Make artWORK: You and Your Books, Part2

By Clay Schudel

Last month I wrote about getting more control over your life by getting a better understanding of your finances. Click here to read that post! If you are just getting started, or don’t know where to start, here are a few useful tips:

1-      Organize your paperwork. Whether you’re making your living as an artist / performer or if you’re just getting started as a working artist (but all of your income is from a day job), remember to take your business seriously.

l  Get into the habit of keeping all bills in one place, so that you can easily put your hands on them, and commit to visiting your home “financial center” at least once a week. Develop a simple system that works for you and stick to it – for example, if you need to, use a red pen to write at the top of each bill the due date so you never get stuck paying a late fee for a credit card bill or miss an important payment.

l  If you’re an individual artist your business expenses and personal living expenses are likely mingled; this makes it extremely important to save your records in an organized way so that when you file your tax returns you can claim every legitimate business expense as an independent contractor against any income, to make sure that you only pay taxes on any profit that your business made. Do this organizing as the year goes along. If you are going to claim a deduction, you’re going to need a record of:

When: The date of the transaction

Where: Where you bought the item

What: What the item was

Why: What purpose it served in your business

Try making a simple spreadsheet with these columns: 

Date  |  Category  |  Vendor  |  Cost  |  Purpose

Make a note on your receipts (“rent; costumes; business meeting”) and file them as you pay them; $10 spent at Staples now on a few file folders will save you so much stress at tax time, digging through every drawer in your apartment and trying to remember what these receipts were for.

·         If you’re prefer saving digital copies of your receipts, there are several phone apps that allow you to photograph and save a cloud based copy of your receipts; probably the two most popular ones are Shoeboxed ($9.95 a month, but this app has many other mobile accounting features than just organizing receipts) https://www.shoeboxed.com/features/

and the much more basic One Receipt (free app) http://www.onereceipt.com/

2 - Evaluate and understand your income and your expenses. Knowing what you spend, and what your income is, over a period of time will let you make intelligent budgets, better use what resources you have, and do all kinds of short and long-term planning. As I wrote last month, the program that I still rely on MOST OF ALL is one that almost everyone already has if they have a home computer – the old fashioned Excel spreadsheet.

·         Start by listing regular income and expenses you know will happen or feel pretty sure about:

Make a thorough list of your regular income, and note when it happens; you should put down things that happen monthly (a job that pays a salary every 2 weeks), a few times a year (do you a get quarterly royalty check?) or once a year (do you usually get a tax refund every May? Teach a paid workshop every summer?)

·         Make this same list for your known fixed expenses. Be as thorough and as realistic as you can; after you list your large and regularly repeating expenses like rent, utilities and internet, take a good look at your cash or credit card spending and try to understand your patterns and to group your spending into categories; use your bank and credit card statements to help you note regularly repeating automatic payments you may not think of (Netflix? Insurance premiums?) and notice when your credit card payments themselves are due.

Lining these two categories (Income & Expense) up side by side in two columns will go a long way towards showing you the bare bones of your financial picture and will help you see cash flow gaps that you have to prepare for or changes you want to make in your spending.

 Follow the links below for pre-loaded templates! 

Microsoft Office (maker of Excel) has lots of preloaded Excel spreadsheets that you can download from the Office website, and easily modify for your own uses. 

SCORE, a nonprofit that provides mentorship services for small businesses and entrepreneurs also has many templates you can download and modify to help you analyze your expenses and cash flow

Here’s a very simple cash flow forecasting spreadsheet that I created using Excel

You don’t need to be stressed out about the money side of your creative business. A plan that’s simple enough for you to actually keep up with (and doesn’t take too much time away from your real work of making art) is the one that’s right for you.

The Equus Projects: Lessons Learned About Generosity & Listening

The Equus Projects

April 20, 2010

Lessons Learned About Generosity & Listening

As The Equus Projects dives deeper and deeper into creating hub sites for our work, we are making some very interesting discoveries about interfacing with the people who make our work possible.

The Hub Site
First, a definition of an Equus Projects Hub Site: A region of the country where there is significant interest in the work we are doing and a vested interest in having us return on an on-going basis.

Passionate Producers
In each of our hub site locations we are dealing with passionate people who want our work to have a presence in their region. Sometimes our projects begin with a big producer such as The Myrna Loy Center for the Performing Arts in Helena, Montana. But when we are asked to return, the people who are bringing us are often the small guys. These are not big producers or presenters. These are people who own horse farms. These are ranchers and horse owners, dancers, theatre directors, educators. They do not have a staff with PR people and professional fundraisers.

We are realizing how immensely important it is for us to fully acknowledge the generosity of those local self-appointed producers with no staff receive enormous accolades and appreciation for what they are doing.

Beyond Thank You
However just saying thank you, thank you and thank you again is not enough. There is more to understand. Let me explain by way of example.

In the Pacific Northwest our hub site supporters include a Sammamish, WA equestrian who is producing a clinic for us to teach. Not only is she offering her ranch and horses as the clinic venue but she is also creating the PR, taking registrations, and making sure we are housed and fed. This individual has a vested interest in having come to her farm. It is crucial for us to spend some time figuring out what we are offering her. How does our work feed her? Why?

Another Northwest local supporter on Vashon Island is documenting our work and creating video presentations for local cable stations. His filming of our work provides a visually captivating subject that will gain his work visibility.

We are being housed. We will be fed numerous dinners. And this is not for a just a few days. We are on Vashon Island for 14 days! We have experienced similar generosity in hub sites in Florida and Texas.

Listening to stories
In the creative excitement (and sometimes maelstrom) of making a new work in a short amount of time it is easy to get distracted, to not fully acknowledge those who are bringing you water, offering hospitality, fixing your costumes, washing your laundry. They admire your work. They ask questions about you and the work. And in some important way they are asking you to listen to their stories, learn about them.

Motivation behind generosity
Beyond expressing our gratitude we must listen carefully and take the time to understand the motivation behind generosity. For some it will be a chance to perform. For some it will be about learning. For some it will be the opportunity to teach us something they know - a chance to share their knowledge. This is about the need to be recognized. If we do not take time to give that recognition we are remiss and will have missed an opportunity to sow tons of good will.

When to say YES, even when it costs
At one of our venues, our producer - and the owner of the horses we are performing with - asked us to pay for an equestrian trainer to be present for all our rehearsals. The price tag for this was very high. I knew the request carried with it important information. This was our second project with these horses. The first had gone well but there were some equine issues not fully attended to. The unexpected price tag for a trainer carried with it important information about our commitment to the well being of her equines. I believe she was indirectly asking us to financially commit to her horses. And I knew it was not my place to question this request or attempt to negotiate. Our company manager and I launched a concerted search for funding sources. We kept the producer fully informed of our fundraising. Update: We are still waiting to hear from The Arabian Horse Foundation and several other sources. More importantly our producer recognized our commitment. Update: The owner has offered to help us with this expense.

