You may apply to the Teaching Artist Roster if you are:

• a professional artist or arts educator. Individuals are considered to be a professional artist or arts educator if they
  • earn at least part of their annual income working with educators and others showing how their art form may be used to enhance learning and teaching
  • consider their artistic work a career
  • maintain a high level of artistic quality, and
  • make a significant time investment in their artistic disciplines through practice, performance, and instruction
• not a full-time student, and
• more than 18 years of age

Please note: Unlike other MAC programs, applicants to the Teaching Artist Roster are not required to be residents of Mississippi.

Applications to the Teaching Artist Roster are reviewed using the following criteria:

1. Artistic & Teaching Abilities (40 points)

The Applicant:

• Exhibits a high level of artistic ability
• Demonstrates experience working in a preK-12 school setting, with teachers and administrators as well as students
• Shows the ability to develop lesson plans that integrate the arts into non-arts curriculum that align with MDE’s Visual and Performing Arts Frameworks
• Introduces the vocabulary, concepts, strategies and techniques of their artistic discipline through their work with schools and community organizations

2. Leadership & Communication Skills (30 points)

The Applicant:

• Is able to present information effectively to different types of education audiences (students, teachers, or members of community groups)
• Has experience guiding teachers, administrators and community groups in developing their own arts education programs
• Demonstrates the ability to make connections between the arts and other content areas

3. Planning & Organizational Abilities (30 points)

The Applicant:

• Has experience in collaborating with clients to develop different types of projects
• Makes efficient use of limited contact time with teachers or students
• Provides potential school clients with a thorough set of pre and post-visit materials

Applicants approved for the Teaching Artist Roster are part of the listing for three years. In order to be eligible to re-apply for the Roster, Teaching Artists must participate in at least one professional development activity during their three years with the program. Acceptable training activities include:

• a training or workshop specifically for teaching artists;
• a conference related to arts education or the artist’s specific discipline; or
• another professional experience that improves your work as a teaching artist

Applicants to the Teaching Artist Roster must include reference forms completed by four different individuals as part of their application. These individuals must be familiar with your work as a teaching artist. References could include a teacher that the artist worked with at a school or an administrator who hired the artist to conduct a workshop for teachers.

Schools that receive MAC grant funds to support work by a member of the Teaching Artist Roster are required to submit an evaluation of the artist as a part of their final reporting requirements for the grant. Copies of the evaluations are placed in the files of Teaching Artists and are made available to the review panel when the artist reapplies for the program.

Artists who are currently members of the Roster are required to re-apply every three years in order to maintain their membership in the program. The reapplication process is the same as the initial application process.

Artists who fail to reapply by the March deadline will be removed from the Mississippi Artist Roster by July 1. However, if an organization applies to hire a Roster Artist set to roll off July 1 during the May Mini-Grant round, MAC will honor the organization’s application.

Applicants who are approved for the Teaching Artist Roster are required to provide MAC with their current contact information. They are responsible for securing and arranging their own bookings, as well as providing presenters with adequate publicity materials. Teaching Roster artists should be familiar with MAC’s grant programs guidelines in order to inform potential presenters about them.

MAC updates the Teaching Artist Roster annually on its agency website. MAC does provide advisory assistance to schools that are looking for an artist to meet a programming need, but it does not actively promote or seek bookings for individual Roster Artists.

Applications are available through our online grant system. If you are new to E-Grant, please refer to MAC’s video guide on how to create an account. Please review the guides and video tutorials available on MAC’s Frequently Asked Questions page, then contact MAC staff if you have any questions. MAC will provide reasonable accommodations for those individuals who are unable to access MAC’s online grant system. Paper applications are available upon request. Applicants must request a paper application no later than two weeks before the deadline, and it must be postmarked no later than the application deadline. Please review the guides and video tutorials available on MAC’s Frequently Asked Questions page, then contact MAC staff if you have any questions.

