 We're also going to drop some Google documents into the chat so that you can directly input your own thoughts and considerations as we build frameworks for sustainable international engagement. So get ready for that in the last 15 minutes of the session. I want to thank our ASL interpreters. We really appreciate having you here and I want to thank our colleagues at APAP and at HowlRound who have collaborated to make this discussion happen. To our colleagues at APAP, many of whom are based in Washington, D.C., we know you have been under a heightened level of stress these past days and we truly appreciate you being here for us as well. Let's see. I want to acknowledge and thank my colleagues at the New England Foundation for the Arts and Lisa Booth Management before we begin for all of their work to support international cultural exchange and presenting opportunities, both through the Center Stage Program that NIFA produces in collaboration with the U.S. Department of State and also through our other opportunities to support touring exchange and research. At NIFA, we believe in the exchange of ideas across borders. We believe in supporting artists to collaborate with and learn from one another and we believe that all communities deserve access to arts and ideas from around the world. Coming out of this momentous political week, I'm not sure that my voice will add too much but I did want to make one observation. Because the insurrection went down on Wednesday, I was really struck by some of the comments by our leaders. We are not a banana republic. I just thought to myself, don't people realize that we are responsible for the creation of the so-called banana republics? We are not separate from this. There are so many people who do not see that we bear responsibility through our policies of exploitation and capitalism and colonialism. We are not separate from the issues and concerns of the global community. Shanta Fakes said yesterday under the radar symposium, this might be, I hope this will be the death knell for American exceptionalism. I just want to reiterate that no, we in the United States are not exceptional. Now more than ever, perhaps, we are part of the global community. We too experience authoritarian politics, disinformation campaigns, mob violence incited by corrupt would-be dictators, and we too experience climate change, poverty, injustice, and COVID-19. So perhaps that is some good context to bring to us as we talk about international presenting and our commitment to continued international engagement as global citizens through arts and culture. So that's it. I'm going to turn things over to David Dower. David, please tell us about the IPG. Wow. Kathy, thank you so much for setting us there because it's a really important place to begin from and to emanate from today. So yeah, let's talk quickly about the IPG. It's still astonishing to me that it is called something. The history here, which is short. I was on a series of phone calls in the spring where many of my colleagues, people that I was collaborating with on projects, were talking about the pivot that they were having to make to focus on all local work and artists given the challenges for international touring. And I started a panic, and it was very individual, I have to say, the outset. I was starting to panic that, oh, if we all decide to do that, what happens to ArtsEmerson if we decide that there's no international presenting. And then right behind that was ArtsEmerson, what happens to the field. So I just called some people, and I just said, are you worried about this? Should we talk about this? And a group of about 20 people immediately said yes, and I think maybe within an hour I had people just saying yes. So we had a call. People said we should have more conversation. More people came. More people came, and we realized that we were kind of an ad hoc group of people who was trying to organize and catalyze a conversation in the field that we could buy this January conference time. We could actually say, hey, here's something in motion, please join us. And I know there's been some consternation, and there's been a history in our field of having these sort of small groups of people who make big decisions for the whole field. The IPG has actually modeled more on what it is that we're talking about, how the context in which we're talking, which is HowlRound. And it's much more of a commons-based activity. It's bring what you have, take what you need, and jump in and do whatever work you can do on behalf of this question that we're noodling on today. That's how it's come about. HowlRound came aboard immediately and has been both a thought partner in how to structure the conversations and also the administrative support to it. And I want to say a big shout out to Abigail Vega who's hiding behind the scenes today, but she has been organizing all of this stuff. And it's turned into, I mean, those of you who haven't yet jumped in, and I hope everybody who's come today will in some manner or fashion. There have been meeting after meeting of whole groups of people and task courses and Google Docs flying around. And just this incredible amount of energy, which was very heartening for me to see having just had one question to see that it was on so many other people's minds and there were people who were willing to spend a considerable amount of time just getting us to hear. And so you're going to hear from some of those people today and I greatly appreciate being part of a community that jumps in with both feet like this. I