This feature was originally published on Creative Exchange powered by Springboard for the Arts.
The hardest thing about making a life as an artist is actually making a life as an artist — acheiving a balance between personal fulfillment, work and financial security. That's where Artists U comes in.
Andrew Simonet is a choreographer and writer who directed the Headlong Dance Theater in Philadelphia from 1993 through 2013. He now works independently as an artist.
“Parts are very similar — fundraising, building partnerships,” explains Simonet. “It's also very new. This is a new sector for me.”
Simonet started Artists U in 2006 to address what he saw as a real need within the artistic community to educate artists on how to make a life, and not just a living, with their art.
“In my community, I'm struck by how challenging it is for artists to sustain themselves,” he says. “Initially, Artists U was focused on performing artists because that was my world. I felt like there were things we could do individually and as a community [to have more of a] conversation on sustainability. Now we work with all artists.”
Simonet attended an early professional development workshop from the Creative Capital Foundation where he was “blown away” by “how wrong artists are in their vision of the world,” he recalls. Simonet then became a Creative Capital artist leader and traveled the country doing intensive weekend workshops. He wanted to see something like that in his own city, and formed Artists U.
“I went to so many [professional development workshops for artists] when I started out and so much of it was useless,” he says.
Workshops were often run by arts professionals, not artists, who didn't understand or address the real struggles that artists face.
Artists U consists of artist-led professional development workshops and one-on-one planning sessions that are open to all artists. The intensive two-day workshops look at strategic planning, artist statements, and time and money management, while the one-on-one sessions tackle any questions and issues artists might have turning their “challenges and dreams into to-do lists.”
“Our workshops are really good,” says Simonet. “They're targeted, they're generous, they're all artist-run. We're all artists. We can't devote ourselves to [Artists U] full-time because we're working artists, and that's the point. Fundamentally, they're really about empowerment. No one's going to save you as an artist. You have to change.”
“A lot of the challenges artists have is the balance of time between life and work,” adds Simonet. “There is an overemphasis [in other programs] on the 'making a living' part. Financial issues are real and need to be addressed, but most of the artists talk about time. Part of building a life as an artist is getting past the point of 'everything will be fine if I can just make a living.' If you're totally career-driven you can still be exhausted and not doing the work you're passionate about.”
Simonet also tries to break artists of the negative association often attached to having a “day job.”
“Day jobs are great!” he insists. “If you have a day job, you are still a full-time artist.”
The Artists U concept has already expanded to other cities, launching in Baltimore from the ground-up and in South Carolina in partnership with the South Carolina Arts Commission. Artists U trains artist facilitators in these cities and empowers them to do this work in their own communities.
All Artists U resources are free and available to all artists.
In addition to founding and directing Artists U, Simonet released a book called Making Your Life as an Artist, a downloadable title that covers everything he has learned about this world.
“I want to try to reach people,” he says. “Relatively speaking, I'm not going to get in front of many artists in my life. This is something digital and downloadable to get out there.”
And, like everything else he does through his organization, it's absolutely free.