Beyond Inspiration: Developing New Tools For Documenting, Sharing, and Improving Our Work as Teaching Artists was a one-day professional development institute held at MCAD this past month. It was designed to help teaching artists in any discipline take control of the means by which we share and advocate for our work. The first time institute topped its maximum registration with 62 Teaching Artists and arts administrators from the metro area and greater Minnesota, South Dakota and Wisconsin. An additional 22 BFA and MFA MCAD students attended. Teaching Artists, arts administrator and students representing visual, literary, theater, musical, dance arts gathered together and spent the day exploring ways we can share and advocate for our work through a series of directed, active and collaborative workshops. We investigated how to write about and visually capture what is essential about our teaching, how to developed new ways of sharing our insights about our work in published and online journals to formal and informal presentations and explored how concrete curriculum design generates advocacy for our work. The conference was planned and implemented by teaching artists Nick Jaffe, Malke Rosenfeld from the Teaching Artist Journal, Becca Barniskis and Barbara Cox from the Artist to Artist Network and MN Perpich Center and Lynda Monick-Isenberg, coordinator of MCAD’s Teaching Artist minor. Categories All