From April 2020 – December 2021, Creative Generation was named an ITAC Innovator and focused on developing an infrastructure within the International Teaching Artist Collaborative (ITAC) to address the gap in research and resources produced by and for the field of teaching artistry. The project engaged volunteers in the teaching artist field from a cross-section of countries to collect, validate, and disseminate tools, resources, and creative/scholarly research in a number of capacities. These include retrofitting the existing knowledge shared through the 2019 Think Tanks, building each into a digital learning module; formulating a strategy to catalog, publish and disseminate research and resources shared through the 2018 and 2020 ITAC conferences; and researching and recommending a sustainable and scalable framework for a clearinghouse of new tools and resources created by and for the field of teaching artistry to be located within ITAC’s digital platform. Read more about this project there.
From this work, ITAC hosts monthly Think Tanks, where a host from a different part of the world shares insights about their work, and in discussion with attendees, digs deep about the ways this could help you develop your own practice. The Think Tanks are edited, archived, and connected to additional resources across the sector.
Check out the latest archives here:
Grassroots Sector Building - Starting Your Own TA Network (April 2021)
BY: LEAGUE OF NORTH CAROLINA TEACHING ARTISTS (LNCTA)
In April of 2021 the League of North Carolina Teaching Artists spurred conversation on how to construct Teaching Artist Networks, similar to The Teaching Artist Guild. When the journey began, it started with collective brainstorms that analyzed aspirations. As the group embraced a multi-perspective approach, it allowed for true collaboration to manifest within a supportive environment. Here are key takeaways for starting a TA network:
Start with a small group of individuals then expand your reach
Remember not all teaching artists work in very visibly high profile ways. Some fly below the radar, but they still want to connect and contribute to a group
You have the power to shape the culture that you wish to cultivate
Draw up a working agreement that keeps a level of professionalism between members
Make meetings consistent (time, place, etc.)
Share information (internally and externally)
Consider roundtable leadership
Focus on the human point of view
Form small partnerships instead of relying on big funding sources
At the end of the day it is about mutual flourishing: How you can support yourself? How can you support your family? The planet? And creating arts based activities based on what has heart and meaning. With the isolation of the global pandemic, it has created an environment to think out of the box; a skill artists inherently possess. Therefore, make inventories on what has meaning and brainstorm with others how to create arts based activities that have economic empowerment
Trauma Informed Practice In Africa (July 2021)
By: Green String Network
In July of 2021 Bonface Beti and Dr. Angi Yoder-Maina explored ways to engage with the world’s problems through healing-centered peacebuilding.
The Green String Network (GSN), where both take employment, investigates how chronic violence has impacted communities and integrates a holistic approach to breaking cycles of violence within said communities. There is a need for mental health support not just in East Africa but the whole world. Every hour, there are individuals who cannot afford therapy, have limited access or reject the practices as a viable resource. Thus GSN has started to develop an arts and cultural piece to engage in community mental health prevention. The key to the approach is that the interventions are not just about raising awareness, but seeking to create behavioral change, so that people who are hurting stop hurting others.
So at GSN, they use storytelling art embodied practices to help people articulate their life experiences and recognize how they shape their behavior. Here, these methods help unlock new ways of thinking, behaving, and feeling, to live more full and peaceful lives as individuals and communities.
Using Teaching Artistry To Explore Future Literacy, Future Fluency, Future Competency, And Future Consciousness (August 2021)
By: Sudebi Thakurata (India)
This session explored "WHAT IF," and engaged participants in a discussion around what skills and competencies we think we should be equipping people with now, to ensure they are ready for the future. With constantly evolving skill sets, changing contexts, and new kinds of knowledge and wisdom required, what is the role of TAs in supporting them effectively? How can we make sure we are preparing future practitioners with capabilities of the future and not those of the past? This session examined the role of TAs, and the challenges/barriers which are present, in relation to future-consciousness building in creative ways. The conversation will be supported by Sudebi's trans-disciplinary design collective D.epicentre and the work they have been doing on Futures for the last few years.
The follow-up working group will be invited to build a framework for a future literacy, fluency, competency, and consciousness curriculum that can be widely used by Teaching Artists across different contexts. The design-led process, running for at least 6-8 months, will facilitate the generation of new ideas, new theories, and new wisdom, built upon existing knowledge and newer partnerships. Sudebi hopes to capture the processes and perspectives from the working group, which will meet every 3 to 5 weeks, in a shareable guide that can act as a living document others can learn from. This resource may become a collectively-made multi-layered book, simple website, games/simulations, or a toolkit that can be utilized by arts/creative practitioners in different contexts—the form will be determined by the working group.
Teaching Artists As Arts Emergency Surgeons For Community Healing And Empowerment (September 2021)
By: Peter Atsu Adaletey (Africa)
While referencing his own stories and experiences, Peter invited participants to share the challenges facing their own local communities. Collectively, they discussed the role arts can have in addressing community challenges and how said communities can be effectively engaged at local levels.
To keep the conversation in motion, a formed working group will aim to include people from a wide variety of local communities (from all over the world), that are facing their own unique challenges. What do we have in common? What is context specific? What can we learn from each other to help us address these issues?
This project will challenge working group members to identify other Teaching Artists within their local communities and begin to map ways in which they might effectively engage community members in creative change-making. The group will work together to support, and provide insights into, the ways in which the arts could be utilized to address their identified challenges. Participants will be encouraged to pilot community engagement methods, report back, and identify the approaches which have worked best in their own contexts.
The intended outcome of this project is the creation of small, local, community-engaged TA cohorts. The process by which these are built will be documented and made available online as a ‘how to’ guide for other TAs seeking to build and mobilize local community collectives.