When to say NO
In another venue the producer asked that we title our press release: Dancing with the Stars. Now this was not acceptable to me. I was willing to go to the mat about this, as Dancing with the Stars was not at all what we would be doing!! Our objections encountered lots of resistance. I questioned how far the gratitude needed to be stretched. I worried that we were offending in sticking to our guns. But I also felt this was a necessary battle to fight.

Sharing Ownership of the Work
We are learning that we MUST give local producers ownership of the project. And with that partial ownership comes the freedom to promote our work in a way that will communicate effectively with the local population.

One step beyond the promotion is the content of the work itself. We must balance our own aesthetic priorities against the need to appeal to a local audience. What do Texans want to see? I am very clear that this question must be answered in a way that does not compromise the work. Then again there is the site-specific-ness of a project: What kind of piece do you make in a bull-running arena in Helena, Montana? It would be wise to acknowledge the cowboy energy that permeates a bull running arena.

Longevity
When a producer brings you in for the first time, the visit is surrounded by that first date kind of excitement. After the first date comes the Let’s see what else you can offer date. With our hub sites we are not on a first date basis any longer. Our current projects are in the 2nd or 3rd date stage. At this stage we must make an investment in a community.

During the making an investment stage the in-kind donations diminish or at least shift. Things that were gratis must now be paid for. We are discovering that the ASK must be different.

I am looking down the road and asking, what will this scenario look like after the 3rd date? That remains to be explored.

For now we are on our 2nd date and making sure we are doing some serious listening.

jms

Thanks American Theatre Magazine!

I love it when good peeps get good press!

Two of our four ERPA artists were featured in April's American Theatre Magazine (one of the only print magazines I read about the theatre!).

Stolen Chair Theater got a full two-pager by the perspicacious Eliza Bent about their scrappy CST program (although The Field somehow got left out as the funder of ERPA). I particularly like the opener that only seems to appear online ("what worked what didn't" etc).

This weekend I am popping over to one of Stolen Chair's CST Member events to see how it all pans out.

Conni's Avant Garde Restaurant also got a hit in American Theatre! to get Conni's lasagna recipe though you gotta get the print mag alas!

OurGoods.org and Trade School

What's happening with OurGoods.org? A wide range of people are excited about OurGoods.org, an alternative system for valuing creative work. It's a barter economy where social, environmental, and ethical rationales drive exchange behavior. In the next two months, we're presenting OurGoods.org at MoMA, The Renegade Craft Fair, and The Walker Art Center. Many people found out about OurGoods through Trade School, a barter experiment that three of the five OurGoods co-founders (Rich Watts, Louise Ma, and Caroline Woolard) ran from February 25th to March 1st.

Should Trade School re-open? We're using Kickstarter to find out. We will open Trade School in September if 5,000 people donate any amount OR if we raise at least $9,000 by June 27. We've raised over $1,500 from 64 people so far...

What is Trade School?

At Trade School, students barter for instruction. We turn storefront space into a platform for learning, a place where enthusiasts and specialists teach in exchange for basic items from students. Anyone can offer to teach a class. Students sign up for classes by agreeing to meet the teacher's barter needs. We ran Trade School for 35 days and we want to open again!

What happened at Trade School?

From February 25th to March 1st, we ran Trade School at GrandOpening in the Lower East Side. Over the course of 35 days, more than 800 people participated in 76 single session classes. Classes ran for 1, 2, or 3 hours and ranged from scrabble strategy to composting, from grant writing to ghost hunting. In exchange for instruction, teachers received everything from running shoes to mixed CDs, from letters to a stranger to cheddar cheese. We ran out of time slots for teachers to teach and classes filled up so quickly that we had to turn people away. This made us think: we should keep doing this...

How did we do it the first time?

Everyone contributed time and materials to support a community that values cooperation over competition. Rich Watts bartered design work for GrandOpening's storefront space and help conceptualizing Trade School. Louise Ma and Rich Watts designed the website and Caroline Woolard coordinated with teachers to make the class schedule. We made a weatherproof flag, bucket furniture, hook-filled shelving, and a huge chalkboard. Incredibly rigorous, creative thinkers gave time to Trade School from day one. See more at: http://tradeschool.ourgoods.org

What do we need to do it again?

Starting in September, 2010, we want to open Trade School again. Many people asked us to continue Trade School, but we need help! If we raise $9,000 or more, we can pay for the materials that cannot be salvaged. We can also give some money to a Trade School coordinator who fields class proposals, schedules classes with teachers, and is responsible opening and closing the space.

What is Trade School about?

Trade School re-thinks value. When I give my teacher something specific (apples, fabric, design help, etc.) in order to participate in on his or her class, we are no longer strangers. Trade School rejects cold cash transactions because barter fosters relationships. Teachers and students alike learn and connect in a space where everyone has something valuable to exchange.

Conni's Avant Garde Restaurant: Seven Downtime Conversations

I loved reading the last two posts by Jon and Joanna, and hearing about how we are all wrestling with our audiences to create a foundation on which to build long-term relationships and communities. Since the production schedule for Conni’s Avant Garde Restaurant has been lighter than usual this spring, I have had a chance to participate in some other encouraging conversations and to see some exciting experiments in community.

Company Meetings
Instead of rehearsals, we have been holding company meetings. We have been taking a look at how we organize ourselves for a long run in Cambridge this summer, anticipating the challenge of mounting our logistically-involved show in another city with very little changeover time. In addition, we need to replace and/or write-around an ensemble member who was cast in the Broadway company of Hair (a shared victory for our company of actors!). How do we bring in directors and designers, re-cast, and grow the numbers of our ensemble without destroying the actor-generated spirit of the work we do?

The name of our mainstage show is the name of our company is the name of a place where a collection of characters work and perform. We are an actor driven-company that has created a show about an ensemble of actors. In our meetings we have also been brainstorming about how to create brands that can allow us to branch out without confusing our audience. For smaller site-specific events with food: Conni’s Ah-La-Carte? For private events: Convergence Catering? But how do we re-define ourselves if we want to create something that is made by the actors of the company but not by the characters of the Restaurant? See Little West 12th Night. Suggestions welcome.

For next year, how do we plan our season in advance but also stay agile enough to take advantage of co-production opportunities that arise with short notice? How can we institutionalize renewal? Is’t possible that back-to-back productions can sometimes be a way of procrastinating doing the real work of building an ensemble? Note to self: build in downtime.

Outrageous Fortune
Speaking of institutionalizing renewal, I work as a part-time grantwriter for New Dramatists, a 60-year old organization that is sustained and funded solely with contributed income. Housed in a renovated church on West 44th, New Dramatists provides time and space for writers to create their best work, offering seven-year residencies to a rotating company of 50 playwrights. I have been privy to some pretty deep conversations among playwrights of late.

