 This is the last of these fishbowl tables. And before we end this whole process, I just want to do one embarrassing thing. And that is to say very specifically, thank you, Jamie Galoon, for making sure that we got everywhere we needed to be. That we were sitting where we needed to be sitting and that we knew what we were doing when we got there. So thank you very much. All right. So this is the last of these tables. And we have been listening for the better part of a day and a half now to this conversation. And I just want to encourage everyone on the listening circle to take their seats. And I'm going to call out Bill O'Brien because this is the NEA misbehaving on live stream. I can do that. Bill knows too much about me. So thank you for everybody. So we're going to very quickly go around. This table is all folks who are in the part of this conversation that is about the presentation of the work. And so we're going to go around. We're going to do our names, organizational affiliation, and then name a project that we're involved with, have been involved with that relates to the topic of these days. And for a couple of people here, there's not a project to be named. And that's part of the conversation that we'll be having. So and as we've done in the past, we'll do 45 minutes here at the table. And then we will move to the larger. And as you saw the last time, if some of the conversation hasn't surfaced fully here, we'll take it there. My goal is really, this is a huge area. And my goal is to get as many of the themes and discussion topics on the table as possible so that when we move to the larger group, we're looking at as much of the field of practice as we can. So thank you for bearing with me on that. So let's go ahead and start this direction this time. Great, I'm Madeline Bell. I am at the Flynn Center for the Performing Arts in Burlington, Vermont. And earlier this fall, we presented Access Dance Company and they did to go again by choreographed by Joe Good. Hi, I'm Ruth Walks. I'm the funding executive director of the Moss Art Center at Virginia Tech. And we did in 1415, we did a series of performances which included Healing Wars in the spring of 2015. Hi, I'm Rob Richter from Connecticut College in New London, Connecticut. And we have not engaged in a project in this area. Great. I'm Colleen Jennings-Rogensock, executive director of Arizona State University's Gammage. And of the many programs we've done, veterans holding it down a veteran's dreams project. Maurice DeKalb is actually here and we worked with VJ IR. Great, thank you. Hi, I'm Michael Reed from also ASU Gammage. I'm the director of programs. Carpetbag Theater and Speed killed my cousin this fall. We presented in residency and performance. Great. Carla Peterson, I'm director of the Maggie Allison National Center for Choreography which is in Florida State University in the dance department. But I also wanna say I was for 25 years basically in presenting. In spite of that, I'm gonna say I haven't been involved in a project like this. However, I inherited a really beautiful project which was Liz Lerman's Healing Wars. And I came in on the second of her, her second residency after three trips that she and her company made. Hi, I'm Ty Furman. I run the BU Arts Initiative out of the office of the provost at Boston University. And last spring, we had Theater Nogaku in residence and as a piece of that, we presented an original new piece in the style of a Japanese no warrior play written by one of our faculty members about her experience with her and her husband who was a fighter pilot. So, Claude Valentin, Ignite Arts, Dallas at Southern Methodist University School of the Arts. And the project, it's not a straight theater project or multi-disciplinary project, but it's an initiative called Community Innovation Lab. One of our members, we have 40 different members that are part of the lab. One of them is this organization called FARM which is Farmers Assisting Returning Military. But within that group, we have food producers, food policy people, artists, educators, and healthcare workers. So, I just wanna throw that level of intersectionality into the room. We'll come back to that. I'm Margaret Lawrence, the programming director at the Hopkins Center at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. And we've done a number of these projects, but the one I'm hoping to talk about is one where we're trying to have an ongoing institutionalized partnership. So, I'll just call it the Community Venture Initiative. Okay, great. Thank you for that. I wanna start in the, keeping with this earlier theme of vulnerability in the areas that we're not expert, I wanna start with both Rob and Carla. What you've heard so far in this conversation, what are the things that are resonating for you that draw you closer to wanting to engage the work and what are the things that challenge you most deeply as you think about it? I'll start. Yeah, I've had a desire to do some of this work. I saw an early version of Basetrack and was very engaged and very interested. I'm in a military community, a naval community. But I don't wanna do a one-off. I want to have some continuity within the community. We're a small program. We present a very diverse program. But it is me. It's me doing, you know, creating the engagement, choosing the artists, picking them up at the hotel. So, developing the marketing plan. So, that capacity to really engage that community and a variety of different communities in the way that I think