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# A Living Framework for the Field

This is a space for advancing the Teaching Artist movement and exploring the intersections of art, justice, community, and care.

I’m a Master Theatre Teaching Artist and a member of Teaching Artists of the Mid-Atlantic (TAMA).

This page reflects my experience from my corner of the field and helps clarify shared language, standards, and actions that support Teaching Artists, institutions, funders, and community partners.

# A Working Understanding of a Teaching Artist

Teaching Artists are professional artists with specialized training to design and lead arts experiences for people of all ages and communities.  

They work across schools, libraries, healthcare settings, cultural institutions, detention centers, senior centers, and community-based organizations.

Teaching artistry is a skilled, specialized practice. Teaching Artists are a core part of the arts sector and frequently work in partnership with sectors beyond it. This work is central to how creative learning and arts education happen in schools and communities, fostering creativity, learning, health, belonging, and the ability for individuals and communities to connect, imagine, heal, and respond to complex challenges through creative practice.

Teaching Artists are not supplemental workers, nor are they simply supplementing their income. They are arts and cultural workers, designers, educators, coaches, creative practitioners, small business owners, and artists sustaining complex, community-centered practices grounded in care, skill, and experience.

# What Teaching Artists Do

  • Design and facilitate arts-based learning experiences
  • Translate artistic practice into accessible, participatory experiences
  • Embed creativity into community and institutional settings
  • Support connection, expression, and creative problem-solving
  • Work as independent professionals and small business owners in community contexts

This is skilled, specialized labor.

And yet, this labor continues to be undervalued.

# Field Priority: Equity & Sustainability

The sustainability of this field depends on structural alignment and shared responsibility across all systems that engage Teaching Artists.

Teaching Artistry must be understood as professional creative labor that requires equitable compensation and sustainable practice structures.

Standards and practices must urgently evolve to support this field priority.

# Field Standard: Principles for Professionalism

Teaching Artists must collectively adopt shared standards of professional practice, such as TAMA’s Principles for Professional Teaching Artists.

These principles establish expectations for artistry, safety, and professional practice across the field. They provide a shared framework for accountability, quality, and integrity in Teaching Artistry.

Accountability to these principles should be recognized within systems of compensation and professional valuation.

# Field Standard: Pay Equity & Compensation

Pay equity is foundational to the integrity and sustainability of the Teaching Artist field.

This includes advancing pay equity as a matter of social and economic justice.

Fair compensation must reflect both:

  • the true cost of the work
  • and the true value of the work

# Toolkit for Stakeholders:  Putting It To Practice

This section supports action and practical alignment across the field.

# For Teaching Artists

# For Institutions & Organizations

  • Budget for Teaching Artist labor as professional expertise, using fair pay standards such as TAMA’s salary ranges
  • Include Teaching Artists in program design, not only delivery
  • Honor established rates, including those determined through tools like the TAMA’s Fair Pay Rate Builder, whenever possible
  • Engage in transparent, respectful dialogue when constraints arise

# For Funders & Policymakers

  • Fund full-cost artistic labor, not partial participation
  • Support long-term sustainability of Teaching Artist practice
  • Align funding structures with equitable compensation standards
  • Recognize Teaching Artists as essential cultural infrastructure

# Why This Matters

When Teaching Artists are valued, communities thrive.

When creative labor is respected, entire ecosystems become more sustainable, more just, and more imaginative.

# A Shared Movement

This work doesn’t belong to one person or one organization.

It is a collective effort across artists, institutions, and communities to build something more equitable, more creative, and more alive.

It starts here with awareness.
It grows through action.

As Teaching Artists, institutions, funders, and communities build together.

The work is already happening. 

The question is how we choose to support it.