Teaching Artists: The Craft Of Profitability
“Those who can, do. Those who can do two things are teaching artists.”
“Those who can, do. Those who can do two things are teaching artists.”
Eric Booth, 2003
Most of the artists I know are also teachers. This has always made sense to me. It’s my belief that teaching is a craft, one with a reciprocal relationship to art-making. Learning to do well that thing that we love sparks an instinct to share it with others. A classroom, like a stage, is a canvas. The work inevitably reshapes itself in relationship to feedback. Both art and teaching are defined in large part by who is in the room.
The problem, of course, is the money. As it so often is.
(Quick note: I’m teaching two sessions of “Designing Your Dream Work Life this month! RSVP here for either session. Tickets are free, but limited to 50 spots.)
In 2011, the Teaching Artist Research Project (TARP) published the first national study of teaching artists.1 Of the 3,550 participants surveyed, two thirds were women and three fourths got by almost entirely on gig work—unpredictable temporary contracts with various institutions. More than half had no retirement plan outside of social security.
Of all the jobs one can get, “Teacher” and “Artist” might be two of the most well-primed to accept the idea of being broke forever. The trope of the starving artist or just-making-ends-meet public school teacher is well-ingrained into our public consciousness. As with much of the world’s feminized labor2, both professions come loaded with a heavy expectation that one should not be “in it for the money,” and, in fact, that being “in it for the money” is actually incompatible with doing Good Work.
Here is where I speak from experience. I come from a long line of educators. My mom teaches literature, my dad taught technology. My aunts and uncles and cousins teach. My grandparents did, too.
It struck me recently that the messages I absorbed about teaching are narratively similar to those I received about smoking. You shouldn’t. I wish you wouldn’t. I know I do it but I don’t really want you to do it, too. I want more for you, but if you decide to do it anyway, I’ll understand. I can’t fault you for it. I crave it, too. At least now it’ll be something we share.
To be clear, it was never the teaching that I was being dissuaded from. That was always sacred and life-giving, no matter the pay scale. What my elders were warning me about were the financial implications of tying my career to the state. Like many artists, teachers exist largely at the whim of institutions. Like many artists, teachers do very Good Work without much expectation of very Fair Pay.
And still, despite these warnings, I teach by way of making art and make art by way of teaching. It’s a role I’ve rehearsed for as long as I can remember—I “played teacher” as a kid and I “play teacher” now. These days I’m inclined to think of it as a trait I’ve inherited, like my curly hair or green eyes. Divorced from the identity of Teacher, I’m not sure I’d recognize myself at all.
What Is A Teaching Artist?
Since the Lincoln Center coined the term “teaching artist” in the 1970’s, plenty of professionalization has cropped up around the idea. The Teaching Artists Guild (TAG), which served for 25 years before shuttering in February of this year, cites in their manifesto a dedication to “quality art-making experiences that stimulate innovation, critical thinking, curiosity, joy, understanding, self-expression, empathy and awareness.”3
For another definition we can turn to Berklee, an institution some might argue has an ethical responsibility to make sure its students have access to jobs and material resources post-graduation. From their careers page:
“Teaching artists are neither musicians who give lessons to pay the bills until their big break comes nor great actors who give an occasional masterclass. Rather, they are working artists who acquire training in education and make it central to their professional life. They are committed to the marriage of pedagogy and artistry, using their work as artists to inform their teaching and vice versa.”4
Which brings us back to money. Do you, like me, perhaps notice a bit of derision directed at those musicians giving lessons to pay the bills? I have friends who went to Berklee and now teach lessons for cash. I’m certain they’d welcome a “big break” if it arrived. Does this make their teaching less impactful? Does it make their Good Work less Good?
The Craft Of Profitability
It goes without saying that artists need money, not only to survive but also to make more art. The same goes for teachers. Every teacher I know, if offered an extra $50,000/year tomorrow, would inevitably reinvest part of that money back into their students and craft.
This tracks with what Linda Essig, in her blog Creative Infrastructure, writes about the role of profit for artist entrepreneurs:
“The ‘profit’ in arts entrepreneurship is MORE ART […] By shifting the means/end relationship from ‘product-for-profit’ to ‘revenue-for-art’ we can reconcile our need to make art with our need to make money.”5
It’s clear to anyone paying attention that the Internet and social media have redefined the artist/audience relationship, allowing artists to increase their revenue outside of the realm of institutions. I can tell you from experience that this has a measurable impact: Just last week, a member of The Study had to close portrait commissions and open a waitlist after one TikTok video sold them out. That kind of anecdote is remarkably contemporary within the grand history of artists making and selling art.
