Our leaders are not only experts in what they teach, most are also practicing artists. In fact, many are Creative Capital awardees. Leaders introduce concepts and practical tools, then share their own real world experiences. This approach helps inspire and motivate participants to see the value and potential of using the tools for themselves. It also sets the stage for participants to engage in peer learning and resource sharing with each other and in the local community.
Workshop Leaders
We provide the tools and strategies needed to gain self-sufficiency as artists. This spirit of community building and resource sharing inspired us to create a full suite of workshops accessible to artists everywhere. Since 2003, we have worked with more than 18,000 artists who are enriching over 800 creative communities across the country.
Jocelyn Arem, Producer and Artist, leads Archival Storytelling for Artists Workshop
Jocelyn Arem is a GRAMMY Award-nominated multimedia remix producer, curator, artist, author, and consultant working across audio, film, print, and live activation. She is the founder of Arbo Radiko, an archival storytelling studio that helps creatives, companies and brands reimagine their archives in partnership with creative collaborators for today’s audiences. Clients and collaborators include: The New York Times, The Library of Congress, NYU Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development, among others.
Matthew Deleget, Online Learning Consultant, teaches Internet for Artists Workshop
Matthew Deleget is an abstract painter, curator, and arts worker. He has exhibited his work nationally and internationally, including solo and group exhibitions in the US, Europe, and Australasia. Matthew has received awards from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, Brooklyn Arts Council, and The Golden Rule Foundation, and his work has been reviewed in Artforum, The New York Times, Flash Art, Artnet Magazine, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and Basler Zeitung, among others. He is a member of American Abstract Artists, the Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation’s Artist Advisory Committee, and the board of The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts. In 2003, Matthew founded MINUS SPACE, a platform for reductive art on the international level based in Brooklyn, NY. Deleget holds an MFA in Painting an MS in Theory, Criticism and History of Art, Design and Architecture from Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY and a BA in Art and German from Wabash College, Crawfordsville, IN.
Tracie Holder, leads Grantwriting for Artists Workshop
Tracie Holder is a filmmaker, consultant, producer and film funding specialist. She is a 2016 Sundance Creative Producers Fellow, teaches at the New York Film Academy and leads workshops in the U.S. and abroad, tutors and serves on juries at international pitching and training sessions. She is widely regarded as a “go-to” person and all-round resource for artists seeking funding having raised more than $2.5 million for her own projects from a mix of government funders, private foundations and individuals.
Colleen Keegan, leads the Strategic Planning team of the Core Skills Workshop
Colleen Keegan 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 was a principal in The Strategic Planning Partnership. Her client list includes American Express, Bandai, Citi Group, ESPN, FM Japan, Hanna-Barbera, Paramount Pictures, Sprint, Sony New Technologies and Sony Pictures Entertainment. Keegan served as the president of Pacific Arts Video Production and Washington Video Services prior to establishing Keegan Fowler Companies. She also worked as a producer for MTV Networks, WETA and Showtime. Keegan developed the Strategic Planning Program at Creative Capital where she currently serves as Co-Chair of the Endowment Committee. She has served on numerous Boards of Directors including the American Refugee Committee, the MS Foundation, Texas Film Commission, Emily’s List, the NOW Legal Defense Fund and Senator Dianne Feinstein’s Advisory Council.
Benn Kerr, Lawyer, leads Art Law for Artists Workshop
Ben Kerr has extensive experience advising clients in a wide variety of practice areas including contract drafting, negotiation and review, entertainment law, business formation, intellectual property, real estate, landlord/tenant law, corporations and partnerships, and wills and estates. He has represented individuals, small businesses, and corporate entities in state and federal courts, and arbitrations on a wide variety of commercial and civil litigation matters. He has litigated claims in state and federal courts and in multiple arbitration venues. Mr. Kerr also has represented clients in a variety of industries in breach of contract, construction, insurance coverage, and other commercial disputes.
Aaron Landsman, leads the Funding Your Work Team of the Core Skills Workshop, teaches Artist Community Engagement Workshop
Aaron Landsman’s performances combine formal experimentation and long-term community engagement. His works are often staged in spaces where people go every day, such as homes, offices and meeting rooms. Current projects include: City Council Meeting, a participatory work presented in four US cities in 2012-13; Appointment, a suite of performances for single viewers in small offices, presented so far in New York, Oslo and Detroit; and Running Away From The One With The Knife, a play about suicide and religious faith, to be presented at the Chocolate Factory in 2014. Previous work has been produced by The Foundry Theatre, PS 122, DiverseWorks and other spaces in the US, UK and Europe. Landsman’s work is funded by the NEFA National Theater Pilot, Jerome Foundation, MAP Fund and NPN. He has performed with award-winning theater ensemble Elevator Repair Service and other artists, taught at Juilliard and NYU, and guest lectured widely. He lives in Brooklyn, NY and Urbana, IL with his wife, Johanna Meyer, and their son Harold. Learn more about his work at thinaar.com.
