The Tank Producer’s Cohort

The Tank Producers Cohort is an innovative program designed to support the unique needs of emerging creative producers and to invest in pathways to increase and expand representation for those who have been traditionally excluded from producing opportunities. This program will engage 3-5 early-career producers for renewable one-year fellowships.

Prospective fellows should be interested in creative producing and line producing both in and out of institutional settings, with a wide array of artists and genres. The Producers Cohort is designed to offer each creative producer opportunities to collaborate with creative project teams, to join in community learning with their peers, to develop professional skills and pathways, and to deepen their practice of producing as an artform, less prohibited by financial pressures. 

While the Producers Cohort aims to serve emerging producers, we recognize that creative producing doesn’t look one way: prospective Fellows might be self-producing artists themselves, produce for their own company, or be experimenting with models of production. Strong candidates to benefit from and contribute to the Cohort might be: an emerging theater maker interested in honing their producorial practice; a generative artist committing to and deepening their self-producing; an arts administrator who wants to reconnect to a creative practice; a mover, shaker, or community maker incorporating public performance as civic practice; or a permutation we have yet to imagine. Given The Tank’s multi-disciplinary programming and our creative community–that constantly redefines what it means to be an emerging artist–we are prepared to welcome and support Cohort members from divergent experiences.

Cohort members will participate in biweekly cohort meetings, led by a facilitator and including both practicum discussions with the cohort and facilitator and guest artist sessions with mentor practitioners in the field or specialists leading intensive skill development workshops. 

With Tank staff and facilitator mentorship, Fellows will also take on hands-on learning opportunities by producing at The Tank. Each fellowship year, each participant will produce at least three projects at The Tank, including Tank Core Productions and Presented Works. These hands-on opportunities would range in scale and genre; because of The Tank’s volume and variety of programming, we will match the cohort members with projects that engage their artistic interests and introduce them to potential long term collaborators, while meeting their level of experience and current practical learning goals. 

As a capstone to their fellowship, each cohort member will additionally have the opportunity to produce a presented show at The Tank as the instigating artist, whether to them that means being the generative artist, a curatorial force, or another model that centers creative producing as artistic practice.

To support their in-depth integration into the Tank’s programming, we will provide cohort members with work space in The Tank’s office during the duration of their residency; we will also make Tank meeting and rehearsal space available to them, offering The Tank as an artistic and professional home. Fellows also have access to The Tank’s institutional resources like our Employee Assistance Program, memberships, softwares, and fiscal sponsorship, as well as staff support and mentorship. At the end of their first year, cohort members would meet individually with Tank Leadership to determine whether they will mutually renew their fellowship for a second year.

Each cohort member will receive a $15,000 annual fellowship. Each year, they can also anticipate opportunities for bonus artist fees for production work and available professional development funding for conferences or workshops.

The Tank Producers Cohort is generously funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation believes that the arts and humanities are where we express our complex humanity, and we believe that everyone deserves the beauty, transcendence, and freedom to be found there. Through our grants, we seek to build just communities enriched by meaning and empowered by critical thinking, where ideas and imagination can thrive.