Social | #ArtistHotline Returns December 19

Tweet from 11:00 AM – 4:00 PM EST for career advice, freelancing tips, and networking tools for introverted and neurodivergent artists. Plus, changes ahead for #ArtistHotline.

The holidays are a great time to celebrate traditions while also looking forward to a new year. #ArtistHotline, a professional development Twitter chat, has been taking place on the third Wednesday of each month since 2015. In this tradition, the next #ArtistHotline will be live on December 19. December’s #ArtistHotline will mark the last day-long Twitter chat, and #ArtistHotline will chart a new course starting in 2019. Read about how you can continue to participate in #ArtistHotline in new ways on Twitter and Instagram, and via our blog, NYFA Current. 

We invite you to tweet with us on December 19 to help us celebrate the #ArtistHotline community, which has shared resources and sparked collaboration for more than three years. The #ArtistHotline-dedicated Twitter chat offers a generalized Open Chat, while also covering select key themes in-depth through a subsequent Guest Chat segment and an Artist/Arts Administrator Q&A. In selecting topics for the Guest Chat and Q&A this month, NYFA staff wanted to take the time to address pressing needs in a changing creative economy and offer more inclusive advice on building an arts career for all artists. Learn more below and find pointers on how to follow the Twitter chat, ask questions, and share your own best practices.

#ArtistHotline Schedule

• 11:00 AM – 1:00 PM EST: The day begins with an Open Chat. Ask questions and receive advice on any arts career topic throughout this segment. The only guideline? Use the hashtag #ArtistHotline in each tweet, as well as during the Guest Chat and Q&A.
• 1:00 PM – 3:00 PM EST: During the “Freelancer Survival Tips” Guest Chat, we’ll hear from photographer Reggie Cunningham, freelance and publishing expert Jane Friedman, and Freelancers Union Executive Director Caitlin Pearce. This panel will share best practices for freelancers and independent contractors, covering topics such as contracts, knowing your rights, and ensuring that your income for a project and as a whole is sustainable and fair.
• 3:00 PM – 4:00 PM EST: During the “Alternative Networking” Artist Q&A, U.K.-based visual artist Sonia Boué will share advice on networking for autistic and neurodivergent artists, for whom the typical model of meet-and-greet, in-person networking can be ineffective and exclusionary. (An individual who diverges from the dominant societal standards of “normal” neurocognitive functioning is considered neurodivergent). This Q&A will also be beneficial for introverted artists and artists who live outside urban centers, as we’ll share best practices for forging connections online. 

Join the #ArtistHotline Conversation

Here’s how you can participate in #ArtistHotline throughout the day on Wednesday, December 19.

• If you don’t already have one, create a free Twitter account now.
• Follow the conversation live on Twitter by following the “Latest Tweets,” rather than the “Top Tweets,” for the hashtag #ArtistHotline.
• Tweet your questions and include the hashtag #ArtistHotline in each tweet.
• Don’t hesitate to introduce yourself, retweet and respond to other tweeters, and share what’s on your mind!

“Freelancer Survival Tips” Guest Chat Participants

Reggie Cunningham, aka “Kidnoble,” is the creator of the Pure Black brand. He is an influencer, creative, entrepreneur, and photographer whose work focuses on urban style and portraiture. His work has been featured in Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan, Essence Magazine, Ebony, and galleries in Washington, D.C. and New Orleans. His passion for photography was instilled by his mother, a photographer for 30 years. His style is edgy and intimate. He likes using his camera to show his clients themselves through another’s eyes, and is known for making even the most anxious feel comfortable at the end of his lens. Learn more about Cunningham at BePureBlack.com.

Find Cunningham tweeting @kidnoble.

Jane Friedman is a full-time freelancer and has 20 years of experience in the publishing industry; her past roles have included publisher of Writer’s Digest and web editor for the Virginia Quarterly Review. She’s served on grant panels for the National Endowment for the Arts and the Creative Work Fund, and speaks at conferences on how creative people can build sustainable business models for their careers. Friedman’s newest book is The Business of Being a Writer (University of Chicago Press, 2018). Learn more at JaneFriedman.com.

Find Friedman tweeting @JaneFriedman.

Caitlin Pearce is Executive Director of Freelancers Union, the nation’s largest advocacy group for the more than 57 million-strong independent workforce. Pearce has spearheaded some of Freelancers Union’s most ambitious initiatives, including Freelancers Hub, a dedicated space for freelancers in Brooklyn that offers coworking and educational programming. Pearce has worked at Freelancers Union for over seven years, most recently serving as Director of Advocacy and Member Engagement, where she led the grassroots coalition of freelancers, labor unions, policymakers, and business groups that fought for and won the historic “Freelance Isn’t Free” Act in New York City. The first-of-its-kind law gives millions of New York freelancers unprecedented wage theft protections against clients who don’t pay them for their work. Pearce also built and launched SPARK, the worker-led network of local freelancer meet-ups in 30 major US cities, and the annual “Freelancing in America” survey in cooperation with Upwork, which tracks the growth of the freelance economy and lends valuable insights into the lives of independent workers.

Find Pearce tweeting @freelancersu.

“Alternative Networking” Q&A

Sonia Boué is an Anglo-Spanish visual artist based in the U.K. She holds degrees in History of Art (BA, Sussex University), and in Applied Social Psychology (MSc, Oxford University). She is also a trained Art Therapist (Sheffield Hallam University). This background informs her research-based multiform art practice, which focuses on themes of exile and displacement, with a particular interest in the Spanish Civil War. She develops and leads Arts Council England-funded projects, and has worked on award-winning community arts projects which support artists with learning disabilities. One such project is WEBworks, an autistic-led peer support and mentoring group of autistic and neurodivergent creatives. Boué, who blogs regularly on autism and art, specializes in autistic project leadership. Learn more about her work on her website.

Find Boué tweeting @SoniaBoue.

Inspired by the NYFA Source Hotline, #ArtistHotline is an initiative dedicated to creating an ongoing online conversation around the professional side of artistic practice. 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: Haisi Hu (Fellow in Film ’18), Still image from stop-motion animation The Transparent Forest; Images Courtesy: Reggie Cunningham, Jane Friedman, Caitlin Pearce, and Sonia Boué