want to take a minute for those of you who are curious about what the IP, how it is that we're organized and why it's kind of emanating from a common mentality, how round is organized around a set of governing principles, a set of values that everybody who participates agrees to uphold and work from. And the IPG did the same thing and we developed right away a set of values that we wanted to help guide us and also to be clear about those values for people who were thinking about joining us. And so here are the things that we agreed to right away. And this is all of this is a work in progress. This is our first draft to the field and we invite, you're going to get an invitation, a formal invitation here later in this meeting to jump into the Google Docs and start to add your own experience and questions and expertise. But the values of the International Presenters Group, I'll read them very quickly, will resist individualism, let go of notions of ownership. We will, if you are not muted, it would be good if you could. We will not abandon international presenting even though it feels impossible right now. We will embrace a way of working that is slower and deeper. I skipped the second half of one, which is that we affirm the concept of reciprocity through decolonization of our work. And I think there are people, particularly people who've joined in the IPG conversation and work so far. Yes, you could mute, that would be great. There are people here who are working very much, though, on this notion of reciprocity and keeping it for front of mind. We'll reduce our environmental impact. We talked a little bit about this yesterday. Expand the notion of what constitutes a presentation to be more flexibly responsive to what artists can make at this moment, including their efforts to create, develop, produce, publish, or distribute work digitally. And we will continue, we will consider others in our ecosystem beyond artists as we make decisions, including independent creative producers, international presenters, residency centers, smaller cultural institutions, and other international presenters in the US. One of the consistent questions has been, how is this a US issue? And what is the US relationship to the global conversation? And so what I want to do is just take two seconds to give you the flow of things here. We started yesterday. We started with a focus on the artist, the impact on artists, and a very sort of ad hoc survey that we had conducted, just amongst the people that we were already working with. Most of it was just artists that we were already in some conversation with. And it went out. Good response. The data was presented yesterday. You can see that on how. And Dennis, if you wouldn't mind muting yourself, that would be very helpful. I don't know if you could even hear me. Okay. So if we could mute Dennis, that would be good. So yesterday we started with the artist. Today we are focused specifically on the US presenter community. What are our current challenges? What are our current opportunities? What are the current leading ideas around how we intersect the justice equity diversity inclusion work? How we intersect the climate work? And how we deal with the logistical challenges? Then the next conversation is at ISPA. And that will be focused on our role, ourselves, the US presenters in the context of the global conversation and global networks and global partners. And so to Kathy's point about exceptionalism, we are building toward taking a seat at a big round table of the world as opposed to being a group of people who are driving a conversation forward. But today is focused on the US. What are our, what's our community? What are our challenges? What are our opportunities? And what kind of work can we get done? And then following the conference season, we'll be going into dates to be determined. But how around we'll be organizing a series of conversations that then builds on all of this conversation to date. Sarah, you could help me out here. It would be great to mute that one, Mike. Hold on, David. Cameron, can you please mute Dennis's mic, please? Thank you. So this is the beginning. It's not the end. This is a draft. It is not a final presentation. And we invite you all from today to jump in with both feet and, and you know, help us move this whole conversation forward. One of the main thing that's going to be happening after the conference is a really a stunning group of people who will be gathering to talk about the history of international presenting in the US organized by Colleen Jennings and hopefully Colleen will have a minute at some point today to talk about what that panel is going to be. So that people are setting up and saving time in their calendars to be part of that conversation. So thank you all for being here. I turn it back to Kathy and off we go. Thank you, David. So I mentioned we're going to organize discussion around three main topics that the IPG has identified as critical areas for discussion. Here are the three topics. The first is cultural equity, racial equity and justice. The second is climate change and sustainability. And the third boring title, but huge logistic challenges. So I'm going to ask four of our IPG guests to speak on the first topic of cultural equity, racial equity and justice. What are you thinking about the intersection of international presenting and our commitments as a sector to equity and racial justice as urgent priorities? How do international presenting and artistic exchange practices relate to and support or not that