& Workshops
The Arts & Business Council’s professional development and capacity building programs are designed to provide essential training, practical frameworks, and direct coaching to artists and creative entrepreneurs. We collaborate with nonprofit organizations, universities, and municipalities to provide customized learning engagements for their cohorts.
Our current workshop offerings are steeped in a long history of successful programs for artists and creative entrepreneurs as well as 20+ years of legal counsel, clinics, and services via our Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts program. We receive hundreds of calls each year from artists and arts administrators seeking help with contracts, negotiation, copyright concerns, and even human resource matters. What we learn about the real and pressing needs of this population has informed our professional development programming at every step.
The Arts & Business Council provides a range of live workshops for artists, creative entrepreneurs, arts organizations, nonprofit boards of directors, business executives, legal professionals, and municipalities. Our current offerings focus on core areas for which the A&BC is nationally recognized as experts and thought leaders
The Arts & Business Council can record and share webinars on specific topics or that are designed to complement live workshop programs. Webinars can include multiple presenters and assorted media, including video, screen-sharing, and more.
The A&BC develops clinics for general audiences as well as customized engagements that allow participants to delve deeper into particular issues that may have been highlighted in previous workshop programs. For example, participants can explore contractual, budgeting, and procurement processes in greater depth with a smaller group of attendees. Clinics can also be a format to review a draft contract section by section and/or facilitate a conversation among small groups. This is an especially successful format for addressing legal concerns.
The A&BC offers the opportunity for one-on-one coaching for individuals and organizations on a variety of themes and topics including estate planning, contract review, legal issues, board development, and nonprofit incorporation. We can also arrange coaching sessions with our partners who specialize in human resource matters, insurance, marketing, and more.
State Street
Blue Cross Blue Shield of MA
Joan Mitchell Foundation
Tremaine Foundation/Artists Thrive
Now + There
Haystack Mountain School of Craft
National Arts Strategies
North Bennet Street School
Mass College of Art & Design
RISD
BU School of Law
Catalyst Conversations
Boston Bar Association
Boston Patent Law Association
Goodwin
Lawyer’s Clearinghouse
TSNE Missionworks
Lesley University
MAPC
ACC Northeast
Philanthropy Massachusetts
Bank of America
Americans for the Arts
New England School of Photography
Boston Public Schools
Art World Conference
Arts Connect International/Arts Equity Summit
Brown University
MassArt
Massachusetts Cultural Council
Boston Art Review Reports on Artist Live-Work Space in Boston
The spring/summer 2022 edition of the Boston Art Review is out, and it includes a fantastic feature by Anita Morson-Matra, “Real Talk," that focuses on the state of live-work spaces for artists in Boston. Anita…
Preserving 350 Artist Spaces in Lowell
The Arts & Business Council is delighted to announce the preservation of Western Avenue | Studio & Lofts, a vibrant artist community in Lowell, Massachusetts, through purchase of the property as the next phase of…
Available Grants from Massachusetts Growth Capital Corporation
Our partners at Massachusetts Growth Capital Corporation have two new grant programs available to help small businesses continue to recover from the pandemic. While not all of the artists and arts organizations we work with…
FUNDERS & PARTNERS






