What do artists need to sustain their creative lives, and what can we offer one another to help make that possible?
Join Sharon Louden, artist, educator, and founder of the Institute of Sustained Creativity, for Needs, Wants, Gives, an open, conversational workshop designed to spark connection, strengthen creative communities, and build new opportunities for artists.
Drawing on decades of experience working with artists and arts professionals across the country, Louden addresses the practical, everyday challenges of sustaining a life in the arts. At the heart of this workshop is a simple but powerful idea: artists can help one another thrive by sharing knowledge, resources, skills, and opportunities.
Participants will be invited to reflect on what they need, what they want, and what they can give. Through an informal exchange among artists of different generations, backgrounds, and experiences, the workshop creates space to build relationships, discover shared priorities, and explore how individual strengths can support a more connected and generous creative community.
Louden developed this approach through years of conversations with artists, national book tours, workshops with Creative Capital, advising Joan Mitchell Foundation grantees, and decades as an educator. Across these experiences, she has seen how validation, inclusion, and meaningful opportunities to share work are essential to artists’ long-term sustainability.
Come ready to share, listen, connect, and imagine what becomes possible when artists invest in one another. Please RSVP to make sure we have a big enough room.
Sharon Louden wears many interchangeable hats: artist, educator, advocate, consultant, community builder, founder and director of the Institute for Sustained Creativity, and editor of the Living and Sustaining a Creative Life series of books. As a changemaker, Louden amplifies creative voices and advances meaningful opportunities for artists — particularly those who are underserved and underseen — across all disciplines to help them sustain their creative lives.
With decades of experience across sectors, Louden is a visionary leader and connector who bridges communities and catalyzes change. She is a skilled collaborator, convening siloed stakeholders from the nonprofit and business sectors to generate dialogue and drive collective progress. At its core, all of her work is rooted in her active creative practice as a working artist.
The Institute of Sustained Creativity functions as a catalyst to connect artists, arts leaders, organizations, foundations, corporations, nonprofits, and academic institutions. We build and grow meaningful relationships by centering artists’ needs and goals through intentional, intergenerational, and cross-sector introductions. Our work bringing together stakeholders does not end with initial matchmaking. We remain committed to successful collaborations that become lasting over time.