The application will require submission of the following documents through the E-Grant system:

• Narrative (two-page maximum) in which you describe:
  • Your work as an artist and your development as a teaching artist (What got you interested in working with schools? How have you developed your teaching artist skills?).
  • Your experience working with students and teachers
  • The specific services you can provide to schools, including consultations, training workshops, residencies, lectures, or coaching.
  • How your artistic discipline can be used to teach skills in different content areas of the pre-K-12 curriculum, such as language arts, mathematics, social studies or science. Note the concepts that help facilitate these connections.
  • Provide details on your technical requirements for your work in schools (for example, stage size or sound system required).
• Your current artistic resumé. This document should detail your work as a professional artist only (including work as a teaching artist). Please include information on arts-related education (college level or other advanced training) as well as teaching artist training you have received. Do not include information about your non-arts work. Applicants who are re-applying to the Teaching Artist Roster must include information in their resume on the teaching artist training that they attended during the past three years (required for all artists re-applying to the Teaching Artist Roster).
• Two Sample Lesson Plans:
  • An arts-integrated plan (no more than two pages in length) for a student group. The lesson should clearly reveal what you want the students to know both in the arts discipline and the subject content area. Follow the format of the sample lesson plan when creating your plan.
  • A plan for a teacher’s professional development workshop. It should be no longer than two pages. Follow the format of the sample professional development workshop on the Teaching Artist Roster page of the MAC website when creating your plan. The workshop should model arts integration strategies that can be utilized by a teacher or community member.

• A list of your previous work in schools, including date(s), name of school, type of activity, and age groups with which you worked. Please note if any of these past activities were funded through MAC grants.
• Teaching Artist Reference forms completed by four different teachers or administrators who are familiar with the applicant’s work as a teaching artist. The reference must send their form in separately to MAC.
• Appropriate samples of the applicant’s work as an artist (see the list below for details on what to submit). The samples must have been completed within the last three years.
• A list that describes the artistic work samples. These descriptions should include the titles and completion dates of each sample. Also include the medium and the approximate dimensions of each work (if appropriate for the art form).
• A digital promotional image of the applicant. The image should be high quality and suitable for printing in the Roster booklet.
• A document containing the required information for the Teaching Artist Handbook. This includes your contact information, a short bio, and a description of the type of workshop and programs you offer.

Work Sample Formats

If you have trouble uploading the work sample files to E-Grant, please consult the tutorials available in MAC’s Frequently Asked Questions.

• Literary Artists: 10-15 pages of fiction, creative non-fiction, poetry, playwriting (original or adaptation), or a screenplay completed within the last three years. If your submitted work sample is an excerpt from a longer work, you may include a one-page synopsis of the work as a whole. Published work must be submitted in typed manuscript rather than published form. The sample must be formatted using a 12-point font size and one inch margins on all sides of the page.
• Media Artists: Three video recordings with 5-10 minutes of excerpts of your work completed within the last three years. The list of work samples should include, for each excerpt, the title, length, date completed, technique, original format, genre (documentary, experimental, etc.) and the specific role of the applicant in creating the submitted work.
• Performing Artists: Three audio or video recordings containing 5-10 minutes of representative work completed within the last three years. Musicians should include at least three songs in their sample. On the list of work samples indicate the title, names of the artist(s), date, and location of recording. Please note: storytellers, actors, dancers and other theatrical artists are required to submit video recordings of their samples.
• Visual Artists: Applicants will be required to submit six digital images that feature work completed within the last three years. The images should be saved in JPEG format at 72dpi, with no image wider than 1240 pixels. The work must have been completed within the last three years. Please submit the best quality images that you have available.
• Arts Educators: A video recording with 5-10 minutes of the applicant actively engaging a classroom of learners in your arts discipline. The presentation should reflect your submitted lesson plan.

Work Sample File Types

Ineligible File Types: 

• Pages (.pages)
• Numbers (.numbers)
• Keynote (.key)

Video & Audio

• If you share media from your website, link directly to the video/audio rather than the home page.
• MAC recommends applicants upload using the following file types: MP3, MOV, MP4, WMV, WMA.
• MAC recommends applicants upload links to video or audio files. Applicants can link to websites such as YouTube, Vimeo, Soundcloud, Bandcamp, etc.

Images & Documents

• MAC recommends applicants upload using the following file types: Word (.doc or .dox), Excel (.xls, .xlr, or .xlsx), PDF (.pdf), or JPEG (.jpeg).
• You may upload links contained in a Word Document or PDF.

February 1 – Teaching Artist Roster application opens

March 1 – Teaching Artist Roster application deadline

April – Review of applications by the grant panel (the specific panel date will be available by late March. Applicants are allowed to attend panels.)

June – MAC Board meets and makes final funding decisions on all applications

July – Applicants are notified whether their application was funded or not. No information on the grants (including whether or not an applicant will be receiving an award or the amount of the award) will be available from MAC prior to this date.