 still available at the registration desk. Of course, the APAP staff and volunteers are here to help. Don't hesitate to approach anyone with an ask me button or with a staff or volunteer ribbon. And with that, thank you for attending the APAP NYC conference. We wish you an exciting, inspiring, and successful conference. Thank you. Thank you for attending the conference. Hi, everybody. So I hope that you are all awake and ready. And I hope that we are awake and ready. And in my inevitable theater, background, fashion, I can't stand the fact that you're all here and this thing is between us. It is, yeah. That's all right. We'll make that work. Move one more chair. There you go. That's great. So my name's Janet Brown. But first, and this is our session, in case you wanted to go someplace else, like playing. Are you on the plane too? But first, Richard Kessler can introduce himself. This is Richard and I presenting at some other conference. But he's all those things. Plus, I think you should also know he was a touring artist. And talk about that, Richard. OK, well, thank you, Janet. And also, good morning. Janet and I are sort of the tag team. Sometimes she'll be Edgar Bergen and I'll be Charlie McCarthy for those of you who know the reference. And other times, I'll be Edgar Bergen and she'll be Charlie McCarthy. So for this moment, at least, I guess I'm Edgar Bergen. And I'm seeing blank faces of people who should go to YouTube and check it out. Anyway, yes, I'm Richard Kessler. Janet Bergen's father, if you could say that. Yes, he was a big star and he had a dummy. He was known for his dummy. So, ventriloquism. I don't know how much he's presented at APAP, but it is still a living art. So yes, I'm Richard Kessler and I'm the executive dean for the College of Performing Arts at the New School, which includes the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music, the New School for Drama, and Madness School of Music. And I'm also the dean of the Madness School of Music. Long, varied career, not to spend too much time, but education advocate, registered lobbyist. I ran two different arts organizations, presenter, performing artist, educator. I have done a lot of different things as Janet has. And I'm really thrilled to be here today to speak, to talk about, and work with all of you together on a subject that's very near and dear to my heart. And certainly, I will tell you that I'll co-present with Janet any time. So that's my introduction, and now back over to Janet. And also an artist, as an artist, toured, right? toured for many years, in a chapter of my life. Actually, airplane, but also at a point in time, in a van with five players, would do 40 concerts in eight weeks, and drive 16,000 miles. You have to be in your 20s for that kind of tour. Those were the days of... Community concerts. Community concert association. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So here's me, same picture, but a cuter face for me. So I'm president of the CEO of Grantmakers in the Arts, which is the very last chapter of my life at the moment, so far. And, but before that, I was in theater, and a theater manager, and worked in New York, and lived in New York, and toured with, worked for Joe Papp, and the New York Shakespeare Festival, and a couple other European tours, and stuff like that. And then I moved back to Midwest, as you might hear from my accent, that I drove in South Dakota. And I moved back there to raise my kids, and then my production company, and also did some touring with my husband, and in shows that we did around the Midwest. So, interesting, whatever. And then with a higher education, came a dean and did some stuff there, and then took this job with Grantmakers in the Arts. But my background is also in public policy in the Arts, and was a lobbyist for about 15 years. So advocacy, and matching community arts, and policy, and advocacy is one of my passions, as is Richard's, as well as arts education. So hopefully we're gonna touch on all of those things today. So, there you go. What we wanna know now, briefly, is your name, where you're from, and your organization. And that works. Let's talk here, Gail. Okay, I'm Gail, helping Bruce with Dance Project in Dallas, Texas. Gail, I'm Elizabeth. Alisa Pearson, I'm from Amherst College, and I'm a music presenter there. Tori, we're contrarious. I work for the Seattle Theater Group in Seattle. Yay, we do. Our office is in Seattle. Dominic Green, Oma Performing Arts, Oma, Nebraska. Okay. That's awesome. I grew up here. A lot of people. Okay, I'm fine. My name is Shruti. I'm with Utah Presents, we're the Performing Arts venue on the University of Utah campus. Becky Wade, Texas A&M University College in Texas. Kristen Yonashik, Texas A&M University College Station. Caleb Clark, Texas A&M College Station. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There, in the room. Sean Alberkson, Bay Center, Parker, Colorado. Angie Beach, Durango, Colorado, Music in the Mouth. Great. Chrissy Smod in Cincinnati, Ohio, represent on the Small Performing College. Don't, don't be, don't, don't, don't. Don't finish yourself, stop it. So, who do you represent? Well, I work for a non-profit real estate development company and we have partnership with the county and we're redeveloping it before the fall. Fantastic. Yep. That's fantastic. Egal Kasselman, California Music Center in New York City. Great. And Sharon Rowland from Freight and Selvidge in Berkeley. Great, super. Do you want to? Yes. I'm Kiki, I'm from the University of Miami. And you're volunteering with the county. Yeah. Yeah. Hi, I'm Evelyn Chang, I'm with the Brooklyn Academy of Music. And there's plenty of room. There's two great chairs right here, they're coming here. Nobody needs to stand unless you prefer to. And we have more chairs we can put up. Absolutely. Okay, where are we? Right where I'm at, we were staying in Utah. Okay. Terry Cowan, Davis Hearts Council from Regions, Utah. Victoria Brown, Mashup, Contemporary Dance Company from LA. Sarah Notenhouse, also Mashup Contemporary Dance Company. Rod Thornton, Texas L.A. Hampton University. Great. John Elbaum, Troy Music College, Troy University. Troy University, my son used to work at that school. Lisa Moe, Artistic Logistics Swap Team in Coochee, Georgia. My name's Alan Conner, I work at Bates College in Winston, Maine. Derek Wallace, at the College School of Music, I work at the College. Kerry Hadley, Kimden Opera House, Kimden, Maine, a gorgeous stunning, when invaded 500 seats, this National Historic Registrar here, gonna order a new website. I have a husband, I went to a good gym here. There's always connections everywhere. This is a very small business, you only have only 37 people in the business and they just move around. That's how this goes. Everybody was first. Yeah, Tamara DiMotto, I'm the director of a small group called the Friends of the Arts and we operate out of Suffolk County in New York. Great. Merrill Budnick, Rosa Performing Arts Center at the Wayne YMCA in Wayne, New Jersey. I'm Eric Gendari, composer and pianist. It's releasing my new album, Soho, New York City. Vabio, Kelly Barrett, mom of the University of Center for the Arts in West Long Ranch, New Jersey. I'm Lorraine Anderson, UAV's Alice Students Performing Arts Center in Birmingham, Alabama. Mark Elder, I'm with the Lincoln Park Performing Arts Center in Charter School in a little town north of Pittsburgh called Midland P.A. Great. And then we have the live streamers. We do. Streamers, streamers, what? Yes, we're from howround.com. All right. Cool. We didn't hear, what is it? We're from howround.com, we're a online community for theater and performance makers. There you go. Where are you physically based? Based in Emerson College in Boston. Fantastic. We're happy to be here. Was there somebody, did somebody just come in and get an interview? I'm Nathan, Brooklyn Academy of Music. Fantastic, Nathan. And there are seats again. There are at least four seats that I see. Five, six, five. All right, thank you. Great group, eclectic group. We hope that you'll be involved. What we want to do is have a conversation with you about what your community is doing in these three areas. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, it's like it would pass me by. Please, please, really, really, really, really. I'm so flabbergasted to see you again. Relevancy, advocacy, and audience building and how they connect and what you're doing and what you can share with the people in the room. That's what this is all about. And we might be able to share with you, okay? So what we have is to talk about these three things and then we're gonna ask you a bunch of questions. So, relevancy is made by connections, right? And I think that in my world of grant makers in the arts, relevancy has become, whoa, really the word. They don't say it a lot, I say it a lot. But the connections that you're making with your community are probably the strongest arguments that you have for funding. So, relevancy, connections are made by values. So think about the values you share, your organization shares with your community and what those intersections like to do. And we're gonna bring these up later and talk about how that works. And then personal and civic concerns, we think there's been a shift occurring over time. There was once a point in time when presenters, performers might say I make my art. My art has a universal sort of connections of things and that you wouldn't necessarily be thinking what are the issues, what are the personal concerns of an audience member, what are the civic concerns of the community? Could those things possibly relate to what we present? Do they relate to the artists themselves? Do they relate to the presenter as an organization? So many people for a long time said we don't think so unless you were really specifically built that way. Janet worked for the public theater a number of years ago. The public theater as the name would imply was designed to connect to the public. There have always been spaces that were designed that way. But again, we think that we're seeing a shift and the shift is rather than organizations looking in, come in, meet the artist, listen to the artist, our presentation, and maybe you'll take that and you'll derive meaning and it will influence your life for the better. There's been this way of looking outward and asking the questions of what are the concerns of the community? What are the concerns of individuals? How can we meet? How do we connect in a different way? And how do we begin to look outside to the people that surround us? And so we're gonna talk about that as well. Great. Okay, so let's think about this and I'll make notes that you can do the deal. Give me a word about what, how your community would define you. Not how you define yourself. But how does your community define you? Is that right? Anybody? Yeah. Well, we recently moved in a new direction so I think our community in a lot of ways is connected to our building, our space, not necessarily our program. So it's kind of a strange. So there's a couple of words connected to our building. Physical asset. Excellent. Right. Another one, please. Forceful. Forceful. Ooh, forceful. Nice, like that. Who else? A word or a couple of words. I'll have that. Education. Education. Very good. Again, what do you think? Someone, how would your community define you? A word. Please. Passionate. Well, in general, in August, we're owned by a town and we have incredibly a lot of involved involved and I think unfortunately it's confusing. Okay. Ooh, yeah. Not sure. Confused. Changing. Evolving. Evolving. Okay. I like that better. Okay. Please. Relevant and meaningful. Excellent. Relevant and meaningful. Couple of others. Stable. Stable. Stable. Stable. Oh, yeah. Good. A little too. A secular gathering place. Excellent. A secular gathering place. A secular gathering place. And I think someone, unless I heard something, said go to, go to, go to. I think that's it. Okay, okay. All right. It's okay. Go to the next question. No, um, please. Any others? A resource. A resource. Good. A couple of others and then they will. Good one. Who else? Do you want to add a guess? Those are great. They are great. Let's move on now to the second question and it's assets that you possess that you believe as relevant to the broader audience. And this is, again, I think you're thinking, the broader audience piece is particularly important. And they begin to think of what do you have? You may be using it. You may not be using it. It may be in the area of potential. It may be in the area of aspirational and it also may be something that you're already doing that's already operational. And some of it's already embedded in that first question and the answers to the first question. So what assets do you possess? Funding. Funding? And again, I just want to point out we're looking for the relevance piece. That question of relating. How do you relate? So can I come to you for funding? You can ask me to fund an artist that you're interested in. But if I'm a civic organization, can I come to you and say we're going to do our... Oh, yeah. I'm not an artist, so is that... No, I'm just talking about making that connection between who you serve and what you do. Please. And affordable venue. Affordable venue. Excellent. Please pass that. Can I ask a question? How many people in the room feel that their space is affordable for the people who live in your community? That's good. That's good. That's good. Do they think it's a... Let me ask that question again. How many of you think that your community organizations, your nonprofit organizations, feel that you charge them a fair price that they can afford in your community? Well, it's fantastic. And I think it's reflected in who is using the facility. Yeah, of course. Right. And the relationships that you have with them. Excellent. Another... Oh, I'm sorry. No, no, please. Can you give me some examples? Sure. We have... Okay, I think good example. I'm in Reading, Pennsylvania. We are the sixth most impoverished city in the country for the size that we are. Cities that are 80,000 or less. We're affiliated with a community college. We did set our rental rates 10 years ago when we opened, but we're used by... Let's see. This month we have Berks pre-trial services coming in because they have a guest speaker. So we've rented them. We have our city use the facility for their inaugural ceremonies. Yeah, we also have local arts organizations using it for dance recitals, for opera productions. So we tried... Yes. It's also the size that we are as a good size. Are you city owned or is it a non-profit? We are quasi-government because we are affiliated with the community college. So we're non-profit, but yeah, cool. Please. We're willing and capable of going for the Broke staff. Excellent. Go for the... We're willing and capable of going for the Broke staff, which is great. Very important asset. Very important. We'd like to hear that. Please. Identity. Identity. Excellent. Could you give us a little more on that? What do you think your identity is? We started when our small town really had no identity and they have assumed the idea that they are more cultural and more successful because of the number of tourists and visitors that we bring in. I mean, we have helped to shape what our town's identity is becoming. Excellent. I mean, you also believe that you're connecting to a very important part of maintaining and growing the city, which is bringing in revenue and vitality. More importantly, we're defining the community by the pride of the community in itself. Excellent. How large is your town? 10,000 people. So it's not that... It's a small pallet to play on, but it means you can do things. It does mean you can do things. You're going to talk about it a lot. 1.5 million within an hour. There are kinds of basics. That's great. Outreach and educational outreach. Health reach and educational outreach. And that happens because you have staff or because you... More so because of the students that we have. Are you in a college? Yeah. Sorry. Right. Outreach with students. So really, this asset, you're mattering the students. Right. I mean, we have a staff that kind of works that process, but the students are actually doing the outreach. And these terms have taken on multiple meanings. Is it going out and also coming in? Both? Yes, we do bring groups into CR performances, but for instance, our revitalists, they can go do their... It's good for them as well. They can go do a pre-recital or one of our retirement communities or something out in the community. We also do performances on our downtown block. And we have a group of students that go play music at hospital care every week. So we have opportunities that we're reaching out but also people are coming. And you guys staff that. You organize that. We have one person in our office who does the educational outreach and she has a student who actually really oversees the whole process. Fantastic. That's fantastic. Please. A passionate student committee? Absolutely. Yeah. Excellent. How big? About 100 students. Okay, and give me a sense of what passion means. Well, we all love the arts and so our job as a student committee is to promote the shows we bring on campus. And then the night of, we actually work with performances with us during the day-to-day days. So all of our students just love what we do and we keep them track. Terrific. And tell me this, do you see the broader audience? Do you see an audience broader than your students? Yes. That you're in an audience. We're located in a community that has sister cities and so we have season-taken holders that come back year after year. And it really reaches a community to our family programs as well as the Broadway and to McGuffins, you know? And what keeps the students coming to do this? The closest major city is Houston and that's still like an hour and a half away. And our prices are, we're closer and they're lower but they're the same performances that you could see in Houston or Dallas. And is any of that subsidized by their activities? By the activity best? They are positive and great, great. We do one other thing that's kind of interesting. We're in the middle of the town of Camden which is beautiful. I don't know what words to use for it but we call it a campus. We have major conferences and an international film festival come in and people stay in the very upper towns within walking distance and ends of our opera house and get tickets to the restaurants all in the downtown and we're in the center of the downtown. And so we use it as a very beautiful and different kind of experience than going to a big resort or something. How about one or two more and