Upcom­ing Busi­ness Workshops:

Jan 9, 6-8pm Julie McLeod
“Let’s Put On A Show! OMG! Now what do we do?”

WHO WE ARE

Jackie Rot­man

The Idea

Seven years ago, 13 year old Jackie Rot­man real­ized that she could make a dif­fer­ence in other peo­ples’ lives through her love of dance. Seek­ing my advice we sat over a glass of lemon­ade and she explained her dream of Every­body Dance Now! High school stu­dents would teach 9–12 year olds free after school dance classes.

We talked about all man­ner of issues that she would need to address. There were many prob­lems to solve: Why do I need insur­ance? How do I write a grant? What’s a bud­get? Do I need a license? A bank account? A web site ? How should I….?

Today

EDN! in Santa Bar­bara has a staff of 7 local teens teach­ing 17 classes a week to 250 young­sters free of charge. Jackie, now on schol­ar­ship at Stan­ford Uni­ver­sity, has in turn ‘men­tored’ 6 teens to han­dle the man­age­ment respon­si­bil­i­ties of mar­ket­ing, sched­ul­ing teach­ers and classes, grant writ­ing, web man­age­ment and be an exec­u­tive spokesperson.

EDN! was fea­tured on MTV’s America’s Best Dance Crew, Jackie is over­see­ing the cre­ation of 8 addi­tional chap­ters in the United States and Canada and men­tor­ing their lead­ers. She has won many awards for teens help­ing young peo­ple and was just fea­tured in the Octo­ber 2011 Glam­our Mag­a­zine as one of “10 Top Col­lege Women.” Jackie was the keynote speaker at the first annual Art Career Day Con­fer­ence pre­sented by Art With­out Lim­its and 7 other orga­ni­za­tions last March.

The Future

When we started, I gath­ered an Advi­sory Com­mit­tee of 25 local arts movers and we cre­ated a plan for Art With­out Lim­its . I had a non­profit sta­tus wait­ing since 1983. We launched in Novem­ber 2009. Our pro­grams have grown because we are lis­ten­ing to our emerg­ing artists and their unique needs.

Guid­ing Jackie was, and is, a deeply reward­ing expe­ri­ence and proved that the con­cept of men­tor­ship as expo­nen­tial.  One sin­gle men­tor­ship has touched thou­sands of young peo­ple! Jackie was my inspi­ra­tion to men­tor emerg­ing artists in all art forms: visual, per­form­ing, lit­er­ary, media and admin­is­tra­tive arts. This is my goal: giv­ing artists the tools and encour­age­ment to make their dreams come true. The gift is my reward.

ART WITHOUT LIMITS IS A WORK IN PROGRESS, AS IS THIS WEBSITE. PLEASE LET US KNOW HOW YOU WOULD LIKE TO WORK WITH US. E-MAIL US WITH YOUR CONTACT INFORMATION, SKILLS AS A MENTOR, AN EMERGING ARTIST, A VOLUNTEER FOR OUR COMMUNITY ADVISORY COMMITTEE. OR CALL JULIE AT 805–565-1332. PLEASE STAY IN TOUCH WITH US FOR CHANGES.

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