This past weekend, artists from around the world and across the disciplines of visual, performing and literary arts gathered at the Brooklyn Academy of Music Fisher building for the first ever Creative Capital Summer Institute (CCSI).
CCSI is a free, four-day professional development workshop and  a unique opportunity for artists from New York to Lusaka Zambia to collaborate, share best practices and learn from prominent leaders working and living as artists today.

Over the four day intensive artist leaders such as Dread Scott, Colleen Keegan, Ela Troyano and many more guided participants through the tenets of strategic planning, the essentials of targeted marketing, the power of effective verbal communication and encouraged artists to take an empowering and authentic approach to fundraising and financial management.
“I used to have a lot of negative ideas about the language of budgets, money and financial planning,” multi-disciplinary artist Katie Caicedo admitted. “[The financial management session] helped me realise that I need to flip that script and realise that it’s powerful to consciously create a plan for yourself. Having financial empowerment will help you have agency and control over your creative vision.”
One of the goals of CCSI is to give artists actionable tools and the ability to hit the ground running from the moment they leave the workshop. Harlem based dancer and educator Sydnie Mosley shared, “The thing I am most excited about is being able to take a lot of the tools that we’ve gotten over the past few days and implement them immediately because my company, SLM Dances is going into a strategic planning process literally as soon as this conferences is over.”
The participation of artists from Dance Motion USA, including international artists from Laos, Indonesia, Madagascar and Zambia, as well as a partnership with the Brooklyn Academy of Music helped to make this year’s summer intensive the biggest and best yet.
Thank you to all the artists who shared space and community with us over the four days, our artist leaders for their wisdom and guidance, and the staff from BAM and Dance Motion USA for their support and partnership.
Until next year!
* In 2016, Creative Capital launched the Summer Intensive with additional support by BAM’s Education & Humanities department and participation by DanceMotion USA. The Summer Intensive builds on the Artists Summer Institute, a program created in partnership with Lower Manhattan Cultural Council that concluded in 2015. We would like to remember and celebrate ASI and thank LMCC for our 6 year partnership.