Teaching Artists, Audiences and Communities

This course introduces teaching artists to the core principles which underpin successful engagement with audiences and communities.

The course features case studies from the work of the Queensland Performing Arts Centre (Queensland, Australia) and introduces different approaches and knowledge required to work with multiple and diverse contexts and communities.

Areas covered include: building projects and activities to deepen engagement with works of art, commissioning new work, understanding the transferability of teaching artist skill sets, connections with audiences and communities and an examination of collaboration and co-creation.

This course is part of the 4-course program, The Basics of Teaching Artistry. Please click here to learn more.

• Audiences and Communities
• In this session we meet a teaching artist who talks about how to prepare for entering a community, her use of journaling as a planning and documentation technique and the importance of project legacy. This session also focuses on creating work to enrich audience connection with works of art. It looks at three elements of an engagement program developed with teaching artists to deepen engagement in the work of Teaching Artists.
• Expanding Connections with Audiences and Communities
• This session asks you to consider the range of skills you have as a teaching artist and to identify how they can be applied and transferred across sectors, disciplines and between communities. Also in this session, two teaching artists look at ethics, respect and community protocols when working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children. They touch on the importance of place and history, which will be explored in more depth in the SOH course. Also covered is how to identify and respond to individual participants’ learning needs.
• Collaboration and Co-Creation
• This session investigates key aspects of collaboration and co-creation by examining an arts-led children’s symposium. It explores the development and delivery of the symposium with a focus on the collaboration and co-creation between teaching artists, children and professionals from multiple disciplines. In particular, this session focuses on how teaching artists deliberately seek to foster in participants a growth mindset essential for both collaboration and co-creation. A growth mindset is characterised by an openness to new ideas, enquiry, wonder, questioning, challenging, acknowledging and embracing imperfections, and viewing the process as more important than the end result.
• Commission and Purpose
• An Artistic Director talks about his festival’s curatorial framework, the commissioning process as well as outlines the range of ways teaching artists might engage with a festival. In addition, he introduces a teaching artist who created a new work in response to the festival values and curatorial framework. The curatorial framework for a major international festival will drive a life-like scenario which invites a contribution from you. How will you align that framework with your own skills and ambitions?