Recruitment and Diversity Guide for Partners

Recruitment and Diversity Guide for Partners At Creative Capital, we believe that striving for greater diversity is one of the hallmarks of leadership in artist service organizations. Creative Capital s Professional Development Program (PDP) is committed to increasing the diversity of artists at its workshops. While supporting diversity in all its forms, PDP places a particular emphasis on increasing racial and ethnic diversity among workshop participants. Arts organizations that provide services usually aspire to reach as diverse a range of artists as possible. Some organizations more readily reach diverse constituents due to their mission and programs. Others find they have to work harder to cultivate diversity. Regardless of where your organization fits, there is a payoff to diversifying the artists you serve. It can make for a more dynamic workshop. It can lead to lasting and rewarding relationships among artists in years to come. And it can change the nature of how your organization works within its community in the future. Ideally, workshop participants should be artistically talented; ready to receive guidance and be responsible for their own professional development; and represent a diversity of backgrounds, disciplines and perspectives. We encourage each Partner organization to take on the challenge of diversifying their workshop participants by aiming for a minimum of 30% artists of color at each workshop. This Guide, which is based on the good thinking and replicable practices of PDP and its workshop partners, is intended to help you as you recruit and select diverse participants for your PDP workshop. None of the concepts for building diversity are brand new. They reflect principles that are successfully used in both the arts and other fields. Some may reiterate practices you already employ. Others may more readily apply to your community or mission than others. Feel free to select and adapt the parts that are most useful. The PDP workshop managers are always available to assist, brainstorm, and provide advice and support in achieving these diversity goals. 1

A. MAKE A PLAN FOR RECRUITING PARTICIPANTS Your plan should incorporate your goals for diversity and include deadlines and assigned roles. Without committing this to writing, your best intentions might get lost in everything else you have going on. Share your plan with your PDP Workshop Manager at least 4-6 months before your workshop date. 1. Define diversity for your organization within the context of its mission and art-making community. Diversity means different things to different organizations. It can include race/ethnicity, geographic, gender, sexual orientation, art form and age. The makeup of workshop participants should exceed or at bare minimum reflect the diversity of your community. 2. Set your goal for attaining or increasing the diversity of workshop participants. Are the artists you want to attract in any way different than those you currently serve? How might the recruitment and selection process reflect, and perhaps help further define, the values you have and aspire to as an organization? How might the relationships made during the recruitment process help to expand your organizational ways of working and your constituency? Make a clear goal of what type of diversity and who you want to see at your workshop. 3. Allocate staff for outreach and diversity tasks. The selection process, and in particular reaching out to artists personally, can take considerable staff time. Identify who within your organization can take on this role. It could be an intern, staff member or even a volunteer, as long as they are committed to attaining a diverse group of workshop participants and at least part of their job is cultivating and selecting participants in the months leading up to the workshop. 4. Create a timeline that starts early and allows for repeated efforts. In an effort to meet their attendance and diversity goals, many partners start to recruit artists as much as six months in advance and find they need to make several rounds of contact with artists and organizations. Allow extra time in the application process so if you have not attained your diversity goals once the application deadline has arrived, you will have time to go back and look for other ways to bring in the diversity of participants you desire. 5. Determine if, and how much, you will charge participants for the workshop. PDP weekend workshops are normally provided free of charge to artists, or at a nominal fee of $30-$100. This fee might be listed as a materials, meals or registration fee. PDP encourages partners to allow for a sliding scale/fee waiver for qualified artists who cannot afford the workshop fee. 6. Consider observing a workshop in advance of hosting one. Although this step is optional, watching a workshop can give potential partners a clear sense of the PDP program's quality and value to artists. This first-hand experience then helps partners effectively promote workshops to artists in their community and make the case to local funding sources. Limited funds are available through our Observer Travel Subsidy program. 2

B. SPREAD THE WORD ABOUT THE WORKSHOP OPPORTUNITY 1. Develop and tailor your marketing and application materials. Create your marketing and application materials based on your goals and the examples provided by Creative Capital. Adapt the language from Creative Capital in ways that are most relevant to the artists you wish to reach. Use testimonials and quotes from artists who have attended PDP workshops in the past, which can be found on Creative Capital s website and in your Partner Packet. 2. Partner with other organizations to broaden the reach of your promotions to a more diverse range of artists. Consider partnering with other organizations in your community that serve a constituent base that is different from your own. Such organizations can be involved as a Co-host, Outreach Partner, or both. Co-hosts provide the venue, a number of participants and/or other resources. Outreach Partners commit to getting the word of the workshop opportunity out to and/or personally nominating their specific constituencies. Identify these organizations as well as key individuals within the organizations who might serve as personal endorsers of your workshop or gatekeepers to the community. Cultivate these relationships and ask them to personally invite those artists they think would most benefit to apply. You could reserve a certain number of participant slots at the workshop for artists from each Outreach Partner organization. PDP has developed a lottery process model for this; see Section E (PDP Diversity Pilot) for details and consider how you might replicate or modify this model for your selection process. 3. Make one-on-one contact with both organizations and artists. While broad-reaching methods such as emails and postcards can and should be used, personal phone calls and inperson meetings are by far the best way of conveying to artists the value of attending a workshop. Contact is most effective coming from someone the artists know and trust, such as artists who have attended past workshops and can personally speak to their value. Ask respected, established artists in your area as well as presenters, managers or funders to personally recommend or nominate artists they know to apply. If there are any PDP alumni in your area, utilize them to speak artist-to-artist about the workshop value. 4. Determine your most effective publicity methods. Consider whether the communities of artists you are trying to reach are most accessible through the Internet or via other methods such as listings in papers, postcard mailings, bulletin postings or phone calls. Research the online and print listings and calls for artists in which you can list this opportunity. Additionally, social media sites such as Facebook can be a great way for artists to spread the word to their friends about workshop opportunities. 5. Monitor the incoming applications to determine if the applicant pool will provide the desired participants. If the range of artists you desire to see at the workshop are not applying, use built-in time to contact additional outreach partners and increased personal contacts. 3

