Artists Space

Artists Space Teaching Artist Position
Art and Literacy: Poetry

Expanded Art Ideas (EAI) collaborates with middle and high school communities, providing innovative artistic programming to approximately 200 students annually since the program’s inception in 2001. Creating is a tool for telling a story, processing experiences and bringing imagination to life. The journey through middle and high school can be a time of great upheaval and questioning and often a Visiting Artist can connect and inspire students in unique ways that expand beyond day-to-day school structures, providing exposure to professional artists, performance and exhibition opportunities and dynamic inquiry-based projects. Expanded Art Ideas consists of four courses that encourage middle school students to develop new artistic strategies and can encourage students to translate these skills into an arts-focused high school education, and beyond.

Art and Literacy: Poetry is an artist residency that has been developed as a core component of Expanded Art Ideas. This 10-week residency involves the entire 8th grade at P.S. 140 and provides students in the inclusive classroom with resources and instruction in the literary arts. Working closely with Humanities curricula and staff, the residency focuses on the social and political role that poetry has played through the last century, along with the literary devices that make a poem. In the past, students have explored personal experience and experimented with a variety of poetic triggers including collage, parataxis, ekphrasis, overheard sound and conversation, observation on walks, photography, collaboration and shape poetry. Students self-select work for publication by Artists Space, accompanied by visual contributions from our other programs. Students are introduced to performance as a significant means of artistic expression through media and visiting artists, and are encouraged to participate in YAP: Young Artist Perform, a day of performance poetry for the school and community audience.

Teaching Artists are paid as consultants based on experience. The position will start mid-January 2022.

  • Teach two 45 minute - class sessions for a 10 week residency per academic year, 1 time per week with additional preparation time
  • Meet with PS 140 Language Arts teacher and Artist's Space Director of Education to plan residency
  • Prepare and organize the students’ poems for Artists Space publication
  • Prepare students for Young Artist Perform (YAP) performance day
  • Organize media and or visiting artists as needed

  • A minimum of 3 years teaching experience (teaching residencies are fine)
  • Ability to work collaboratively with Artists Space and school staff, as well as independently in a - responsible manner
  • Ability to inspire creativity and enthusiasm, and to encourage students to take risks and think outside the box
  • Vision for how the program could grow and change to meet the needs of the students
  • Active publishing and/or performance history
  • Excellent writing and communication skills
  • Compassion and commitment to working with students from diverse backgrounds
  • Fingerprinting by the NYC Department of Education is required to teach in the schools

Please send cover letter and resume as a single PDF attachment to jobs@artistsspace.org.

Artists Space is uniquely positioned to involve students as both artists and viewers, enabling them to experience the art world as an accessible place and thereby impacting, even if in a small way, their choice to contribute to the cultural field. Fostering points of connection between the education program and Artists Space’s programming is a high priority for the organization.

We believe that in a world saturated with images it is a precondition for social justice that students have the tools to understand how artwork is constructed, as well as the economy of production and its circulation, in order to recognize, articulate and propose an alternative to that world and its conditions. Providing students with these tools, as well as other practical skills, are the goals and objectives of Expanded Art Ideas.