ART IS emerged from TPT’s long-standing commitment to the arts and its desire to find new ways to present, engage, and elevate our communities’ stories. To sustain this for generations to come, TPT created a multidisciplinary series to draw new, younger, and more diverse audiences. ART IS needed to be digital first, include live public events, and be completely artist-driven.
TPT selected renowned artists of color to serve as the series co-curators and mentors. It is crucial to identify and invite lead artists who are passionate about supporting and mentoring younger artists, who are energized by collaboration, and have a large local following and network.
Since artists know their communities best, they were the ones to identify early career artists who deserve visibility and access to resources to advance their work. Each cohort produces a live public event in TPT’s studios around a theme of their choosing.
In producing this series, the goals were to provide tools that each artist could use to increase visibility, advance careers, revitalize the local artistic community, and attract new audiences to TPT and the media.
To do this in a sustainable way, TPT created a package of short-form media for each artist and cohort, including a short documentary about the artist, a portrait/headshot, promotional shorts for digital and social media, and event impact videos of performance highlights and audience reactions. Every artist is paid and has access to media for use in their promotional and professional work.
Additionally, TPT set up a curated media experience on TPTOriginals for the ART IS series, where audiences can view media and deepen engagement with these stories and artists.
In the past three years, three integral local presenting arts organizations have closed their doors. ART IS presented an opportunity to build TPT’s community, as well as fill a broad community need for a space for local artists to showcase their work.
TPT hopes to develop a more comprehensive marketing plan for social media. They plan to share individual posts that feature content that inspires audiences to take action, like attending events, visiting a linked organization, or seeking out artists’ work. They will think of ways to produce media that can be directly integrated into events.