priority? Christie admins, may I start with you? Oh, I was hoping you wouldn't, but hi everyone. Good morning. She, her hers from the Tongva and Chumash people. Thank you, Kathy. Thank you, David. Thanks everyone for being here. You know, I think, you know, when trying to look at how the international practices of artists just on the broadest brushstroke to me, there has been decades and decades and decades of work behind how we ensure that our cultural exchange practices are both reciprocal. And in the case of the center, in the case of, you know, myself here and now, one of the biggest things around international practices that I think is crucial for every intersection that we have in all of our different communities, including radical approaches on racial justice and systems of oppression and everything else is that the artists themselves, whether they be US based or international are in a flow of creative and cultural exchange already. We've already experienced just in this year alone with the Trump administration shutting down visas that some of what would have been able to have degrees of mobility in and out of our country have absolutely severed the way in which communities of artistic practitioners who are interdependent in their manifestation of ideas of work have been, you know, stopped, just absolutely stopped. The backlog of this is going to be not insignificant for a substantial period of time, even with a new administration coming in. So one of the things to me about this is really listening to our BIPOC related communities. I follow the artists first and foremost who within community end up leading us as a presenting partner in the work towards how the exchange of their work moving internationally and community groups and their peers and cultural partners moving into the US can take place. An independent artist alone often will not have enough infrastructure to be able to engage in those on their own. So the heft of an organization or institutional leadership support is what is also going to help drive it. So that's one of the things, you know, on an audience based level. That's another kind of thing and I don't want to indicate that presenting work from international communities is how we reach BIPOC and culturally diverse communities alone in the context of our work. We have gone through that trope for years that if you bring somebody from Mali, the Mali based community or African American population is going to be showing up in droves, it is not the way it works. But we operate in the world of ideas and culture, integrities of practice, the narratives and storytellers of our time across languages, across culture, gender, borders, et cetera. And for me, the way in which we have a kind of process of integrity is to absolutely intersect, support and make those ideas mobile to assure sometimes that audiences are able to see the way in which narratives are flowing in different cultures who are facing oppression and injustice, but sometimes it becomes a way in which they can see, feel and hear that narrative different to the one that is going to be picked up in the newspaper and implicates your own community. That cracking open of a new way of seeing through the practices that have been exchanged can often lead to new practices of mobility around activism. So I don't want to go on and on and on because there's many other people that are far more intelligent on this than myself. And I'll hand it back to Kathy. But the thing that I think is critical also is that the mobility of an artist from here related to our own BIPOP communities is also going to be able to have amplified exchange if we are manifesting and continuing our relationships with colleagues abroad. We have seen the degradation of our own isolationist practices in this administration accelerated at a rate beyond the pale. And how we now fall forward into empathetic, compassionate resource distribution exchange with our artists grounded at the absolute center is a creative justice that I believe is critical as we try and fall forward into the next era of betterment. How's that, Kathy? Moving on. Somebody else go. Thank you, Christy. Amazing. Roya, can I turn it over to you? You may. Hi. Thank you, Kathy. Hi, everyone. Roya Amir Soleimani from Portland Institute for Contemporary Art on the Unceded Lands of the Chinook, Multnomah and Clackamas in Portland, Oregon. I'm artistic director and curator of public engagement at PICA, which was in fact founded by Christy Edmonds. So it's an honor to follow her in more ways than one. So just some thoughts that I've written down. So I'm going to read, please forgive. In 2021, we will mark the 10th anniversary of the Arab Spring, a decade of war in Syria and Occupy Wall Street, and 20 years of war and occupation in Afghanistan following 9-11. Today marks less than 48 hours since Wednesday's crescendo of white nationalist violence, only its latest and most visibleized domestic display. What happens here and what happens over there, as Kathy alluded to in her introduction, rely on identical mechanisms of power and serve to perpetuate the same ideologies and myths. If we accept ongoing geopolitical conflict, militarization, occupation, and enforcement of national borders as not simply a masquerade of well-meaning foreign policy and global diplomacy, but as violent tools of power and control that serve white supremacist and western imperialist interests, then we might think of the crossing of national borders and the effort to do so as declarations or acts of resistance, as a result of this