C. SELECT THE ARTISTS Determine a selection process that promotes the diversity and values of your organization. PDP workshop participants can be part of an already-determined group, such as fellowship recipients, or they can register, be nominated or apply. Most commonly, artists apply for a workshop and are chosen by panel, based on criteria developed by the partner. To determine your selection process, consider the following: 1. Eligibility Standard requirements for PDP workshops are that participants have: the creation of new work as a primary artistic focus (as compared to interpretation of existing works) a demonstrated history of professional activity outside of a degree-granting program (typically a minimum 3 to 5 years) a commitment to attend the entire workshop Beyond this, Partners may add their own eligibility requirements, for example: work in a specific discipline live and/or work in a certain city, county or state have been practicing professionally for a certain number of years 2. Selection Criteria A point system is usually used, based on one or more of the following criteria, weighted according to the goals of your organization and the needs of your artistic community: Quality of work: artistic product/process/services as evidenced by work samples and reputation Career level: Is artist actively participating in their artistic career? Are they highly motivated? Would they benefit from setting professional goals and building upon marketing, fundraising and financial management skills? Vision: Does artist have a demonstrated vision for where they want their career to go? Motivation: Is artist eager to actively take this information and advance their career? Demonstration of need: Is artist poised to transition to a new phase of professionalism in their artistic career? Are they in need of career and professional development skills? Would they benefit from an expanded network in the artistic community? Diversity: Demographically, does the artist bring something underrepresented to the table and help achieve a balance of ethnicity, disciplines, locations, etc.? Tips: Look for applications that demonstrate the artist is ready and eager to actively take the information offered in this workshop and do something with it to advance their career, rather than looking to passively be handed the keys to success. To ensure diversity, you can narrow the group down based on the point system and then make final choices that diversify the group. You may also wish to reserve a certain number of participant spots for artists of specific ethnicities, artists with disabilities, artists from an under-reached geography or discipline, or another targeted group. For example, one workshop partner reserved five participant slots for folk and traditional artists in their area. Some points above rely on applicants identifying their race and/or ethnicity on their application. PDP encourages including this whenever possible. 4

If working with Outreach Partners, remember to include space on the application for applicants to identify who referred them to this opportunity. 3. Panel Process If participants are selected by panel, the panel should reflect the diversity you wish to attain in your artist selection. Panels can also provide a way to develop relationships with new organizations and individuals. Tips: Artists in your community who have already participated in a Creative Capital workshop can make astute panelists. They know first-hand what the workshop entails and thus the type of applicant that is best qualified and can best benefit from it. Rather than by panel, participants could also be selected by a curated lottery (see PDP Diversity Pilot in Section E). D. TIMELINE Activity Schedule your workshop with Creative Capital (CC). First conversations with CC regarding diversity and recruitment. CC provides Partner Packet and Guidelines. Execute agreement with CC. Define diversity and set goals. Draft workplan and timeline for participant recruitment that includes your list of Outreach Partners, and share with CC. Contact organizations that might partner with your organization. Draft marketing language and application. Submit to CC for review before publishing. Decide which artists you will contact initially and best way to reach each. Make initial invitations: postcards, flyers, email announcements. CC publicize the opportunity to their contacts in partner area, include on CC website. Determine selection criteria and confirm who will be involved in selection process/panel. Hold town meetings and one-on-one meetings; make personal phone calls; follow up with outreach partners and nominators. Application deadline for interested artists. Allocate time for further targeted outreach if you do not have the diversity/quantity of applications desired. Check in with CC about applicant pool and next steps. Review applications and select participants. Notify artists and finalize your list. Include alternates. Submit your participant list to CC. Timeframe (Relative to Workshop Date) 6-12 months before 9-4 months before 4-6 months before 4-6 months before 4-6 months before 2-3 months before 2 months before 6 weeks before 4-5 weeks before 3-4 weeks before 5

