The project I’m developing now is called The Arbor Fellowship. There are a few reasons for that name, which I’ll get to in Part 2.
First: What it will do.
I’ll be working with fine and performing arts students at Christian colleges and universities, to help give them the business and life tools they need to have sustainable, thriving careers in the arts.
Why is that important? Artists make culture, culture shapes people, and people create the future. I care about the future.
From my own 30+ years, post-education, working professionally in the arts, there are a few things I strongly believe:
- Artists need time to grow into creative maturity and cultural influence.
- Artists won’t get that time if they are having to work for free*, squeeze their creative work around demanding full-time day jobs, redirect their work entirely toward commercial uses, etc., over long periods of time in order to pay their bills.
- To create the “margin” needed to make enough work to grow in maturity and influence, they have to get paid.
- To get paid, artists need to think of themselves as, and work like, business owners and entrepreneurs.
- We didn’t learn how to do that in our art/music/drama/film/dance schools (with a few new and notable exceptions, as these realizations are slowly starting to spread through academia).
Why do I believe this? It’s the last 30 years of my life. And of hundreds of artists’ lives I’ve observed during those years.
Continue reading “Why trees? Part 1”
Luann Purcell Jennings 