Todd London, ND’s artistic director, along with researcher Ben Pesner, just published a four-year study Outrageous Fortune, the Life and Times of the New American Play that looks at the lives and livelihoods of playwrights. Read it and you will feel like you are not crazy. It is getting harder for individual artists to make a living in the theater. The systems are shrinking, empirically confirmed. In 1920, a new play opened on Broadway every two days. Today, every 2 months. And the not-for-profit theater structure, created to support artist-driven work, cannot support the weight of its own institutions. The last chapter contains hope.

www.tdf.org/outrageousfortune
Also, check out Arena Stage’s new play blog: http://npdp.arenastage.org/

Play Mountain
Only half-joking, I have expressed that my mission in life is to create a New Dramatists for devised work, except that I would like it to be funded with earned income. Justine Williams of the Glass Contraption has organized a series of meetings to think about just this. She calls it Play Mountain. It was not intended to be a women’s group, but for the first three meetings it has been largely dominated by thirty-something women with their own theater companies.

This started as a loose group of friends, many of whom share both a lust for real-estate and the hope of finding a way to share a space dedicated to developing new work on its feet. The group is part discussion, part support, part action-plan, part creative project, and may soon become part play. ERPA fans and thinkers, please contact me if you care to hear more about it: theproducer@avantgarderestaurant.com.

Passion Play Festival
Epic Theatre Ensemble is organizing a coalition of performing groups to create a theater community event surrounding their premiere of Sarah Ruhl’s Passion Play at Irondale’s space in Fort Greene. Conni’s Avant Garde Restaurant is slated to perform and serve up a 2- or 3-course meal on select Sundays after the matinee performances this May.

http://epictheatreensemble.org/surrounding-events

Little West 12th Night
So, while I am off chatting and easdropping, what do my ensemble members do during downtime? They make another play, with a new set of characters, a reconfigured set of company roles, and a potentially fascinating ERPA-spirited business model, originally conceived by Rachel Murdy with Stephanie Dodd as head writer and Cindy Croot as director. I got to act, just act. On March 25, we held what amounted to an open rehearsal for an underground walking tour of the meatpacking district. Throughout the tour, the audience encountered characters who evoked the spirit of the neighborhood during the 80’s, and who appeared to be enmeshed in a drama very reminiscent of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. Conni’s Avant Garde Restaurant will heavily cross-promote, so get on our mailing list to get yourself invited to the tour next year: http://www.avantgarderestaurant.com/connitact.html

This project has sparked a new obsession for me in terms of stealing an already-established business model and overlaying it to serve artist-driven theater: walking tours! Does that mean I have given up on food service? Not yet.

Catering Class
The ERPA implementation project for my theater company, Conni’s Avant Garde Restaurant (for those of you just tuning in) is to invest in kitchen equipment and other one-time costs associated with starting a food service business, to enable us to eventually support art-making by selling food. As part of these activities, I brought an ensemble member to a class taught by David Turk of Indiana Catering about how to start a catering business.

Two tricks I’d like to share that directly translate for season planning:

First, he had us do an exercise for starting a business plan. Start by envisioning where you want to be at a point in the future, say two years. Then work backwards. In order for that vision to be realized, where do you need to be in one year, 6 months, 3 months, 1 month, this week, and what can go on the to-do list today? I turned over the exercise to my ensemble to help us collectively make a vision for next year’s season and to take accountability for the actions that need to happen now. I’ll let you know what we come up with.

Second, he gave us a trick for accepting gigs: the four Fs. The gig should either strongly satisfy one of these needs, or meet more than one F:

Fun (or, perhaps, artistically satisfying)
Financially lucrative
Future business
Fills a hole the calendar

Another tidbit about food and theater from me and the Restaurant, including Jonny Hammersticks’ lasagna recipe, will be published in the upcoming (April) issue of American Theatre magazine.

North Captiva
Perhaps we are working too hard. I am writing this post from my parents’ home in Southwest Florida, where an island liberal arts community has spontaneously erupted. It is not a self-determined community but one that arose out of a homeowners association that baby boomers bought, then retired, into. True to their generation, these folks are pro-duc-tive! From within their ranks of volunteers, they provide for one another weekly yoga classes, book club meetings, a theater group (I am trying very hard to avoid Plaza Suite rehearsals this week), nature walks and talks, painting classes, a sketch group, and it goes on.

What do they have that we don’t have? Time and space.

My mom held her first art show and sale at her home on Saturday. She sold half of 30 paintings. Yes, she is a brilliant watercolorist. (She picked up a brush at the tender age of 55 and has been steadily working over the last 10 years.) But also she is very pragmatic and paints for her audience, featuring subjects that are dear to them. For shows in Florida, she paints pelicans. Massachusetts? Fishing boats.

Note to self: When in Florida, paint pelicans.

I love iland!

What are you doing next weekend?
Learning about mushrooms? Getting your hands and mind dirty in workshops about the urban environment? Me too!

Join the brilliant and provocative folks at iLAND as they offer their super affordable ($10-20 sliding!) Symposium "Connecting to the Urban Environment - Creating embodied and relational approaches to environmental awareness"

This titillating event will "pursue issues emanating from creative collaborations across New York City that are actively designing new relationships to public space. A keynote address by the seminal landscape artist Mary Miss will address collaboration through the “City as Living Lab” project. Presentations and a panel by choreographer Jennifer Monson, iLAB residency artists of Strataspore and the New School's sTEM project will conclude Friday's event."

March 26, 2010
7pm - 9pm Keynote Speaker, Collaborative Discussions and Panel
Kellen Auditorium, 2 East 13th Street, NY, NY

March 27, 2010
10am - 5pm Workshops and Discussion
10am - 12:30pm Workshops
1pm - 2pm Lunch provided at E. 16th St
2pm - 5pm Discussion

Fee: Sliding scale $10- $20


Presenters include: sculptor, Mary Miss, iLAND founder and artistic director Jennifer Monson, previous iLAB residents Chris Kennedy, Athena Kokoronis, Caroline Woolard, Kate Cahill, Gary Lincoff, and New School professors Timon McPhearson and Philip Silva.

Stolen Chair: When a new business model makes you get better at your business

Dearest Entrepreneuristes (my terrible attempt at coining a term for artist-entrepreneurs),

Stolen Chair's ERPA project, the Community Supported Theatre (CST), has certainly kept us more than a little bit busy. We're now fully halfway through the pilot season of the CST and we can take this opportunity to reflect a little bit about the journey. One of the reasons we were granted implementation funds from ERPA was the tight link between our mission and our project. At its core, the CST simply transforms what was usually a major drain on our financial resources (new play development) into a revenue stream by opening access to the experience and sharing it with a small community of audience-investors. Given how closely aligned this project is with our general play development process, we have found it, therefore, surprising how very much the CST is transforming the way we approach our work. The monthly meet-ups with our CST members have forced us to improve in a skill-set critical to our artistry: curating audience experience.

