Administrative Resource Team (ART)

Mentors:

The mentors were selected and paired with each artist, taking into consideration the specific needs of each artist and the mentor’s areas of expertise. In addition, to receiving 100 hours of one-on-one mentorship from their assigned mentor, the artists also had access to an engagement opportunity consultant, Cathy Zimmerman on an as-needed basis to help them develop their touring and engagement strategies. Following an open call to leaders in the NYC performance field, Pentacle selected the following group of mentors:

• Barbara Bryan, Executive Director of Movement Research

• Boo Froebel, Producer, Curator, and Creative Consultant

• Brian Rogers, Artistic Director of The Chocolate Factory

• Fernando Maneca, Marketing & Communications Director of BAX

• June Poster, Independent Arts Consultant

• Phil Chan, Arts & Culture Director of IVY

• Sarah A.O. Rosner, A.O.PRO (+ductions)

Hollis Headrick/Arts and Cultural Strategies, Inc.,
Outside Evaluator
Hollis Headrick is a consultant for arts, education and philanthropic organizations focusing on program development and strategic planning. His clients have included the Brooklyn Academy of Music, League of American Orchestras, Lincoln Center Education, Pentacle, National Guild for Community Arts Education, The New York Community Trust, and the Wallace Foundation.

From 2003-06 he was the Director of the Weill Music Institute at Carnegie Hall. He was the founding Executive Director of the Center for Arts Education, 1996-2003, a public-private initiative with New York City government and the Annenberg Foundation. From 1990-96 he was Director of the Arts in Education Program, New York State Council on the Arts. Hollis received the Arts Management Excellence Award from the Arts and Business Council in 2002.

Cathy Zimmerman,
Engagement Opportunity Strategist
Cathy Zimmerman is an independent producer, curator and creative consultant. She has a profound belief in artists as change agents and in the critical role arts and imagination play in creating just and democratic societies. With this core value at the forefront, she has worked for more than 25 years with U.S. and international performing artists and arts organizations in capacities including producing, curating, project development and management, artist representation, public relations and fundraising. Zimmerman was Executive Producer at MAPP International Productions, (1998-2016) --a producer of major performing arts projects that raise critical consciousness and spark social change --working with some of the major contemporary artists of our time, to bring their works and ideas to communities around the world. She is a recipient of the 2018 Fan Taylor Distinguished Service Award for her leadership at MAPP. Currently Zimmerman is a group leader for the Association of Performing Arts Professional’s Leadership Fellows Program and is on the dance and theater faculty at Sarah Lawrence College where she teaches an academic course designed to prepare graduate students with the global perspectives needed as they embark on their professional lives.

As a research study, the ART Program engaged the services of Hollis Headrick/Arts and Cultural Strategies, Inc. to design and implement a methodology for evaluation including:

• ongoing, hands on monitoring by the Program Director

• intake assessments and periodic surveys and evaluations by all stakeholders

• monitoring of rubric established benchmarks for artists including the collection of economic comparable data during different points in the project period

• an overall program evaluation

Pentacle is working with Hollis Headrick to create an online Administrative Resource Toolkit as a vehicle to share the outcomes of the ART study with the wider dance community, funders, and support organizations, and to increase the impact of the findings on services to the field.

The anticipated field-wide impact of the ART project included: advancing new voices in the dance community; evaluating the effectiveness of concentrated capacity-building for emerging artists; and increasing infrastructure support for emerging dance artists nationally over the long-term. In addition, with the comparative study between the capacity-building and comparison groups, the dance field will have solid data evaluating the effectiveness of intensive infrastructure support for emerging artists.

Pentacle wants to make sure the most vulnerable artists among us, those that have been routinely marginalized, or shut out of the traditional patron model of support, are able to access the resources needed to persist with their art. The potential long-term impact of this project is significant, as it is providing the basis for sustaining the next generation of dance artists. It is our belief that the outcomes of the ART study and the forthcoming Administrative Resource Toolkit will give artists the support and tools they need to thrive and make their high quality work. By adapting to the ever-changing needs of artists we are helping to enrich the cultural landscape and contributing to the dynamic flow of ideas so necessary to a healthy democratic society.

*Yancey Consulting Report “What Are the Paradigm Shifts Necessary for the Arts Sector to Nurture More Sustainable THRIVING Institutions of Color?,” Commissioned by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and New York Community Trust, Jan 2018.

Pentacle’s Administrative Resource Team (ART) is supported, in part, by public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council. Pentacle receives private support for ART from The Scherman Foundation’s Katharine S. and Axel G. Rosin Fund, Mertz Gilmore Foundation, and the Howard Gilman Foundation.