# Divide and Conquer: Why Teaching Artists Struggle to Mobilize Collectively

Teaching Artists are not disorganized.

We are organized through fragmentation.

There is a question beneath many conversations about Teaching Artists:

If there are so many artists who are skilled, experienced, deeply invested in this work, why does collective change feel so difficult? Why does it feel just out of reach?

It is easy to suggest: Teaching Artists are too independent, too busy, too scattered. This explanation misses something deeper.

What we are experiencing is fragmentation. 

It is structural.

# A field built on movement

Teaching Artists work:

• across organizations
• across schools, libraries, hospitals, and community spaces
• across short-term contracts and shifting schedules

We rarely share a consistent workplace.
We rarely share sustained time together.
We rarely share spaces for reflection.

This structure produces flexibility and isolation.

The flexibility serves institutions. The isolation limits collective action.

# Categorization into art forms

The arts sector itself is categorized into disciplines:

• visual art
• theatre
• dance
• music
• media arts

And within those, further divisions of medium, training, and professional identity.

Teaching Artists often move across these boundaries. 

Cross-disciplinary collaboration is one of the field’s strengths and produces an opportunity for growth. But the field is not organized to truly support it. In fact, there are long lists of member associations that reinforce categorical separation. Artists who have minimal discretionary funds rarely join and support multiple associations. Organizations by and for Teaching Artists are often deprioritized. 

When artists are separated by disciplines, they are less likely to see themselves as part of a shared workforce with shared conditions. But even when they do, specialization in their art form is distinctly reinforced, and networks that are by and for Teaching Artists become hard to build.

# Uneven value and legitimacy

Fragmentation is not only structural. It is also cultural.

Within the arts sector, not all artistic labor is valued equally. 

The designation of ‘Teaching Artist’ carries less status.

When I identify as a full-time Teaching Artist, I am often perceived differently from artists whose primary identity is performance, exhibition, or production-based work, especially when it is for adults versus young people. This is true even when Teaching Artists bring comparable skill, rigor, and experience to every program and service.

Adding to this challenge, there is a persistent narrative that teaching work is supplemental and something artists do on the side. 

Until recently, even public definitions reflected this hierarchy. A widely cited description framed Teaching Artists as ‘professional artists supplementing their income.’ I requested that the language be changed at the end of 2025. Because it wasn’t just inaccurate. It shaped how Teaching Artists were valued.

Words matter. And that narrative has had consequences.

Not long ago, I was denied eligibility for a grant because I identified as a Teaching Artist. 

They saw the title and overlooked the new play I was writing and the community-based projects I was staging. The title, not the artistic practice, determined access. 

Structural devaluation creates distance between:

• artists who teach occasionally or never, and
• artists who sustain full-time, professional Teaching Artist practices

These are not opposing roles. But they are not recognized equally.

And when legitimacy is uneven, alignment becomes harder.

Because we are not only navigating different systems, we are navigating different valuations of the work itself.

# Labels in Systems

Division also occurs across multiple structural dimensions, including:

• geography (policy variations by state and locality)
• sector specialization (education, health, human services, justice, and related fields)
• organizational type (for-profit and nonprofit)
• employment classification (employee and contractor)

Teaching Artists may identify with multiple labels under each category. For example, they may live in one state and work across several others. Every category holds multiple parallel systems that rarely intersect in positive ways. More often, they carry overlapping and sometimes conflicting expectations and requirements. The result is:

• limited connection across regions, sectors, organizations, and job structures
• inconsistent policies, languages, expectations, and evaluation systems
• uneven access to information, resources, decision-making, and influence
• inconsistent funding, pay, benefits, and working conditions
• increased competition, isolation, and reluctance to organize collectively

These labels shape access to power and structure relationships among artists and the institutions and agencies that support, train, hire, and fund them. In practice, each system also becomes a separate site of membership and participation, requiring artists to divide their time and attention to access information, opportunities, and recognition.

# Fragmentation of Access: Inside and outside the system

Power is further shaped by relationships to arts organizations. Some Teaching Artists are embedded inside institutions:

• as administrators
• on rosters
• within programs
• in ongoing contracts

Far more are outside:

• independent
• less visible to decision-makers
• navigating unstable access to work

I have worked in both spaces.

The difference is not only access to opportunity. It is access to recognition, information, relationships, influence, and funding.

When a field is split this way, alignment becomes even harder to build.

Not because of disagreement, but because people are not positioned to see the same system.

Those inside are often focused on compensation structures, benefits, and institutional stability. Those outside are focused on access, sustainability, and securing consistent work.

