ARTSPEAK RADIO live with Lisa Cordes, Don Simon, Ruben Alonso III, and Davin Gordon

Maria talks with Artist INC. Director Lisa Cordes, Arts attorney & managing partner with Mudstomp Records, and Alt Cap President Ruben Alonso and Program Coodinator Davin Gordon.

Artist INC workshops take the mystery and fear out of the business end of a fine arts practice. Through the use of fine arts specific content, peer-to-peer learning and artist mentoring, participating artists get the arts-specific techniques they can immediately use and the chance to practice and apply them with the support and guidance of other artists working through the same challenges. Developed for artists of all disciplines, visual artists, musicians, film makers, dancers, performers and writers come together for intensive work on the components of a viable and sustainable arts practice.
The successful traditional Artist INC workshop launched in 2009, has been completed by over 300 fine artists in the Kansas City area. The Artist INC Online workshop was introduced in 2011 to meet the needs of those artists unable to attend the traditional workshop due to constraints of geography or schedule. And, due to popular demand, Artist INC II arrived in the fall of 2012—an eight-week intensive bootcamp for traditional program alumni to each take a current project and work the business aspects of it from every angle. www.artistinckc.com

Lisa Cordes is the Artist INC Professional Development Program Director. She has been a member of the Kansas City arts community for more than 25 years, working as an artist, administrator, and educator. For the past decade she has served in administrative leadership positions at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts, Mid-America Arts Alliance, Kansas City Friends of Alvin Ailey, and Heart of America Shakespeare Festival.
In 2010, she was a recipient of a Charlotte Street Rocket Grant and an ArtsKC Inspiration grant for the development and performances of her play, Prop 8 On Trial, and was a resident artist at the Fishtank Performance Studio. As a playwright, her work has been produced by theaters across the country. Locally, she has produced many of her own plays and written several plays commissioned by The Coterie Theater, including scripts for their award-winning Dramatic AIDS Education Project that has now served over 100,000 young people.
Cordes has served on panels for the National Endowment for the Arts, the Missouri Arts Council and the Charlotte Street Foundation, and has consulted and written for the President’s Committee on the Arts. Currently, she considers herself a freelance theater artist, writer, and recovering arts executive.

Don Simon writes and lectures extensively on a wide range of business and legal issues. He has published two law review articles and has appeared in numerous publications. Mr. Simon currently writes a column for KC Business Magazine called “Simon Says.” Mr. Simon has given presentations at Arts Incubator, Artist, Inc., and Writers Place; and to members of KC Metro Music Therapists, KC Volunteer Lawyers and Accountants for the Arts, Professional Women Controllers, and KC Metro Area Webmasters Association. Simon is managing partner of Mudstomp Records that serves to preserve and to promote and Americana music from the heartland.
www.simonbizconsulting.com
www.mudstomp.com

Since 2005, Alt Cap (as the KCMO CDE), mission is to be a catalyst for investment in Kansas City, Missouri’s economically distressed communities through innovative financial products, targeted economic development programming, and the development of strategic partnerships that promote economic growth and empowerment.
Ruben Alonso III President of AltCap, is responsible for the overall administration, management and ongoing development of the organization and its targeted lending activity as well as its small business and economic development programming. He has led the organization since 2007 overseeing its certification as a community development entity (CDE) and then as a community development financial institution (CDFI).
Davin Gordon-Program Coordinator-Economic Development, is responsible for coordinating all programs that support AltCap’s alternative, nontraditional financing products as well as administering AltCap’s WIBO 16-Week Workshop “How to Build a Growing Profitable Business” and annual “AltCap Your Business Competition.” AltCap is located in the Robert J. Mohart Multipurpose Building 3200 Wayne Avenue KCMO 64109
(816) 216-1851
www.alt-cap.org

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