then we'll move on to the third question, please. The first programming. Excellent, the first programming. Children, one more, please. We actually have a charter school within our Performing Arts Center so that allows us to pull from a large group of students for performances for all of our outreach program. Did you say charter school? Yeah, we have about 750 kids in our school and those students are the ones that put on all of our performances. And it's within the Performing Arts Center. Excellent, very interesting. Terrific. You can already see that we actually started moving on to the third question because we started to look at activities. It's all difficult, it's not to just simply state an asset, what it is at. So the asset has moved naturally into programming. So let's hear a little bit more. And actually, let's start with you. So you can give us a sense of the programming and how this works a little bit with the charter school within the center. What does it look like? We probably do a tentra season. We break that down through dance, music, musical theater, and just straight theater plays. We base a lot of that off of the talent that we see coming up within and as we grow them so that they were ready to move on. Last year we did Les Mis with our students and it was actually on par with the Pittsburgh area. In fact, we used the sets from a traveling Broadway performance. It's seventh through 12th grade. So a lot of our programming is based off of the talent that we have there. But we try to make sure that every student at some way, shape, or form, either is on our main stage, in our studio theater, in our recording studios. So we build everything off of that with what the students need. So Richard, let's talk about identifying your community needs, not your organization. But what you think your community concerns are, is that a next question? Yeah. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Stop it. It's going to slice down. No. Is it? I think so. Okay, never mind. It's fine. Well, I think, I was just trying to think about what are we, where are we making new connections? So is that? Can we not go from that question? Because I think that's an excellent question we just had that I never really framed our presenting in these terms and it's making me really nervous. It's really interesting. Because the thing that I consider all the time is I met a college and our mission is to educate. So we provide music that is educational. It's also fun and awesome. But students who are my main concern, I have a really wonderful audience that does get personal and celebratory rewards from these performances. They need these performances. But the students don't know yet that they need these performances. So I'm sort of, I kind of have this translation issue and I'm speaking gibberish and they're going, what is she saying? I'm going somewhere else. So we have this kind of veil between us and the students. So I don't think they see this as their concern yet, but I do. Well that can happen in any class I have found in teaching, especially when you get the blank stare from the students. But what I would say is I think actually if we started from what's become sort of tried and true and it's most appropriate to this day, so just a reminder today is Martin Luther King Day. And many, many organizations have created programming for many years around the Martin Luther King Day. So there will be orchestras that will program a particular piece as a Joe Schwantner piece that uses the I Had a Dream speech. There's also ways in which organizations have partnered with other organizations to celebrate Martin Luther King, to educate about Martin Luther King. And so that in some ways is tried and true. I wanted to be, hopefully we could sort of span out from there and what it does and I'll be with you in one second, I promise. You'll be the first one. I think what it does is it connects to what Janet was bringing forward. So it's the idea of starting to create that bridge. What are the concerns of a community? What are, and we talked about earlier, the personal concerns, the civic concerns. You start to think of assets, you start to think of programming. So again, Martin Luther King being the easiest one, but there can be all kinds of things that organizations do, sometimes seeming to be very, very different from what you would ordinarily present. So let's get a little sense of programming that connects to these concerns and I'm just having given you the most appropriate example, please. I'm going to give you a recollection of a social content hip-hop activist and artist at Pittsburgh. And I would just like to encourage you to connect with the local artists that are in your area, because every movement has a soundtrack and artists are providing it. So if you connect in with those artists, that'll help you. In terms of our programming, I wanted to say that we like to leave a little fluidity in our programming. So when things happen that are relevant and important to our community, I'll give you an example. When Darren Wilson gets off, the community's in mourning. So we just opened our doors, ordered a whole bunch of food, told everybody to come, and it was almost like a recap. You know, the community where I come from a recap is like a party almost, you know? And so it was a way that we could facilitate healing for the community. You know, the artists were inspired to create around the subject matter. You know, so that's why I say, like, you know, connect with the people on the ground and also leave a little bit of room in your programming so that you can address it without having to go through all of the, you know, political, you know, things that we normally have to go through with programming. And viewing, also connecting prior to the assets. Viewing the physical asset as being, I don't know if you would mind my interpretation, as seeing it as part of, as being owned by the community. Because I think that that's an important twist and if you start to see it not owned by the board or not owned by a group that sort of cares for it, but owned by the community or partly owned by the community, it really starts to change the ways in which you think about your work. And do you actually set money aside for these flexible kind of activities? So if you are spontaneously going to invite the community to come, is there a little budget that says, here we can pay for the food and here we can... I think... Mm-hmm. They would come for catering, you know, things like that. But the thing is, when you consider yourself part of the community, the community considers themselves part of your community. And so a lot of people bought drinks and food and things like that. And so it was not a huge expense. I mean, a hundred people came and they bought children and everything and everybody was fed, spiritually and physically. Can I ask you a question? So we are bringing the Campbell Brothers, sacred steel string guitars, and I have to play them really far ahead. So I'm slow, I'm like the Titanic, I sort of inch along and I give a lot of funding to bring great artists and it's a small town so we can bring really great acts. The students just said Amherst Uprising. It was fascinating. They just rocked it. They took over Frost Library. They talked and mostly white students listened. It was great. And so I talked with one of the leaders of Amherst Uprising and I said, Campbell Brothers are here as part of MLK celebrations to actually add to that. And it turns out we're not the edition, we're the only thing this year. Things have fallen apart. So we sort of had the only programming. I said, how could you take over ownership of this? How is this helpful to you? And that was the wrong question I think because she came back at me and she said, we'd like to go on stage and do our performance. You know, it had nothing to do. I tried that and I couldn't make that go because they're precedents and we can't do it technically. But I couldn't establish the connection now on the 29th of January. I had that date. I had the willingness, I had partners across campus with funding, with catering funding, which I don't have. I built all that and then it fell down because I couldn't give her what she wanted. What's the question I should ask? Like, should I not even have programming and just go talk to students? Like, what's the, what would be your advice to me? I don't think it's a need for all of that. This shows you kind of how important it is to make the contacts before the last minute. We talked to the BSU and said, we're thinking of bringing the Campbell Brothers. Would they be appropriate? Do you like them? The BSU came and said, a black student union. We said, yes, it's a great band, brand. Well, that's a different question. If you know any local artists that might be or if you all are interested, you feel me? So if you have a conversation about being a piece of prior to it, then that will help. But then there's also a respect with, you know, there are constraints. So we're a small arts organization and so we, you know, we do have constraints, budget constraints and all that type of stuff, right? But there are other individuals who, for instance, I represent artists and so my husband is just very excellent. So he's a hip hop artist and people hit me up all the time. Like, can he come and perform or we don't have a big budget? A