Assets for Artists + Artists U
Special 10-month Cohort

Assets for Artists is pleased to partner with Artists U -
one of the country’s leaders in artist SUPPORT & development!

Led by Andrew Simonet and Michaela Pilar Brown

Photo provided by Artists U.

“Our local art sphere is changing with these workshops. People are talking about things differently and feeling more empowered. The impact is deep.”
—Filmmaker, Baltimore

"I have been working full-time as a self-supporting artist for ten years, but there was not a single idea or observation in this workshop that did not make an impact on me." 
—Visual artist, Baltimore



"The Artists U workshop was a jolt of clarity, community, and validation—a reminder that our work as artists matters. I came away with practical strategies for setting goals, managing time, negotiating for fair pay and re-committing myself to the work that makes me feel alive."
—Performing artist, Philadelphia

Wednesdays, October 12, 19, 26 & November 2, 2022 | 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM (in Zoom)

(With additional future meetings to be scheduled - see details below.)

Do A4A’s typical short workshops leave you wanting more connection, conversation, and time to envision your best creative life? Do you want to build community with other artists while building a sustainable future for your practice?

We’re thrilled to announce this new partnership with Artists U, which will allow a group of artists to do exactly that in 2022-23!

This 10-month FREE online series of workshops and small working groups is based on Artists U's transformative book Making Your Life as an Artist. It’s an opportunity to build clarity around your artistic practice and the resources that sustain it. It is specific and practical: the principles, tools, and prompts artists use to make balanced, sustainable lives, and to create the art and impact that matters most to them. Artists U has refined this work through fifteen years of workshops with over 5,000 artists nationally.

Participants in this series will talk about:

  • The role of artists, our impact and value.

  • Long-term planning, the most powerful tool for sustaining as an artist.

  • Time: doing fewer things, better.

  • Financial thinking for artists.

  • Your mission: What audiences, communities, and impacts matter most in your work.

Participants will come away with:

  • A two-year strategic plan with specific goals and steps.

  • An understanding of the value of your time as an artist, based on what you need to earn to live your life comfortably.

  • An artist mission statement, describing not only what you create, but why it matters to you and why it matters to your audiences, publics, and communities.

Participants will commit to:

  • 4 two-hour online workshops in the fall, once a week over a month (Weds, Oct 12, 19, 26 & Nov 2, 2022, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM)

  • 2 two-hour follow-up online workshops in the winter (Dec 2022 - Jan 2023, dates TBD)

  • 5 ninety-minute online meetings in smaller working groups (Nov 2022 - March 2023, dates TBD)

  • Making time to reflect on prompts between each workshop.

  • These workshops build a community conversation over time. It’s important for participants to commit to being present at the first four sessions and the working groups. If you do not think you can make that commitment of time this year, please reserve that space for someone who can. (Don’t worry! we’ll be offering Artists U again!)


    OPEN TO ARTISTS OF ANY DISCIPLINE ANYWHERE IN MASSACHUSETTS || ONLY 30 SLOTS AVAILABLE

    Wednesdays, October 12, 19, 26 & November 2, 2022 | 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM (in Zoom) | with additional times TBD


The application form is now closed.
If you requested a place in this cohort, we will follow up by mid-September with our decisions.

 

THE ARTISTS U LEADERS

ANDREW SIMONET is writer and choreographer in Philadelphia. From 1993 to 2013, he co-directed Headlong Dance Theater, creating dances like CELL (a journey for one audience member guided by your cell phone), and This Town is a Mystery (dances by four Philadelphia families in their homes). Andrew left Headlong to focus on writing fiction. His debut novel, Wilder, was published by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux in 2018; his second novel, A Night Twice as Long, was published by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux in 2021. In 2006, Andrew founded Artists U, an incubator for helping artists make sustainable lives. Through workshops, convenings, and one-on-one planning sessions, he has worked directly with over 5,000 artists across all disciplines. His book Making Your Life as an Artist, an open source guide to living as an artist, has been downloaded by 200,000 artists worldwide and is used as a textbook in dozens of university and graduate arts programs.