In the past, we only really had the opportunity to interact with an audience during our self-produced runs of our new plays. These interactions were always under many different types of duress. Cramped in a space we had little control over, we would have a few minutes to usher hordes of people into our performance space, a harried interaction that might not provide the best opening act for the performance itself. While we certainly thought about the dramaturgy of the audience's experience of the play, we ignored how these other elements (front-of-house, intermission, post-show) might influence and likely detract from said experience.

Now, once a month--every month--we have to shape an entire evening of audience engagement in which only a very slender portion is our actual performance work. There is food, drink, lectures, q&a's, films, and lots of discussion. As a company, we have to have many many many conversation about how best to weave all these elements together so the experience is whole, the take-away is clear, and the event satisfies both our desire for creative feedback and our membership's desire for interaction. Beyond that, we've had to mobilize all of our organizational abilities to be sure that when our members arrive, they are entering a space that is ready to welcome them.

On the field trip we took to New Paltz during our ERPA r&d phase, I spent a lot of time thinking about how the drive up to the drop-off point of various CSAs was a major factor in each CSA's specific character (and in a town with the most CSAs per capita in the world, "specific character" is a primary selling point). While we can't do much to make it more appealing to travel to a midtown rehearsal studio on a Sunday night, 5 months of CST has helped us learn how to make sure that once our members step through the door, we can treat them to an evening in which they can relax into the experience of being sated with theatre, food, and conversation.

As an entrepreneuriste (not gonna work, is it?), how can you shift your business model so that it capitalizes on things you do well while also encouraging you to get better at the skills essential to your craft?

Sincerely,

Jon & the Chairs

March fundraising Madness is killing me

If you are as exhausted as I am by writing project descriptions, reading Artist Statements, drafting budgets, imaging programming for 2012 (apocalypse now?), try this handy dandy Artist Statement generator! Like mad libs for the Artist Statement? This one is for the fine arts and not for us gross artists (performing arts are gross!).

This is what I churned out in less than 30 seconds!! I think I'll use it for our next big grant app.

Work of Sub-Art in the Age of Generative Reproduction
The mind creates, the body permeates. In the material reality, art objects are reproductions of the creations of the mind -- a mind that uses the body as an organism to materialize ideas, patterns, and emotions. With the rationalization of the electronic environment, the mind is conceiving a point where it will be free from the body to transcend immersions into the machinations of the delphic reality. Work of Sub-Art in the Age of Generative Reproduction contains 10 minimal shockwave engines (also refered to as "soundtoys") that enable the user to make dippy audio/visual compositions.

measuring chains, constructing realities
putting into place forms
a matrix of illusion and disillusion
a strange attracting force
so that a seduced reality will be able to spontaneously feed on it

Sally Struthers's work investigates the nuances of pixels through the use of slow motion and close-ups which emphasize the Generative nature of digital media. Struthers explores abstract and flippy scenery as motifs to describe the idea of infinite reality. Using nippy loops, non-linear narratives, and slow-motion images as patterns, Struthers creates meditative environments which suggest the expansion of time...


Thank you facebook and my pal CWood for showing me this delightful brain mash.

The Equus Projects: Raising Money is Really Challenging But I am Still Excited

Every day that Michael Lonergan, Executive Director, and I work on raising money for our hub site projects we are struck by the many faces of this economic climate. But in seeking out funding we are exploring uncharted areas of income generating and fundraising creativity.

Here are some of our strategies and discoveries:

We make serious money teaching clinics for equestrians. Our enrollment for this spring and summer is down by 30%. So we have turned to reformatting. Instead of our previous format of two-day clinics for a set fee we are reducing our material to one-day formats. This is making us dig deeper into the material, offer smaller amounts of information but at greater depth. We are also teaming up for one-day presentations with well-known equestrian trainers. These trainers are generously charging us do-able fees for their time in exchange for attending other sessions we offer. We are all learning. We get to share information.

We are investing in some preliminary visits to communities were we have performances scheduled. This might sound like spending more money, but the preliminary visits are generating excitement about the company and the project. This excitement has led to In Kind donations, as well as –hopefully- some generous (even in this economic climate!) patrons.

Our preliminary visits are not just sit at a table planning sessions. They include a live Demonstration with horses, riders and excellent cookies. Last year we did a Demo on Vashon Island and met fabulous people who offered to house and feed us for a week. This kind of willingness from the communities to open up their homes and kitchens allow us to continue our work at a minimal cost to the company. For this we are very excited!

We just did a very successful Demo on a chilly Valentine’s Day in Aubrey, Texas for a project that will be produced in late May. Despite record low temperatures 45 people attended - horse people and lots of dancers from Texas Women’s University, University of North Texas and community dancers from the Dallas/Forth Worth area. We are very excited to build upon this Demo a deeper community involvement with those people we met.

We are holding open rehearsals.

We do not eat in restaurants.

When people ask what they can do to help out we suggest they invite us to dinner.

We are bringing our non-profit paperwork so that rental cars do not charge us tax.

We are forging relationships with local businesses to work with us on use on everything from use of equipment to help with papering the community about the company.

We use members of the community to help make introductions to local government officials and other cultural institutions.

Phase One is the Honeymoon Phase

Phase One was our exploration and options for our hub sites. Everyone was tremendously excited about the work.

We are now in Phase Two; returning to our sites. Our communities have accepted us with open arms. They donated everything to make the hub-site come into being. But, we know these donations can’t last forever and sooner than later, our communities may suffer from donor fatigue. Nobody is more aware than we are at the cost of these services – and it continues to be our challenge to keep our communities motivated and expanded enough to work with us as ambassadors for the company.

Phase One we could create community through volunteerism. Phase Two: Where does it go from here? What do we need to do to facilitate the real engagement?

There is a message about accountability inside all of this. And I like that because that accountability for action exists in our work with the horses as well.

We come with a big initial splash. The second visit we must present something different and not just for the sake of variety. We are no longer a new flavor. Now we must dig deeper.

Here are some Phase Two Challenges:

The second visit we are accountable for the residue we left behind the first time: horses that got spooked, grass that got torn from overuse, items that were lost or misplaced.

The second visit we must answer to mistakes made: using equine halters that were too heavy, forgetting to throw the wrappers away that littered not only the rental car but the car our friend lent us!

The second visit we must really deal with all the things that were not working the first time. Rather than chalk up unworkable situations as a one time event – we will be looking for ways to work in partnership with our hub site communities.

