Emerging Arts Leaders/LA is hosting Creative Conversations 2011: Maximize your Impact: Create Growth at Every Point in Your Career, this Saturday, October 29th in Santa Monica.  Emerging Arts Leaders/Los Angeles’ mission is to ensure sustainable innovation in arts leadership by facilitating and providing a forum for preparing, educating and inspiring emerging arts professionals to assume the next generation of arts sector leadership positions.

From EAL/LA: Learn how to leverage your creativity and skills, diversify your leadership experience, and get inspired to take the next steps in your careers. Whether you are looking to collaborate with others in creative ways, build your professional persona or find unique professional development opportunities, Creative Conversation 2011 is the ideal place to exchange ideas and gain practical tools to advance your career in the arts.

Annenberg Community Beach House
415 Pacific Coast Hwy, Santa Monica, CA 90402

Saturday, October 29, 9:30am-3:30pm
Tickets // $20.
For tickets, please visit: http://ealla.kintera.org/ecommerce

Speakers / Events Schedule:

9:30-9:45am: Registration

9:45-10:00am: Opening Remarks

10:00-10:45am: Why We Work
Gretchen Maldonado
Associate Director of Career Planning & Resources, Scripps College
Early career artists and arts management professionals have many things to work on such as mastering field research, gaining technical skills, learning how to be arts advocates, etc. Yet choosing which area to gain proficiency in can be a great challenge without knowing exactly where you currently stand and what you want to contribute to and take from your career. Gretchen Maldonado, a seasoned career counselor, will take you on a journey to identify your core values and pinpoint the ones that will drive your career satisfaction. This session will inform your participation in and understanding of the workshops throughout the rest of the day.

10:50am-11:55am: About the Report: Nurturing California's Next Generation Arts and Cultural Leaders
Ann Markusen
Markusen Economic Research Services
Ann Markusen, editor of the recent report commissioned by the Center for Cultural Innovation, "Nurturing California's Next Generation Arts and Cultural Leaders," will share some of the fascinating tidbits gleaned from her research, which distilled results from a survey that more than 1,300 California-based arts administrators completed. The ambitious survey assessed employment contentment, career aspirations, and professional development satisfaction. A first-of-its-kind, this report is sure to spark conversation at Arts organizations state-wide about the needs, desires, and hopes for the next wave of arts leaders. Ann will both share her expertise as well as spark dialogue with Creative Conversation attendees.

11:55-12:45: Lunch

12:45am-1:45pm: Deciphering Your Personal Brand and Making it Work for You
Nancy Hytone Leb
Principal, Hytone Arts Management
Trainer, Center for Cultural Innovation
Thinking about your brand identity is a challenging concept. When promoting yourself to others, whether you realize it or not, you are communicating your personal brand. In this workshop, Nancy Hytone Leb from Hytone Arts Management and the Center for Cultural Innovation will help you take a step back and learn to think about your brand identity, what it's based on and how to communicate it. We'll explore the concept of branding and how your brand should be a reflection of your mission, vision and values as well as look at some tools to help you begin creating a brand that is reflective of you and your mission.

1:50-2:35pm: Being a Leader at Every Point in Your Career
Claire Knowlton
Executive Director, McGroarty Arts Center
You don't need to be the CEO or ED of an arts organization to show leadership qualities. In fact, as an entry-level professional, one of the best ways to impress your supervisor and colleagues is to not only master your assigned tasks, but also to have comprehension of how your job fits in to the organization as a whole and imagine better practices and new ideas. Claire Knowlton was recently featured in an inspiring Arts for L.A. blog-post entitled "Take it On and Make it Yours: An Alternate Track to Advancing Your Career." Now the Executive Director of McGroarty Arts Center, she worked there not long ago as a part-time staffer paid at minimum wage without the benefit of a job description to work from. Claire has gained career skills and a good reputation through her hard work and initiative to save the arts center she loved and had taken classes at from the age of three. She states "I took an unconventional approach to advancing my career – I built an organization." No matter what your current employment situation is – whether you work for an arts organization, run your own non-profit, work free-lance as an artist or educator, or are job-seeking – Claire will give her input on how you can be a leader from wherever you are.

2:40-3:40pm: Discovering Professional Development Opportunities
John Arroyo, Urban Practitioner and Cultural Producer
Letitia Fernandez Ivins, Assistant Director of Civic Art, Los Angeles County Arts Commission
Jayna Swartzman, Program Manager, Center for Cultural Innovation
The career paths of emerging arts leaders are as diverse as arts leaders themselves. And no one does it alone. External resources, mentors, peers, and networks all strengthen the careers of emerging arts leaders and sometimes it's tough to find out where these opportunities are. This session will address existing professional development opportunities, how to strategically take advantage of those opportunities, and how to create them from scratch. Our panel will inform and inspire you to find the support you need to be a successful arts leader.

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More about the Creative Conversation: In collaboration with Americans for the Arts (AFTA), Creative Conversations are local gatherings of engaged citizens in communities across the country and are part of a grassroots movement to elevate the profile of arts in America during National Arts & Humanities Month every October. 2011 marks EAL/LA's 4th annual Creative Conversation and comes at an exciting time of tremendous growth and progress for EAL/LA as an organization. We hope you will join us for what is sure to be an exciting, engaging, and educational event.