Sharon Louden, Artist and Educator, leads Building Community for a Sustainable Creative Life Workshop Series
Sharon Louden is an artist, educator, advocate for artists, editor of the Living and Sustaining a Creative Life series of books and the Artistic Director of the Visual Arts at Chautauqua Institution.
Published in 2013, Living and Sustaining a Creative Life is now in its 7th printing, with sales in 24 countries. From 2013 until 2015, Louden traveled on a 62-stop book tour, where she met thousands of artists. Louden has continued this momentum bringing her second book, The Artist as Culture Producer on an extensive 102-stop conversation tour from 2017-2018. This book is now in its second printing and has also sold in 24 countries as well as adopted in many schools throughout the US.
Eve Mosher, teaches Internet for Artists Workshop
Eve Mosher is an artist and interventionist living and working in New York City. Her works use investigations of the landscape as starting points for audience exploration of urban issues. Her public works raise issues of involvement in the environment, public/private space use, history of place, cultural and social issues and our own understanding of the urban ecosystem. Mosher’s work has been profiled in international media including The New York Times, ARTnews, L’uomo Vogue and Le Monde. Her public- and community-based artworks have received grants from New York State Council on the Arts and New York Department of Cultural Affairs, both through the Brooklyn Arts Council and The City Parks Foundation. She is an Assistant Professor at Parsons the New School for Design. Mosher has an undergraduate degree in architecture and a Masters in Fine Arts. Learn more about her work at evemosher.com.
Dread Scott, Creative Capital Awardee, teaches Core Skills Workshop, Internet for Artists Workshop, Artist Community Engagement Workshop, Creating a Marketing Strategy Online Workshop
Dread Scott makes revolutionary art to propel history forward. He first received national attention in 1989 when his art became the center of controversy over its use of the American flag while he was a student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. This work was denounced by President G.H.W. Bush and outlawed by the US Congress. In 2006, the Whitney Biennial included his art in the Down by Law section and his work was also included in recent exhibitions at MoMA PS1, the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum and the Brooklyn Museum. He is a recipient of a Creative Capital award, a Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation: Artists and Communities Grant and Fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts. His work is in the collection of the Whitney Museum, the Akron Art Museum. He works in a range of media including installation, photography, screen-printing, video and performance. Learn more about his work at dreadscott.net
James Scruggs, Creative Capital Awardee, leads Effective Work Samples and Communications Workshops
James Scruggs is a writer, performer, producer, arts administrator and teacher who creates large scale topical, theatrical, multi-media work usually focused on inequity or gender politics. His solo theater piece, A Voluptuary Life explored the whitewashing, and hetero-washing of LGBTQ+ history. It was presented at HERE Arts Center in March 2019. In May of 2018, he was commissioned and created a site specific immersive, interactive, satirical work for The High Line, MELT! It was “The 17th Annual Post Racial America Day Rally”, an extermely left-leaning dystopian future where the president of the USA is a gender nonconforming person who has outlawed pronouns. He was awarded a 2015 MAP Grant and a 2016 Creative Capital Award to create 3/Fifths. It was a fully immersive, interactive theatrical experimental ethno-theme park exploring race and racism called SupremacyLand that utilized the 10,000 square feet of 3LD Art & Technology Center in May 2017.
Andrew Simonet, Creative Capital Awardee, teaches Core Skills Workshop, Real Cost Budgeting Online Workshop, Artists Raising Kids Online Workshop
Andrew Simonet is a choreographer and co-director of Philadelphia’s Headlong Dance Theater, along with his collaborators Amy Smith and David Brick. Since 1993, Headlong has created collaborative dance theater in Philadelphia and toured nationally. Recent projects include Cell, a performance journey for one audience member guided by mobile phone, and This Town Is a Mystery, performances by regular Philadelphians in their homes. Simonet is in charge of fundraising for Headlong, securing grants from funders such as the New England Foundation for the Arts, Creative Capital, The Rockefeller Foundation MAP Fund, The Japan Foundation and The National Endowment for the Arts. Headlong’s work has been produced by The Philadelphia Live Arts Festival, Dance Theater Workshop (NYC), P.S. 122 (NYC), Central Park Summerstage, The Jade Festival (Tokyo), The Kyoto Arts Center, The Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art.
