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:
Individual Artist’s Practice
- Defining success and setting goals
- Communicating about your work effectively
- Determining artist fees and creating budgets
- Practices for healthy self-management conscientious collaborations
- Searching for arts jobs and day jobs
Project Support for Individual Artists
- Creating budgets
- Generating resources for creation through grants, residencies, and fundraising
- Identifying and vetting potential partnersInitiating ethical collaboration with producers and presenters
- Self-producing
Initiating New Artistic Collaborations
- Defining mission, vision, audience, and anti-oppression practices
- Articulating values and methodologies for equitable collaboration
- Experimenting with self-producing and finding your audience
- Defining success and creating feedback processes
Creating New Performing Arts Organizations
- Determining the best organizational structures and supports, including pursuing 501c3 status
- Refining mission, vision, audience, and anti-oppression practices
- Working with legal advisors to create bylaws and board structure
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.
Thought Partnership
- Engaging with organizational leadership to work through challenging and complex problems
- Visioning the future
- Identifying structural challenges
- New program design
- Exploring a new business model, earned income projects, and capital projects
Organizational Culture
- Defining organizational culture and values
- Acknowledging and moving through conflict
- Creating working agreements for staff and board
- Employee engagement and professional development
Grantmaking & Arts Service Program Design
- Designing grantmaking programs for individual artists and small arts organizations with a commons-based approach
- Facilitating peer panels for grants and awards, including applications coaching and feedback
- Designing and facilitating professional development and career development programs for artists and small organizations
- Building resources for grantees and grantee organizations, including shared resources, facilitated consulting, and financial supports
Team & Culture Building
- Creating working agreements
- Defining organizational culture and values
- Addressing toxic work environments
- Dismantling hierarchies and leading equitable organizations
- Preparing for leadership transitions
- Recruiting, hiring and training for small arts organizations
- Setting up compensation and benefits programs, creating equity-based employment policies
- Designing employee management, evaluation processes, and strengths-based coaching
Operations & Finance
- Creating and implementing finance and operations systems, payrolls, and other tools
- Creating budgets and cash flow tools
- Reviewing budgets through an equity lens for alignment with stated values
- Offering advice on administration, governance, and operations
- Addressing organizations in crisis and generating new paths forward
- Setting up systems for tracking impact and stakeholders
- Referrals to specialist consultants
Responsible Closure
- Assessing financial position, operational capacity, and achievement of mission
- Determining if it is time to close, managing conflict and mourning
- Navigating legal, audit, and governance responsibilities
- Advising on archiving of organizational files and other collateral
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.
Interim Executive Leadership
- Work directly with Board and Staff to manage day to day operations and strategic decision making
- Support stakeholders and provide stability during organizational transitions
- Provide transparent feedback on organizational opportunities and challenges
Interim Programs Staffing
- Provide support for mission-driven programs
- Collaborate with in-service staff and freelancers
- Implement projects and create deliverables
- Offer feedback and analysis
Exit Interviews & Workflow Documentation
- Documenting workflows, job descriptions, and operating practices
- Exit interviews with departing staff
- Feedback and discussion around management practices and job design
Job Design & Preparing for New Staff
- Documenting job descriptions and mapping duties and needs
- Assessing and addressing organizational culture
- Creating roadmaps for hiring and capacity building
Hiring Process Design & Shepherding Inclusive Interview Processes
- Job postings and equitable recruitment
- Candidate screening
- Tracking applicants and offering feedback, rejections, and respectful communications
- Facilitating interview processes
Succession and Transition Planning
- Planning for leadership
- Succession with an equity lens, navigating with stakeholders and founders
- Building welcoming organizations
- Managing change
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.
Single Classes
Classes on practical self-management and skills building for artists and artist-leaders
- Defining Success & Setting Goals
- Conscientious Collaboration
- Money Stuff: Artist Fees and Budgets
- Grant Writing
- Self-management Strategies
Class Sequences
Practical skills learned in a group setting, with joyful peer support and cookies
- Developing Mission, Vision, and Values
- Meaningful Collaborations with Producers, Presenters, and Collaborators
- Finance & Budgeting Best Practices
- Paying Artists & Collaborators
- Generating and Deploying Resources
Durational Learning Cohorts
Durational curriculum for small groups facing similar challenges
- Creating a New Company
- Establishing Your 501c3 (?) (No! Don’t do it!)
- Transitioning from Fiscal Sponsorship to Established Nonprofit
- Managing Crisis and Transition
- Navigating Growth with Integrity