it needs to be engaged and to have a continued continuity. It's just not okay that we did this this year and then 10 years later we come around to doing something else. That's, to me, a disservice to the community, to the work, to so many things. But I'm finding ways, and even when I was asked when Jane contacted me to come, I said, you know, all right, in what capacity? I'm a presenter. I'm an advisor to the National Theater Project. I'm on the board of the Regional Cultural Coalition and working with military communities in that way. And she said, well, all. I said, okay, just as long as I know how many hats to bring. And so, I'm beginning to see ways through our cultural coalition and contacts. I mean, somebody else on the board is with the Office of Military Affairs. So, I'm beginning to make those contacts. And so, it's been great to hear of various projects and techniques and things. And also, confirming for myself that the continuity is important. Okay, great. Carla? It's a couple of different reasons why I think I'm really interested somehow figuring out a way to engage in this work, although I don't know how. Because I'm not a presenter. I am someone who supports the development of work. But a couple of things. One is that I've been in the field for a long time. History changed, politically, socially, culturally, et cetera, et cetera. But just in terms of being here now and what is happening in this country, and it's not the only good reason why one should engage with this. But it is, and I know we're always talking about this, this is not, what we're doing here is not political, but it is political for me. And that is that while this is going on, in addition to making your phone calls, we can get around to your Congressperson. What is it that you can do in the field in which you work in terms of art and the making of art and bringing art and audiences somehow or another together in meaningful ways? This seems like an absolute necessity to get connected to. And also because being in the field for a long time, I've, you know, it's a gift to work in this field. And I have had such an opportunity to engage in so many different kinds of things. But not this. I've never been in a room like this. Sorry, I know we're not supposed to be out and I did it again. But I've never, ever been in a room like this. And I'm trying to kind of wreck my brains. Have I ever actually sat and had a meaningful conversation with a vet? I don't think I have. And that's, I'm not saying that proudly. I'm just saying it's not been part of my universe. And it seems that it is now, that is the thing that I need to do. In terms of, in terms of how to do it, again, I'm not a presenter. I completely got to underscore what you're just saying in terms of the things that I've been hearing and also knowing other kinds of sort of community engagement kind of work. It really is a very time, the capacity is about time. It's about building trust. You cannot just go in and out. And how to do that while still maintaining the work that I'm supposed to be doing. You know, the reason why I got hired supposedly, you know, for the position that I'm running. So, it has to do with that. But I also want to say that maybe there's a way of kind of flipping that. And that is I do have a resource. And that I think in the way that Jennifer Callian is my predecessor, worked with Liz Lerman in identifying how to bring members of the community and vets into, and other, and family members into the process. And having Liz come for a site visit and she can talk about all of this, of course, in much more detail and more accurately than I can. But then having two more residencies so there was real time to be, you know, in that community for a while, as opposed to somebody coming in and out. And that is something I think I can do. Great. Kai, did you have a response to that? Well, I wanted to answer that question too because, you know, we were a young center. We're two years old and we don't have a long history of presenting, right? And I think when I came in, I had a series of themes that I wanted to tackle. Food being one of them, which is why this project is coming to fruition. You know, the military was not one of them. And I think that was for a lot of reasons. You know, we touched upon some of those earlier today, the conflicting nature of even, you know, our anthem. And at the same time that we began to relocate to Dallas, Texas, you know, the closest I have to a son who's my young brother-in-law, we helped to raise him, you know, instead of going to college, he decided he was gonna enlist in the military. And we became a military family. We were at his first leave when he was in training camp for Thanksgiving and had a Thanksgiving dinner. We flew the family down for graduation from training camp. We made sure we attended his re-enlistment ceremony. So we are invested because he is our son, our brother, and we love him, and we want him to know he's not alone in the decision he made. So it's deeply personal to me. So I'm grateful to be in this space, but it's the way I know how to make work, it is not a one-off to your point, right? So I'm here listening and learning and thinking deeply about what that sustained engagement looks like, because that's the only way I know how to make a commitment. Yeah, great. Can I ask you, Colleen or Michael, both of you to comment? One of the, I'm sorry, Ruth will come back. I wanted to just pull a little bit, what are the core competencies? You guys have a very long