disruption and toward change. So, when we, as arts workers, spend time, money, and labor against odds to support global exchange among artists and communities, we are saying this matters. It does something to us, it shifts something inside us, it enables something for us when we allow for the experience and sharing of live performance that we have in the past. So, we need to reach another place and people to reach other borders and new contexts. Visiting artists as humans connect with local organizations and audiences and artists and communities as other humans. Yet, global presenting and cross-cultural exchange in performance are not recipes for diversity or solutions to the problems of injustice or exclusion. These terms often do not even translate. We should be wary of instrumentalizing international, immigrant or indigenous performing artists as cultural ambassadors and the exploitation of their forms and narratives as representative of a homogenized perception of place. How we interpret and frame international artists work is critical to resisting easily and in a way, it is important to understand that it is not something else, something other than other. It has been said that there is no such thing as difference because there is only difference. As someone who is an immigrant Iranian family in the U.S., like so many others, has faced words, acts and attacks of xenophobia, racism, prejudice, ethnocentrism and discrimination. I think of what is risked by border crossing of all kinds, what it takes, what it means, what is sacrificed and what is gained. As we enter 2021 following this week's events and preceding the deadliest days of the pandemic to come, we are reminded there is no romanticizing this heightened notion of risk. It cannot be solely an aesthetic consideration. Rather, it will inform to an even greater extent that there are real threats posed in entering, exiting and existing in a place of difference. In international presenting, risk will be critical to how we think about health, safety, visas and values, the possibilities and impossibilities of virtual platforms and the impossibilities and possibilities of live work. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I want to ask, I have had a request as well, the ASL interpreters are not visible on screen because we have so many cameras on. I believe if we mute our videos, we will be able to get our ASL interpreter colleagues on the main screen. I will ask if folks can do that. Thank you. Okay. Edgar, can I ask you to share your reflection? Sure. Thank you. Thank you, Roya and Christy. I'm Edgar. I'm the deputy executive director and curator at Redcat. I'm calling in from the unceded lands of the Tangva and the Schumash peoples. I took this question as a more complicated question. I wrote some remarks. I'm an immigrant from Mexico to the U.S. I lived life in Los Angeles without government citizenship meaning I was undocumented for many years including post college. In my search for belonging, I saw refuge in places in Los Angeles that reflected my language, customs, experiences and experiences. I'm inspired by the idea that in Los Angeles County, does this not include different dialects. When I think about equity, racial equity and building a just world as it is related to international work, I imagine a place that serves a multiplicity that the language is moving and shaping life in the city reflect every day. I'm inspired by South African choreographer who was born in the U.S. and the arts can be used as a tool to see the beauty in humanity. Even more so now as this pandemic and politically disturbing moment in the U.S. has exposed deep inequities. I'm a geographer by training and given the moment I was reminded of a younger self that was restricted from traveling to do the undocumented status. I discovered a conversation and exchange a window into a world I recognize and those that I didn't but revealed the deep humanity we shared across waters. In some instances I can travel to my country and see myself reflected in the work of contemporary artists like Claudio Valdescuri, and at the same time in the work of the U.S. I realize it's a personal experience but in thinking about the experiences of recent immigrants and the millions who have made Los Angeles their home for generations, I can't imagine my experience being isolated. We have to continue to present international work that reflects the communities around our city. California is home to more than 11 million immigrants more than any other state in Los Angeles. We have to continue to present international work. As a presenter, I see myself as a facilitator of experience and whose experiences we elevate as a question we should be asking ourselves, especially now, as the inequities experienced by our black and brown brothers and sisters and other marginalized communities have become impossible to deny. I owe a lot of my experiences to my former red cat colleague Mark Murphy who provided a platform for the much more specialized international work from our close border of Mexico to Central and South America, Asia and Africa. I reflected my experience in those of many other marginalized communities in Los Angeles. We have an opportunity now to think through how we can continue to champion international work when travel is impossible and we can't cross borders. Although I'm not abandoning a lot of in-person experiences when we're able to, it is an opportunity to move into the world of international work. I'm not going to admit to and support international artists by