Idaho Commission on the Arts | Arts Education | Directory of Teaching Artists

Planning a Residency

Where to Begin?

Assess your needs
Allow enough time to determine your site's needs and interests. Begin by talking with students, teachers, staff, parents, and members of your community about residency or project ideas.

One way to examine your site's artistic goals and arts curriculum objectives could be to list:

The general artistic goals of your school or organization
Five strengths and five weaknesses of your current arts program or curriculum.
Five things you would like to see happen in your arts program over the next five years.
Brainstorm ideas with a steering committee using the survey results as a starting point.

Shared Leadership

Creating a residency is a collaborative process. It is important that those involved in the residency build a broad base of support to share the learning, the excitement and the workload.

The most successful residencies are created through shared leadership. Whether you are a new applicant or an experienced sponsor, you should establish an Artist in Residence Committee and distribute job responsibilities among members.

Planning Sessions

Planning sessions provide time for conceptualization and in-depth discussion-making to fully develop residency ideas. Be prepared to describe your focus and preliminary goals with the teaching artist. The collaborative interaction between teaching artist and site are crucial to a successful project. Ask the teaching artist to propose creative activities to help reach your goals and support student learning.

Discussions can be continued in person, by phone, or by e-mail in order to finalize the plan. Compensation for teaching artist planning time can be included in your project budget.

top

Ideas to Get You Started

There are many possibilities for a teaching artist to enrich your curriculum. The following list demonstrates the wide range of options in presenting an Artist in Residence program.

Brainstorm with a Teaching Artist

How might the students understanding of molecular structure be enhanced by actually creating a dance piece based on the structure of an atom? A residency could explore authentic integration between elements of science and elements of dance.
Develop a time line with students focusing on a particular time and place. How might their understanding of that region or period in history be developed through the inclusion of the arts? Create masks of characters from Greek mythology, learn a related folk dance, write new lyrics to a song from the time, make handmade paper illustrated with Egyptian images.
A theater artist can guide students on important journeys such as developing an original play. The range of possibilities is vast, from the creation of a gritty, realistic work addressing difficult issues to fantasy from another time and place.
Design a community quilting project with a quilter. Involve local historical societies, museums and festival organizations in exhibiting the quilts you create. Have students interview the teaching artist and write stories about the quilts and quilters.

Ask your Teaching Artist Questions
The Commission encourages teachers to work closely with teaching artists in planning a residency project. The following questions offer a starting point to frame that conversation.

Describe your ideas for the residency project.
What key understandings do you want students to understand as a result of the residency? What do you want them to know and be able to do?
What are some of the specific activities you will use during the residency to achieve these understanding goals.
How can you tell if the students understand?
Please talk about the ways you see your residency work tying into the curriculum at our school.
What Idaho Humanities standards will you address in your residency?
How many students do you prefer to work with at one time?
Do you provide any workshops for teachers as a component of the residency? Do the teacher workshops include information on how to integrate the arts into the overall curriculum?
What kind of space requirements do you have for your residency? Please be as specific as possible and let us know where you can and cannot be flexible in your requirements.
What materials or supplies do you need for the residency? Again, please be specific.
Describe in detail any specialized equipment you need for the residency?
What are the dates you will be available to come to our campus for this residency? It is best to agree on specific dates rather than general time periods, such as spring.
How many weeks will the residency last?
How many hours per week will you spend with our students?
How can staff and volunteers help with the residency program?

Preparing Your Grant Proposal

Read the grant guidelines carefully before you begin. Pay particular attention to the Evaluation Criteria in addition to the Narrative Questions.

Share the commitment and enthusiasm that you have for the project. The panel needs to understand your proposal and:

Get a sense of your school or organization.
Clearly understand the skills and understandings you want participants to develop through engagement with the project.
Know what activities are planned to help build understanding for students and achieve the project goals.
Know exactly how the funds will be matched and spent.

top

Academic Content Standards

The Idaho Humanities Achievement Standards in the arts are challenging, but attainable visions of student outcomes (i.e., what students should know and be able to do and appreciate, resulting from their arts education and arts learning experiences).

The Idaho Commission on the Arts requires support for the standards in all K-12 in-school arts education grant projects. The Idaho Humanities Achievement Standards can be found on the Idaho Department of Education web site www.sde.state.id.us/dept/standards.asp

Each of the artists listed in the Directory of Teaching Artists have identified key understandings, outcomes and standards that correlate with a potential residency. This will give you an idea of how Artists in Residence programs can support Idaho Humanities Achievement Standards.

Reflection and Assessment

Artful assessment is at the heart of each arts discipline. Making teaching artistic work “good” requires the creators to thoughtfully reenter the work multiple times to reflect and refine it and, ultimately, find satisfaction with its expression. Do not shortchange this process by an overemphasis on the final product.

As the residency progresses, participants should consider what changes may be occurring that improve teaching and learning. And, how those changes could be tracked and communicated through such qualitative means as journals, video documentation, and through the artistic work.

Public Presentation or Sharing

Presentations can be used to share the work of a residency with a wider audience and reveal the learning that occurs through an artist residency.

