Open Spectrum
CREATIVE SUSTAINABILITY – How Do We Invest In Ourselves as Artists and Human Beings?
We are no longer accepting survey submissions for this event. Tickets are still available for purchase.
Do you take time to invest in yourself? Do you have access to the resources, tools and advice you need to plan a sustainable life as an individual?
We live in ecosystem of interrelated platforms that support the creative process, but how is the artist considered beyond the production of art? Working from a framework that honors the diversity and complexity of the field, we look to bring together a group of artists and shareholders involved in this ecosystem to discuss questions and ideas of sustainability. We are looking to reevaluate the needs of artists as individuals. What does it mean to support artists (not just the art they make) with a system based in care? This is part of a series of discussions to identify the tools and resources available and missing that can help artists build more stable lives. This is part of a research process to gather and share information from artists with other stakeholders to help develop a new model that is flexible, adaptable, and at its core in service of artists as people, not just the product they make.
Discussion topics include: What does sustainability mean to you: financially, emotionally, artistically, otherwise? What are you lacking? Do you consider long-term planning a possibility?
Co-presented by New York Live Arts, The Sustainability Project and Dance/NYC. Co-curated by Brian Tate|The Tate Group. Discussion moderated by David Thomson & Kate Watson-Wallace with panelists Kimberley Bartosik, artist, former arts administrator, Yanira Castro, artist, Walter Dundervill, artist, Annie-B Parson, artist, Sarah A.O. Rosner, artist, producer and manager, David Sheingold, Arts Consultant, and Kay Takeda, LMCC, VP Grants & Services.
The Sustainability Project (working title) is a platform for research initiated by David Thomson and Kate Watson-Wallace, that seeks to create discourse surrounding ideas of financial, artistic, and personal empowerment in the performing arts community. One of our goals is to help develop strategies of sustainability for the artist as an individual. Working in collaboration with arts organizations, we are conceiving this work as a social activism that lives within the realm of artistic practice. We are beginning this process by developing a series of dialogue sessions. Our objective is to gather data by creating deeper discussions amongst various stakeholders in the ecosystem (artists, funders, presenters, administrators) to more fully understand the strains on the system, particularly for artists. We are looking towards sourcing creative models from within and outside the field that can be adapted to the needs of the community and reflect the changing landscape of the field. We are interested in education, engagement and empowerment for artists.
Dance/NYC’s mission is to promote the knowledge, appreciation, practice, and performance of dance in the metropolitan New York City area. It embeds values of equity and inclusion into all aspects of the organization. It works in alliance with Dance/USA, the national service organization for professional dance to execute its core activities: advocacy, research, training, promotion, and grantmaking. Dance/NYC’s Symposium, the only full-day gathering of the dance community in the New York metropolitan area, will return to Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center on February 25, 2018. www.Dance.NYC
David Thomson, has worked as a collaborative performer/creator in the fields of music, dance, theater and performance with such artists as Bebe Miller, Trisha Brown (‘87-‘93), Susan Rethorst, Remy Charlip, Ralph Lemon (’99-’10), Sekou Sundiata, Tracie Morris, Meg Stuart, Dean Moss/Layla Ali, Alain Buffard, Marina Abramović, Yvonne Rainer and Maria Hassabi among many others. His work has been presented and supported by The Kitchen, Danspace Project at St Mark’s Church, Dance Theater Workshop, Movement Research at Judson Church, Baryshnikov Arts Center, Gibney Dance Center, LMCC,The Invisible Dog and The Yard. Thomson is a Bessie award-winning artist for Sustained Achievement (2001), a 2012 USArtist Ford Fellow, a 2013 NYFA Fellow in Choreography, a Yaddo and MacDowell Fellow and a Rauschenberg AIR. He has served on the faculties of Movement Research, NYU/Experimental Theater Wing, Sarah Lawrence, The New School, Barnard, and Pratt as well as teaching internationally. He is a 2017-18 QUEER ARTS Mentor.
Thomson has worked as an Arts Administrator and/or Database Consultant for several organizations including New York Foundation for the Arts, Merce Cunningham Foundation, Dieu Donné Papermill, National Performance Network, Movement Research and he developed the Archive database for the Trisha Brown Company. An ongoing advocate for dance and the empowerment of artists, he was one of the founding members of Dancer’s Forum and has served on the boards of Bebe Miller/Gotham Dance, Dance Theater Workshop and presently New York Live Arts. He holds a BA in Interdisciplinary Studies in Languages/Linguists and Dance from SUNY Purchase. www.davidhamiltonthomson.com