history over many projects in this work. What are the core competencies that you have had to develop, both personally and in your staff, to be able to create the kinds of authenticity in the work that Rob and Carla are talking about being a first hurdle? What are some of those elements of confidence? I think one of the things that goes back to the organization's 52 years old, I've been its executive director for 24 of those 52 years. Over that time, the staff collectively discussed and developed our mission. Our mission is connecting communities. And then we identified those missions, those communities, and stayed true to them. I'm a military brat. Of course, the military was going to be one of those. We live in a state where there are many military bases, National Guard, Air Force, et cetera. But the core competency was understanding the work that we do is connected back to a community. That those communities are not monolithic. So they must connect to a multiplicity of communities. So we are connected to the Latino communities. We're connected to the African American communities. We're connected to Jewish communities. All those communities are represented in the military. So that was important. The other thing that was really critical is return on investment. We had to redefine what that means. We are a large organization. We are a $19 million organization. We get no support from the university or the state. We make it, we raise it, we earn it. So then we had to say, what is the return on investment in doing this work? And I think it was stated earlier, it's not the return on investment isn't dollars or having butts in seats. I hate to be crude, butt in seats. But it is about creating partnerships, sustaining partnerships. It is about addressing issues that have concern over a broad group of communities. Those are our return on investments that we look at. So we don't look at the dollars. We don't look at this. We do have to look at how we pay for it. And so in those partnerships, and it's something Annie and just brought up about, you know, what are those guides of going to? We found that we had partners in the military. The US Army Foundation supports our work as do the blue star moms. Senator John McCain and Cindy McCain, Mrs. McCain are not only active supporters of our work, they financially support our work. We found the Arizona Lottery. We are the only cultural organization that they have given multiple years of funding to for this work in particular. So you can develop partnerships. We went out, I went out to Luke Air Force Base to meet with the general and just talk about what we hope to do over a long period of time. You know, and like with any partners, there was skepticism, but we just kept doing it. And I'd like to ask Michael, would he like to add something? Core competencies. So I've been in the organization 22 years from a very structured background on the arts as a classical ballet dancer. So what I've seen that has been successful over the years is the consistency is also in the case of, I'll go directly to speed kill my cousin and carpet bag. We had already done two years prior military based theater projects or multimedia projects with base track and holding it down. But we'd also had for at least 15 years really solid ongoing programs to support military families to come to our theater. So not at all the same type of interaction with military but very important relationships that were already there. So a real trust. What kind of programs, Michael, could you describe the programs in a little detail? This is an interesting one. About 10 years ago we started from the Broadway League. They started a program that they funded in the beginning across the country. That's the League of Broadway Producers. It's like a professional association of theaters and producers of Broadway work. And it was Family First Nights was the name of the program. Well, we were the only partner that decided we're calling it Military Family First Nights. So we focused on all those military partnerships that Colleen had spoken of with Luke and others, Arizona Army National Guard is another really important one. And that's who we came upon the National Guard because those families were not trained to be Marines. They were trained to help in national disasters or floods and then all of a sudden they're doing three tours of duty in Iraq. So those families, we felt there was a structure in place. We had a good partnership from them coming to other shows on an ongoing basis. So that was one of the first ongoing programs still going. We've had a probably 20 year program with VetTix. So VetTix is a national organization that very well in a very organized way gives tickets to veterans and veterans' families. So calling on those partnerships when I was in early, early conversations with Linda and some of our campus partners like the Tillman Center, the Pat Tillman Center on campus were key because knowing what you don't know, even though we had done these other military themed projects, carpet bag was interested in having very real interaction with PTSD vets and I knew that, okay, I need to go talk to some of these vets on campus and see what their take was and do they want to be involved in this or not? Do they want to see a theater piece like this or not? So I did that listening tour, talked with our partners, early conversations with Linda and Andrea. All of that helped us form the most respectful and impactful approach to creating the residency. Okay, yeah, great, thank