive to humanity and managing myself to be flexible and available to people. I teach because I love sharing, I love to be inspired by others and being around the youngsters. How did you begin/what has your path been to this work? As far back as I could remember, I always wanted to be a professional dancer. After pursuing my BFA in dance, I have had some opportunities to work with different choreographers around the world, I had the desire to search for new community which I can contribute my knowledge of dance to aside from being a dancer onstage. I discovered Performing Arts Workshop in 2008, I have grown as a
teaching artist and gotten the privilege to build relationship with local students and classroom teachers. I found myself being the agent delivering the exchange between classroom and stage. Do you call yourself a teaching artist? Yes, I consider myself a teaching artist who is curios in the bridge between studio and classroom. What would you recommend other artists who teach or work in communities to do if they are interested in this kind of work? I would recommend teaching artists to be listeners before being teachers. Listen to possibilities in the classroom, understand what is relevant to your students and what skills are required of your students to take on problem solving exercises. And most important, pour your heart into what you bring to the classroom whether is your lesson plan, attitude or energy. Both teachers and students carry great responsibility for the future, you must be curious and constantly evolving yourself as a creative teaching artist.
Who is your favorite/most important philosopher/thinker/mentor? A great creative thinker, philosopher and mentor I’ve always admired is my mom, Yao-Ru Kung. I would think that I have figured out how she thinks and deals with the world by now, but she always surprises me with her responds. She is a traditional Taiwanese woman who thinks creatively and takes actions with respect and conscious. I see graceful quality of a woman who carries traditions in her visionary life in 2016. She is curious, loves learning and is never afraid of revising herself and changes. I am still catching up with her footprint and hopefully to master the art form of being Yao-Ru Kung. It’s a fortune to be born from the person I admire my whole life.
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Photo 2
“I would recommend teaching artists to be listeners before being teachers.� Photo 3
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“I consider myself a teaching artist who is curious in the bridge between studio and classroom.” Photos: Photo 1 by Jason Lam Photo 2 by Russell Jew Photo 5 by Russell Jew
Photo 4
Cover photo by Gama Hsu
Photo 5
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STILL LEARNING AFTER ALL THESE YEARS...
By Elise May
Let’s get started …so begins my first day at Lincoln Center Education’s Intermediate Teaching Artist Training during their Summer Forum 2015; two weeks of classes, keynotes, panels and performances. I love professional development! I thrive on being in a room filled with like-minded people who love the arts and sharing their experience. There is plenty of PD around for teachers; plenty around for artists; but for teaching artists – not so much. Let’s not confuse this with Teaching Artist training, where an organization hones your skills to teach for them in their pedagogical style. I mean professional development for Teaching Artists by Master Teaching Artists to share techniques, best practices, ideas and rigorous experiential exploration all while having a lot of fun! When Lincoln Center Education (LCE) spread the news that they were creating a course which was open to all teaching artists I thought I would apply. I had taken many PD courses where the pedagogy was specific to the organization which always left me feeling a bit disenfranchised; as if I was in a world of teaching artists who chose to speak different languages. It felt competitive. As these courses were open to teachers, I also felt that there was a sales pitch involved to get the organization’s programs in schools. So I was slightly skeptical about LCE, wondering if all I was going to learn would be related to their model of aesthetic education focused on a work of art. While I thoroughly enjoy that practice, most of my teaching artistry has not been focused through that lens. I am an Independent Teaching Artist with a variety of programs in schools and communities which develop vocal empowerment through theatre arts. I love working with popu-
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lations that may never make their way to a stage to perform but can use the skills that theatre and voice utilize to empower them no matter what direction their futures take. While my work does not center on an existing work of art, it very often creates a new one. I knew there were other TAs out there like me, developing relationships with districts, libraries and community centers while writing grants and creating programs to meet their needs. Yet almost every form of professional development I signed up for would generally lead me to a group of educators interested in the organization’s programs and TAs who wanted to work for those organizations. While applying to the LCE program, I learned that Russell Granet had joined Lincoln Center Education as their Executive Director. I had taken a Professional