Coming to Twitter on March 15: #ArtistHotline Professional Development Day and Guest Chat
Tweet us your arts career questions all day, and educators, be sure to chime in during the “Teaching Artists” Guest Chat!
Calling arts professionals and artists of all disciplines: join NYFA and our online community on Wednesday, March 15, 9:30 AM – 5:30 PM EST for #ArtistHotline, our monthly Artist Professional Development Day on Twitter. #ArtistHotline is an ongoing conversation around building a sustainable career in the arts, taking place the third Wednesday of every month. When you follow #ArtistHotline, you’ll find individual artists and organizations tweeting about a range of topics, from grant application budgets to social media promotion.
As part of #ArtistHotline, we’ll also host a “Teaching Artists” Guest Chat from 3:00 PM – 5:00 PM EST, with arts education consultant and educator Sobha Kavanakudiyil and poet and educator Aja Monet. This Guest Chat is designed to be a resource for artists who teach students of all ages, from Pre-K students to senior citizens.
Possible Guest Chat topics include:
- Cultivating work-life balance as a teaching artist;
- Finding inspiration through your teaching;
- Resources for current teaching artists and teaching artist hopefuls
So, arts educators, we want to hear from you! Whether you teach in an elementary school, at the university level, or for a cultural organization, we look forward to hearing your questions and insights. Here’s how you can participate throughout the day, as well as during the Guest Chat:
- If you don’t already have one, create a free Twitter account now.
- Follow the #ArtistHotline conversation live on Twitter here.
- Tweet your questions using the hashtag #ArtistHotline and get responses from arts professionals, cultural organizations from across the country, and your fellow artists.
Guest Chat Bios
Sobha Kavanakudiyil is a faculty member in the Graduate Program in
Educational Theatre at The City College of New York. She earned her B.A. in Communications from
Fordham University and her M.A. in Educational Theatre from NYU. She has been an arts education consultant for
many organizations in and around New York City including: The Apollo Theater, The
Center for Arts Education, Urban Arts Partnership, and The New Victory Theater.
Last October, she was a featured keynote speaker at the New Orleans Theatre in Our
Schools Conference. She serves as a Vice Chair on the Board
of Directors for the New York City Arts in Education Roundtable, where she also is Co-Chair for the Face to Face Conference. She is also on the American Alliance for Theatre and Education (AATE) Board of Directors
as National Programming Director, and the Association of Teaching Artists Board of Directors. She has been a presenter at many
conferences, both in New York State and nationally, including the National AATE
Conference, Face to Face Conference, the NYU Applied Theatre and
Pedagogy Conference, and the NYU Teaching Artist Forum. In
addition, she has presented her “Dialogue for an Emerging Teaching Artist”
webinar for AATE. Sobha has a strong
commitment to quality and accessible arts education for all.
Find Sobha Kavanakudiyil tweeting @MsSobhaK.
Aja Monet, the youngest individual to win the legendary Nuyorican Poet’s Café Grand Slam title, is a Caribbean-American poet and educator from East New York, Brooklyn. She received her B.A. in Liberal Arts from Sarah Lawrence College, where she was awarded the Andrea Klein Willison Poetry Prize, established to recognize poetry that “effectively examines relationships among women, especially in the context of justice for everyone.” She received an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Monet independently published her first book of poetry, The Black Unicorn Sings (2010), and in 2012, she collaborated with poet Saul Williams on a poetry anthology of this generation’s social and political anthems entitled, Chorus: A Literary Mixtape (MTV Books/Simon & Schuster). In 2014, Monet was awarded the YWCA of the City of New York’s “One to Watch Award,” an award established in honor of Monet’s work for women under the age of 30 who exemplify the mission to empower women and eliminate racism. She was an active member of Justice League NYC, a rapid response organization created by Harry Belafonte’s Gathering for Justice, a movement to end youth incarceration and to eliminate the racial inequities in the criminal justice system. Co-founder of Smoke Signals Studio, Aja Monet currently lives in Little Haiti, Miami and volunteers to merge arts and culture and community organizing with the Dream Defenders and Community Justice Project. She spearheaded an arts and activism initiative, “Voices: Poetry for the People,” which provides free poetry workshops for grassroots leaders & organizers in Florida. Additionally, she continues to organize artist delegations and cultural and political exchanges with disenfranchised communities at home and abroad. Her first full collection of poems, my mother was a freedom fighter, is forthcoming in May 2017 (Haymarket Books).
Find Aja Monet tweeting @aja_monet.
Inspired by the NYFA Source Hotline, #ArtistHotline is 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.
Images, from top: Jeffrey Jones (Fellow in Painting ‘10); courtesy of Sobha Kavanakudiyil and Aja Monet