These are not opposing concerns. But they are experienced from structurally different vantage points.

# Scarcity reshapes behavior

Those inside and outside structures show up in the work, and it gets real - fast because most Teaching Artists' work is structurally limited:

• finite contracts
• finite funding
• finite roster spaces

Scarcity shapes behavior.

It encourages:

• competition over collaboration
• silence over risk
• flexibility over advocacy
• short-term survival over long-term organizing

The cost of disruption is real.

# Control of access shapes power

When disruption is possible, access to work can be mediated by institutions and arts agencies.

Organizations:

• determine who is hired
• set rates and contract terms
• define expectations and evaluation processes
• control relationships with schools and communities
• define what counts as “qualified”

The structure creates a power dynamic.

Because when access to opportunity is controlled, so is the ability to advocate for equity.

When Teaching Artists hold deep expertise in the work but lack influence over the systems that structure it, we are not dealing with a training gap. We are dealing with a power gap.

# How the structure is maintained

I have experienced, from both sides, what happens when Teaching Artists begin to align, or when leadership perceives the possibility of them organizing.

From the Teaching Artist vantage point, it is rarely explicit because it doesn’t need to be. It is:

• invitations to lead programs
• advisory roles
• proximity to decision-making spaces

These opportunities and their consequences are real. They sever the connection among workers that otherwise share similar conditions.  It often sounds like:

• “They treat me well.”
• “I haven’t experienced that.”
• “They’re better than most.”

These statements are often true at the level of individual experience.

But individual treatment does not equal shared power and opportunity. Organizations carry an incentive to manage collective alignment. And they do through structure:

• individualized relationships
• selective access
• uneven inclusion

This is often framed as stability, alignment, and standards. But it raises a critical question:

Who is included in the act of defining? 

# Why mobilization is difficult

When you layer these realities together, a pattern emerges:

• a workforce that is mobile and dispersed
• limited shared space for connection
• segmentation across disciplines
• uneven value and legitimacy
• labels in systems of geography, specialization, organization type, and employment structures
• structural divides between “inside” and “outside”
• scarcity that increases competition
• systems that centralize decision-making power
• incentives that discourage alignment

This is not a neutral environment.

It is an environment where fragmentation is the default outcome, and where collective action requires overcoming multiple structural barriers at once.

In this environment, structural separation of workers isn’t a side effect. It’s the stabilizing mechanism.

# This is not new

Other sectors have faced similar conditions that challenged workers. Look at the history of any union. In these conditions, workers often respond by building:

• collective bargaining structures
• shared standards
• professional associations
• policy-driven advocacy systems

The Teaching Artist field is doing this work, despite the challenges and setbacks. Artist-led networks and coalitions exist, including the one I help lead. Organizations like Teaching Artists of the Mid-Atlantic (TAMA) are building infrastructure for Teaching Artists. But they are often under-resourced relative to the institutions they work alongside.

They are also operating within a different set of incentives. Institutions offer access to paid work. Artist-led organizations ask for time, participation, and often membership, with benefits such as networking, tools, and resources that do not translate into immediate income. In some cases, participation can even carry perceived or real risk to future employment.

These conditions make it harder to build and sustain collective infrastructure.

These imbalances matter.

# Why this matters now

From my position as President of TAMA, I can tell you a fragmented occupation is hard to mobilize.

When Teaching Artists are disconnected:

• standards remain inconsistent
• advocacy remains unclear
• accountability becomes diffused
• systems remain unchanged

But when the connection between workers strengthens, the field shifts.

# What begins to change this

Rebuilding the connection does not require uniformity. But it does require:

• naming the structures and systems that produce fragmentation
• building sustained spaces for shared dialogue
• supporting artist-led infrastructure
• reducing competition where collaboration is possible

And most importantly, treating collective action as infrastructure. 

If we believe in equity and justice, it must not be disruption.

# The tension we have to hold

Teaching Artists navigate the field by carefully building relationships, protecting access to their work, and making decisions based on survival. Yet these actions can also reinforce the system that depends on our separation.

Naming that tension out loud is part of the work ahead.

# What comes next

I am interested in holding tension and reconnecting all of us.

What comes next is whether we stay organized in fragments.

These conversations are already happening regularly within spaces like TAMA.

The knowledge is already here.
The experience is already here.
The demand for change is here.

The conditions are clear.

And yet, despite the knowledge, experience, and demand, the systems that structure this work remain unchanged.

With increased collective commitment, we move from fragmentation toward power.