Trying in Public

Trying in Public, with soprano Megan Ihnen, is a workshop about getting more comfortable being seen while you’re still becoming. We’ll look at the perfectionism and professional pressure that can keep artists endlessly rewriting the bio, rebuilding the website, waiting for better recordings, sitting on project ideas, or deciding they need one more credential before putting themselves forward.

Using materials familiar from Building a Brand and Portfolio and more courses across the Breakthrough Curriculum, we’ll explore how a bio, résumé, website, portfolio, project pitch, application, and digital presence each ask us to practice a different kind of public trying.

We’ll also turn the whole process around and look at these materials from the other side. Who is actually reading your résumé, watching your work sample, opening your website, or receiving your pitch—and what are they trying to figure out?

The goal isn’t to lower your standards or toss unfinished work onto the internet. It’s to develop the professional skill of making something thoughtful, sharing it with the right people in the right form, noticing what happens, and making the next version better.

Your professional materials aren't a collection of arbitrary homework assignments. It's the infrastructure that allows other people to encounter your work and say, “Oh! I understand what you do. I can see where you might fit. I know what I want to ask you about next.”

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