Re-Defining the Teaching Artist: the Marriage of Pedagogy and Artistry

By Sobha Kavanakudiyil

What does it mean to be a practicing artist?  

I started as a teaching artist in the spring of 2001.  I didn’t even know what a Teaching Artist really was. I was sometimes referred to as a Workshop Leader, a Visiting Artist, an Artist Educator or a Teaching Artist and I often wondered – what did all these things mean? Was it just semantics?

Are there really necessary skills to support the work that I do? Is it really a practice?

I was in grad school and still learning.

Often I have prospective graduate students come to the City College Educational Theatre program, not really knowing what a Teaching Artist is.  I speak to emerging practitioners in the field who have no idea how to develop a career, artists who did not seem to reach their desired level of success in their artistry and think that being a Teaching Artist will buy them some time until the big break. How hard could it be? My need for a definition emerged. Read more…

Sobha Kavanakudiyil is Faculty in the Graduate Program in Educational Theatre at The City College of New as well as an Arts Education Consultant. She is currently on the Board of Directors for the New York City Arts in Education Roundtable and a Co-Chair for their Teaching Artist Affairs Committee.