The financial literacy and strategic planning workshops will be held at the Creative Capital offices in downtown Manhattan. Attendance is $35 per person and open to artists at any stage in their careers. Tickets are available at creative-capital.org; additional workshops will be announced soon.

Financial Literacy
Thursday, March 8, 2018
6 – 9pm
Led by Amy Smith
Designed and led by a working artist with expertise in bookkeeping, budgeting, tax preparation, and financial management, this workshop will raise participants’ level of financial literacy regardless of their prior experience. The workshop is appropriate for individual artists working in any genre and at any point in their careers. Topics will include individual taxes for artists, segregating personal and artistic finances, budgeting for your life and your artistic projects (how to translate artistic narrative into line-item budgets for funders), tips for tracking deductible expenses (what can artists write off?), and how artists can get out of debt and start saving. Participants will leave the workshop with better financial management and planning skills, as well as a variety of useful tips, tools, and worksheets.

About Amy Smith
Amy Smith is an artist, educator, and activist. She is a Creative Capital Awardee and founder and Co-Director of Headlong Dance Theater, a collaboratively run Philadelphia-based dance theater company. Headlong has been creating and performing their work since 1993. In 2008, they started the Headlong Performance Institute, a semester training program for dance and theater artists who are college students or recent college graduates. In addition to Headlong, Amy has acted in and directed theater productions, performed in cabarets, and choreographed for opera. She has 20 years of experience in the for-profit and non-profit worlds doing accounting and financial management. She also teaches financial literacy workshops for artists, and does tax preparation for 100 artists annually. She has served on many boards, including serving as Board Treasurer for Dance/USA, and is active with Dancing For Justice Philadelphia, a dance community response to the Black Lives Matter movement. Her personal mission is to help artists improve their financial literacy so they can reach their financial goals.

Strategic Planning
Wednesday, April 4, 2018
6 – 9pm
Led by Colleen Keegan and James Scruggs
Participants will learn key business and management skills and hear first-hand strategies from artists used to break the crisis management cycle and achieve success as they define it. Topics include business management, goal setting, communications and negotiation. In addition to lecture presentations, attendees will engage in interactive exercises and receive a Strategic Planning workbook to help guide their process.

About Colleen Keegan
Colleen Keegan is a corporate Strategic Planner and Arts Activist. She is a partner in Keegan Fowler Companies, an equity investment and consulting firm specialized in providing strategic planning and business affairs services to companies in the communications and entertainment industries. Previously, Keegan served as the president of Pacific Arts Video Production and Washington Video Services. She also worked as a producer for MTV Networks, WETA, and Showtime. Keegan is the creator of the Creative Capital Strategic Planning Program for Artists, the executor of the Theo Westenberger Estate, and the administrator of the Westenberger grants and fellowships for art and conservation. Keegan is the art business adviser for the TED Fellows program and the Co-Chair of the TED Fellows Arts Committee. She has served on numerous Boards of Directors and advisory boards. She lectures on art and new markets at the Wharton Business School and the California Institute of Arts among others.

About James Scruggs
James Scruggs is a writer, performer and arts administrator who creates topical, theatrical, multimedia work usually focused on inequity or gender politics. His most recent work is Trapped in a Traveling Minstrel Show, an intimate piece exploring race through the lens of a deconstructed minstrel show structure. He was recently awarded a 2016 NJSCA Fellowship for artistic excellence, a 2016 Creative Capital Award, and a 2015 MAP Grant to create 3/Fifths, a piece exploring race and racism today. It premiered in 2017 at 3LD Art & Technology Center in New York. 3/Fifths was inspired by Disposable Men, a 2005 multimedia solo performance that juxtaposed images from Hollywood monster movies with the harsh reality of the historical treatment of black men in America. It was produced by HERE Arts Center and toured nationally. Previous theatrical works include Touchscape, An Emotional Striptease; Tickets To Manhood and more recently Deepest Man, an experimental work with a 3D holographic projection surface exploring freediving as a cure for grief. He’s a consultant and Fieldwork facilitator for The Field, and is also currently a Professional Development workshop facilitator for Creative Capital. James Scruggs has a BFA in Film from School of Visual Arts.

About Creative Capital
Creative Capital supports innovative and adventurous artists across the country through funding, counsel and career development services. Its pioneering venture philanthropy approach helps artists working in all creative disciplines realize their visions and build more sustainable careers. Learn more at creative-capital.org.

Creative Capital receives major support from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Lambent Foundation, Toby Devan Lewis, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Stavros Niarchos Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, William K. Bowes, Jr. Foundation, Jane Brown and Neil Didriksen, Paige West, Stephen Reily and Emily Bingham, The Theo Westenberger Estate, and more than 100 other institutional and individual donors.

Press Contact
Michael Gibbons
Director of Marketing & Communications, Creative Capital
[email protected]