Development course from him several years ago when he was the Director of Professional Development at the Center for Arts Education. The PD was focused on Arts for the Special Needs population, which has direct applications to several of my programs. I enjoyed the class very much. Mr. Granet’s knowledge, presentation and class structure gave me much to take away. Most importantly to me, the focus was arts education to service a population in need rather than any one ideology or pedagogy. This made me hopeful that LCE’s new initiative would have the same open approach. Then there was the fact that Eric Booth was advocating for the program. His article, “Something’s Happening: Teaching Artistry Is Having a Growth Spurt,” (Booth, E. (2015, July – September) Something’s Happening: Teaching Artistry Is Having a Growth Spurt. Teaching Artist Journal, 13, 151-159) was recommended reading prior to the program. In it is the clear desire to define and unite a field that is almost as old as time in the hopes that it will only grow bigger and stronger (as opposed to going extinct!) Part of helping to make that growth happen was an inclusive approach which I had not seen linked with arts education before. This idea that there was more than one way to teach artistry was defined as “Purpose Threads.” The defined purpose of each thread moving forward is done so from the aforementioned article with the author’s permission. Near the end of Eric’s article, the “threads” were a new beginning for me. Although I knew I had never worked in the first thread (work of art), I was about to learn that I had worked in five of the others (art skills development, arts integration, community quality of life, social development and digital). This was extremely validating. For years, I didn’t know whether or not I should use the term Teaching Artist because I did not work for a large organization. Now, the ‘father of teaching artistry’ himself, had clearly defined that what I do makes me a teaching artist. Now I owned it! Eric Booth has been a consultant in the creation of the LCE TA training program from its inception. In his own words, “I have had the good fortune of broad experience throughout the field, so I am able to help LCE open up to a fully inclusive training.” Knowing that Eric was at the forefront of this new program, open to exploring teaching artistry of all ideologies, I felt as if I finally fit in. Application completed, processed and accepted
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into a class of 19 TAs from seven countries. So… Let’s get started. Upon entering the room, the first thing I see is the gorgeous smile on the face of LaTonya Borsay. She was one of the facilitators of a course I took at the Theatrical Teaching Institute at the Roundabout Theatre Company. The focus there was a framework they developed using elements of a play to create cross-curricular lessons. Besides the comfort of a familiar face, I instantly felt that, unless LaTonya had switched allegiance, Lincoln Center Education was committed to opening its educational scope beyond its own experience. I learned that each day we will be focusing on a different “purpose thread” and that the facilitators were being challenged to teach a lesson in a thread other than the one they were used to. I liked that. It showed me this learning process was not expected to be one-way. Besides these experiential workshops, each day would include a keynote speaker and/or panel sharing their work in the field. Many are connected in some historic or present way to Lincoln Center. Russell Granet, Matt Britton, Jed Bernstein, Ping Chong, Tim Webb, Gary Hynes and Eric Booth presented. Panel discussions included The Evolving Role of Cultural Organizations in Education, Growth Mindset: The Psychology of Success, Sustaining Philosophically-led Institutions, Culture at the Core, Redefining Advocacy in Arts Education and Teaching Artists in the 21st Century. Not all of these sessions were specifically geared towards Teaching Artists as other programs in Summer Forum were run simultaneously. All involved had impressive resumes and I looked forward to hearing what they had to say as well as seeing some of their professional work, which was also part of the program. It looked as if the next two weeks were going to be exhilarating and exhausting. I was looking forward to seeing if it was going to be the inclusive professional development experience I had been looking for. Let’s get started! LaTonya’s lesson was focused on the Work of Art thread; its purpose to enhance the encounter with art works. Initially, we didn’t know what the work of art was. The phrase, “Let’s get started,” was used repeatedly in the lesson which continued with choral clapping and exercises focused on cultural identity. It was a beautifully scaffolded lesson that led to us creating short scenarios of our own cultural identities. After that we went to see a play called Beyond Sacred: Stories of Muslim Identity by Ping Chong. The lights dimmed and the first words I heard were “Let’s get started” and instantly the connection to LaTonya’s workshop was clear. She opened up a way for us to engage in this new piece of theater which was presented by non-actors telling their stories of Muslim identity. I was impressed with Latonya’s ease as a facilitator in this work of art thread. The last time I had taken a class with her, the methodology was quite different.