Presentations could take the form of:

Exhibitions of the students' visual art works at the conclusion of a residency. Ask your teaching artist to bring some examples of work to the exhibition.
The teaching artist or the students perform for an audience.
Students can join the teaching artist in reading original works.
Classes for parents and their children. It can be fun and educational to have the teaching artist conduct classes where the parents and children work as partners.

Schedule

The schedule is developed for daily activities planned with the teaching artist and participants throughout the project. Applicants are encouraged to be realistic in scheduling a teaching artist’s time. Remember "quality and not quantity" is important. An in-depth arts experience with substantial learning for a smaller group is preferable to a series of short sessions for many students.

top

Budget

The residency budget includes teaching artist fees, supplies, and possible travel and lodging.

The following teaching artist fees are negotiable estimates.
1 hour $40.00
1 day $160.00 [4 hours per day]
5 days [1 week] $800.00

Project applicants may apply for up to 50% of total project costs, and should not exceed the maximum allowable request of the grant category. Grants must be matched by other sources, such as district funds, student activity funds, fundraisers, or dollars from local businesses.

Before the Residency

Ask the teaching artist to send a personal bio and some information about the teaching artist's work, such as news articles and photos, that may be used on bulletin boards, in school newsletters, or for class discussions in preparation for the teaching artist's visit.

Confirm the payment schedule, lodging, travel, transportation, and supply needs/costs with the teaching artist.

Plan the (in person) pre-project meeting with the teaching artist. This can take place before the residency or project start date for local teaching artists, or on the first day of the residency or project for out-of-town teaching artists.

Establish a means for handling your residency's financial matters. All school grants or awards will be issued directly to the school district office. Each district handles the dispersing of grant funds in a different way. Therefore, it is important to contact the district's accountant early (two months prior to the residency start date would be ideal) in order to access money to purchase supplies, pay teaching artist fees, and so on.

Keep the steering committee involved.

What Visiting Teaching Artists May Not Know:

Where should I park my car? . . . Leave my coat? . . . Store my supplies?
Should I buy my lunch, bring it, or is it provided?
Should I use my first name with students? Should I address teachers by Mr. or Mrs., or by their first names?
Who can help with clean up?
Are there discipline codes? (For example, hands up for quiet.)
Can we move the desks?
Are there established "quiet zones" or times?

top

Get Set

Make sure everyone in the school knows who the teaching artist is and when they are coming. Plan to extend a warm welcome, and be sure to introduce the teaching artist to all teachers, staff, and students.
Confirm that necessary facility or special equipment arrangements have been made.
Prepare daily schedules with classroom numbers, names of teachers.
Plan publicity for residency or project, and create a timetable for its implementation.

Teaching Artist's Responsibilities

The responsibilities of the teaching artist in a project are to:

Participate in pre-planning with the sponsor before project begins through written or verbal communication. It is important for the teaching artist to work closely with the sponsor throughout the planning and grant writing process.

Understand the goals of the project so that the teaching artist can be an advocate for the residency.

Communicate clearly about the needs and the mechanics of the program. Be sure the sponsor understands and has specific information regarding teaching artist travel, lodging, studio space, materials, and transportation requirements before submitting the grant proposal.

Maintain flexibility through the residency or project and be willing to make adjustments in order to best meet the needs of the participants.

Participate in publicizing the residency or project by providing the sponsor with promotional materials and participating in media interviews.

Develop and maintain communication with the Site Coordinator and other Planning Committee members throughout the residency or project.

Coordinate with the site to plan follow-up activities that will take place after the teaching artist leaves.

top

Designing Projects for Youth at Risk

The Idaho Commission on the Arts invites schools and communities throughout the state to Arts Education Project grants to discover powerful ways to work with at-risk youth. The following is an excerpt from Youth at Art: Artists Working with Youth at Risk, available from the Commission office.

What We Have Learned

Choose professional teaching artists who demonstrate a high level of artistic quality, who have experience teaching their art, and whose skills lend themselves to working with at-risk youth. Choose persons who exhibit warmth, sensitivity, flexibility, and a clear sense of boundaries.
Think long-term. Residencies are more effective, in general, if they last three months or more. But even for short-term residencies, plan strategies to keep students engaged with the art form.
Fit the teaching artist to the kids. Choose a teaching artist or artistic discipline that is most likely to be successful worth the particular youth you are going to serve. Make it culturally relevant- something or someone that will appeal to them personally.
Promote the program. If others in the community are aware of what you are doing, they will often donate supplies of space to reduce costs. Public exhibits of performances can make students aware of the program, generate interest, and connect them to the community.
Work with referring agencies. Counselors and probation officers prove useful in determining which students are most appropriate participants.
Communicate. The projects' success depends on effective communication among teaching artists, project staff, youth, and parents. It helps to prepare teaching artists in advance with information about your community.
Pay attention to details. Plan ahead for snacks, transportation, medical insurance/medication, release forms for publicity, documentation, and evaluation. Even with the best planning, you will have to improvise.
Remember the process is more important than the product. Young people do not always produce museum-quality work. Sometimes they have to stop in the middle of a dance. But the fact that they have the guts to do it at all is what is important. Celebrate victories with them, no matter how small.

top

Phone: 208/334-2119 or 800/278-3863 Fax: 208/334-2488
Mailing address: P.O. Box 83720, Boise, ID 83720-0008
Street address: 2410 North Old Penitentiary Rd., Boise, ID 83712