Don’t get me wrong. We are having a blast and the projects we have planned are awesome. But we are also facing the harsh reality that come fall of 2010 we will not have another ERPA check in our mailbox!!

jms

FREE $$$ Fair: The Art of Money

From our friends at the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs:

Have you used credit cards to fund a project and can’t seem to pay them down? Are you looking for free objective one-on-one financial advice?

Join the Department of Cultural Affairs and Department of Consumer Affairs Office of Financial Empowerment for a day of FREE one-on-one financial counseling and workshops designed to help working artists and arts administrators in all disciplines, as well as independent workers reduce debt and manage credit...

The City of New York will host The Art of Money: Personal Financial Resources for Artists on Saturday, March 6 from noon to 5 p.m. at the Dwyer Cultural Center located at 258 St. Nicholas Avenue. Designed to help working artists and independent workers in all fields, the City will provide free, confidential, one-on-one consultations, in English and Spanish, with financial counselors, as well as group workshops on how to access and use credit, reduce existing debt and interest rates, and plan for the highs and lows of irregular income.

Call 311 or visit nyc.gov/ArtOfMoney for more information.

The Field will be there with our Economic Revitalization hats on!

ERPA Resource Guide

A Non-Exhaustive Resource Wiki for Artists, Arts Administrators, Philanthropists and Arts Enthusiasts across genres and across the board...

The Field encounters provocative information about the arts economy every day. The ERPA Resource Guide has evolved organically as a means for us to serve the performing arts community a menu of hot topic information across artistic disciplines; from The Field (us) to the field (you)!

Check out the wiki for a multitude of innovative resources and services we know will stoke your personal process of economic revitalization.

Conni's Avant Garde Restaruant: Searching for Usually

“Usually” is a word often used by friendly people asking me about our show, Conni’s Avant Garde Restaurant. Where do you usually perform? How often? Where do you usually prepare the food? How much does it cost? These basic questions stump me: We don’t “usually” anything yet. We are making it up as we go along. But, the funny thing is that as soon as you make something, people believe it already exists. We are three years old now, but the usuallies started right away. I am very wary of them and I crave them at the same time. They signal the end of the birthing process.

The way I answer the usually questions is to say what we have done already: The first year we did three stand-alone events at a rehearsal studio with a kitchen, with the idea that we would be a once a month, low key, underground supperclub serving at most 50 people. We forged our characters and our ideas in front of the audience and the evenings we bizarre and chaotic and beautiful. I did the shopping and cooking like I “usually” do, by carting it around by hand. We charged $30. The next year, we moved into the Bushwick Starr and developed the current format for the show very much in collaboration with the physical space. We developed an internal logic and invested in the stories of the characters and the the audience’s experience over the evening. We did five productions, each with a 2-night run spaced about six weeks apart, serving 120 people over each weekend. By then we had assimilated two more characters to prepare the food and we had discovered Fresh Direct. We charged $35. We increased the run to 3-nights, serving 180 people over the weekend. We became real foodies and started sourcing locally. We charged $40. We lifted that show up and plunked it in the Ohio Theatre this summer and fall, had a design duo replicate the format with bling and style, and served 320 people over a 4-night run. We found Farm to Chef. We charged $50.

We have nicknamed this full show our “Mothership” production in order to distinguish it from the “Ah La Carte” site-specific events that we write for the location and the occasion. We say yes to everyone and everything: pass-the-dessert performances for benefits, conferences, and festivals, a bridal shower at a private home with champagne cocktails and party games, full cabaret evenings at Joe’s Pub with and without food, a full holiday dinner in the lobby and conference room of a Manhattan office, and a commissioned work for a museum cafe.

I like to think that we are developing our company by trial and trial. We try something and then we try it again with a bigger audience, or seasonal food, or refined writing, or in a different setting, or more nights in a row, or spaced farther apart, or with higher price points. In other words, we don’t know what we are until after we have tried it. The one thing we do have is an army of characters whose fiction is aligned with function (cooks, general manager, bartender, diva performers, bouncer, etc.) and we can own most new set-ups by just letting the characters do what they would do. The characters might have fictional histories, but they are always in the same time and place and situation with the audience. We don’t have to be flawless or fully prepared for everything, we just have to be able to meet the unknown with grace and keep taking care of the audience.

Still, some ‘usually’ might be good for my health. We are good at trying new things and the next new thing might be taking care of ourselves. This is the part where ERPA and the larger conversation surrounding it comes in. Usually is the way you build word of mouth. Usually is the projected budget. It’s the only way to plan your calendar. Or to live a balanced life. Or to ask for funding. Our show is something new for most of our guests. They want to say things like “they usually perform in this really cool space in Bushwick.”

With the ERPA implementation grant, we are looking for “usually” this summer: Where? A great new club space. When? Once a week throughout the season. How much? Hopefully enough. The Food? Locally grown and prepared in a viable kitchen space. I don’t want to jinx it, so check back for the next blog post and I’ll tell you where we’ll be! In the meantime, we will be serving lunch at 2pm at the NoPassport Conference on February 26, Nuyorican Poets Café, $10 at the door for conference attendees. Please come and feed us back.

OurGoods is running a storefront!

OurGoods.org is really picking up speed! I'm writing from the storefront we opened last night: Trade School at 139 Norfolk in the Lower East Side. For the next 30 days, we'll have nightly classes, daily co-working for Trade School teachers, and barter agents available to the public from 3-6pm. Sign up for a class here by meeting one of the teacher's barter needs.

Trade School classes are taught by members of the OurGoods alpha network. Sharing skills and hanging out at the storefront will foster better working relationships. I want to know what you do! Let's get to know each other as rigorous artists with a wide range of talents. Come visit in the afternoon or evening and meet other people who want to share skills, spaces, and objects.

We have a month long storefront space because OurGoods co-founder Rich Watts bartered a lot of design work with Grand Opening. From there, we made a chalkboard and built 16 tables and 16 chairs with salvaged materials- we only paid for 1 sheet of plywood and finish paint! Co-founder Louise Ma made an incredibly beautiful flag that we will fly every day. The space will be reconfigured each day. Last night at the opening, Athena Kokoronis brought her mobile kitchen and exchanged gestures for cake. Martyna Szczesna set up a portrait studio and took 100+ photos. This week, we have classes about foraging for mushrooms, business and art, running an LLC, organizing an arts festival, and making kimchee. Classes start today!

Online, OurGoods is being tested by around 100 people! We are still fine-tuning the site, and expect to launch in the Spring. Stop in the storefront and talk to me (Caroline) if you'd like to join this early group of testers online.

