Today we celebrate JuneRose Futcher, an emerging TA who lives in Delaware. JuneRose joined TAMA’s Board as the Delaware Director during the pandemic. What is so cool and joyful about JuneRose is that while she is a lifelong artist, she is relatively new to teaching artistry. Her voice, her ideas, and wonderings give us pause, invite us to question, and possibly even shift our direction or altogether change us both in her presence on TAMA’s Board and with her responses to our questions here in this blog.
Where are you in your career, and how do you belong in this community? Are you beginning, do you have years of experience, do you identify as a master? Do you identify as a creative who uses your artform with participants without assuming the title of TA? Are you an educator first and then an artist? There are still more identities to be named here, but each belongs to this community and completes the arts ecosystem.
In our classrooms, in our studios, in all the spaces where we work, we invite participants to explore and test and fail without judgment. Then we encourage self-reflection to discover where they might grow and improve. We empower participants to have courage and take risks in the artist’s playground!
We constructed this blog similarly. It is our community TA playground! The artists, the creatives, the educators who exist here, and the practices, ideas, and wonderings they express will inform and shape our organization’s formation. Our goal is to create a just and equitable space of belonging for all in the arts ecosystem.
Emerging and Masters United Together
Last week, Uncle Devin reminded us that together we are stronger, braver, and wiser through his accomplishments.
If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.
African proverb
Please join us today to lift our Delaware State Director and emerging TA, JuneRose Futcher. We asked JuneRose:
- Tell us about when you discovered your voice in the field as a Teaching Artist.
- What is your number one tip to increase creativity in one’s life?
- Why TAMA?
- What inspires you?
Tell us about when you discovered your voice in the field as a Teaching Artist.
I joyfully discovered my voice as a teaching artist wonderfully spontaneously when I taught basic photographic arts in a cultural center confronting youth violence in Wilmington, Delaware. An administrator found my sincerity and achievements to fit the program for young artists. With their trust in my basic skills for curriculum, established photographic body of work, and instruction with youth in the sport of sailing, I wrote a simple program of studio portraiture, urban study, and community law enforcement. I was able to teach and inspire the young artists in observation, study, and cooperation using a camera.
What is your number one tip to increase creativity in one’s life?
The practice of making a moment in a photograph is a dynamic one, and with a soulful relationship to your environment, a photograph has the power to tell a story. The photographic story may be mine, but the visual story is greater when shared freely and abundantly.
Why TAMA? What does TAMA do for an emerging TA?
The privilege of being involved with the Teaching Artists of the Mid-Atlantic is a gift and inspires me daily. Though I am an emergent teaching artist, being welcomed and trusted for my developing knowledge and contributions is flattering. Knowing there is a place for support and hope that we all offer to advocate and grow and where we lift each other is invigorating.
What inspires you?
There are so many in my physical world as a sailor, environmental activist, and native of coastal and agricultural communities. At this moment, Annise Parker, the first lesbian mayor of Houston, TX, campaign materials are floating to the top. This philosophy steers my creative and life journey.
Life shrinks or expands according to one’s courage.
Anais Nin
Uplift JuneRose Futcher for 7 days (and forever more!)
It’s #FollowFriday. Share this blog and JuneRose on your social media channels. Please give her a shoutout!
Then take time to learn more about JuneRose here as part of TAMA’s TA Directory or view her bio as part of the Delaware Institute for the Arts in Education.
Are YOU a TA who resides in DE, DC, MD, NJ, NY, PA, VA, or WV? Whether just beginning or having years of experience, join the forum conversation for this blog here. These blogs are difficult for TAs to put together. They require courage, especially for those emerging. Now is the time to empower more courageous conversations. Say hello to JuneRose. Let her know how her responses to our questions rippled through your perspective and experience. Who will be the first to accept this invitation? Do you have the time, the space, the energy, the courage?
How else to get involved in TAMA?
If you are a TA in the mid-Atlantic, check out our events calendar. Join us at our bi-monthly TA Cafe – First Mondays at 9:30 AM, and Third Fridays at 2:30 PM! This upcoming Monday is the first one of March. Will we see you?
Check out our events page to mark your calendar for other events, and see you soon! More possibilities for this month are coming soon!
And of course, check this blog next Friday to see – Who will we spotlight next week?
Stay tuned!
#FollowFriday #TeachingArtist #ArtsEducation