MICHAELA PILAR BROWN (Columbia, SC) is an image and object maker, a multidisciplinary artist using photography, installation and performance. She studied sculpture and art history at Howard University. Brown’s installations, collage and photographs address issues attendant to the black body. She uses nontraditional materials and their juxtaposition to each other, and/or dissimilar objects to make statements about the body and its relationship to larger cultural themes of age, gender, race, sexuality, history, and violence. Her work considers memory, myth, ritual, desire and the spaces the body occupies within these vignettes. Brown is the 2018 grand prize winner of Artfields juried art competition.  She is a 2018 inaugural resident artist of the Volcanic Residency, Whakatane Museum, Whakatane, New Zealand. She was has attended many residencies around the world and her work can be found in private and public museum collections in the United States. She is the Executive Director of 701 Center for Contemporary Art in Columbia, South Carolina., where she has served since 2020.


THE A4A WORKING GROUP LEADERS

Christine Brown is a multidisciplinary artist who works with textiles, paint, and digital/graphic media. She makes and sells handmade baby accessories, quilts, pillows, and other items through her business, Fawn. Christine credits her sewing skills to the local 4H club, where community members opened their homes to her and where she was able to learn a skill she has enjoyed over her lifetime. That experience led to her commitment to teaching sewing to the next generation of artists through private lessons and workshops. Christine studied art education at Fitchburg State University, and her work has been featured in ArtsWorcester’s “The Little One” exhibition.

John Vo is a working artist who paints to connect to people, and who aims to make art accessible. As the son of Vietnamese refugees, the stories of lost waters have given them many homes. As a part of the Vietnamese diaspora, they draw from their family’s narrative as a poetic understanding of history in development. John’s paintings range from allegorical still lives and landscapes to contemporary portraits. In their studio practice, John is a materialist, sourcing textiles with a story and origin. They are currently engaged in silk and textile painting, begun during a Fulbright fellowship to Vietnam. This has led to explorations in cone denim, Vietnamese silk, and wearable art.

Sculptor Laura Baring-Gould’s practice includes award-winning installations, public artworks, and small bronzes sold in galleries, juried shows, and through private commissions. Her permanent, public installations can be found throughout the Boston area, including in the Tower Hill Botanic Garden, the City of Cambridge, and Edward Everett Square in Dorchester. She has taught numerous workshops with A4A since 2018. She is also an alumna of the A4A Capacity-Building Grant Program, which makes Laura uniquely skilled to help current grantees with designing business plans and budgets best suited to their needs and the grant program’s requirements.


Ngoc-Tran Vu is a Boston-area-based 1.5-generation Vietnamese American, interdisciplinary and transnational artist whose socially engaged work draws from her experience as a community organizer, facilitator, and staff at the Association of Independents in Radio (AIR). In addition to being an A4A webinar and workshop trainer, Tran is herself an alum of A4A’s Capacity-Building Grant Program and attended A4A’s artist residency, the Studios at MASS MoCA.


Sarah Marcus is a Northampton-based theater artist, educator, producer, and mother. In 2019 she co-founded Play Incubation Collective (PIC), a local launchpad for new theatrical works. She also directs the Youth Performance Festival, a yearly free opportunity for youth artists to create original performance pieces under the guidance of mentor artists. Her mission across all her work is to widen the canon of stories we experience, and celebrate the power of artistic community. Sarah has performed locally in PIC’s Piedmont Plays, Northampton's 24-hour play festival and Greenfield's Double Take Fringe Festival. Outside of Western Mass, she has created and performed work at the Emerging Artists Theatre NYC, Cleveland Public Theatre, NY International Fringe Festival, and HERE Arts Center, among others.

Yara Liceaga-Rojas, M.A., is a queer, Afro-Caribbean mother, writer/poet, performer, cultural manager, and educator, born in Puerto Rico, who currently resides in the Greater Boston area. Yara is a Letras Boricuas Fellow (2021); Boston Neighborhood Fellow (2021-2023), and Brother Thomas Fellow (2019). She has been developing her consulting career in arts management and grant writing in Massachusetts and Puerto Rico, servicing artists, collectives, art businesses, and other entities. She has authored 5 books and has been the lead artist/curator of the ongoing projects: Poetry Is Busy; El Despojo Project; Acentos espesos/Thick Accents, and most recently Encarnar/Embody. She holds a Master’s Degree in Arts Administration from the University of Puerto Rico.