With the combined mentorship of the internationally known Creative Capital Foundation program and a unique series of follow-up workshops, Pittsburgh's Flight School Fellowship helps artists use that same practice to reinvent their careers. Flight School offers you the opportunity and the guidance necessary to take a critical look at your career, and to see how a new professional model may help you achieve both your artistic and your professional goals. It's a chance to reexamine your professional life and amplify the aspects that are working - and to overhaul those which are not.

The Creative Capital Foundation is a New York City-based institution committed to helping artists develop their careers alongside their artwork. The institution's lauded Professional Development Program partners national artists - men and women who combine artistic prominence with financial and strategic success - with regional artist-participants. The mentors lead rigorous workshops through which participants reexamine their goals and strategic plans, as well as the relationship between their professional and artistic lives.

The Flight School Fellowship launched in 2011 to bring Pittsburgh artists into the intensive and "life-changing" Creative Capital program, and to then steward these artists in their implementation of Creative Capital's ideas in order to reach the artists' individual, specific goals. The program was created as a partnership between Pittsburgh Center for the Arts/Pittsburgh Filmmakers, Creative Capital Foundation’s Professional Development Program, and funders including The Pittsburgh Foundation, The Fine Foundation, and The Heinz Endowments. Over the course of eight weekly sessions, the fellows will be led through workshops on each of the core elements of the Creative Capital curriculum, tailored specifically for artists working in Pittsburgh with an eye to the national and international art world. Just as importantly, the 2011 contingent of Flight School fellows became more than a class: The program created a tight-knit group of artists committed to helping one another achieve their artistic and professional goals.

Flight School is a program designed for the benefit of you: the professional artist living and working in Pittsburgh. Flight School is not a program for those who wish to be handed new careers. The weekly workload is heavy, and the demands placed on fellows is high. But the results can mean a new life - an opportunity to build a career in which financial and strategic goals can be sustained and grown with your artwork remaining the central feature of your life.

2011 FELLOWS: WHAT THEY'RE SAYING

Flight School helped me - a recent returnee to Pittsburgh - get oriented to the art scene here. It was like my VIP ticket to the art world. I am now part of a community of folks who help each other out and cheer each other on.

- Elizabeth Hoover, poet. New post-Flight School book forthcoming, 2012.

Flight School is aptly named. In Flight School you work with fellow artists to pave a communal runway with a safety nets and rubber mats -- so that you can practice your flights of fancy with safety and support. It's perhaps the one place in the arts where you don't always have to learn by your bruises. Flight School also offers incredibly practical support on the business of being a working artist. From LLCs, to tax IDs Flight School helped to lay out the alphabet for a professional and sustainable career in the arts. Flight School is also a wonderful connector for any artist looking for collaborators across all disciplines.

- Anya Martin, theater artist. Post-Flight School organization Hiawatha Project debuted its first original piece in fall, 2011.

My experience with Flight School caused me to re-evaluate and adjust my work, my process, and my goals. This change in thinking has resulted in new creative directions and new opportunities I would not have pursued otherwise. It very well could be a turning point in my career and life, though I think it's too early to objectively make that statement.

- Jim Rugg, comics artist. Numerous post-Flight School collaborations, publications, and professional appearances.

One of the things that people might forget is that being an artist is to bathe oneself in constant critique and rejection. It always seems so glamorous from a distance, but you don't see the 13 refused grant proposals that came before the one that got accepted. But Flight School was so completely different. You're surrounded by support. You've got this whole crew of people working like mad to help you achieve your goals. It is an amazing environment to be a part of.

Maybe most exciting was the networking component. In the months since the program ended I've worked with or for several of the other fellows and that's been fantastic. And the opportunity to share what you do with the guests and speakers was wonderful. You are presented to them, so it's organic. It's not like barging into somebody's office or pestering them at a party and guilting them into looking at your work. You're part of this amazing group of artists and so they see you in that way. And it's hard to stress how rare that can be, how hard it can be to get noticed by a curator who's used to dealing with people who've won prestigious international awards and gets glowing write ups in Art Forum.

- Ben Hernstrom, photographer and videographer. Post-Flight School exhibitions include the Pittsburgh Biennial, plus numerous collaborative works.