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I was hooked. On our second day, we explored the Skills-Based thread; its purpose to deepen the development of art-making skills. I get this. I use this thread. However, the facilitator, Richard Mannoia, started with a rhythm and a phrase I couldn’t get from my head to my hands and feet. I was feeling quite spastic and inept. Richard opened up other avenues to connect with the rhythm: auditory, visual, different notation, small groups with student leaders and individual tuition. I was getting better, but each time I achieved a level of comfort Richard added another level to differentiate and engage those well beyond my level of (in)competency. Fortunately, the level of frustration I felt was totally outweighed by the fun I had. While the methods used were very akin to mine in using multiple intelligences, trying a new skill put me back in a place where many of my students are when faced with a new challenge. I find that a valuable place to inhabit. Our third day’s focus was the Arts Integration thread; its purpose to catalyze the learning of nonarts subjects. A piece of cake! I do this all the time. Barbara Ellmann starts by asking us to share personal migration stories in small groups. She then handed each group a quote from Jacob Lawrence’s Migration Series and asked us each to create a collage with construction paper. I thought I felt inept in Richard’s Again, I remember the importance workshop; now I felt entirely out of my depth. Creating visual art is defias a teaching artist to recognize nitely not my thing. Fortunately, I how uncomfortable students can don’t mind trying. Again, I remember the importance as a teaching artist sometimes be with what is asked of to recognize how uncomfortable them. As long as I give them a safe students can sometimes be with what is asked of them. As long as place and clear parameters to exI give them a safe place and clear plore, wonderful things can happen. parameters to explore, wonderful things can happen. Scissors started snipping all around the room. The more I saw of others creative abilities, the less I wanted to start. Barbara recognized my reticence and was extremely supportive and nurturing. I took the plunge. I created something I would classify as “primitive”. Barbara then told us the story of Jacob Lawrence’s creation of 60 paintings for the great migration. That afternoon we met at MOMA. The exhibit was extremely disturbing on so many levels as history has a terrible way of repeating itself or just not changing. The impact of the exhibit, with the recent events in Charleston and subsequent church burnings was immense. Wait! Isn’t this the Work of Art thread? We are in a museum! Are we being manipulated into thinking that work of art is central to all threads? We have only worked with three threads so far and yet I’m already seeing how intertwined they can be. On the fourth day, my suspicion continued as we explored the Community Quality of Life thread; its purpose to increase the livability of communities. We traveled up to The Point in the Bronx. It is an amazing community center dedicated to youth development and the cultural and economic revitalization of their community. We learned about what they do from the staff who were available to participate in our workshop. Then, the LCE facilitators led a workshop to help the staff
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Photo credit: Lincoln Center Education
understand what we do. It was a workshop based on a musical work of art. It was a great workshop facilitated by Judith Hill Bose. The information we received from the staff was invaluable regarding what a community organization needs to do for its families to help all thrive. The day included a fabulous exchange of ideas and I think LCE walked away with a wonderful new community connection. As a teaching artist who works a lot in my community, I had a fun day, but was left wondering who benefitted more from the experience. At the end of our first week, Eric Booth explored the Social/Personal thread in a workshop; its purpose to develop personal or social capacities. He stated that this is the fastest growing thread in the teaching artist industry, with arts programming for the aging leading the way. I have explored this through PD on creative aging offered by Lifetime Arts. At LCE, we discussed going off site on Monday to the Goddard Riverside Community Center and working with a group of 40 children who go to arts camp there. We worked as a group on a lesson plan which would incorporate the artistic interests of the children. It was decided we would use newspaper photographs and headlines to evoke points of view from the children which would be explored and presented through dance, music, fine art or theatre. I work in this thread a lot; not in the inner city but with a large immigrant population. In this environment, the necessity for comfort and a safe place to tell your story in is essential. You never know what experiences or memories will be evoked. While the need for process is essential, this group also has a need for product. This way they can see how the arts can be used by them to make sure their voices are heard. This can be a life-changing experience for all involved. No work of art used in our lesson here but some amazing new ones were created! Judith Hill Bose, one of the LCE facilitators, shared, “Personally, it stretched me as a very experienced TA. It changes the notion of what is the most important in the work itself.” I Page 38