showcasing their work via the screen or commissions or virtual residencies to continue to provide artistic offerings that amplify their experiences to our Los Angeles audiences. Thank you. Thank you, Edgar. So appreciated. Claudia Norman, can I turn it over to you? Hello. My name is Claudia Norman. I'm a director of the Mexican art festival. I'm a founder and director of the Mexico now festival and founding partner of the generators, a new arts company dedicated to create and produce innovative programs within the individual approach and global perspective, but also I'm also proud member of SIPA, which is the reason I got invited to this conversation. I was born and raised in Mexico City and for the last two decades I moved to New York and for the last two decades my work has been focused in producing multidisciplinary festivals and in partnership with American presenters introducing and advising the work of global artists to U.S. audiences, but in another hand I'm proud to be looking for opportunities to introduce work of American artists to Latin American festivals. During these pandemic times and the last few days, I'm sure that most of us in the cultural sector are questioning what is our role in society and what is the importance and the impact of our single actions. It is a very important role in our single actions. Every day that goes by for the last three days and more convinced that it is crucial to continue the work that we do, but based on my experience and reflections, I think now that the Pandora box is wide open, this is the time to do it in a very different way. We live in communities that are constantly changing immigration, colonization, slavery, displacement are part of the human history and are part of our common present. Sharing these experiences through the voice of the artist should be our main goal as cultural workers. We should see artists as part of the global citizenship in our societies. Imagine not to share the work of artists like William Kentridge, Susana Baca, Gilberto Gill, Lola Arias, the list is infinite. This would be exactly represent and we represented a big loss for our audiences and for our souls. Therefore, if we want to talk about equity, racial equity, we have to commit to change our structures, views and practices, no more exclusivity, changing the contracts, changing the payments schedule for the artist. We have to start changing our timelines and metrics and see the importance of our human investment. This is the time to start from scratch. Human investment and the quantification of that human investment in ourselves, our audiences and the artist. Let's think of creating long-term, deep and meaningful practices where artists, independent producers, presenters, founders, board members are engaged in democratizing culture and work in a horizontal way. Let's also think about creating sustainable and hybrid models where local communities can maximize the presence of artists and mobility become part of the cultural experience. Let's think about the distribution of wealth. How can benefit a larger number of cultural workers? This ecology, independent artists, independent producers, presenters, how we can redistribute the excitement of that wealth. So we have a long way to go but I think let's get to work. Gracias. Thank you, Claudia. Amazing brilliance from our speakers. We are going to try to get their notes and share them with you post panel. I'm going to move on now to the intersection of climate change, climate sustainability and our vision for the future of international climate change. Thank you. Thank you, Kathy. I'm Colleen Jennings-Rogensack from ASU Gammage and I am on the Gila River lands. One of the things that I think we have all done in our practice and Claudia, your words resonate as we go on to this next topic is our role and responsibility isn't in a box and climate change is something that is impacting us globally to deal with climate change and one of the simple and easiest thoughts is we go nowhere everybody stays in their own boxes it'll keep the environment clean but that's not acceptable you've just heard Claudia's words for us to understand each other this must be a both and situation we cannot ignore climate change nor can we afford to just stay in our own boxes. We must first and foremost look at the artist and look at our ability of what we have learned from the artist in terms of democracy in terms of diplomacy this world is at a deficit in terms of diplomacy and we here in the United States have been at the bottom of that barrel and how we are going to get to the top of that and rejoin the globe is through artists and we know we have to travel to do that the other thing is we are a global community you look in all of our communities and the faces of the world and the people of the world live in Tempe, Arizona live in Los Angeles, live in New York City live in Chicago, live in Seattle so know that the world is already here so our ability to exchange and have artists from the globe be a part of our community here not only supports our community members supports our artists who are here our home artists in learning but provides that diplomacy and that exchange furthermore the role and responsibility of those of us who run venues is that we look at climate change and carbon footprinting beginning at home we look at what and how we do our lighting we look at water fountains that have refillable water bottles we look at digital programs, no longer printing programs, we have a way to address climate change and responsibility in our