you. Margaret? So we've done several of these large projects and actually out of an older three year programming initiative that was part of Creative Campus called Class Divide, we had developed an ongoing relationship with military in a more institutional way, so we've really been trying to grow that and now through I guess another version of that initiative that we hope will be permanent. We're in a really small rural community, our town is 10,000 people, we're surrounded by just very small villages so we don't have most of those large organizations, what we do have is the VA and then we have a very small undergraduate Veterans Association on campus, maybe like 25 students. So our relationship is primarily with the VA and this is a way to make us more accessible to them and I guess the competencies would really mostly be kind of learning points for us about that way of working rather than, and I don't mean that what you guard, I don't think this is what anybody's mentioned so far but sometimes organizations provide tickets to things that they know are not gonna, kind of the dogs, right? Nobody has here has said that but rather than do that we actually establish a bank account for the VA that they can spend on anything, they can spend it on Yo-Yo Ma, they can spend it on anything and we work with them at the beginning of the year to do that. What we've really learned by partnering with them is that I guess several points, one is obviously has been said before the veterans are not monolithic at all. Many have traveled internationally, some have never been anywhere, some have never been on a plane, some many have never been on a campus so it's really to take that risk of coming outside their comfort level. The VA is very bureaucratic and things that seem like a priority to us may be superseded by much more important priorities for them so it really does take patience and for us to understand that process. Some of our biggest successes have been moments when we have something that we can bring to them physically, something like combat paper project where people can actually get their hands on something, have some result that they can point to that comes out of it. They especially like when there's moments of very clear instructions so the recording at the beginning of the show about what to do, the veterans love it because it's clear. It's like here's the instructions and then something that I was talking about earlier that's a challenge we can come back to is that they do not see this as a charity and having dedicated a career to service they really are now starting to ask how they can give back to us and we're challenged by this because we've never been asked that before so it's very interesting. Yeah and I was gonna follow up similar I think to what Clyde was saying is we're a fairly new presenting organization. We opened in the fall of 2013 and we actually are just establishing some consistency in developing work around veterans around those in the military service. Virginia Tech has a military history and background. We have a core of cadets on our campus or a thousand students who are in our core. About 75% of those will go on to active duty service. So that's an element there. When I think about Liz Lerman and the Healing Wars actually Liz first came to our campus before our new art center was open and it was really in the context of science and research because we have a phenomenal of the Virginia Tech Chirilean Research Institute so we have these amazing brain researchers and so that was our initial conversation and the reason we brought Liz in was to meet with the faculty and the researchers there and I think that one of the keys and then of course it grew and developed we have an amazing Center for Civil War Studies. We've got the core, we've got this military history so we found a lot of different layers but as I have been sitting here now for two days trying to figure out what is our intention? What is our motivation if we're gonna pursue this? I don't think it can be just singularly we want to be working in specifically with veterans or in the military service. I think it needs to intersect with these other areas and it might be with the health sciences, it might be with creative technologies and different ways that artists are working to bring this kind of work forward but as I'm trying to sort of process all of this here I think that's gonna be essential for our university we can't afford, because of the capacity issues we can't afford to have one staff person who's really focused on this for three years and just this. We've got community engagement happening on a lot of different levels and we need to pay attention to those different levels. Yeah, I wanna pick up on the knowing what you don't know and ask you to go a little bit further. First of all, how do you know what you don't know? And then if you have an idea about that what do you need, what gaps are there in your capacity to actually pursue this fully? Can you identify just some, like as you look at it what would be your gaps at this point? I'm gonna come to you guys about that. As I said, I think we need to seriously, we meaning myself, my staff, ourselves as a presenting organization what are we trying to accomplish with this? And that's another part of this whole conversation is who is the audience? There are those who participate and we had some outstanding student veterans who also participated with Liz and interviews. I mean, just compelling evening that we all spent