The New Coordinates Education

Purpose:

 

To guide students to explore and find their creative North Star through The New Coordinates’ collaborative process.

To foster an environment for students to help one another to reach their goal of writing a brand new play.

To provide students with the tools to add collaboration and flexibility to their own future processes.

TNC Education Program's Commitment to Anti-Racism:

 

The New Coordinates is engaged in the ongoing work of becoming/being an anti-racist theatre company.  The spaces we make for new work are for artists of all backgrounds and identities, and our policies and practices are designed to provide an equal footing to those artists, and to remove barriers that have traditionally limited that access.

Our goal with our curriculum and our policies is to foster harmony, not homogeneity, and for all applicants to have a clear idea of the expectations; the expectations we have of the program and our students, and the expectations our students should have of themselves and one another.

Making art involves, by necessity, self-expression.  Creating new work involves, by necessity, taking risks.  The New Coordinates encourages both, in a collaborative environment that flourishes when all involved understand the impact they have on one another, and the work necessary to minimize harm and maximize compassionate growth.

Sharing space with others is at the core of everything here.  Be prepared to listen, learn, and adapt.

Questions or requests for clarification about TNC educational policies should be directed to the instructor of the class as well as our Director of Education

Click here to learn more about the motivations behind (and our commitment to) anti-racism.

Meet our Education Staff:

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    Fin Coe - Co-Artistic Director and Educator

    The Writers' Room was my first chance to work with TNC, it's where I wrote my first full-length play, and it has shaped my entire playwriting process and philosophy. I am honored to teach and facilitate the class, and to cultivate new voices and the plays that we will discover and build together in this class. Growing our education program will bring more people into the room where our process was founded and continues to evolve, and it is my dream for everyone to share our appreciation of new work and our passion for creating more of it.

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    Andrew Hobgood - Co-Founder and Educator

    We were founded to support new artists creating new works by providing a space that encourages risk-taking and experimentation. The education program has always been a critical pillar of that mission. Our programs teach The Process, a series of tools TNC artists use to maintain creative momentum while facing the most challenging moments of development head on and with complete confidence. Programs like the Writers’ Room were designed so artists could learn how to take great leaps of creative faith - and then quickly jump up, dust themselves off, and try again. It’s incredibly humbling to look back at the last several years of the program - at the amazing works that started in one of our sessions, at the artists who took their first stab at writing a script and then saw it come to fruition on stage. As much as I love the world premieres we’re known for, the truth is that more new work has been born from our education programs than we could ever produce.

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    Katy King - Director of Education

    My first experience with The New Coordinates was in the education program. It is where I discovered my own artistic voice and my passion for New Work created for and dedicated to our Chicago Community. I am so unbelievably grateful to be a part of a program that seeks to develop each artist’s unique voice, and add new voices to Chicago Arts.