Save the Date | #ArtistHotline Returns May 16, 2018

Mark your calendar to join us next month, then catch up on takeaways from the April chat!

Have your calendar nearby? Save the date for Wednesday, May 16 when #ArtistHotline, NYFA’s Artist Professional Development Day, returns to Twitter! The chat takes place on the third Wednesday of each month and includes an Open Chat between 11:00 AM – 1:00 PM EST, a special Guest Chat between 1:00 PM – 3:00 PM EST with artists and arts professionals, and a Q&A with an arts administrator from 3:00 PM – 4:00 PM EST. To participate, you’ll need a Twitter account and to include the hashtag #ArtistHotline with each of your tweets. Read more about how you can participate here.

April Topics

During the Open Chat portion of the April #ArtistHotline, NYFA staff and arts professionals shared a range of arts career tips, such as:

• Create a cohesive arts community in your area by collaborating with other artists and organizations. Cold calling and setting up coffee dates are a few ways to reach out;
• Encourage yourself to apply for opportunities that intimidate you by focusing on completing the application, instead of worrying about the results; 
• Take the crucial step of sustaining an arts enterprise by building a detailed business plan;
• Find opportunities through membership groups relevant to your discipline and keep an eye on the residencies and platforms your peers are utilizing.

Key Takeaways from the “Community Building” Guest Chat

After the Open Chat, we invite a group of virtual panelists to share tips and discuss best practices around a particular topic. In April, we spoke about community building with Aniela Coveleski, Coordinator of Arts in Bushwick; Mathilde Dratwa, teaching artist and Moms-in-Film founder; and Amy King, poet and VIDA: Women in Literary Arts Executive Board member. Below are a few takeaways:

• Involve the target community in as many stages of planning as possible;
• Ask, “Who is being left out?” and actively engage that demographic (but avoid tokenizing);
• Recruit and keep volunteers by ensuring volunteering is a valuable experience for these engaged community members;
• Cultivate accountability. If you feel you’ve excluded members of your community in the past, acknowledge those mistakes internally and externally;
• Bring your tribe with you. When you’re offered a platform, try to include others’ work by spelling out the benefit of bringing more artists on board for the hosting organization; 
• Do your research and make friends. Make efforts to learn about a new community, be respectful, and engage the longstanding players;
• Use data to reveal bias. For example, filmmakers use software to tally words spoken by different demographics in a script, and VIDA: Women in Literary Arts tracks gender parity in publishing each year with the VIDA Count;
• Evaluate application criteria, if applicable, to ensure the application is not unintentionally exclusive;
• Offer support to others just as much, or more, as you ask for support for your project.

“Publishing Poetry” Arts Administrator Q&A

We close out each month’s #ArtistHotline with a one-hour Q&A with an arts administrator. In our latest Q&A we spoke with Zef Lisowski, poet and Apogee Journal editor, about tips on submitting and publishing poems, both online and in print. See below for tips from Lisowski:

• At Apogee Journal, writing that plays with form, interrogates dominant structures, and engages with the reader unexpectedly is always exciting;
• “Thinking about audience” is a workshop cliche, but Lisowski encourages folks to think about why they are writing;
• In terms of submitting, look for places whose work excites you in ways similar to how your own work excites you! Writing, especially for many members of marginalized groups, is a kind of community-building;
• Think about how you’re putting poems together as a unit, and why! There are many great chapbook and full-length contests to submit to, and even if individual poems aren’t getting published, that doesn’t mean the collection won’t get picked up.

Read the full day’s conversation here, and join us for the next #ArtistHotline on Wednesday, May 16, 2018. As part of the day, we’ll host an “International Opportunities & Travel Grants” Guest Chat from 1:00 PM – 3:00 PM EST, and a “Resume Building” Arts Administrator Q&A from 3:00 PM – 4:00 PM EST. In the meantime, stay up-to-date with NYFA and get updates on this month’s #ArtistHotline by following us at @nyfacurrent on Twitter.

Inspired by the NYFA Source Hotline, #ArtistHotline is an initiative dedicated to creating an ongoing online conversation around the professional side of artistic practice. #ArtistHotline occurs on the third Wednesday of each month on Twitter. Our goal is to help artists discover the resources needed, online and off, to develop sustainable careers.

This initiative is supported by the Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation.

Image: Stephen Bowler