lot of times if you offer people a platform, and this time I may not be able to accommodate your budget requests, but next time I got you girl. You know what I mean? Sometimes that works, you know what I mean? But it's building those relationships because I'm not, you know, I'm sure they understand that this was like the last minute thing. So you just have conversations. I keep building. Thank you. I know that Maria wants to jump in. Thank you. My name is Maria Leon. I'm with the National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures, a national service organization for the Latino arts field. And I just want to just add and support to what you were saying that if you want to build connections with community, you have to engage with them all the time and you have to bring them into your programming, into your decisions about what the mission and how you're gonna work as a central part of what you're doing. It cannot be just about diversity and bringing in one group or adding one person to your board. It has to be about deep engagement with your community, whether it's the Latino community, African, Asian, whatever community it is, that they need to feel that they have ownership and a voice in the organization. And that will bring in the community and the audience that you want. When you build that trust and you build that sense of sincere engagement, that your organization and your program really reflects them as well, their voice as well, that there can be a true interculturality in what you do. And that's just my two cents adding to what you need to do. I think we're gonna talk about this a little bit more and talk about advocacy. Same thing applies, right? When you wanna be an advocate, you don't go to somebody you've never met before to say, well, you join me. You go to somebody you've had at your table all along to say, now it's time, right? We're gonna move together. You can't move together if you don't know each other. So this idea of programming is a consistent reaching out to community perfect, Maria. Thank you. I think there was a point in time where I was running an organization that brought on a significant amount of arts education and advocacy. And in order to do the work, in order to run the campaigns, you had to expand well beyond, you had to expand well beyond the issue, the primary issue you were concerned with. So a corollary to this is expanding beyond a particular reputory or a very narrow kind of mission. So there was a point in time and it was funny because I was talking about it with my wife very early this morning. About 12 years ago, I remember on Martin Luther King Day, on a very cold day in New York, going to a rally that was being run by a group of churches and a group of organizations, including the United Federation of Teachers in New York. And while the issue wasn't specifically arts education, it was embedded within it. I remember being at this larger rally of people I was getting to know and of people I was becoming comfortable with who had other issues that were sort of connected, but emerging from that were, over the next couple of years, allies. There were people who would show up to our rallies and we would show up to their rallies and we became part of a larger community when we needed people to sign on to statewide campaigns and we needed to show broad based support that could never have come to the issue if we were only working with the arts education organizations and those solely interested in arts education, but when the teacher unions start signing on, when the charter schools start signing on, when people who are interested in help women's issues, a whole range of things start signing on, it could only have come by us being willing to leave behind what we sort of saw as our tight core foundational interest. And there's something in that shift, the mindset that it requires to be able to do that. Which it probably is. Yep. Okay, so here we are. I know. Talking about advocacy. How was your community, right? How would your supporters define you in terms of advocacy? What is it you stand for? Are you defined? Do you have definitions? Do you have? Do you feel that you stand for something? Let's get back to values. Let's get back to shared values. Community shared values. As opposed to service. Many may, some of you may feel that you're not by service providing artistic services, but what values? What do you project? What do people understand? I mean as an artist, I would say unity and peace. Well, you know, unifying people. I mean, I have a project called Pianos for Peace. We'll put just pianos all over it. Yeah, lovely. But that's not the organization of this. No, but it doesn't matter because it's a human's interest. It's something that you're projecting and that you're sharing. And it's not just a piano style. Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course. But it's not your... Exactly, please. I think our community looks at it as an advocate for performing arts. And that's what the organization brings to the community that they appreciate. And we're in a out of the way kind of middle range market and they would never have it if it were not for the organization bringing in the performing arts that they do every year. And as somebody else pointed out earlier, when the university itself is looking for professors or staff people, they look to see what you have. And if you don't have some version of that, they say, why would I wanna come there because I enjoy the arts? So I think that's one of the things that I see that our organization brings to it. I like to break that down. I've decided that sometimes when we talk about arts, people get, what does that mean? So what you're an arts advocate, that means like you're married to a musician and he needs a job? That was my life, very long time. But what is the value for that? And I mean my own definitions have come beauty and truth. I mean these are the values. Artists bring beauty and they bring truth. Sometimes the truth isn't so beautiful, but the rest of it is beauty, right? So I mean I think that when we talk about being an advocate and an arts advocate, what does that mean to people, right? So I love that your community sees you as that. I would expand that conversation to say, what does that mean with your board, with your staff? What does that mean? So how do you articulate that out into the community, right? Yeah, sorry. Can we go back to the previous question? To some extent, the way that we do it is we include both the community, non-school people and the students at the university in our organization to work on the programming for the future here and the current programming. So I think including both gets you both views and you wind up with them feeling ownership both from the community outside the university and within the university. Yeah, yeah, ownership. Absolutely. Great. Let me have a hand up, please. Innovation and accept. Now, what is that word? Me! What is that? Me! So creating new things. And Dallas is the stereotype of everything that's bigger, bigger and better than Dallas. But that is not the case. And developing new things, we want to bring in new people, new ideas and celebrate these new makings. So in terms of the programming, making new things and the excitement. I think there's also tremendous opportunity to unpack that. I think that's what Janet was looking for. The ways in which if you think through even planning that you do when you start to get into organizational values and you take a look at what innovation means in many different respects. Is it to stimulate innovation, artistic innovation, personal innovation? Is it the artist you choose? Is it the ways in which you get behind the art? It is interesting to be able to move from something that's really sort of a meta-oriented term, especially a term that's unfortunately become a little bit hackneyed and to be able to find ways to make it live, to animate that term. And how it's not only animated through the programming but it's animated through the language that you use when you describe the program, when you describe the organization and also in some ways it can become animated through the structures of the organization. What are the board structures? What are the community structures? What are the friends structures like? It can, that can get pretty interesting if you decide to follow it. And I just want to say too that I think the next step of that is, I mean just to add on to what Richard said, the next step of that is to say to what end? We're bringing in this innovative new idea, new performance, new artist, new concept, to what end in your community? Who is the target audience? What do you want to have come out of that? You want people to be educated? You want them to be inspired? You want to follow up with them? I mean what is it? I mean I'm just saying, I don't know. But to what end is it? I'm bringing this artist in. To what end? Is it just because we want to hear a great cellist? But maybe that's not the end. Maybe there is a, you know, then there are cello students. Then how do we affect them? You know what I mean? So that we dig a little deeper about what, why are we doing the kind of programming we're doing? And how does it have a lasting impact? Or how does it address some of the values or some of the concerns of our community, right? Okay, so let's just refresh on the