venues the other thing that is important for artists and our communities is the length of stay and the depth of stay so we have artists not coming out for one night or one day but coming and being a part of our community for weeks, months and even years and those things are possible we look at how we share our resources and our information all of us on this screen have learned from each other all of us know that we all travel in different places, in different spaces but we communicate together and can share that information it may not mean that all of us jump on a plane and we go there but we say look, Claudia will be there, Christie will be there, Susan will be there I will follow up with them we will again utilize the screens that we have had so that we are not all just going into the same places but I have to say the importance of climate and the importance of artists and the importance of us gathering is that we actually learn so when we go to Mexico to a festival or we are in Russia at a festival or in Scotland or where we are we also meet and exchange information and learn from each other so this always has to be a conversation, it cannot be just one without climate change I would say the other thing is we have to look at our responsibility in terms of climate change in how we address that issue with our communities and through artists I think about Antaran Goad and are we drawing towards a new era and that kinds of information that comes out and helps people to understand it we do and will have issues going forward with funding because we have banks and private funders who are going to pit us against each other sorry no problem, awesome I think we might get to funding in our logistic challenges as well so that will get some coverage Elizabeth can I turn it over to you absolutely good morning my name is Elizabeth Dowd and I am currently the curator of performance at the Ringling Museum in Sarasota, Florida which is the traditional lands of the Kalusa people of the Black the Angola community of the Black Seminole and also the Seminole tribe of Florida and I am also the creator of Climacazi Miami with Fundarte in Miami and I work for many years with the National Performance Network in the Performing America program and I owe a great debt of gratitude to both Fundarte and NPN for my introduction to international work what we know as international work but I live in Florida which is really the crossroads of the Americas in so many ways and take an idea of bioregional and transnational identity into the work that I've been doing with climate for the last 10 years I think climate performance eco theater green theater and I wanted to say a couple things about climate in theater and in performing arts I would like to also mention that I've been part of an evolving group of people that have been meeting, gathering annually since about 2015 around the idea that artists and in our case performing artists have a really critical role to play in the climate movement and also the climate justice movement it became very clear in our first meetings that the work of climate is not independent from the work of anti-racism and equity and so for us it's always been really important to understand how we fold in and embed everything that we talk about in terms of environmental sustainability climate friendly zero carbon things with a really through the lens of eco justice and centering the voices of people that have been leading these movements for decades and I also wanted to think about climate forward presenting and with a couple different things in mind one is clearly the mobility of work across borders and understanding that any kind of international exchange can have a climate aspect or be dealt with in a climate friendly way but we are also encountering a very rich and powerful range of work that is about climate so there's the aspect of thematic content how artists are taking these stories to the stage in different performance disciplines and when we look at that in an international context or in a global context we're also able to tap into ways of working and epistemologies and ways of seeing climate issues and issues of ecological justice through the eyes outside of our own borders and so I would encourage presenters to think about not only how can we be presenting and doing international exchange in a much more sustainable and climate friendly way but also really seeking out artists that are making work that is about climate about environmental justice and this is a both end situation that Colleen just mentioned we have to do these two things simultaneously but I believe that these artists are also not only creating work that has this thematic focus but that they're doing so in ways that are taking into consideration the best approaches really applying these principles and structures to the logistics. Thank you Elizabeth we are so running short on time thank you brilliant Ron Barry can you take it from Elizabeth Hey everyone Ron Barry co-artistic director of Fusebox Festival in Austin, Texas traditional lands of the Tonkawa, Comanche and Lipan Apache I echo the very wonderful words of my colleagues I share so many of those sentiments I think this is a yes and a both moment I'm very excited about how this challenge of climate change can perhaps be also an act of community building it can be a call to build community working together not just on this issue in imagining together and sharing ideas but perhaps also as part of a new more collaborative way of working in general Colleen was referencing