“I stopped worrying about my career and just started loving my crazy-ass process more.”
Scaffolding for Practicing Artists (SPA) provides artists with one-on-one coaching and peer artist gatherings, helping them thoughtfully address their artistic goals and challenges.
SPA is free for artists and artist-directed at each step of the program. SPA’s goals are to increase artists’ agency in their artistic work/careers and to build a deeper sense of community and connection. Each participant’s specific needs guide their one-on-one coaching sessions and the subsequent peer gatherings.
Coaching
Artists partner with a coach from our coaching ensemble for work sessions over a one-year period, creating space for dialogue about immediate or long-term challenges they face. Coaching sessions last from 45-90 minutes; the artists decide how best to use the time and can shift the focus as needed.
Coaching provides artists with a unique opportunity to have an ongoing, collaborative relationship with an experienced practitioner who is familiar with the arts and culture ecosystem. Artists have used sessions to focus on everything from approaches to touring new works to cultivating institutional partnerships to building sustainable creative careers.
Gatherings
In the last quarter of the coaching year, participants attend a two-day virtual gathering of up to 6 artists, facilitated by SPA coaches. During the gathering, artists introduce their practice, identify connecting threads between them and their peers, and share a current challenge, which their group then considers and advises on. SPA gatherings are an opportunity for artists to offer to each other the same deep listening, thoughtful questioning, and compassionate shared problem-solving that they experienced with their coach. Artists leave the gatherings with an expanded cross-disciplinary peer network, engendering solidarity in what can often be an isolating endeavor. Depending on how SPA is tailored in consultation with MAP partners, attendees receive a stipend to support their participation.
SPA provides artists with practical tools to develop their work, create sustainable careers, and expand their impact. We serve artists across all disciplines including choreographers, directors, playwrights, writers, musicians, filmmakers, and visual and multimedia artists. We routinely hear from participants how essential SPA is in supporting their vision and the quotidian tasks necessary for maintaining an artistic career.
MAP customizes SPA for our partners to best serve their artist communities. In addition to the core components of coaching and gathering, we tailor SPA for specific geographies, career stages, or residency/award programs.
We offer SPA participation to a subset of MAP grantees and through our partnerships with the Jerome Foundation’s Jerome Hill Artist Fellows, Princess Grace Foundation’s Artist Fellows, and Walder Foundation’s Platform Awardees.
SPA is free for all artists who participate. To date, MAP only offers SPA in combination with the direct financial support of a grant or fellowship. We understand that monetary resources can help create the sense of spaciousness that allows artists to optimally benefit from coaching and gathering. This breathing room enables the dreaming, visioning, reflection, long-term planning, and strategic thinking that we believe will help sustain artists’ practices for years to come.
MAP continues to look for new partners that will enable us to provide this program to more artists. We are happy to consider ways to bring SPA to existing artist cohorts, as well as help think through new programs for artist support and development. Please contact Ron Ragin, Director of Programs, for more information, or download our informational brochure for potential partners.
360+
artists served
1,900+ hours
of coaching
40+
artist gatherings
$260,000+
distributed in artist stipends
Co-designed by MAP staff and consultant David Sheingold and launched in 2011, the Scaffolding for Practicing Artists (SPA) Program provides unique forms of support to independent artists and ensembles in response to these dramatic, nationwide shifts in arts sector producing structures over the past decade. Learn more about SPA’s history.
Since its launch, SPA has engaged 360+ artists. In 2019, MAP commissioned an assessment of the program. The report indicates that participation in the program has a strong, positive impact on the lives and work of artists, with 91% of respondents indicating that they would participate in the SPA Program again.
Hear from artists Sarah Dahnke, Caroline Davis, Ayana Evans, Jerron Herman, and Kate Marks as they reflect on their time in SPA. (Videos by Nate Armstrong, and supported by a grant from the Jerome Foundation.)
At this time, SPA is available to Jerome Hill Fellows, Princess Grace Artist Fellows, Walder Foundation Platform Awardees, and a subsection of MAP grantees. Subscribe to our mailing list to stay up to date on future partnerships and opportunities to participate.
Any artist can benefit from SPA’s tailored system of support. We serve artists at all stages of their careers and across all disciplines including choreographers, directors, playwrights, writers, musicians, filmmakers, and visual and multimedia artists. We routinely hear from participants how essential SPA is in supporting their vision and the quotidian tasks necessary for maintaining an artistic career.
Thanks to our funding partners, SPA participation is offered at no direct cost to artists. Depending on how SPA is tailored in consultation with MAP partners, MAP also includes a stipend that goes directly to artists to support their participation in the gathering.
When looking for coaches, the SPA Program is interested in folks who have worked in the arts, culture, and creative sectors in multiple ways and have specific experience providing advice, guidance, a listening ear, and support to individual working artists. In addition, we want folks whose practice reflects MAP's Values and who bring a structural analysis of oppression, a commitment to justice, and an ability to work with artists across a wide range of identities, experiences, and social and political locations.
We are not actively recruiting new coaches at this time. If you are interested in being considered for the coaching ensemble in the future, please email us with more information about you, your coaching practice, and your interest in working with SPA.
It’s a mix of information and intuition. When artists enroll in SPA we offer them an opportunity to share topics they’d like to discuss with a coach as well as characteristics they are looking for in a coach. Coaches indicate whether they think they might be a good or not-so-good match for each artist based on their review of artists’ responses as well as information artists share about their identities, practices, and desires for their creative work. We also hold virtual Artist-Coach “meet and greets” for participants and coaches to get to know each other, and we offer artists the option of selecting specific coaches to partner with. Ultimately, the SPA Program director makes the final pairings based on all of the above.
Coaching relationships typically unfold in the course of a year, with up to seven coaching sessions. Each session can last from 45 to 90 minutes, depending on the artist’s preference and in agreement with their coach.
Some areas of consistent inquiry include: strategizing around a specific creative project (design, troubleshooting, implementation), clarifying purpose and vision, creating sustainable structures for creative work and life, relationship building (networking), and accountability partnership.
Most coaching sessions happen remotely — via phone or videoconference, based on the agreements between the coach and artist. Occasionally, coaching sessions take place in person, when artists and coaches are in the same location. Like SPA participants, coaches live and work across the country, so in-person sessions may not be feasible.
Gatherings happen virtually via Zoom over two days, roughly four to five hours per day. We structure the time to ensure as much ease and accessibility as possible, in collaboration with artists and coaches.
Please email spa@mapfund.org for more information about SPA.