question. We have like an hour left. Okay, good. And we'll refresh. Okay, good. Thank God. But again, we've shifted into advocacy. We're trying to shift this into advocacy. So let's focus that a little bit. So I think that we actually could combine a couple of things here. So it would be the question of what is your community? How does your community understand you in terms of advocacy? And then if we couple the other piece, do you believe that there are people in your community that do not get it on what you're doing or don't feel that it connects to them? And then it starts to become a really interesting conversation when you begin to think of who are you connecting to? Who do you feel that there's a sort of pathway of relevancy to and from? A two way street, at least. And where do you feel that that's just not happening? And that gets into audience building and gets into community building. So those two things, either one. And so I want to jump in with an audience or a community that you don't feel you're reaching, please. We had a big audience shift a few years ago. Our group called the Friends of the Arts is like quasi-governmental. It was started by a librarian who was really into classical music at the Big Suburban Library. She got some grant for seed money and she started bringing in performers, mostly classical, because she felt that the economically downtrodden community needed to be uplifted with classical music. And that went on really well for like five, maybe even eight years. And then the concert attendance started really going down. I took over about five years ago and just tried to figure out what was going on. Why don't people want to come? What's going on? And started talking to some of the community leaders and they came to us and they said, well, you know, these are great, you know, but we need something else. Like our school recently cut funding for the school musical, which was really important for this community. A lot of kids got involved and they asked us flat out. They're like, what can you do? And we're like, oh my God, I have no idea. Like, we can help you. What do you need? They're like, well, can you fund the rights to buy the musical performance? And we have volunteers that will produce it. And from there, it grew that our organization started partnering with two other arts groups to actually help the students produce the school musical. And now the whole thing is self-supporting and it's all run by volunteers, but we also started paying community members who act as producers, choreographers and stuff. So now we provide income for people in the community who are involved. The families of the students come. We do partner with the school. They still, you know, it's mostly students, although we have some adults in the production that's been a complete shift from us just scheduling classical music, which is great, but the community wasn't interested and they had a problem to solve and we didn't even know how to do it. Like, I don't know, we'll give you some money and you want to try to start solving it and then that just grew. So that was really exciting. Are you doing any classical music anymore? No, no, it totally shifted. The community really said, you know, we're not interested. We want to do something else. We want students involved. You know, we want this type of thing. So it's been interesting. This is, and I think this is a, for some, for diagnosed, so arts presenters and older ones like me, this is a scary thing, right? This is the scary thing. This is, oh my God, I'm gonna ask my community what they want in me. They're gonna tell me and then, for God's sake, it's not gonna be what I want. Yeah, and we want, we want a couple, we actually want some warm-up. Of course you do. I'm not a human for that, it's not what we do. Yeah, I remember, 25 years ago I was doing a session on rural arts, I used to be a rural arts specialist. But rural, and there was a guy in the room who said, I've been running this chamber music, and God bless chamber music. I've been running this chamber music. Richard serves on the board of the Chamber of Music, America, but this guy said to me, I'm in a small town in Mississippi. We've been doing this concert series for 20 years, 25 years. I can't get more than 50 people to come. 50 people, and I said, you know what? There are 50 people in your community who like chamber music, and your audience is not gonna grow, unless you do something else. So do something else, what's wrong with you? I mean, it was like, it doesn't mean, I mean it doesn't mean you have to stop doing chamber music forever, but it also means that you're not addressing, you're not addressing what your community really wants or needs, and that's why, we're not there just to educate. We're not there to just say, what's, no, let me start over there. We sometimes have this misperception that we know what the best art is for everyone else. And that has led us down a sneaky, sneaky, very isolated, at this moment, path. And if we don't stop thinking that, and start opening our doors to, you're feeling this. You have to feel this more than I do, because I don't run one of your organizations. And unless you have sold out performances, every performance you have, then great for you. But if you don't, there's something missing. And it probably is, what do people really want to see? And how can I really address those, all those concerns? Celebrating in my community, civic concerns in my community, what populations in my community, right? I wanna jump in. All right, that, okay, all right. Jump in with one other thing, just also tagging on, I think the beauty of the time, you must be feeling it from the conference, or other conferences, is that the range, the breadth of work being mounted today by artists in all disciplines is so much broader and so much wider on an increasingly, almost day by day. There are more artists adept in whether it's K-12, or artists who are adept in civic issues, political issues. There are artists adept in creating work together with communities. There are traditional artists. There are technology-based artists. There are multidisciplinary artists, multi-genre artists. So the one of the saving graces in this today is, it's easier to be able to, you might not have to leave classical music behind in the way we talked about because of the range of artists today who might be doing classical music and music theater in a combined way. So that's one of the beauties of being at this conference and one of the beauties of being someone who's working towards finding a way that the art can fulfill a broader mission. You have more to choose from. The material is unlike anything ever before. Please. Yeah, I guess I may be comforted on the opposite side because my organization is all of this, but without any money and has been for 30 years. What is your organization? I run a theater program at AS-220 in Providence, Rhode Island, which is one of my, for 30 years, sticking to its guns with an unduring, uncensored, all ages, all original policy, based specifically on community concerns, consistently changing based on the needs and the wants of the community. But because of that, we've also, at this point, we have four buildings that we own and operate. Because we own and operate them, we're able to magically script by things. But part of our mission is to program everything and anything, so we're built to lose money, to have shows that have five people in an audience. But we don't have enough money to support that in a long-term way, even though it's part of the mission. And so our biggest question is, are there any concerns or how to get more of a financial base? Because we are doing all of these things, but we're always scrambling. I run the theater building on the only full-time person. I do 250 shows by myself. So like, and it is so community-oriented and we're now also shifting to specifically look at communities of color and the communities that problems have become. But it takes years in order for those audiences to develop. And I see it developing before my eyes, but I know that it won't completely be there unless there is a time period financially funded for those audiences to build, even if you're doing everything right. Oh, I don't know if that's how I'm talking. I, this is, you know, this is a really, I mean, we've been spending a lot of time with written graphicers in the arts talking about capitalization. What does it mean for an organization to be well capitalized? What can funders do to help you? And what have they done to not help you? Which has been some cultural norms of the past that are trying to get over. But I would have to, if I were a consultant advisor, I would say, stay a course and what you need is administrative help. What you need is to convince somebody, whether it's an institutional funder or whether it's somebody with some money to say, if I had two more staff people, if I had one more staff person, these are the kinds of programs that I could do. So investing in your own organization to be able to make, to continue to make, do the same programming, but to continue to get the word out about that programming so that you can get funded to do it. So oftentimes we don't do that enough. We don't say, I mean, you want each one in 50 programs, it's crazy, right? It's crazy. Yeah, so somehow, you know, that, yeah. So what we're