But along with facilitating a direct connection to your art-buying audience, the Internet is also an astoundingly flexible (and often very profitable) sandbox for teaching artists to work in.
What do you know that other people don’t? What have you learned that you can’t help but share? This, to me, is a far more interesting place to start than trying to “make a bunch of money selling online courses.”
The Internet makes it easier than ever before to gather an audience and facilitate those mental processes that, according to TARP, are intrinsic to an artist’s disposition and make said artist such an excellent teacher:
Vision and planning; imagination; discipline; attention to detail; seeing the whole; pattern making; finding and breaking; reflection; revision and assessment; persistence; judgement; spontaneity and play.
These are the building blocks of art. They’re the building blocks of learning and experimentation. And notably, they’re what make teaching artists so uniquely good at making things other people want to buy. It’s not just about apprenticeship or summer camps or online courses teaching fellow artists how to do what you do (though it can certainly be that). It’s mostly about craft.
How do people learn? How do children learn? How do adults learn? What changes inside of us when we study and practice and learn about art? How do everyday people come to adopt a new way of thinking, seeing, or believing? What impact can that kind of shift have on a regular person’s life?
These are the questions of teaching and of art-making. They’re the questions of “content marketing” and “online course development” too—mostly because they are also the questions of entrepreneurship.
If we step outside of the individualistic “endless growth” definition of entrepreneurship, we can see that it is, in practice, simply about a devotion to listening and responding. It’s the act of solving problems and answering questions for other people in a novel and/or innovative way. Both artists and teachers, and especially teaching artists, possess these skills in droves.
Which means there’s no good reason all of these brilliant creative people should still be so broke.
Here’s a concrete example: When I opened the virtual doors to the Pretty Decent Internet Café in 2020, that was an act of entrepreneurship. My largest driving force was passion, followed closely by a need to make money and accommodate my ADHD.
Step one in any design, marketing, or entrepreneurship venture is to define a “target audience.” I chose artists. Over the last 5 years, I’ve taught hundreds of writers, makers, designers, sculptors, blacksmiths, healers, and craftspeople how to market and sell their work online. If you’re reading closely, you’ll recognize that this means not only am I a teaching artist — an artist (writer) “for whom teaching is a part of a professional practice,” I am also teaching artists, in a very literal sense.
What I’ve learned from occupying this position for so many years is that there is not such a stark difference between making art and selling art as one might think. Both are acts of self-expression and self-advocacy. Both are feedback-responsive in their own ways. Though the art-making may happen in private, the art-sharing almost always involves other people. For the teaching artist, this is where the magic lives.
Consider this framing, again from Linda Essig:
“Arts entrepreneurship is concerned with that essence of the relationship between artist and audience, between the art that is created and its intended community. The action of entrepreneurship occurs when the artist identifies their public and discovers or creates an opportunity to connect their art with that public through an appropriate mediating structure.
But for the artist to truly be entrepreneurial requires them to also create that mediating structure, not merely make use of a structure designed and created by others.”6
This, then, is my line of questioning for teaching artists—those getting by on gigs and lessons and coaching calls to pay the bills.
What are your mediating structures? How might you build some of your own? If the institutions aren’t big enough (or properly funded enough) to hold your ideas and practice, what other forms might be possible? What other shape might your teaching artistry take?
The answer is hidden in other questions. What do you have to say? Who do you need to say it to? How can you, with the materials in your current possession, create a small opening for change or growth in someone else’s life?
An Invitation:
What do you want, and what does it mean? Join me this July at the Pretty Decent Internet Café for an exploration into desire and the role it plays in designing a fulfilling creative career.
"Design Your Dream Work Life" is one part workshop, one part salon, and one part art studio.
Together we'll spend an hour:
Journaling about our deepest held desires
Philosophizing about abstraction and fulfillment
Crafting a visual representation of our values and vision
Live both Thursday, July 17 and Sunday, July 20 (same structure each day, with perhaps totally different tangents and conversations!)
Limited to 50 participants: This is not a webinar — we will be talking and working together in real time! To help keep the experience engaging, we're limiting capacity to 50 participants at each live session.
If we've hit capacity, join the waitlist! We'll open up more spots as they become available and will also send out a DIY version.
love reading this as i ramp up ideas to run workshops & open a paid section of my substack! and thank you for dispelling the myth that "those that can't do, teach" <3
Lexi, I truly loved this & made me think of the teachers in my life and also they’ve also called me one, but it’s only something I’m growing into very slowly. Your essays are always so well-crafted and research - they have my heart <3