Weekly Dispatch #24
A Survey!
The House Lights Fellowship trains artists for residencies in social and public service organizations, where their unique talents can have unique impacts in our communities.
Hello! Happy Holidays- as they say here in Catalonia, “Bones Festes!”
It has been a fascinating last month and a half for us here at House Lights. I want to spend a little time describing what we’ve been up to, but first I want to share something we would love your help with: A Survey!
We have put together a short survey about artist training and experiences- if you ever studied or got involved in any kind of creative art in school (especially in your undergrad or grad days), we want to hear from you! Feel free to pass the survey on to friends, family, and colleagues who might also have some useful insights.
The Survey Link, again: Artists and Impact Survey
Ok- now, on with the updates and other info!
First: This fall, we had a really difficult moment when our strongest prospective partner for a launch next year had to back out, through a combination of schedule crunch and resource scarcity. This was a really tough pill to swallow, and it felt for a bit like the rug had been pulled out from under us. But we came to see it, eventually, as an opportunity.
Second: We realized that the model we had put together had two potentially fatal flaws. The big one was revenue- the way we had set up House Lights initially would have been way too donor-dependent, without substantial other revenue sources. We would have really struggled with sustainability. The other flaw in our model was in the training we were going to provide- it just wasn’t enough, in the space of a few short weeks, to try to get artists up to speed on everything they’d need to know to make a meaningful impact in their residency.
Third: Sarah and I took these observations and had some really good, wide-ranging discussions with friends all over the nonprofit and arts worlds (as ever, we are grateful for your willingness to chat!). We started to revise our model, tinker with our mission statement, grapple with our fears and apprehensions, and get back to the core of what we want to offer.
Fourth: We made some choices. For me, the part I realized I am most passionate about is the training. This is maybe no surprise for anybody who knows me (I’ve been teaching in some capacity or other since I was 18), but it was clarifying to me to focus on that. For Sarah, the placements and the residencies, where the artists would do their work, were most important. She wanted to be sure the artists were placed in good, supportive atmospheres where they could continue practicing their art and doing it in the service of a larger social or public goal. Starting from those two points, we redesigned our model from the ground up.
Here’s how it works now:
The Training:
We are expanding our training model, from 3 weeks to 10 weeks. We will offer a mix of MFA and MPA curricula, allowing Fellows to continue working on their craft while helping them acquire core nonprofit support skills like grant writing, fundraising, program management, and community organizing
The training will cost something like $5000, and will be in-person, at a site TBA. We hope to offer substantial scholarships to help offset that cost.
We will also be offering a range of workshops and classes, online and in-person, to schools, colleges, and universities, helping their arts students imagine careers where they can make meaningful use of their degrees
The Residencies:
We are broadening our Residency focus from libraries to all social and public service organizations- libraries are still a key, central pillar of that, but we need to open up to other possibilities so we have enough residencies to actually place Fellows in
The Residencies are meant to fill extant roles at the organization- there is a huge nonprofit labor shortage that we can help address here, in addition to shortages in libraries
In addition to the standard salary of the role they fill, we also work with Residency Partners to find additional grant funding to open up other possibilities for what the Fellows can do
Timeline:
We hope to raise our first $50k in the first few months of 2022, to use as a base for building out our curriculum, our outreach, and our organizational structure
We are aiming to start offering workshops to institutions online throughout the winter and spring of 2022
We are looking towards the Fall of 2022 for securing our key launch partners, including a host site (or sites) for our training program, with the first in-person 10-week session starting in January of 2023
You’ll hear a lot more from me in the next few weeks about what that will all look like in practice. For now, if you’re up for it, take our survey!
Some interesting links:
A particularly beautiful tribute to the late Stephen Sondheim
A tremendous clip of Sondheim teaching "Not Getting Married Today" to some drama students
Until next week, Bones Festes! I hope you all are well and safe, and to hear from you soon!
A