saying is that I don't think, I mean, I think you're on the right track. I think there's money out there to do that. You need to not create more programs. You need to create an infrastructure and a stable administrative environment to run a business, right? It's the business. Okay, good. That's good. Please. I'm very, Grand Performances in Los Angeles and we've been a free summer concert series for over 30 years and we've lost over a quarter million dollars over the past few years because funders have shifted to this, answering this call, but we are not doing something different because we've been doing it all alone. And I don't know how you can help us sort of navigate and maybe claim that legacy because we're not the traditional PAC that's now going and doing community work. I don't know if you do. Well, I know it very well because part of what I do is I'm going out from my class in music conservatory so I certainly understand the issue. What happens is, and I think it's connected to so much of what we're talking about for any organization. Things change over time. I think that it's so critical to look at the external world. I have faculty who would like to see the program not change at all and they believe that the traditional instruction for the last 60 years is over the last 160 years. It's all that's necessary to create an appropriate and effective artist. At the same time, what happens is if you look around the world and you look at what artists are being asked to know and be able to do, what do they need to know in technology? What do they need to know in doing their own recordings, writing their grant proposals, working in communities, being effective from the stage in terms of communications, multi-disciplinary work. What's happened is you run into sort of an interesting moment where I believe that you have to find ways to evolve and I think that you can honor traditions and I think that you can maintain traditions, but at the same time, I think that you have to take a look at the world around you and be willing to innovate from within the tradition, maintaining it, but finding ways to change it. I would also add, I think it's important for maybe harder for presenters, I'm not sure, but I think every organization has to have some experiment. You have to have some place of research and development to try something to let it fail, to try a different, maybe it is a big departure, maybe you create a couple of things that are really extraordinary departures just to see what happens and what it tells you and what you learn from it and I think that in a way what I would argue is all organizations are learning organizations. They have to be learning organizations and you have to be looking at those kinds of loops of doing new things, of assessing and evaluating and changing and while it's not the most concrete do X and you'll get Y in terms of do X and you'll get Y dollars, I think that it's more of a deep seated issue of assessment, reflection and appropriate change and it's my best shot at that question. Yeah, I think too, if you're not hooked into a revenue source like a college that budgets for you, which is always nice, if you're raising your own dollars and you are having trouble at the moment, you seriously need to rethink what you're doing because times they are a change in thing about. It's a new world out there with funders and it's a new world out there with individual supporters. Maybe not this year, maybe not five or seven years from now but in 10 years from now or 15 or 20 years from now, the donors who we're giving to you now are gonna be dead and their children, if they don't care, you're out. So this idea of relevance, how are you building community, how are you supporting community, who's not in your audience, who needs to be in the audience, those kinds of questions need to be talked about now like your institution, before you discover that, oh, oh, everyone's gone and we're tickled, you know. Particularly when it comes to your friendships. Yeah. I just wanna tag on to that, I was in a session yesterday about social media using of the millennials and they said that by 2018, the millennials will surpass the baby boomers in their disposable income. So that's how literally we have to like switch the world around now. Maybe boomers and Gen X are being replaced. We actually have, we should go on. Hold on. Oh my God. Oh that's good. Thank you. Okay, thank you. That's okay. I mean, I would point out just to think about it in a really concrete way. Comcast today owns NBC. So the sort of, you know, if you think about it, the cable provider, which used to be minimal, now owns the content provider, the broadcaster at the same time, I think they're talking about it, something like 30% of people have cut the cord and aren't using cable. So if that's what, and you know this stuff related, this is not an abstract thing because all these things connect to what we are. It's how people are acquiring our content to some degree and it's changing so drastically. But if you think about that, it wasn't just the first wave of a Comcast owning NBC which is only in the last decade. But now people moving away from Comcast into being able to go to Netflix or Amazon to see a Golden Globe award-winning show. So again, it's not, and it's the pace of change as well. Yeah, yeah. Is that, in the book that I found, programs or a program I used to in the past have a much broader appeal? I feel like everything nowadays is a niche audience. It's like everyone, because there's so many choices, everyone's almost had to put on blinders and well I'm a family so I'm all gonna do this or I'm a sports person so I'm only gonna do this and it's just, I'm having challenges just trying to say how I can get the community involved as you're saying, you flipped it, but to come. Well I think if you stick with this, we're gonna move the slides in there about 20 minutes before. But what happens is I think we're inserting an additional twist, it's not just the artistic sensibility of I wanna choose this artist, because this artist performs a certain record, while we're talking about this issue of relevance, it's another, I think it counterbalances in this interesting way, what does the community need? Who are they? How do I partner? It adds another dimension that may leaven that fear to some, or that challenge to some degree. And I also wanna, I just wanna interject this, I'm not sure if it's the right place to put this, but for Fermi-Harris presenters in community, with a venue as an asset, right? Community, convening can come in. We are sometimes held back by our, I hate to say this, but it's true, by those people who support us the most, right? Who don't want this to change, the board of directors who doesn't want this to change, good liberal people who don't want these things to happen. And a great case in point is the Flynn Performing Arts Center, if you've been, you know, John Clacky used to be on our board, I love John, he's been through the culture wars of God knows how many times. But he chose to rent the space to Donald Trump. And the supporters in town, now this is a government-owned facility. Hello, government-owned facility. And he got all this crap from all the, you know, not all, I didn't shouldn't say, I don't wanna overblow it. He got some pushback from the good arts people who said, how dare you, good, good, good, good, good. And this is a community convening space. It is not our job, it isn't his job to tell people in the audience what their political views are. So his job is to give people access so that they can make a decision. Do you like this kind of music? Do you not like this kind of music? Do you like this political view? Do you not like this, but what you know is when you come to this space, you're gonna get all of it. And you have to decide, right? So it's that, you know, we have to be very careful because this changeover, this ability to say, we weren't, we used to make money here, now we're not making money there, and now we have to change somehow, takes courage and leadership. Hello, the big L word, leadership. And that's not always, that's hard, that's hard. You know, the added bonus for the Flint Center was that the marquee had never received this kind of PR. No. I'm gonna roll over. Including the Bekjenskianist because of Billy Child's name was everywhere, was this. Newspapers, cable TV, it was incredible. Was it good? Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And the university having a very broad mission to just bring the arts to the community, which to us means, you know, we have a very diverse community. So we have some of the richest communities in the state, some of the poorest living right next to each other, you know, African-American, Latino, very conservative Jewish community, and then our university community, which is a very different audience, who is our primary funder, how do you become, you know, all things to all people? Because we can't serve everybody, but you know, our communities are telling us all this stuff that they wanna see. So we're doing the best we can, we have a staff of three and a half people, but it's, we just don't have the resources to serve our community, basically. You know, we can serve a part of it, but not everybody in, you know, our university wants to see very different things than our community wants to see, but our community is the people coming. So sometimes our programming doesn't always serve the community. Well, I've jumped in with one idea. Universities will have, tend to have a variety of people approaches centers. Center, they may be social scientists, it may be economists. My guess, my bet is that you, while you could never serve an entire university, because of the disparate views, however, you're almost certainly going to find some people that will probably line up. They may not line up, as I said, it might be economics and something you wanna present. And you might be surprised that it lines up, but I think that you can find a lot of traction because there's so much offered and there's so many people of diverse practice and interests within a university. So I think there's something there to assess and to find what you think is a good match. I also think, I think some of it, even with the stress on the small staff, some of it's just sense making and the right decision making in terms of knowing who you are, what you wanna do, how you wanna serve the community, and also the limits to it. I think that these things are really important practices to try to make sense of it. Then we do like a certain theme every year to try and run people, but then we also see that we get this great energy and then we move to everything next year if they don't really sustain the energy we have for that one thing. So that's also a challenge. Yeah, and I think that, I think that with the gal that we were a little behind you said earlier about the mission, the mission, you know what, it's the audience business. So it shoots out the idea of things. The communities don't have things anymore, and those are limited. The 10,000 of you are like one. I would argue that they don't have things anymore. I do think that what it comes down to here is one of two things that we have to do. We either have to say, this is our niche and we are there. We are there for these people and you have to make sure that those people can pay for you, right? So you have to specialize and say, this is what we do. Or you have to say, we're gonna serve in some way or another the entire community because we've opened our doors and we want them to come in. That means this idea of partnerships and who are you bringing, and I will, I just give great kudos because I worked in a performing arts center in college and I understand how those ivory walls can be so tall and so thick. Anybody who reaches out to community members other than asking them to buy tickets and hopefully the general age of those who were buying subscriptions is under 50. To actually partner and develop programming and to ask people what they want and how they can be involved. How can we serve you? That's, those are the words should be in your vocabulary. And sometimes they'll come up with an answer that you can't do and you just have to be honest and say, whoa, we can't do that. But we can do something else. So what's the next thing? And so I don't give up because it just takes all of those, you just have to keep all those plates in you. Just think of all the plates in your community that you need to keep spinning and we can do that, we can do that. And I'll jump in one last, I do think there's some interesting sort of design questions within this to be looking at the arc of a certain period of time. And so even if you throw out the themes in programming you know that there's always people moving in and out but there might be, it would be, it's interesting if you're not solely looking at the programming choice but you're looking at the relevancy and relationship to the community and perhaps you take a look at a five year clip of what you would like to achieve in the partnership what you would like to achieve in relevancy in the increasing relevancy and the deepening of partnerships. It creates, it's a slightly different lens once you put it up against the programming concerns and I think that we grow as administrators in this. So I think there's something to that. Again, because it's a different question in relevancy it's not just which artist. It's so, it becomes again a richer palette to be working from. Please. No. Sorry, go ahead. I'll just comment to the theme and then to what you just said. Real quick, don't work at A.H.U. Gammage I'm a student worker and I work in our Beyond Residencies program and yes we can't serve the entire university but the artists that we bring in are very diverse to where I'm able to find loopholes to be able to serve the university that we're working in. So the example is Meredith Muck is an artist that we have come in and her new work is on behalf of nature and focus on ecology. Well who at the university is doing research around ecology, the school of sustainability. So I reached out, hey we have this artist coming in, can we do something? Well who's an artist and we wanna do something with artists but we don't know what to do. Well let's see if we can find the connection between how an artist studies ecology and how the people in your department study ecology. Damn, there's a connection built in a magazine also came out of that. A magazine who never presented artists said we think this is interesting. We wanna promote it, let's put her in the magazine. So your year may not need to have a theme but the artists that you're bringing in already have a theme that if you think creatively you're able to find those loopholes. If you're bringing in artists who used to be veterans that gets you into the history department. That actually gets you into any department. Every department has a veteran. Every department has a veteran. What happens is students are like, oh I heard of Gamma and she got us to Broadway but I didn't know you usually do these shows, they come, they've never been to the theater ever before and all of a sudden they're excited because they not only feel connected to the artist who's coming, they feel connected to this big space because we took the time to do our research to find out a way to be able to expose them to something new. You know, if you just wouldn't have had to talk at the first when we started this, it could be right on track. This is exactly what we're talking about. Relevancy and finding, matching the artists with the needs of the community, with the resources of the community, all connected. How do we connect them? So they take some more thinking then, geez I really like that guy, let's bring him in. What does that mean? What does it mean, what's the next step and the next step and the next step? Who does it serve? Who can you partner with? Where does the money come from? And bottom line in this session is that all those things go together. You make those tie-ins that you will, this is where it comes down to the money, you will find the money because the relevancy is there and your community will see the relevancy in it. We've made this connection with this artist who's coming in from the VA, who's gonna do a couple workshops, who's also gonna perform, who's also gonna go to the hospital, who's also gonna, and this makes a new audience for you and also brings in their older audiences that connects to new money. And so that's a whole idea, right? It's not a very complicated idea. It just takes work and it takes some creative thinking. You can't sit in your desk and just say, oh here's a date, works for you, here's a guy. Okay, then we can't do that anymore. We have to work hard. And I know that we work hard already, believe me, I know, but yeah. I was gonna say our facility's 10 years old and I think from the beginning, what we recognized was there needed to be a balance in programming of what we opened the theater understanding that we wanted to offer a balance of things that we knew itself, that had artistic integrity, but also to always keep pushing the envelope artistically. And it's been a formula that really works for us. So we've been able to, through the years, do this, have this premise, but also to gain the trust in our audience, which I think is really big. So if you can pair that up with bringing something like an Arlo Guthrie in next to 500 Clown, which is Visible Theater, and have that same audience appreciate it. It takes time to build that audience and then build it up with maybe pre-show talks by the artists of the audience, understands what they're gonna see that might be new, and then bring them out into the community as well. It tends to be a really good mix, but it's building that trust in your audience that takes time, it comes to do. And you're always fresh. You're always fresh that way. So I wanna see how many of you do more things than bringing the artist to perform? I mean, more things with that artist, right? So you have partnerships with the schools, you have very partnerships. Schools, libraries, libraries, schools, community organizations, partners. There's your home, senior center, yes. Rotary, library, library, library, yeah. Great, I mean, that's also a big part of it, right? Do any of you participate in fundraisers for other organizations? How many belong to the Chamber of Commerce? You could all belong to the Chamber of Commerce. You visited people. What kind of, so Richard and I, when Richard and I first started talking about this, it's like, what about performing arts center as civic leader, right? And what does that mean? Does that mean going to city council meetings? Does