GhostLight's Wednesday Workshop Series Creates Access to Education & Career Growth for Detroit Artists
DETROIT — "Every artist is a small business owner." That's the idea behind the new Wednesday Workshop Series from the GhostLight Arts Initiative (GLAI). On Oct 14, a group of Detroit artists started putting that premise into practice.
The free series gives individual artists and growing arts organizations hands-on training in the business skills a sustainable creative career requires. It opened at the Detroit Public Library's Main Library in Midtown with Part 1 of Building Your Personal Brand, led by Jenn Maine. Part 2 is tomorrow, Wednesday, Oct. 28.
The series is part of GLAI's Detroit Artist Fellowship Program, a three-year professional development program that provides training and mentorship for early-career artists. The Wednesday sessions are designed to support emerging performing arts professionals in the fellowship, but most workshops will also be open to the public. Detroit artists at any stage can come learn in the same room as the fellows.
"Workforce development is key to any successful arts ecosystem," GLAI says in its description of the fellowship. The Wednesday series puts that idea into practice with skills-based sessions, led by working Detroit professionals, in one of the city's most accessible public spaces.
Maine titled her presentation Branding 101: Selling Yourself Without Selling Your Soul, and the first session started with the "self" part. Before anyone talked about logos or color palettes, she walked participants through a self-awareness exercise. They looked at how they see themselves, how ego shapes their choices, and how the expectations of others can "get in the way of being your authentic self."
From there, she reframed what a brand actually is. As one of her slides put it, "A brand is a feeling that the others own." It is shaped by your visuals, your messaging and your actions, and by how all three relate to the people you want to reach.
Maine brings 19 years of experience to the room. She is the owner and director of Studio Incognita, a certified women-owned Detroit design consultancy focused on brand identity and environmental design for community, arts and culture organizations. She has also taught brand design and development as an adjunct professor at Oakland University and Kendall College of Art and Design.
Her recent work uses design to build community. While leading brand development for Detroit's Joe Louis Greenway, she developed a Public-Integrated Brand Design process that uses public engagement to build shared community identities. Her local clients also include Kresge Arts in Detroit, Living Arts Detroit and Sidewalk Detroit.
On Wednesday, Nov. 4, from 6 to 8 p.m., the series moves from telling your story to funding it. Grant Writing 101: Finding Funding for Your Creative Work is a two-hour introduction to finding grants and writing strong proposals, led by Frannie Shepherd-Bates.
The workshop is designed for both individual artists and nonprofit organizations, and it is structured around the full path of a grant:
Finding Opportunities
Where funding for creative work comes from and how to identify the grants that fit your work
Building Relationships
How and when to connect with program officers before you apply
Making the First Ask:
How to write a letter of inquiry (LOI), which many funders require before inviting a full proposal
Writing the Proposal: How to develop a strong, complete grant application
No prior grant-writing experience or nonprofit affiliation is needed. That point matters, because many individual artists assume grants are only for organizations with a development staff. The goal is to give participants practical tools to approach grant writing whether they are seeking support for their own creative practice or building an organization.
Shepherd-Bates has worked on both sides of that equation. Michigan theatre audiences know her as the founder of Shakespeare in Prison, which she led from 2012 to 2023, and which became Detroit Public Theatre's signature community program. She has directed for many of southeast Michigan's professional theatres.
As a development professional, she has more than a decade of experience writing organizational and individual grants, cultivating individual donors and working with institutional funders. She has also served on grant review panels, so she knows what reviewers look for when a proposal lands on their desk. She is currently director of development at Linkage Community.
For emerging artists who see grant writing as a mysterious gatekeeping skill, Shepherd-Bates offers a rare perspective: someone who built a program as an artist, then learned how to fund it, and has sat on the other side of the review table.
The fall workshops are the start of a longer curriculum. GLAI plans future sessions built around Business 101, a set of workshops that walk artists through the basics of running their creative work as a business. The series will also expand into workshops and seminars on Guest and Audience Services and Production Management. These are two career paths that keep Michigan's theatres, venues and festivals running, and they offer emerging performing arts professionals stable work alongside, or in addition to, their artistic practice.
All workshops are free (pay-what-you-can), but registration is required. Registration and updates on future sessions are available on the GhostLight Arts Initiative website.
GLAI's Detroit Artist Fellowship Program is made possible because of support from The Gilbert Family Foundation. The GhostLight Arts Initiative is also the parent organization for Encore Michigan.
