The Peabody Institute published its first-ever free digital book, The Path to Funding: The Artist’s Guide to Building Your Audience, Generating Income, and Realizing Career Sustainability. Targeting students, independent artists, and artist educators, the book breaks down the process of building, articulating, and funding a creative project from the inception of an idea to the moment of submission for a grant proposal.
The Path to Funding focuses on developing business and entrepreneurial skills today’s artist needs to build sustainable, satisfying, and rewarding creative lives in the 21st century. It draws from the innovative course, Pitching Your Creative Idea, part of the Breakthrough Curriculum that supports hundreds of students each academic year at the Peabody Conservatory of the Johns Hopkins University.
Lead author Dr. Zane Forshee, the Marc C. von May Distinguished Chair of Professional Studies and director of the Institute’s LAUNCHPad career services office, was interested in expanding the reach of these skills beyond the Peabody campus: “I loved the idea of creating something every artist could readily access, for free, to help them bring their ideas to fruition.”
Kathleen DeLaurenti, Director of the Arthur Friedheim Library says that most open textbook projects have focused on high-enrollment STEM and social science texts. “Launching this project at Peabody is the beginning of filling some critical gaps for artists in the open book space.”
Developed in collaboration with DeLaurenti, Joseph Montcalmo, Director of the Learning Innovation, and Valerie Hartman, Senior Instructional Designer, The Path to Funding walks artists through the process of developing an artist mission statement, generating new ideas for creative projects, and creating an engaging project description. Performing artists, instructors, and now co-authors Christina Manceor and Robin McGinness from LAUNCHPad provide expertise on methods for artists to identify their audience, generate a comprehensive project budget, collect compelling work samples, and identify potential funders to support their creative work. Featuring a dozen interviews with active artists and educators, this resource provides creatives with tools and strategies to communicate passionately and effectively about their work and take control of their financial and artistic future.
The Path to Funding is published and accessible for free on Pressbooks. Read the book or learn more by visiting peabody.jhu.edu/path-to-funding/.