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am feeling back on the all-inclusive track with LCE! Another thread we explored was Digital; its purpose to activate personal artistry in digital media. I am the farthest from tech-savvy there is, so I thought I would not be able to connect with anything in this thread. With the help of Aaron Siegel, we discussed Blended Learning where all can progress at their own pace; the Flipped Classroom where you learn information online and have engaging group experiences; and one on one instruction through technology like Skype. About a year and a half ago, I was contacted by a teaching artist (although I doubt he would know this terminology) from Lagos, Nigeria. He is an actor/audio book narrator and literacy coach. He was interested in the possibility of teaching one of my programs. The schools he wanted to work in had no classroom technology so I couldn’t Skype with students directly. I could, however, train him via Skype. For the past year, he has been teaching my program in one school and has two more signed on for next year. I have only been able to do this because of the Digital thread. Yet another thread I never knew I already used. I am creating quite a tapestry. The final thread we explored was the Instrumental Goals thread; its purpose to achieve non-arts goals important to institutions. Presented by Alexa Miller of Arts Practica, this workshop showed how the teaching artist tools of aesthetic education, noticing deeply, inquiry and reflection, working with fine art enabled doctors to become better diagnosticians. The research backing this up was undisputable. The entrepreneurial aptitude of Ms. Miller was inspiring. Back in the 1980’s, I worked with many financial institutions, teaching theatre voice techniques to traders primarily for phone solicitation; not nearly as inspiring but I do believe another thread I have sewn with. The second week also brought a new form of learning; participant labs. Each TA was asked to teach a 30 minute session. We were asked to challenge ourselves and teach in a thread that we were not accustomed to. Interspersed throughout the week were lessons by teaching artists whose area of expertise was music, fine arts, dance or theater working in one of the six+ threads. Lessons were as varied as the instructors. Everyone challenged themselves by going a little bit outside their comfort zone. I did this by choosing the work of art thread. Because my work primarily focuses on vocal empowerment, I used a work of art that was a radio drama. In feedback, one TA told me how uncomfortable she was with my opening exercise. Her background was music and the exercise asked her to describe a quality in her voice. I wondered if she related this to the student in her classroom who may be uncomfortable with music. Fortunately, she shared that she enjoyed the rest of the workshop. These labs, as well as this encounter, opened my eyes to how different approaches can be from varying art forms. While our overall educational goals may be the same, our unique approach is part of who we are and what makes us artists. I have worked in many of the purpose threads long before they were defined. I did this out of necessity when asked by school, library and community center administrators to create programs to fulfill a need. I do not believe I am unique in my exploration and programming. There are many teaching artists who do not focus solely on one thread. Few are fortunate enough to earn a living doing so. Teaching artists owe it to themselves to be the master of as many trades (or threads) as possible. Judith Hill Bose believes, “Looking at the different threads of our work allows us to hone our skills and our flexibility and be more clear and intentional about the purposes and the practices of teaching artistry.” There are so many other individuals and organizations out there doing great works. Many of
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the individuals do not call themselves teaching artists. Many have never heard the term. While there is the movement nationally and internationally to connect via the Internet thanks to organizations like Teaching Artists Guild and the Association of Teaching Artists, there still seems to be many camps, many tribes, different How do we unite as an industry lines of thought, and different vocabularies. How do we unite as an industry when when many of us are not seeing many of us are not seeing what we do as what we do as teaching artistry? teaching artistry? Do we have to agree on a uniform vocabulary and speak the same language? What may we lose of our individual artistry if we are all required to speak one language? Some of us are running as fast as we can, trying to survive with and through our art. We may not have time to learn another language. Can what we do speak for us? I bring this up because it is hard to be inclusive when we don’t know a lot about what is going on in the field other than from the major players. By creating open or multi-pedagogical professional development, we open the doors to all so that no artist who shares their work educationally in any setting feels disenfranchised. I believe taking this direction can help artists unite, learn from each other and empower each of us with an earned place in a growing field. I do believe Lincoln Center Education is on the right