E. PDP DIVERSITY PILOT: ONE MODEL FOR INCREASING THE DIVERSITY OF WORKSHOP PARTICIPANTS As part of Creative Capital s ongoing efforts to ensure that PDP workshops are attended by ethnically diverse artists, PDP piloted an outreach strategy for its self-produced Internet for Artists workshop in New York City in February 2011. This description, which is based on that pilot, is intended to assist other PDP partners as they develop their own outreach strategies. The PDP methods may be replicated or modified, depending on the unique circumstances of each community. 1. Involving Outreach Partners PDP invited nine local culturally-specific arts organizations to participate in a PDP hosted workshop as Outreach Partners. Some of them had previous relationships with PDP, while others they did not. Six organizations accepted the partnership, while three declined. Invitations to apply to the workshop were sent to specifically determined groups of artists by each of the six participating Outreach Partners. The workshop application was not open to the entire artistic community. The language PDP used on all promotional materials conveyed the Outreach Partners involvement, while maintaining Creative Capital s role as the originator, host and fiscal sponsor of the workshop. Outreach Partners also received recognition and thanks at the beginning of the workshop and on workshop materials, as well as an invitation for a staff member to observe the workshop (one spot per organization). 2. The Application In order to ensure that the final group of artists selected was, as a whole, ethnically mixed and included representation from each Outreach Partner s list, applicants were asked to indicate their ethnicity as well as the organization that had invited them to apply. 3. The Lottery PDP received 143 applications. Qualifying participants were selected through a lottery process in two rounds, designed and conducted by PDP staff. First, PDP staff established the number of seats in the workshop that would be reserved for each non-white macro-ethnic group. See the Participant Makeup section below for a breakdown of seats reserved for each group in this pilot workshop; please note that because no applications were received from Native Hawaiian artists, no seats were reserved for this ethnic group. A mini-lottery for each group was held with four alternates selected in each group. This was done in Excel by assigning each artist a number, and then picking numbers out of a hat; online application software can also assist with selection. Artists who were not selected in the first round of lotteries based on ethnicity were then put into the remaining group of applicants (those who indicated White, Other or Prefer Not to Say on their applications) and given a random chance of being selected in a second lottery to choose the remaining participants. 4. Selection Criteria All participants were expected to reach PDP s standard eligibility requirements (see page 4). With a list of 24 selected participants, PDP read each artist s statement to check for recent professional 6

activity the basic criterion for eligibility. If criterion was not clear in the statements (i.e. if they didn t have recent shows at reputable spaces, awards or press coverage), PDP reviewed the participants websites, and also did Google searches to make sure that they met the eligibility requirement. If any artists were disqualified, artists on the alternate lists were randomly selected to replace them. 5. Participant Makeup Ethnic Group Applications Number of seats reserved Participants % of Participants American Indian/Alaskan Native (including all original people of the Americas) 3 1 2 8% Asian (including Indian subcontinent and Philippines) 21 5 7 29% Black/African American (including Africa and the Caribbean) 19 5 5 21% Hispanic / Latino 16 4 6 25% Middle Eastern 5 1 1 4% Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islanders (original peoples) 0 0 0 0% White 61 N/A 2 8% Prefer not to say 15 N/A 1 4% Other 10 N/A 0 0% 6. Initial Email for Outreach Partners A personal email from Alyson Pou, Director, Creative Capital Professional Development Program to her contact at Queens Arts Council. Dear Janis, I hope this note finds you well. I received your recent e-mail to the ASAPP cohort, welcome! Creative Capital's Professional Development Program has recently received support to offer one of our Internet for Artists (IFA) weekend workshops free-of-charge to 24 NYC area artists. Workshop dates are set for February 18-20 th. I am writing to invite Queens Arts Council, along with a few other leading NYC-based arts organizations, to participate as an Outreach Partner for this event. Your participation will help to ensure that a diverse range of artists hear about the workshop and have the opportunity to apply. The IFA workshop is a comprehensive weekend event that teaches artists how to use the internet to build audience, expand community, amplify marketing and extend administrative resources. The IFA workshop has been called eye-opening, life-changing, and our artist-leaders are regularly recognized as being inspiring and generous with their knowledge. In the words of one artist-participant from Arizona, This is a great program, both through the imparting of information and the connections and community that was created during the workshop. Here s what your participation will entail: Creative Capital will provide you with an e-mail invitation for you to send to artists who you determine can make the best use of this opportunity to further their professional development. (This can be to your full artists list or a selected group). The email invitation will be co-branded with Queens Arts Council and Creative Capital identities, and Queens Arts Council will be credited as an outreach partner on all workshop related materials. We are aiming to send the workshop announcements out the week of December 13 before the holiday season is upon us. Artists who receive the announcement will be invited to fill out an online application and note on their application the organization from which they received the invitation to apply. PDP will then conduct a lottery to choose and follow up with the participants. 7

It is clear we are on a short timeline here but we hope you will be able to partner with Creative Capital in our efforts to get the word out to a diverse group of artists about this workshop opportunity. We, of course, would be delighted to have you and your staff join us to observe this workshop. If you have any questions please feel free to e-mail or call me. I look forward to hearing from you soon. Alyson Pou Director, Creative Capital Professional Development Program * Further information and templates from this process are available upon request. 8