this as well that like I think this is an opportunity for us to all share our thinking and ideas when we're talking about projects and we're imagining tours so that aspect of this is really actually exciting and sort of ripples out across these different dimensions of how we work and want to be together I do think that there is something really powerful about renegotiating our relationship with time and thinking about longer deeper engagements as Colleen was referencing there I'm very excited about the digital I think it doesn't scare me like I think it is this is an opportunity this is a technology that lots of people are using every day and it feels like actually an opportunity to connect different artists and different ideas with different people in some new ways I also think it's a really exciting it's a venue it's fun to think about it as a venue with its own particular parameters and imagining new work for that is exciting but I also don't want to lose sight of our bodies in this there's so much knowledge and wisdom and histories in our bodies and so I do think that to say we're not going to to do more traveling the sharing of this work in person I just think we have to use our imaginations and figure out how to keep it going because there's so much power and wisdom and meaning in our bodies and we need to keep sharing that with each other I do wonder if there is a way to also facilitate some more perhaps collaborations between say a choreographer in Chile and setting that work on people in like Austin or another city and so perhaps there's a way of creating a different kind of exchange I know this is already happening in many instances but I think that's an exciting possibility and I also think that we should really this is a a large issue that's affecting so many people and so I also wonder if there's a way of sharing our work outside of our own sector as we're thinking about this topic and not only thinking about airline travel but also thinking about our own infrastructure our buildings the greening of our facilities how people are getting to and from the places where we're sharing our work also perhaps maybe some of the lowest hanging but maybe there's city partnerships maybe collectively working on this together allows us to get some additional resources to better drain our facilities those are some of the things that I Thank you Ron Thank you I'm keeping an eye on the clock we have 10 minutes and 3 more folks we want to hear from so I really appreciate all of you reflecting on these climate and sustainability issues really important we want to move into our critical and specific logistic challenges that we face Ichun can I start with you Hi everyone I'm Ichun Ye Vice President and Director of Sales from Sozo Artists from NYC and Land of the Nabe the biggest logistic hurdles are the usual suspects everybody talks about visa international airfare and sometimes freight with visa we have seen changes especially in the past four years making it from not so great to worse and perhaps even the worse situation that we have seen and that's something we all have to work together on the legislative level to overhaul some of the ridiculousness I would call and by the other items though I would urge our colleagues to share the responsibility it has been a practice here that artists coming to the states will have to pay out of pocket for visa and international airfare ahead of time and with many institutions and organizations not issuing deposit when cancellation happens artists and producers are left in a very dire situation which we saw a lot of horrific examples especially when this pandemic broke some may call it risk sharing but I would like to call it responsibility sharing and if your organization is actually in a position to take on even more responsibility then we can move this conversation from a matter of equality to equity another thing I have been thinking is perhaps less logistical and more about the cultural leadership position where the U.S. stands so as a manager producer who works with artists from abroad coming to the states and vice versa we all know that bringing an artist or a company here is a lot more heavy lifting but the artists still want to come here and we still wanting to bring great artists here for various reasons financial gain is of course but then the value of cultural experience and knowledge exchange have always played a big role and in my observation the traction for artists wanting to come here has been decreasing how are we going to entice artists to come to the states and what can we do to make touring in America a valuable and worthwhile experience that they would be willing to jump through the hurdles to come here this may not be an immediate issue but it will be something and it has been something I'm curious about and to see how we as a field can think together and react thank you so true thank you each and really appreciate that we've got Pam Tadji and Alicia Adams to offer their thoughts as well Pam I'm going to kick it to you first Alicia who opened the IPG session yesterday under the radar thanks so much everyone I'm Pam I'm the executive and artistic director here at Jacobs Pillow we are on the land of the Mohican, the Nipmuk, the Agawam and the Pekumtek and I'm just delighted to be in this room with all of you today and just second so much of what's gone on but I think what I want to comment on is just we can't sort of underestimate the toll of all the cancellations that happened in 2020 to give you an example one third of our programming here