Amy Smith, Creative Capital Awardee, teaches Financial Literacy Workshop
Amy Smith is 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. Smith has also acted in and directed theater productions, performed in cabarets, and choreographed for opera. She also has 15 years experience in for-profit and non-profit worlds doing accounting and financial management work. In 2008, Headlong started the Headlong Performance Institute (HPI), a semester training program for dance and theater artists who are college students or recent college graduates. In HPI, Smith teaches a course called “The Life of the Artist”, teaching planning and financial skills. She also does tax preparation for more than 100 artists annually. She chaired the committee that created Dance/USA Philadelphia, a local service organization, and recently served as Board Treasurer for the national service organization for dance, Dance/USA. Her personal mission is to help artists improve their financial literacy so they can reach their financial goals. Learn more about her work at headlong.org.
Ela Troyano, Creative Capital Awardee, teaches Core Skills Workshop, Taller Profesional de desarollo para artistas
Ela Troyano is a Cuban-born filmmaker based in New York City. Her work has been shown at the Berlin International Film Festival, MoMA, the Guggenheim, the Kitchen, PBS, the Kino Arsenal, the New Horizons Film Festival in Poland and other international venues. A retrospective of her work was screened in Berlin at the Arsenal Institute For Film and Video Art in 2012. A performance and installation of her work with her sister, performance artist Carmelita Tropicana, was presented at El Museo del Barrio with partner organization PS 122. Her films include Carmelita Tropicana Your Kunst Is Your Waffen and Latin Boys Go To Hell. Troyano has worked as a director for network and cable television in the US, Mexico and Spain. Select awards include USA and Rockefeller Fellowships, screenwriting workshop at Sundance with Gabriel Garcia Marquez and funding from the Jerome Foundation, the Ford Foundation, Latino Public Broadcasting, the Independent Television Service and New York State Council on the Arts.
Leaders Emeritus
Many thanks to the following Leaders Emeritus, outstanding and generous artists who have been part of our team and have worked with us over the years.
- Byron Au Yong, Creative Capital Awardee, teaches Core Skills Workshop, Art Business Management Online Workshop
- Jackie Battenfield, leads the Promoting Your Work Team of the Core Skills Workshop
- Ellen Bruno, Creative Capital Awardee, teaches Core Skills Workshop
- César Cornejo, Creative Capital Awardee, teaches Core Skills Workshop, Taller Profesional de desarollo para artistas
- Chris Doyle is a multidisciplinary artist based in Brooklyn, New York.
- Jeffrey Gibson is a painter and sculptor living and working in Brooklyn, New York.
- Barbara Hammer is a visual artist primarily who worked in film and video. She passed away in 2019
- Brad Stephenson, teaches Internet for Artists Workshop, Social Media Online Workshop
- Brian Tate, teaches Seven Elements of Strategic Marketing Online Workshop
- Kirby Tepper, teaches Verbal Communications Workshop
- Maxine Lapiduss, teaches Authentic Branding Workshop and Online Workshop
- Brad Lichtenstein, teaches Internet for Artists Workshop
- Beverly McIver, Creative Capital Awardee, teaches Core Skills Workshop
- Hasan Elahi, Creative Capital Awardee, teaches Core Skills Workshop
- Matthew Geller, Creative Capital Awardee, teaches Core Skills Workshop
- Sue Jaye Johnson, Creative Capital Awardee, teaches Core Skills Workshop
- Daniel Alexander Jones, Creative Capital Awardee, teaches Core Skills Workshop
- Maureen Huskey is an award-winning theater and hybrid-performance director based in Los Angeles.
- Steve Lambert helped develop the IFA workshop and continues to teach in the program.
- Carla Lynne Hall is a singer, songwriter and music marketing specialist based in New York City.
- Richard Move, Creative Capital Awardee, teaches Core Skills Workshop, Performance Documentation Workshop
- Angela Reginato, Creative Capital Awardee, teaches Taller Profesional de desarollo para artistas
- Chemi Rosado-Seijo, Creative Capital Awardee, teaches Taller professional de desarollo para artistas
- Blithe Riley, teaches Internet for Artists Workshop
- Sue Schaffner, Creative Capital Awardee, teaches Core Skills Workshop, Internet for Artists Workshop, Website, Blog & Email Essentials Online Workshop