that mean belonging to the Chamber of Commerce? Does that mean belonging to the non-profit, whatever, association? I mean, all of those things as a business are important. I mean, I think for too many years, although we're getting so much better at this, it's great. I'm so old now that for too many years, I remember those too many years, we just sat back and said, this is what we do. We have artists, you buy tickets, we open the door, we clean the bathroom, you come in, and then, you know, and then you go out and we'll raise money for the next season. That can't happen anymore. We have to think of ourselves as YWCA's, YMCA's, that kind of program needs to happen in our buildings. And there's, we've been talking a lot about this operation, but this slide here, we begin to take a look at the issue of something different. It has to do with the things you know. It has to do with that. If you're going to be part of a community, it becomes an interesting question of who leads from within the organization? How do you bring the community concerns in? And how do you help from within your organization model these sorts of things? So there's this interesting question of educating, depending on the institution. Are you, do you know enough about the kinds of concerns of the community to be able to educate your colleagues? To be able to educate a board of directors if you have a board of directors or a board of advisors? Program committee. Program committee, absolutely. What, how do you take the lead in this? It's not enough to just say, the community has concerns, but what happens is we see people showing up at council meetings. People who are artistic administrators who run these organizations. They become linked to the concerns of the community and they become adept at being able to communicate these things and their understanding helps to influence the operation of the organization. And then there's also this very interesting issue Jen and I felt was important for all organizations to consider is to look at this from a mission perspective. Sometimes people will say it's not our mission. Our mission might have been service. We talk about this, this has come up a number of times. We provide artistic service. But that's not really true. A lot of times when you start to get into the mission of organizations or why they were created, you tend to see that they're educational mission. You tend to see community within the mission. And what happens is you can ask yourself, does this in the sort of consideration of the foundational meaning of your organization? Is this in it? Is advocacy in it? Could advocacy play a role? Now, advocacy can mean many things. Advocacy may be, as we heard earlier, the concerns that maybe a simple, easy one. The arts in the schools may be in danger. Is this something you want to support? Maybe something else in the schools is in danger. Maybe some other kind of funding issue. And what are you going to help people understand this? Maybe there's a policy piece that you can point out. Maybe it's in a program. But you ask yourself, is this a place where we want to get involved? I think that both Janet and I would argue if you're going to be part of the community, it's going to be impossible not to take some sort of stand. It may not be a political stand per se, but it may be an educational floor of advocacy to point out or to make space available. But we think that this is an important thing for organizations to get into. Well, and I also think the idea of the environmentalists and making those kind of connections is our role of advocating for the artists in cross-sector work, right? I mean, that's part of what we do. And you don't have to convince artists of that because, as you probably all know, they're there. They're doing this work. And you can find, as Richard said, you can find any artists to deal with any social issues in your community who will come in and do a fabulous performance and also will teach and also will speak and also will work with opportunity groups. I mean, that's just a stash. I think the question there often is like, how do you do that? Like, say you want your professors, you had Meredith Monk first and then you went to your professors? Or did you do it the other way around? Yeah, it's not easy. I got a lot of no's and a lot of non-responsive emails and I just kept emailing and I kept calling and I'm like, hey, there's an opportunity here. So, we have a very diverse group. A lot of people don't know who Meredith Monk is if they're not in the artistic world. And I'm the answer. And I think that some of her stuff is weird. But she were coming and we need to build this audience. So it's like, all right, well, what are we going to do? Not stopping really at no. Just like, no, there's purpose. There's something here. If I can't get into you, who else in your apartment can I talk to? So you've done what Richard said is you've sort of said, this is what we want. This is what we've decided. And now we're going to go find partners. Well, our season is already set. So we're changing to be more of a model which is being talked about here. But this season was already set. So I said, well, the season's set, we have to do something. But what we're doing is also going to play into part of what we do in our coming season where we are making it more community-orientated. So let's get back to the issue we talked about before. I said, you don't ask somebody to partner with you. And hopefully you have a relationship. Think about the all the relationships you can create. So it's time for us to be done. But I wanted you to see this slide. Because this is what's happening with the organization I work with. These are institutional funders, foundations, public agencies, state arts councils, national government state arts. They're all members of the Grand Makers in the Arts. The trends are equity. The trends are, as my good friend Maria Adelion just said to me, I just wanted to, I believe you're going to lunch. But I want to remind everyone that by 2020, people under the age of 20 will be the majority will be people of color. 2020. Whoa. What's that? Four years from now. Hello. It's too long. Oh, sorry. We're already, last year was already. Yeah, last year was already the majority majority. So I hate that majority minority. That's our majority. So it was a good majority. See the second, I'm screaming bad. OK, so equity has become a huge issue for us. And Grand Makers in the Arts is working really, has some really strong language on our website. If you want to go look at our equity, our racial equity, and our philanthropy, safe and on purpose, it is pretty out there and strong. We're really proud of it. But areas of, this is the realization. Who's not in your audience? Know who's in your audience. Who's not there? Who are you reaching? Who are you not reaching? As a nonprofit organization, which all foundations are, as a government funding, as a government funding funder of tax dollars, their concern has to be that you are addressing the needs of your communities. Because that's how they get their tax exempt status for that purpose. It's not always justifiable in some places that they put their money. But, and tax dollars have to go for access. They don't have to. But theoretically, these are the purposes we have these kinds of tax breaks and tax dollars for service. And if your organization isn't rising to that occasion, you're going to miss this boat. And it's a big boat right now, right? And so, and then individual giving is the same. We talked a little bit about this. It's different. Our grandparents and their parents, or our parents, gave in a certain way. They wanted to build legacies. They wanted to build major institutions. Their kids and their kids' kids are not doing that. They want to have impact. They want to be involved. They want to see what you're doing today. Again, they want to see that you've affected so many kids, or so many seniors, or so many whatever. And they want to be part of the decision-making. And they want you to sit down and talk to them about your business, how you're financing it, and how is their return on investment going to be. So, important. And this is our very last thing. No magic answers. Sorry. We wish. There are no national benchmarks. I always hit it. I think the worst thing that's happened to the nonprofit over the last 40 years is that we said, well, in this city, they do this, and they run like this, and they report to directors like this, and they raise money like this. And so we need to do that, too. You know, the best thing I learned about 40 years ago when I was doing community arts development work is that communities are self-determined. You understand what's going on in your town. You understand the economic marketplace for the nonprofit business. You have the solutions to these. And don't look at somebody else and say, oh, they're doing that, and we can do that, too. Because maybe you can't, but you can pride your better for your people. So consider letting go of the definitions of cultural and performing arts centers of the past, because they are not the future. But you are the future. And you will make it better. And don't fear the change. Don't take advantage of it. Energize. Go with it. It really is. It's an exciting time. It really is. Yeah, it is. OK, thanks. Thanks for coming. Thank you. We're all good.