All-Day Teaching Artist Workshop to be held at Collective Impact Conference
By Ann Talbott Brown, Director of Arts Education –
“If teaching artist work is but a dimension of arts practice, then it should be as inventive and idiosyncratic as art-making.” This is a quote taken from the Teaching Artist Handbook, vol. 1: Tools, Techniques and Ideas to Help Any Artist Teach (University of Chicago Press). Nick Jaffe and Becca Barniskis, co-authors of the book, will lead a day-long workshop for Tennessee teaching artists on Wednesday, June 8th from 8:00-4:30 p.m. in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. This workshop is designed to provide new and veteran artists with strategies to improve their work as educators, but will do so in a way that recognizes the unique and valuable role professional artists play in arts education. The workshop will explore such questions as: What will I teach?, How will I teach?, and Is my teaching working? and will draw on the expertise and experience of those in attendance.
The workshop will be held as part of the Tennessee Arts Commission’s 2016 statewide arts conference Collective Impact: Together as Community Change Agents at Patterson Park Community Center and Bradley Integrated Arts Academy. Arts administrators, educators, and artists will come together to learn how to address community issues through the arts. One primary focus of the conference is education, and supporting teaching artists in their effectiveness as educators is a goal of the Commission. The registration fee for the one-day teaching artist workshop is $50 which includes breakfast and lunch. Participants may choose to attend the entire Collective Impact Conference for a registration fee of $149 which also includes participation in the teaching artist workshop. Registration opens April 1st. For more information, please visit the Collective Impact webpage.
About the presenters
Becca Barniskis is a poet who has published her work in many journals, and she has a chapbook of poems, Mimi and Xavier Star in a Museum That Fits Entirely in One’s Pocket. She performs regularly as part of the bands Downrange Telemetrics and Pancake7. Becca also teaches and works as a freelance writer and consultant in arts education for a range of schools and arts organizations across the upper Midwest and around the US. She co-wrote the Teaching Artist Handbook, vol. 1: Tools, Techniques and Ideas to Help Any Artist Teach (University of Chicago Press) and was an associate editor at the Teaching Artist Journal for many years.
Nick Jaffe is a guitarist who has performed with such artists as Common, Estelle and Ice Cube, and recorded across a wide range of genres from soul and rock to free improvisational projects. As a teaching artist his focus has been on setting up student-run recording studios in public schools. Nick is a co-author of The Teaching Artist Handbook (University of Chicago Press) and former Chief Editor of the Teaching Artist Journal.