The Field's Economic Revitalization Implementation Awardees

The Field's Economic Revitalization for Performing Artists (ERPA) program awards $55,000 to entrepreneurial artists working to catalyze and sustain their creative economies! ERPA Implementation Awards provide grants of $10,000 to $20,000 to continue developing and implementing projects under the auspices of The Field. Watch ERPA Artists work their magic at WNYC, featuring coverage from September 2009's Public Display of Invention at The Greene Space...



Thanks for watching, let us know what you think!

Stolen Chair: Going back to college

Howdy, folks. Jon from Stolen Chair here with my second installment on ye ol' ERPA blog.

So...I've been thinking a lot about college lately. This is not surprising, given the fact that one of my survival jobs is as a college consultant; I'm looking at the roster of high schoolers who've just signed on board with me and trying to start figuring out how I can help them find the transformative undergraduate experience I had at Swarthmore College. While I readily and frequently give a nod to my alma mater for shaping the entire course of my adult life (including the development of Community Supported Theatre), I am always surprised when I discover that elements of my undergrad experience have trickled into my Stolen Chair life. And here's what I just realized: the theatre blogosphere (ridiculously codenamed by some as the "theatrosphere") and Twitter have been fulfilling some of my undergraduate nostalgia. (I have to give a credit to Mr. Dave Charest, @DaveCharest, for suggesting the link between Twitter and college.)

The Theatrosphere

Do you remember those conversations in college which started sometime in the late afternoon and stretched out until dawn? There was an urgency shared between you and your conversational co-conspirators; perhaps if you just spoke about the issue long enough, you would together punch through the syntax and cultural baggage to arrive at a revelation. Or maybe, you had locked horns with an ideological adversary, using every rhetorical tool you could muster to bring him or her over to the side of reason (which was, of course, always yours). Or maybe, you dejectedly discovered that your truest allies actually, once the level of the conversation got deep enough, frustrated the bejesus outta you. Or maybe, just maybe, once the dining hall's breakfast started calling you out of your intense battles you realized that maybe all that syntax and cultural baggage can't actually be overcome and we are who we are and we're from where we're from...but we can still find enough common ground to talk, really talk with each other about important issues.

This, folks, is the magical nostalgia that the theatrosphere (at its best) summons from me. You can take a peek at the blogroll here for some of the best and brightest theatrical minds who are provoking such reveries. I am by no means suggesting you go out and start your own blog to join the fray (and that's a topic I'll revisit in my next ERPA installment m'thinks), but I do think that you could do worse things every once in awhile than staying up past your bedtime to get lost in some of the fiery debates and paradigm shattering conversations happening on these sites.

Twitter

My undergrad had a tiny little cafe called Kohlberg Coffee Bar, always filled with brilliant people en route to class or other activities, or sometimes camping out in the quixotic attempt to accomplish some assignment or other. Though sometimes one of the above mentioned conversations might start at Kohlberg, it was far more likely that you'd just get little snippets here and there. You'd wander into some people's conversations, eavesdrop on others, and sometimes wander into conversations on which you've eavesdropped. And because it's such a small cafe with such extraordinary acoustics, there's a certain performativity to all the proceedings. You are in public. One of the nice side-effects of this is the emergence of a certain decorum as it's probably not safe to say nasty things about people when the world (or at least your world) is listening.

Twitter is just such a cafe, a great equalizer where theatre's biggest and smallest engage in sometimes banal, sometimes brilliant chit chat. I've forged international brain trusts from colleagues I've discovered through such chitting and chatting on Twitter. Heck, three of them even joined the Community Supported Theatre! Again, I'm not suggesting you go out and start tweeting every day, but there are so many brilliant, innovative theatre tweeters (the thweeters?), it's certainly worth a latte's worth of your day to eavesdrop on the rapport. You can really follow anyone on the "following" lists of the inestimable Travis Bedard, Nick Keenan, David J Loehr, or Chris Ashworth (or maybe us)...

Kahlil Almustafa: The People's Inauguration: Poetry & Dialogue on the one-year anniversary of Obama's Inauguration

kahlil almustafa, The People’s Poet and author of From Auction Block to Oval Office leads an interactive event combining performance poetry and critical dialogue commemorating the one-year anniversary of President Obama’s inauguration.

When: January 20th, 2010

Where: The Jerome L. Greene Performance Space

44 Charlton Street (on the corner of Charlton and Varick)
New York, NY 10014

Time: Doors 6:30pm, Poetry & Panel 7pm

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER.

Panelists include:

• Rosa Clemente - 2008 Green Party Vice-Presidential Candidate
• Cindy Sheehan - author of "Not One More Mother's Child"
• Michael Skolnik - Political Director to Russell Simmons & Editor for GlobalGrind.com

About the event:

To commemorate the one-year anniversary of Obama's inauguration, kahlil almustafa, The People's Poet, leads an interactive session combining performance poetry and critical dialogue. Reading from his fifth collection of poetry, FROM AUCTION BLOCK TO OVAL OFFICE: 100 POEMS IN 100 DAYS OF OBAMA'S PRESIDENCY (MVMT Publishing, January 2010) kahlil explores the hopes, fears, contradictions and complexity which come with the election of the United States’ first African-American president.

Written in the voice of a young, African-American male, a romantic revolutionary, and an intellectual, these poems capture a nation teetering between danger and opportunity, cynicism and hope.

"kahlil almustafa’s poems are extraordinary in their political complexity and aesthetic sensibility. His language in From Auction Block to Oval Office is crystal-clear and the ideas are continually provocative."

- Howard Zinn, author, A People’s History of the United States

This event will be interactive. The panel will respond to the critical questions raised by the poems. Audience members will have the opportunity to create their own poems. Panelists to be announced.

Some of the questions to be addressed:

• How do we create a space for people to express the ways Barack Obama has inspired them and create a space for principled criticism?
• Is this the closing of a chapter in the American narrative beginning with the auction block and concluding with the Obamas in the White House? Or is the narrative of African enslavement being used to promote the idea of America perfecting its democracy?
• It has been said that the Hip-Hop generation greatly impacted the election in 2008. How has the Hip Hop generation been impacted by the campaign, Obama’s presidency, and how will the Hip-Hop generation continue to be engaged?
  

The event is powered by the Mighty Mighty

Kahlil Almustafa: Thank You to The Field

This January 20, 2010, I will be launching my collection of poems, From Auction Block to Oval Office: 100 poems written in the first 100 days of Obama's presidency. We are proudly presenting The People's Inauguration: Poetry & Dialogue on the one-year anniversary of Obama's Inauguration to commemorate this occassion. The lessons I learned during ERPA have been invaluable to the success of this project. In the ERPA lab, I learned key concepts which helped me think about both my artistic and my business approach.