at Jacobs Pillow is international the longest running dance festival in the country and the largest and have a very high concentration of over 10 weeks of international voices so that people can really put their finger on the pulse of what's going on in the world so yes we have a lot of challenges and I just want to highlight I think ways that practices need to change that are very much embodied in the values that this group has embraced first this notion of transparency the only way we're going to logistically deal with the cost of visas and by the way if you haven't looked recently the premium processing fee has gone from 1,400 to 2,500 dollars per application which if you do the math it's going to make it really impossible and the only way this is going to succeed is number one transparency with the artists that we're negotiating with taking a page from the Creating New Futures platform of the need for transparency between artists and presenters to put those expenses out and clearly state what they are and as each one says whose responsibility is what expense and then really relying on partnership what we're doing right now what we should be doing in this time until it's safe to bring companies back is forge those partnerships find out what are the communities around this country that are like-minded that we want to bring an international artist to tour to and how might we frame those partnerships together in a proactive way and that means that we have to do fewer things to do them more deeply and do them probably over time with advance visits and forging relationships and I just think from a logistical point of view we have to be ready and the final thing I'll just mention that sort of harkens back to something that Christie said is this need to be advocates at this time for US-based artists we cannot underestimate our role and our need to maintain our colleagues our relationships with our international colleagues so that as you know it's they have not been looking at American artists for obvious reasons we're not safe to bring right now and so what can we do to forge and foster those relationships so that we can advocate for those artists over time not just in a year when we have a relationship with them but in the long term so I think I'll pause there and let Alicia take it away Thank you Pam Alicia it's all yours Thank you the most boring part right Kathy I'm Alicia Adams I'm the Vice President for International Programming and Dance at the Kennedy Center and I'm speaking to you from the unceded territories of the Piscataway the Pamunci and the Anacostin we have stepped into a very complex situation in terms of dealing with the logistics it is going to take a lot more time to figure out what we will need to do because there are no universal or uniform protocols from country to country from state to state and sometimes from city to city we don't yet know what we're going to have to to do exactly and what the path forward is there's this fluidity that's going to exist and I think that it means that there's going to be a lot more risks involved and particularly financial risk planes get canceled if they're quarantines how will we observe the quarantines, how do we share in that we're talking about building a network and working together deeper collaborations that will pose problems also because we are in different states in different countries that will allow for different things and maybe from certain people from one country are not allowed into this other country so we don't know when that will change we've been doing some talking about that earlier and vaccines what will be the requirement for vaccines in terms of entering the various countries everybody may not be vaccinated by the time we want to bring them so that's something that we will need to deal with and look at and do we provide vaccines for people coming here how do we manage that as Pam just said visas are going to well the visas will cost more in general so it's going to add to the budget and I'm just wondering and also we still may be dealing with socially socially distanced seating in our theaters and so that will mean that the financial aspect of this is going to be another issue we will have to plan for that and I'm just wondering in terms of looking at funding sources that we will look to funders as we advocate to provide or to help with these kinds of collaborations that will be deeper that will involve many more presenters that we will be doing fewer fewer things but there is just a lot of thinking that will need to go into this and I'm just wondering if you have any thoughts on this with the various countries it goes on it's crazy it's not easy and we know that and we have done this for many years but it is more crazy now and we are going to have to pay as much attention to this as we possibly can and to think about it but I am not sure I am sure that it will be a good idea Alisha we are out of time Kathy did you want to say something? I do want to say a couple things hold on to those Google docs that were dropped in the chat you can enter your thoughts it's important that you share them I'm sorry we didn't have time for dialogue there is going to be a continuation of this dialogue the HowlRound livestream was interrupted but it will be archived info on the HowlRound site. All of our speakers were incredible. We will try to capture everyone's info on paper and share it out as well. I appreciate all of you for attending and HowlRound and APAP and Sarah it's all yours. Thank you. End of the meeting. Thanks, guys.