Introduction
The New Sun Rising with support from The Heinz Endowments is pleased to announce this Request for Proposals as part of the Transformative Arts Process (TAP), a Heinz Endowments’ grants program focused on fostering the careers of teaching artists and bringing transformative arts experiences to youth. TAP’s specific goal is to move towards a more Just Pittsburgh by invigorating the field of teaching artists and arts organizations that have a demonstrated practice of challenging structural inequities, bringing transformative arts centered experience to youth in and from African American/ distressed communities.
Transformative Teaching Artist Award Program Description
The Transformative Teaching Artist Awards recognize that quality teaching artists should be recognized for the important work they do in Pittsburgh’s African American and “distressed” communities. Teaching artists play critical roles in the lives of the youth they serve, providing not only artistic skill building, but caring, support and mentorship. Yet those teaching artists who have chosen this as their life’s work face great challenges in building teaching artist careers. Most of our teaching artists are underpaid and under recognized; the delivery system for teaching artist instruction is fragmented; and arts instruction is often not assigned a high priority in public or out of school time programs.
The Transformative Teaching Artist Awards have been created to add another validation, strengthened networking and increased visibility for the artists who choose to do this work amazingly well. It is our hope that these recognition awards can play a part in acknowledging teaching artistry designed to play a transformative role in the lives of youth living in African American, Black, and “distressed” neighborhoods, as an important and recognized profession. The Transformative Teaching Artist Awards program will provide ten teaching artists in the field with a cash award of $5,000. The awards are recognition awards which may be used in any way the recipient deems fit.
Program Goals
- Recipients have an increased sense of being appreciated and confidence in their work as a teaching artist.
- Recipients will join the TAP network and build relationships with colleagues they did not know and strengthen their own practice in the process.
- Local media will feature the work of recipients and highlight the importance of teaching art & culture in African American and “distressed” neighborhoods.
Eligibility
Eligible applicants will be teaching artists who meet our definition of a teaching artist as noted in the cover sheet accompanying this RFP. That is, they have a track record of combining artistic skill and the complementary skills of an educator. By track record we mean those teaching artists who have worked at least 1 day a week in an African American, black, or “distressed” neighborhood (the list of eligible neighborhoods is listed at the end of the proposal), for a period of at least 9 months each year for the last two years. In addition, we are looking for applicants who are teaching artists of color.
Teaching artists and other TAP awardees who have previously received the award are not eligible, but welcome to participate in the Teaching Artist awards day.
Selection Process
The decision-making process for this program will feature two components. In the first award component, the 10 strongest applicants will be chosen by a local peer panel. Each recipient will receive an award of $5,000 in recognition of their work as a teaching artist.
The criteria the panel will use for selection follows:
Love: Emanate love and dedication for children and have the ability to build relationships beyond the artistic training components.
Merit: Practice art, have engaging and effective teaching styles that reach students across diverse developmental levels, stimulate quality student work, possess a strong understanding of learning standards in the arts, and have substantial experience working in school classrooms or in out of school time programming.
Justice: Help youth deconstruct issues of oppression in ways that empower and enable them to avoid many of the traps of Black/African American and “distressed” neighborhoods.
Preparation and Adaptability: Demonstrate professionalism, including the ability to plan with others, articulate goals and objectives, and adapt to varying student populations and school environments.
In the second component, awardees themselves will be asked to participate in a day of celebration and learning. Each awardee will demonstrate their work and all participants will engage in the activity chosen for the day by the awardee. The goals of this part of the process are to strengthen the relationships among the cohort by facilitating their learning more about one another’s work and to strengthen the work of the teaching artist through the process of critical review from their colleagues. Awardees will receive an additional $500 award for their participation.
Applicant Support
Application Guidelines
The deadline for this application was 2018. Applications can be submitted in writing, video, or audio. In order to be considered, please include the following:
Proposal: While these questions are short, please answer them as fully as possible, so that your fellow teaching artists will understand your work.
- What neighborhoods do you work/live in?
- Describe the path you travelled to become a teaching artist. Give us a sense of your artistic practice AND your teaching experience.
- Describe what motivates you as a teaching artist: What is your approach to teaching?
- Please describe your preparation before students enter the room.
- Please provide brief example of a time when student learning made you proud and another example of when it made you not so proud of yourself as a Teaching Artist.
- How would you assess yourself as a Teaching Artist? What are your strengths and where do you have room for growth?
- Whom or what inspires your artistic practice/artwork and why?
Distressed Neighborhoods List: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B019MINNIui6dDZtREV4dkdHYlk/view?usp=sharing
Letter of Support: Please include a letter of support answering the question: Why is this applicant a transformative Teaching Artist?
Work Samples: Provide samples of your work as a teacher, including lesson plans, examples of student work and ways you assess student learning (where applicable).
Resume or CV: Provide a copy of your resume or CV with your email, phone, and address.
Submit your completed proposal (and/or attachments) to 2018 . Transformative Teaching Artist Awardees will be selected by a peer panel in consultation with The Heinz Endowments.
Questions about the award? Technical questions on applying?
Contact Daniel Stiker at New Sun Rising: vibrancyfund@newsunrising.org
