Pentacle recently received a major grant from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation (DDCF) through its National Projects Fund to support and expand Pentacle's Help Desk program, currently administered in Los Angeles as Help Desk/L.A.  Pentacle also received increased support from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), a portion of which also will go towards supporting Help Desk.
 

Help Desk pairs dance artists and companies, who do not have adequate administration, with experienced arts professionals in a guided year-long mentorship.  For some artists and companies Help Desk introduces the concepts of strategic planning, helps them assess their professional lives, works with them towards a structure that will ensure stability and develops a plan that will ensure growth.  For others, Help Desk provides individualized focused, strategic planning support and guidance that will move the artist or company forward, and provide much needed organizational rationale and sustainability. Help Desk artists and their administrative partners attend regular meetings, the subjects of which derive from the projects and issues being worked on during the program cycle. Meetings are participatory, interactive and relevant.  Artists view each other's work, meet with experts in a variety of pertinent fields, and work together on a project to build a professional peer-based community.  The ideal number of artists per cycle is between 10 and 15.  Artists may continue in the program from year to year, may participate for only one year, or may re-join Help Desk as needed in non-consecutive years.

Thanks to significant support from DDCF and NEA, Pentacle plans to bring pilot versions of Help Desk to other U.S. cities, including Boston, Chicago, Miami, Minneapolis, New York, Philadelphia, Seattle, and Washington D.C. Taking into account the unique needs of the dance communities in each city, Pentacle will work with local partners to create a Help Desk that realistically and creatively meets the needs of each constituency.  Pentacle will hold regular meetings of all Help Desk program participants from all participating cities-during the project period.  The end result will be a national, yet specific, network of Help Desk programming that provides useful and individualized infrastructure support for dance artists and companies and allows for needs to be met in a fluid, affordable and creative structure.

Building a carefully planned and executed network of Help Desk programs in important U.S. dance cities will provide keenly needed support to ensure stable infrastructure for dance makers around the United States.  For the dance community to survive and thrive-for creators of dance to continue to create and flourish-stable administration is an essential building block.  Participants in Help Desk find the tools and necessary support to build such a foundation. Dance organizations and individual artists who are well organized, have working infrastructure and a network of support on local and regional levels will enable the national dance field as a whole to endure and move forward.

For more information about Help Desk and Help Desk/L.A. contact
Felicia Rosenfeld at feliciar@pentacle.org or 310.471.7853