Artists U is an incubator for changing the working conditions of artists.
Everything we do is artist-run and open-source.

c o m m u n i t y  +  c l a r i t y  =  p o w e r

Wednesday, June 4, 12:00-2:00 pm EDT (GMT -4)
Wednesday, June 11, 12:00-2:00 pm EDT (GMT -4)
Wednesday, June 18, 12:00-2:00 pm EDT (GMT -4)
Wednesday, June 25, 12:00-2:00 pm EDT (GMT -4)

WE WILL TALK ABOUT:

▪ The role of artists, our impact and value

▪ Long-term planning, the most powerful tool for sustaining as an artist

▪ Time design: doing fewer things, better

▪ Financial thinking for artists

▪ Generating opportunities for your work

▪ Your mission: What audiences, communities, and impacts matter most in your work?

THE DETAILS:

▪ Four two-hour sessions, $85 for the series. You can attend live or watch the recordings.

▪ I will host (optional) conversation time after each session, and (optional) breakout conversations each week on Fridays (1-2 pm ET/GMT-4) and Mondays (6-7 pm ET/GMT-4) after each workshop. These are a chance go a little deeper, share questions and ideas in a smaller group setting.

▪ We will take breaths and breaks. There will be writing prompts and space for discussion.

▪ I will give a prompt after each session for the next week.

▪ We will use Making Your Life as an Artist and the Making Workbook.

One-on-one planning sessions with Andrew Simonet

For the past fifteen years, I have been doing one-on-one planning sessions with artists. Here’s how it works:

1) You bring an issue or goal.
2) I ask a lot of questions.
3) Together, we turn challenges and goals into to-do lists.

It is a chance to get the conversation out of your own head and break things down into small, concrete steps. I do not tell artists what they should do. That’s my whole point: I think artists are geniuses. Let’s act that way and solve problems just like we solve them in the studio: by being resourceful, creative, and clear.

I was part of a national working group looking at how residencies can better support artist parents. Here’s the poster we made, with two sides: What Residencies Can Do, and What Artists Can Do. Read it, print it, stick it on the wall.

Our Best Idea yet

A free structure and tools for artists to organize.

back together, not back to normal:
A 2021 message from Artists U

Dear artists,

We are beginning an unprecedented transition. We are getting back together.

The enforced separation and isolation of the pandemic will begin to end (thank goddess and medical science and everyone steeped in reality).

We are entering a liminal time, a borderland, a long transition where much is at stake and much is possible. We will slowly and haltingly step out of lockdown and into—what? The coming transitions are so unimaginable, so unthinkable, they need the wild and precise attention of artists.

READ MORE

A 2020 message from Artists U:
This is what we train for

Dear artists, this is what we train for.

This moment is a health crisis, a brutal one. It is also a crisis of meaning. It is a crisis of connection, of story. It is a crisis of who we are to each other and the agreements that hold us together. And those are things we artists know how to work on.

The script for how we will be together in this time has not been written. Artists will have a huge impact on that story….read more

Some quick reads