The Producer Cohort programs Cannonball, works directly with artists and leads festival staff on the ground. They are the visible faces of Cannonball, and they work within its mission to actualize their visions and empower their communities.
This model is new, and it is an experiment in community curation and peer-to-peer presentation.
Festival as Laboratory
Producing as Learning
Labor as Service
Polyphonic Perspectives as Keystone
Curation as Community Building
Welcoming the Outsider as Practice
Gathering as Medicine
We’re hiring for 2025. Apply now.
images by Wide Eyed StudiosHERE’S HOW IT WORKS
Each year, members of our larger community join the Producer Cohort.
They start as Associate Producers, and learn by doing as they produce the Festival.
YEAR 1:
YEAR 2:
They become Core Producers, guiding the vision for that year’s Cannonball and making it all happen.
As Mentoring Producers, they document knowledge and pass it on, working directly with Associate Producers to prepare them for their roles.
YEAR 3:
YEAR 4:
They REST. It’s mandatory.
CHECK OUT THE ORIGINAL PROPOSAL! (delivered in April, 2023, along with some delicious pizza by our co-founder Ben.)
OK but what do producers actually DO?
The Producer Cohort is responsible for everything it takes to produce the festival including:
drafting and presenting the open call for applications (typically opens in Feb, closes in April);
reading, scoring, and discussing the ~300 applications we receive;
selecting 100-150 different projects and creating the schedule of events;
supporting hundreds of artists by answering questions about the venue, festival, producing a show for the first time, etc;
managing projects and programs with budgets and goals;
attracting and supporting audiences through marketing, communications, accessibility, and more;
partnering with venues to offer the best experience for artists and audiences;
partnering with our year-round staff to support festival initiatives like Special Presentation Tracks, Presenters Platform, Black Circus Week, and more.
Being a Cannonball producer is a job, not a training program, and producers are independent contractors, not employees. However, there's still a ton of training and learning that happens, and oftentimes we pay for producers to take training in, for example, audience accessibility or first aid. When we say it's a job not a training program, we mean that the right candidates will come in with a good amount of experience producing or presenting independent performance. There's still lots of learning about how CB does it, but we expect folks to have a baseline of understanding about producing live performance.
Rotating Producer Cohort Model
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Rotating Producer Cohort Model ::::
This is a model that fosters support, collaboration, mentorship, and rest (imagine that?!),
and we’re constantly experimenting with it year over year.
The model ensures a constant influx of new perspectives, centers peer-to-peer producing and skill sharing, and has built-in structures designed to ease the transition for new Cannonball producers — and hopefully, avoid the self-immolation that befalls many perennially under-resourced arts administrators. As artist-producers, we view curation as an embodied practice, an extension of each of our artistic worldviews, and an organic extension of our overlapping communities. We view Cannonball as a platform, a catalyst, and a renewable resource that we hope will enrich our community for years to come.
(get it? It’s rotating?)
What are the hours like?
January, February, and March | five to 10 hours per week
April and May | 10 to 20 hours per week
August | 20 to 30 hours per week
September | 30 to 40 hours per week
October and November | 5 hours per week.
Most producers work ~20 shifts over the festival and each shift is about six or seven hours long, so during the month of September it's a full time job. Our producers all have varying kinds of work situations in their lives -some have full time jobs in addition to Cannonball, some are free lancers, and some are in between.
Is it paid?
Yes. Please see our open positions for this year’s rate. In addition to payment, all members of the producer cohort get a “free” entry into the festival under the Buy-In Track. That is, the producer does NOT pay a Buy-In fee, but they still keep 100% of their ticket sales. Please see our Open Call for more information about tracks.