Client Experiences
“Working with Ann Marie has been transformative. We’ve left behind our scarcity mentality and learned to thrive, while developing governance, fundraising and fiscal management infrastructures we’ve never been able to build on our own. It’s been a deeply enriching experience, trauma-informed, and completely compassionate to the needs of small, independent arts organizations of color. Ann Marie works nimbly and responsively to change but her priority has always been so clear and essential: ensuring artists sail freely to lead the way of their own artistic journeys. This belief centers the artist and the arts in such empowering ways!” –Kyoung Park, Artistic Director, Kyoung’s Pacific Beat
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“What’s perhaps most extraordinary about Ann Marie Lonsdale is how she weaves the lessons from her stunningly diverse career — as a facilitator, administrator, funder, collaborative maker, and anti-oppressive practitioner — in the service of helping her clients do good in the world.
She was our first call when we wanted to build a sustainable and ethical ecosystem for [ [ edge effect ] ]. Ann Marie guided us in creating our founding documents with compassion, rigor, and encouragement. In the process, we found ourselves.”
–Nicolas Benacerraf and Jess Applebaum, [ [ edge effect ] ]
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“Partake Arts has been an invaluable part of the team as my small non-profit arts organization navigates some significant transitional challenges prompted by growth and a new business model: from big picture issues like vision and financial forecasting, to personal touches like ‘let’s get a time on the calendar to check in about this item you keep kicking down the road,” Ann Marie brings attentiveness and thoughtfulness, and an ability to tease out what’s at the essence of what we mean and need, that have helped keep momentum going towards the best, most imaginative and fulfilling version of what Asheville Creative Arts can be.”
–Abby Felder, ACA
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“Ann Marie gently guided me through the process of applying for a particularly personal grant. She advised all aspects, from the grant language itself to detailed help with the budget. I was a bit overwhelmed at first and she broke down all the parts for me in a way that made everything seem much more manageable and dare I say exciting? I can’t wait to be using her services for years to come!”
–KatieRose McLaughlin, Choreographer
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“I have been privileged enough to work with Ann Marie Lonsdale on a number of projects to support our individual artists and small theater companies at The Indie Theater Fund/IndieSpace. There is no one who knows this community better than Ann Marie. She is this community. Ann Marie understands the needs of individual artists and she helps small companies navigate the nuances and complexities of operating in NYC. She challenges systems that aren’t serving everyone in her work. She truly is one of those rare gifts who gets it. I highly recommend anyone who can work with Ann Marie, do. You and your organization will be better for it.”
–Randi Berry, Executive Director, Indie Theatre Fund and IndieSpace
“Ann Marie is a fiercely intelligent out-of-the-box thinker. I met her in 2008 when she worked at LMCC. She was a huge champion of our Latina-led company, going above and beyond normal duties to support bringing our public art project to life. Since then, I’ve admired her outgoing commitment to reinventing our industry to more thoughtfully serve its constituents. Recently, I sought Ann Marie out to consult on my anti-racist action plan; she was thoughtful, generous, responsive, and asked all the important questions.”
–Solomon Weisbard, designer (www.solweisbard.com)
Recent Projects
Freelance Artist Resource Project
The Freelance Artist Resource Producing Collective is an iterative, responsive project composed of five freelance producers and culture makers. Together, we created a website and produced a series of webinars to provide resources to and raise the collective knowledge of freelance, unaffiliated artists in the United States. The website saw traffic of over 1,000,000 in the days and weeks after the Coronavirus crisis in March 2020, spurred the creation of sibling sites in the UK and Canada, and the Howlround webinars were viewed live and watched by thousands of artists and cultural workers in the US and internationally.
Indie Theatre Fund: The Big Learn
The Big Learn is a long-term learning and professional development initiative designed to bring high-quality, low cost anti-racism and restorative justice training to the independent theatre community in New York City. Partake Arts collaborated with Indie Theatre Fund, LIT Fund, and the IT Awards to raise money for the effort, and offers workshops with Coming to the Table and Nicole Brewer, learning pods, and other resources to the independent theatre community for the foreseeable future.