track. Most importantly, LCE showed they are open to learning and committed to continuing wherever the road, or in this case the threads, may lead them. Speaking about the LCE program, Eric Booth shared, “This is the first time I am aware of a major player in the field looking beyond their own needs and interests to create a significant contribution to the whole of the national field.” It is my hope that more organizations will offer professional development that is not pedagogically specific but rather open to all processes in a diverse field that needs to be recognized for what it can do for all learners. Because those of us who teach need to keep learning. Elise May is an independent Teaching Artist, educator, actor, singer and storyteller who has performed and taught in the U.S. and internationally. Elise works with school districts, libraries and corporations on communications skills, community development and developing educational programs using theater arts for vocal empowerment. Using her degrees in Theatre and Communicative Disorders and Sciences, Elise developed Storytime Theater, Expressive Elocution, Multicultural Voices, Creative Readers (an arts education inclusion program for students with disabilities) and more. Her programs have successfully been in mainstream, Special Ed and ESL/ELL classrooms in multiple districts. Elise is on the board of several arts organizations, a Teaching Artist for the Tilles Center for the Performing Arts and a Steering Committee member of the Arts in Special Education Consortium. She was a contributing writer for the Teaching Artist Journal and a contributing author of, “In It Together – How Student, Family, and Community Partnerships Advance Engagement and Achievement in Diverse Classrooms”(Zacarian, Silverstone; Corwin Press.) Elise has presented at many conferences including Balanced Mind, the Annual Conference of the Bermuda Union of Teachers, NYSTEA Educator and Student Conferences as well as to school administrators, teachers and parents. www.storytime-theater.com Page 40
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From Gravel Road to Superhighway by Jon Hinojosa I was honored to participate in the Grantmakers in the Arts Thought Leader Forum on Artists in Community Settings held in St. Louis, Missouri on March 2, 2016. The day was based around an engaging conversation on the the role of Teaching Artists in a community setting. We discussed the history of this work and what we know, but most importantly we tackled the question: What does the future hold? Erick Booth did a great job of facilitating a robust exchange between a group of committed funders and thought leaders [practitioners]. All agreed that though the work is incredibly complicated, it is thriving. The morning centered on the history of artists in community settings and an expanded definition of all of the terms associated with what a teaching artist is. Some examples include: Change Artist, Citizen Artist, Artist Catalyst and Artivist. We looked at great examples of the varied ways that many different communities benefit from the work including: creative aging, creative youth development, and reaching communities of color and marginalized populations. In the afternoon, we dug deep and spoke about the commitments made by both Teaching Artists and the intermediaries that support them. There was great consensus on the broad types of professional development that could both support the work and encourage innovation within it. Some ideas included partnerships and cross-sector training, strengthening core competencies and allowing artists to confer about their work and find opportunities for rejuvenation. There was strong agreement that artists are excited and ready while funders are behind in catching up. At the end of the day, I left excited and encouraged about the future. I look forward to see what comes next.
Jon Hinojosa serves as the Artistic | Executive Director of SAY Sí, a national award winning, creative youth development program for urban students. The tuition-free program encompasses 6 distinct multidisciplinary arts programs, including visual, performing, film, and game design. SAY Sí is situated in a 26,000 square foot warehouse in San Antonio’s Cultural Arts District.
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THE SPRING IS FOR GROWTH Grow your teaching artist career today! Become a member of teaching artists guild at www.teachingartistsguild.org
FEATURED NEW MEMBERS Charlee Wagner - Childsplay - Arizona Korbi Adams - Montalvo Arts Center - California Mary Murphy - New York Valerie Gutwirth - Berkeley Unified School District - California Kirsten Hein - Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission, Arts and Cultural Heritage Division - Maryland Liz Dinwiddie - Carolina Strings Academy at Ashley Hall - South Carolina
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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 artists provide our educational systems and communities.
You can support our work by becoming an Allied or Full member. Our membership provides Teaching Artists with the tools and resources they need to take their career to the next level. Want to learn more? Visit us on the web: www.teachingartistsguild.org
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.*
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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TEACHING ARTISTS GUILD
www.teachingartistsguild.org