Let me quickly list the way three Field Workshops have helped build this project:

• The "Strategies for Internet Outreach" workshop with Jaki Levy in May 2009, helped me gain the confidence to work on WordPress and transformed my relationship to publishing content as an act of creating value.
• The "Public Relations Principles" workshop, also in May and the one-on-one session with Fran Kirmser, helped my wife, Julia, and I conceive of the "100 Donors 100 Dollars" campaign to raise money for my project. It was Fran's excitement about the possibilities of my book which led me to publish and her insistence that I set a date which would make sense for my project which led me to choose the one-year anniversary of Obama's inauguration. She also provided some simple strategies for creating a personalized mailing for my donors.
• The "Special Events Planning" workshop with Andrew Frank, who stepped in for Fran helped immensely with the final stages of the project's launch. Andrew's workshop focused on building community as the way to create successful events. He helped us map out our communities and strategize specific and personalized ways to engage with each of them.

In addition to the Field Workshops, my continued work with Executive Director, Jennifer Cook, and the conversations I had with the ERPA 7 have been invaluable moving this project forward. Thank you to the whole Field staff for your stance for the arts and the artists.

kahlil almustafa

The Equus Projects: Research is just Curiosity with Purpose

EQUUS PROJECTS - Economic Revitalization update!

Hub Sites

These statements describe what we are experiencing as we develop four hub sites for our work. One in Texas; one in Florida; one in Montana and one in Seattle.

It is just simplest to describe each in terms of the specific hub site anecdote.

TAKING WHAT COMES YOUR WAY

Last August we created a large performance project on Vashon Island, a small commuter island off the coast of Seattle. Both performances were sold to capacity. The project created quite a buzz on the island. All good, since Seattle was to be one of our designated hub sites !

In September we were invited to return. I had hoped to do a remake of the work we created last August, but do it better. Better horsemanship. Better development of choreographic through line. However our producer felt it would be wiser to produce a new work: new music, new costumes, new choreography. So much for deeper investigation, but as it turns out there is Seattle based funding for new music commissions and our composer is well known in the Pacific NW.

I am planning a trip to Seattle in March to plan the project, seek out potential patrons, create a buzz about the new project. And visit good friends. One of those friends produces periodic soiree featuring a guest speaker. Voila! a chance to entice a group of potential patrons who all are already interested in hearing about The Equus Projects.

We are planning our catered dinners again at our friends Sandi and Joe’s. Instead of restaurant5 eating we buy the food and pay a small catering fee for nightly dinners. And provide a chance for us to share down time, wine and good food with our hub site friends and collaborators.

MAKING THINGS HAPPEN

Seattle is unfolding with happy surprises this year because we madethings happen last year. Hours of conference calls and planning went into a cultivation event in June and many layers of planning for meals and housing for our ten days on Vashon last August.

We are taking the same approach in Aubrey, Texas. In February I will spend four days with our co-presenter Jeanette Wright. She is a masterful organizer. It was her idea to produced a performance event in Aubrey, Texas – home to many ranchers, and a wonderful population of retired Hollywood actors!! One of those actors is married to Jeanette’s dressage teacher. Valentines Day Jeanette and I will host a brunch and demo in her barn, with her horses.

What is exciting about Texas is that Aubrey is 15 minutes from Denton and Denton is the home of Texas Women's University and University of North Texas and close to Texas Christian University – all universities with terrific dance departments. Four emails later I have been able to contact faculty at each university. I will teach a master class at TWU while I am down there. And my dance colleagues are ALL planning to attend our Valentines Day party and demo.

PLANNING IT FOR THEM

It is not always this easy. Gainesville and Ocala are only 40 miles apart but it has been a gentle uphill climb to create bridges between our horse world and dance world in Florida.

We are making progress.

Last July we had a 10-day residency at White Oak Plantation in Yulee Florida. At White Oak dancers are treated like kings and it was our pleasure to invite Joan Frosch - former dance chair and now co-Director of the Center for World Arts the U of F/ Gainesville - to be our guest for several days. At White Oak we were able to spend time with Joan talking about our work, planning and processing.

She also enjoyed a Hawaiian luau with us and got to watch our creative process and a premiere performance of Un/Stable.

Joan gets our work on many levels – the dancing, the training, the physical listening and the intellectual dialogue that surrounds the integrating of sensing and knowing that is a crucial part of how we as dancers must work with horses if we honestly wish to create work that is both beautiful and profound but also safe!!

We want to produce one of our Creative Collisions think tanks in at the U of F. in Gainesville. Joan will be an invaluable help. But the U of F dance department is huge. There are many agendas and ours will not be a first priority. So intermediate steps are required. This March I will be a guest artist at the U of F for a week. I plan to teach an intensive course on site specific choreography. I believe one must be deeply accountable to one’s choreographic site. We will begin with horses as our site. That is real accountability. And then move on to lawns and stairways!!

Florida is also where we spend as many as five weeks a year in training with expert horsemanship trainers and fabulous horses. When it is 34 degrees and the ground is frozen here in NY, we can spend 7 hours a day on Ocala training with horses in the dead of January. This January we will spend five days training and choreographing. We like to invite lots of our equestrian friends to watch, give feedback and coach us. They love the creativity and admire our ability to move and make split second decisions inside a piece of choreography with equine partners. Last January we did an open rehearsal/ demo and invited a few friends. Sixty people showed up! We might just do another one of those “small” gatherings again this January!

JUST SUGGESTING

Helena, Montana is a new site of The Equus Projects. In October we created a large performance piece with 16 riders and 20 horses. Lots of people saw us. Our creative time was far too short and we would like to return to show that we can make a different kind of work.

In Helena we have some unusual and very strategic supporters. Anne Perkins is the founder and chair of the Human-Animal Bonding Program at Carroll College. She is a PhD in Psychology. She invited me to give several lectures to her class while we were on site creating in Helena. She is interested in how we communicate with horses and brings to our work the mind of a scientist. Perfect of Creative Collisions!

When we left Helena in October I was wondering how/ what we could do in partnership with Anne Perkins. A week later one of our equestrians wrote to invite us to come and teach in Bozeman. I immediately emailed Anne suggesting we piggyback a Bozeman visit with a 3-day brainstorming in Helena. Better yet, let’s do a demo of our work with horses – small, informal, narrated – in Helena. Invite potential patrons. Create a plan for residency focusing on movement and the human and equine connection. Maybe a possible series of lectures for next fall. Set the foundations for a large performance project in 2011. But connect it to a research project with Carroll College. Just suggestions.

Research is just curiosity with a purpose. I think much oif what we are doing is following our curiosity. And doing research. Now that ought to be fundable!

****

For more on multi-localism visit www.DanceLocally.com.

Learn more about The Equus Projects at www.dancingwithhorses.org

The Equus Projects is a recipient of The Field’s Economic Revitalization for Performing Artists (ERPA) Phase 3 Implementation award. The Field’s ERPAprogram receives funding from The Rockefeller Foundation’s Cultural Innovation Fund. For more information, please visitwww.thefield.org or www.economicrevitalization.blogspot.com.

