What does it take for a partnership between Artists and Presenters to be sustainable? How do Artists and Presenters create sustainable relationships?
Presenters & Artists Learning Exchanges
Over the course of 2009-10, ROOTS and SouthArts partnered for an NEA-funded initiative to bring together Artists and Presenters to learn more about their relationships, how they understand each other, and how they work together. The outcomes of this partnership were three encounters in:
- August 2009 - Alternate ROOTS Annual Meeting
- September 2009 - Performing Arts Exchange
- July 2010 – Artists/Presenters Learning Exchange
Alternate ROOTS Annual Meeting 2009
There were artists from all stages of the process wanting to be presented. A singer, who wanted to get booked on a cruise ship, brought us to clarify the difference between a booker and a presenter. Singers who were being presented by the Kennedy Center were finding the power of the Internet to get their work out, and they talked about getting Coke as a sponsor. Social justice and the choices we make as to how we survive became part of the conversation. What is our work’s purpose? Puppeteers who run their own festival wanted to get more work, and grassroots organizing became part of the discussion. A community-artist that was grappling with the balance between presenting the art of immigrants to help them economically shared her struggle to find time to do produce her own personal artwork. Defining personal missions, recognizing personal experiences of transformation, and the nuts and bolts of the field were the focus of this workshop.
Performing Arts Exchange 2009
At PAE presenters ranged from having a library in a rural community with minimal technical support, to running a fully equipped stage and center in the Virgin Islands. Defining community-arts brought up, traditions, religions, social justice and how we house, host, and cultivate the diversity of opinions that come with these archetypal aspects of what it is to live in community. We explored power as a presenter and the power structures in our communities, what it means to be in dialogue with difference, and the complexity of partnerships across cultural behaviors, habits and understandings.
Presenters and Artists 2010
Presenters and artists came together to talk about sustainable partnerships in Atlanta GA. Check out a series of the conversations we had that address organizational missions, partnerships, and models for community engagement processes which promote sustainable structures that develop education, culture, equity, tradition and healing.
Click here to watch and listen to interviews and stories between participants in the July 2010 Learning Exchange.
Margo Miller (Knoxville, TN) draws a visual representation of a sustainable partnership.
Priscilla Smith (Atlanta, GA) listens on as Terry Scott (New Orleans, LA) tells a story about a partnership between a theatre and a local presenting organization.
Participants debrief about the "blind lead" exercise.
