Leverage Your TLA Expertise as a Social Arts Practice, for Community Engagement, & Radical Livelihood // with Yvette Hyater-Adams

Explore how to use narrative-based models to strengthen your professional voice, better communicate who you are and what you do as a transformative language artist, and further shape the emerging field and practice of TLA.

Artists, activists, facilitators, and scholars contribute toward the emerging field and profession of TLA practitioners. In this class, we'll hone our abilities and build tools for communicating our individual and community TLA work. Particularly relevant today is a call to action for a greater consciousness-raising in power and privilege, igniting movements such as #MeToo, Black Lives Matter, and Movement for Trans Lives. There is a greater demand for skilled TLA practitioners who can create space for truth-telling and healing for silenced voices in our culture. We are in the midst of a robust culture shift demanding processes for change.

Yvette will use models and frameworks to showcase the story of your TLA practice, articulate your skills, and identify your targeted audience to market your work.

If you imagine a way to effectively and passionately convey your whys, whos, and whats of your practice and to market yourself effectively, this is the course for you. In a nutshell, this course will guide participants to name succinctly: This is my body of work. This is who I am. This is with whom I work.

Objectives & Goals

Participants can expect to:

• share experiences to expand further and deepen the context and content of your personal TLA practice and its connection to the profession;
  
• design a TLA niche and target audience to support Right Livelihood; 
  
• write a one-page business plan map for your TLA practice and, 
  
• develop and apply a storytelling framework for marketing your TLA practice.
  

Participants will reflect on and write a high-level overview of their TLA practice and its supporting theories to articulate the impact and advance TLA's reputation. The framework used to write their summary will support TLA research and practices. Using a storytelling template, participants will build a narrative for marketing and branding themselves and their target market profile.

Week by Week

Week One: Introduction to TLA Practice as Personal Story, Theory, and Goals

This week, we'll explore who we are, what's our TLA practice, and what theories support our work. We will identify our goals for the class.

Week Two: Who Am I?

This week, we dive deeper into first-person storytelling on our histories, including the theories that have helped us gain a greater understanding of ourselves, identity, and personhood. We shall produce a few short personal essays and exchange supportive feedback.

Week Three: With Whom Do I work?

This week, we dive deeper through first-person storytelling on the people we are currently working within our TLA practice or the audience with whom we wish to work. We'll unpack the"why" to get at the core of our authentic connection to our desired population. We shall produce a few short personal essays on the needs and experiences of our audience.

Week Four: What is Our Work?

This week, we will examine the core and pathways of our TLA practice. We will brainstorm to expand our thinking of our work, and then reduce ideas to a focused and nuanced practice

Week Five: One Page Business Plan Map

We'll develop a one-page business plan that will put our TLA practice into practical and sustainable work.

Week Six: Storytelling Our Work

We'll wrap up class by using a branding framework to draft a story that speaks about our TLA practice. We'll identify ways we can use our story as a marketing tool to build our social arts practice.

Who Should Take This Class

This online class is for facilitators and practitioners (whether you're a writer, storyteller, performer, activist, educator, healer, or community leader). If you wish to document your work and your background creatively, this course is for you. If you want a high-level business plan that maps out how your practice operates, well, this course is for you! This online class works well for individuals wishing dedicated time to write about their storytelling, personal narrative, and narrative storytelling based facilitation practice. This course will help participants establish their "brand" and marketing through stories.

Format

This is an online class, hosted on the online teaching platform, Wet Ink. The Wet Ink platform allows students to log in on their own time to post comments and critiques directly to students’ works. You can also view deadlines, track revisions, and watch video or listen to audio. At the end of the class, each student will receive an email that contains an archive of all their content and interactions. 

The day before class begins, you’ll receive an invitation to join Wet Ink. There are no browser requirements, and Wet Ink is mobile-friendly. If you have any questions about the technical requirements, please email tlan.coordinator@gmail.com.

About the Teacher

Yvette Angelique Hyater-Adams, MA-TLA, is the Principal and Chief Storytelling Officer at Narratives for Change. Yvette Angelique is a poet, teaching artist, and proven culture change strategist. Yvette's recent artistic work includes: a digital poetry chapbook book, Something Old, New, Borrowed, and The Blues; a poetry chapbook, Shut Eyes See; and storytelling performances--See the Girl Monologues, and Europa: Zora Neale Hurston, Carlos Santana, and Me. Her poems appear in journals and anthologies, and her essays and book chapters contribute to the discourse on transformative language arts for personal and social change. Yvette teaches creative writing and storytelling to heal, create literary art, for consciousness-raising and advocacy. She is on the editorial board for the international publication Practising Social Change. She is Chair of the Board of Directors for Alternate Roots, a longtime organization for Southern artists and cultural workers.