Services

Here goes nothing! Drawing on 15 years of professional work, training, and learning, we are ready to support artists and arts organizations who put creativity and community at the center of their work.

Partake Arts provides support and guidance that is tailored to your needs, and we encourage you to see what is possible for your art practice or organization. We’re the supportive big sibling (that doesn’t borrow your clothes), or the fitness trainer who gives you cues and knowledge to make your movements are safe, efficient, and effective. We are here to help. Partake Arts offers:

• Advising: Guidance, feedback, practical resources, and thought partnership in 60 and 90-minute meeting blocks
• Shared Work Sessions: 90 minute sessions focused on executing practical work together, such as setting up budgets, collaborating on grants, drafting mission, vision, and values statements, and creating business plans  
• Independent Work: All that back office work–reading and editing documents, writing a grant, creating budgets, research, finance and operations tasks, and creating agendas for classes or facilitation
• Project-based Consulting: Those big, multi-faceted strategic projects that need an outside perspective, like a strategic planning process or succession plan
• Interim Leadership Staffing: Temporary and project-based leadership and staff support for mission-critical roles, as well as support for recruitment and placement
• Facilitation: Holding space for group collaboration and creating opportunities for learning, trust-building, communication, and growth
• Community Classes: Learning opportunities for small groups, including guest teaching, single classes, and durational learning cohorts with individual advising

We envision a performing arts ecology where artists and arts workers are empowered to lead and able to ask for strategic advice and support when they need it. Our hope is that Partake Arts clients will develop internal expertise and capacity so that when we part ways, artists and the projects they lead are healthy, impactful, and sustainable. Let’s get to work! 

For Individual Artists

They didn’t teach this is your MFA program, and even though that’s bananas, it is valuable to develop the administrative and self-management side of your practice. Partake Arts can help you (finally!) apply for that local arts council grant (what are matching fund and why do I need them?!), create a touring budget for your latest piece that is heading to Australia (international freight!), write an artist statement for a residency application in Maine next summer, or decide if it’s worth it to file for 501c3 status (the quick answer: almost never, but sometimes it can work out fine in the end). It’s hard work, it’s worth it, and it can even be fun when we do it together. 

Partake Arts works directly with individual artists to offer advice and administrative support, acting as a thought partner and advocate. Fiscally-sponsored projects, independent artists, students, and emerging arts professionals from a variety of backgrounds come to us with a challenge, and we work together to find the right solution for you. Unlike a traditional producer, agent, or manager, we don’t step in or take over and handle administration or negotiations. That’s not our style, and it’s not productive in the long run anyway! Partake Arts is more akin to a coach: someone who helps you build skills, test out ideas, and create plans for the future—keeping you goals and values front and center. 

Examples:

For Organizations 

For too many artists, starting a company means endless administrative work with little or no time for the actual work of making art. So many small and mid-sized artist-led companies struggle under the weight of administrative work, and find themselves stretched too thin. We can commiserate, and we can work together to make it better.

Partake Arts offers advising and strategic support for emerging, small, and mid-sized performing arts organizations, arts funders, and arts service organizations at critical moments of change and growth. We can assist with the practical tasks of running a small arts organization, offer wise counsel that you are completely free to ignore, and perform more traditional consulting work like strategic planning, board development and training, and staff development. 

Interim Leadership & Succession Planning

In small organizations, everyone is key staff. Partake Arts provides support during moments of planned and unplanned transition, and we can come in quickly to manage teams, support Boards, set up operating systems, and provide internal assessments during the search process. Interim executive director work is specifically informed by our training with the New York-based Support Center, and is designed to support over a defined time period alongside the specific goal of hiring a full-time, permanent leader. We also design and recruit for a wide variety of positions, working from a framework of inclusion and equity, and support succession and transition planning, both on emotional and practical levels.

Community Classes

Artists need and deserve support to learn more about the practical side of their craft in a supportive, joyful space with snacks. Learning is a lot easier when we do it with co-conspirators who share our challenges and who can offer their real-world experiences, tackle pressing issues, and complain about the fundraising industrial complex together. These classes, both one-time offerings or durational learning experiences, bring together artists who share these values and who want to build their administrative and self-management skills, form relationships with peers, and deepen their analysis around how we treat each other as artists, colleagues, and communities. Classes are specifically crafted to focus on the needs of individual artists and emerging companies. Partake Arts can facilitate and teach our own offerings, or we can design courses, programs, and retreats that complement your organization’s educational mission.