The Equus Projects: Helena, MT: a case study of beginning a multi-localism hubsite

The Equus Projects has a unique way of touring.

We do not own our own horses.

For each project we use horses owned by equestrians in the community.

This makes for a very deep engagement with the local community.

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Below is an over view of a recent tour in Helena, Montana where we used 20 local horses:

In early October The Equus Projects spent a week in Helena creating an hour-long performance piece for dancers and horses that mobilized a cast of 16 local riders and 20 horses.

Our on-site creation time for Join Up! was only 7 seven days. That seven-day creation marathon was the culmination of six months of preparation. It was that preparation that best exemplifies how The Equus Projects engages the community and how that engagement results in some unusual and innovative solutions to touring challenges.


Finding Horses and Riders

Unlike many of our past projects, we had no existing network of riders and horses in Montana.

March – May: We send out emails to Helena area equestrians asking for participants. We make use of a fairly extensive on-line network of riders who all train in natural horsemanship and heard back from over 30 riders expressing their interest in being a part of the project. Riders post videos of their horses and their riding on Youtube. Eventually our list narrows down to a group of creative-minded, athletic riders who were available for a solid week of rehearsal in Helena.


A Fabulous Local Liaison

July: Helena equestrian Amy Palmer trailers her horse 12 hours over the mountains from Helena to Snohomish, WA to take an equestrian clinic with us! Amy offers to be our liaison with the performance site and arrange for the Tri-Arabian Club, a group of riders who have Arabian horses – to audition for us. We send ahead riding patterns. They rehearse, film and post on Youtube.

August-September: Amy Palmer sends photos of the performance site - cavernous metal building on the grounds of the Lewis and Clark Fairgrounds: Metal walls and packed dirt floor, the space is used for rodeos and bull running.


Performance Venue

Clearly we need to arrange for some theatrical lighting!! The Myrna Loy has its lighting instruments being used for an in-house show. We find the fabulous Marty Severson, lighting designer/ soundman from Great Falls, MT who has worked with everyone from the Obama campaign to the Rolling Stones!!


Creation

Join Up! was constructed in ten sections: an opening for 10 liberty horses (horses without riders) and 4 dancers; several small sections for dancer, horse and rider; and five large group rides with dancers woven into the intricate riding patterns. The equestrians ranged from reining cowboy to dressage rider.

We organized our days into rehearsal modules: Dancer warm-up 8:30am; Equine warm-up into work ona group ride until noon; small sections during midday; Lat afternoon logistics meeting; 5:30 dinner followed by the Tri-Arabians 6:00 - 8:00 pm.


Horsemanship Training & Equine Expertise

Given the number of horses and riders we were working with, we knew we would need an equine director and advisor. So we invited our long-time equestrian mentor, David Lichman, to join us for the week.

David helped with the equine choreography, offered horsemanship advice to every member of the cast, made sure the dirt footing was dragged, had the metal fencing moved to achieve better sightlines and rewired the sound system.

For us, David's horsemanship served as a binding attachment to the horse community. David's respect and enthusiasm for our work was apparent. His superb horsemanship set the bar for the performers.

Work Schedule andMeals

With a rehearsal schedule that had us working from 8am til 8pm, realistically there was no time for leisurely restaurant meals.

Solution: Amy Palmer arranges for a small clubhouse on the fairgrounds to be our home base and orchestrates a full service soup kitchen!Amy's Kitchen fed hungry equestrians and dancers breakfast, lunch and dinner for six days. Throughout, Amy was assisted in planning and cooking by Equus Projects Site Coordinator Kristen Schifferdecker.

Meals on site made it possible for us to spend mealtime and snack breaks with our cast. Offering them meals was a small thank you for all the time they gave to the project.


Community Engagement

Our work does draw passionate community engagement. It is not so much what we do but how we go about doing it that makes for this depth of community engagement.

Here are some guidelines that might make be useful points of inspiration, suggest possibilities and translate into practices you could use for your own practice.

Over 1500 people saw our work in 7 days!!

Each day busloads of 5-6th graders, seniors and community people arrived at 1:00 to witness an Open Rehearsal. Our Open rehearsals morphed into narrated demos offering excerpts from the various pieces we were creating and insights into the choreographic challenges our work presents. The demos were like mini reality shows in which we shared with our audiences not only the creative process but also the backstage dramas that go into creating a performance with dancers and horses !!

The day of our opening, the newspaper had advertised a free performance and 450 people showed up for our 1:00 Open Rehearsal !! That night Join Up! Played to a sold out crowd of over 600.


Community Engagement

Our work does brings about a depth of community engagement.

Here are some touring guidelines that might translate into useful practices for your own touring.

1) LOTS of advanced planning:

Months and months of advanced planning is actually a form of PR announcing that you are coming to town! It creates word of mouth about the work and gets people excited about the project.

Our advanced horse planning happens much before the presenter's outreach into the community and months before the official; PR for the project is announced.


2) Finding local networks to work with:

Use locals as advisors, helpers and liaisons. We have found that locals can be great ambassadors for our work and serve as very effective liaisons to our presenter.


3) Find creative solutions for touring necessities such as meals:

We rarely go out for meals. For most projects we find a local who is interested in catering, we buy the food and sometimes provide muscle power to prep meals. Meals are an excellent time for artists and locals to visit.


4) Spend time with local community OUTSIDE of the work

We spent lots of time hanging out with our equestrians before rehearsals, after rehearsals, during equine training session in which they become our mentors. They offer us advice as to how best use their horses.

In Helena several key individuals became very involved in the creative process and offered numerous fabulous suggestions.

Discover ways that the community can be your teachers.


5) Plan to return

Wherever we tour, we come with the attitude that we would love to return.

Coming into a community with the desire to come back and do more, creates the sense that we value what the community offers us.

Sharing with locals the intention to return creates an opportunity for locals to brainstorm about future performance and teaching opportunities. It gives the community a sense of ownership in the work. It often brings us into contact with potential patrons.

In Helena the plan to return had a very specific goal: We made it known that we were building "hub-sites" outside of our base in New York. The Helena horse community has already begun brainstorming projects for us and invited us to return in July to teach a clinic in Bozeman, MT.

****

For more on multi-localism visit www.DanceLocally.com.

Learn more about The Equus Projects at www.dancingwithhorses.org

The Equus Projects is a recipient of The Field’s Economic Revitalization for Performing Artists (ERPA) Phase 3 Implementation award. The Field’s ERPAprogram receives funding from The Rockefeller Foundation’s Cultural Innovation Fund. For more information, please visit www.thefield.org or www.economicrevitalization.blogspot.com.