together. That's one aspect, but there's this larger audience and with both Healing Moors and we also presented Bass Track and had some really great engagement around that. And again, as we've heard, the audience is however the sort of general public coming into this work it was much more difficult. And where did those engagements take place with Bass Track? Were they as part of the performances? Were they on the way leading up to the performances? We did a workshop the night before a performance with a group who signed up. During the period of residency that included performance. We were doing some advanced work with, we have a terrific group of faculty who work on a veterans and society conference. So we just have all these sort of elements and people we connected with. So I felt like there was a small group that was very engaged in all of these projects and benefited. But then there was that larger public. You know, and it's the same public, I have to say, who go to the football game and it's Veterans Appreciation Game Day and we've got the camouflage jerseys on and everybody's hurrah, but they won't come to see a theater piece that's about the Marines experience or they won't come and see something historical. And I think it's one of the things that, you asked about core competencies, David, a lot of those we learned on the way and then where we hit a wall and felt like we were in territory we didn't know, we actually went to the Pat Tillman Center and we hired one of their best people away to come and work with us on this, but on other things as well. And the Pat Tillman Center is? Is the Veterans Center at Arizona State University. We have the largest ROTC in the country. We ranked the number one most military friendly and then it's a center for returning vets and it's such an important center that we are actually involved in moving the center to we're redoing our state, we're putting $300 million into the football stadium, but in that process we're gonna turn it into a 365 day a year facility and we wanted the vets to be upfront and center, we're gonna have playgrounds so their families could come and that's their welcome to the university as opposed to trying to find their way in that large city we're in. But the other thing I wanted to say is that we looked at those kinds of partners who go to football games and actually our athletic director Ray Anderson who's amazing, I absolutely love him. We sat down one day and we were talking and he said, you know, I wanna have something called a senior experience and I wanna have every athlete who's a senior and we have like thousands of them graduate, not graduate without having a strong cultural experience. And so as we taught about that, we said, well, what should their first experience be? And it was Black Angels over Tuskegee and it was the story of the Tuskegee Airmen and he said, because it's about leadership, it's about gutting it out, it's about teamwork, it's about all of these things. One of the things that was interested, the captain of the basketball team stood up, the women's basketball team and said, she's an African-American woman. I don't know who the Tuskegee Airmen were. I'd never been in the theater before. This was the most important experience of my four years here. And so we knew that that's a group to engage because yes, they're there for veterans. So how do we get them into the theater? And now we're actually gonna bring through Pat Tillman the work to them in the stadium. As you tie and Madeline, as you look at your own interest in the work and your own history with the work, what are the gaps for you that you see that you've heard about today that there might be, that might be resonating for you about ways to fill them. What struggles do you have? What challenges do you have? Sure, yeah. So I think I've been looking around and one thing I realized is we're the only standalone presenter, not based at an Institute of Higher Education. And I think that has been a little bit of a gap in capacity for us, most definitely. I think we've had to engage the university in different ways. We actually did Black Angels over Tuskegee as well. And the way that came to us was not through veterans and the military community, but through multicultural affairs and diversity at the University of Vermont at UBM. And so that was a way that we were able to then invite the Vermont National Guard and their families to Black Angels. And so we sort of got that multiplicity. We got the multiplicity with the veteran community, the military community, the UBM students and professors and connected it to curriculum. So we're making up for those gaps in capacity by coming in from a different angle. I think also we've talked a lot about process versus product. And it's hard for a lot of us here, I think, to think of where we're trained to think about product, about the end show and the end number of tickets you're selling. And so really trying to, from an internal standpoint, change that in our own organizations, focusing on the process, the artwork, or letting other people in your organization know and that the process is also the product. I think, for me, is a gap that we're trying to fill definitely. One of the things I want to acknowledge, sort of similar to what our differences is, I am not a presenting center. I'm an academic unit as part of the Office of the Provost. So I don't have to fill a season. I get to do one really big project as best we can with the resources that we have. And I don't have to sell tickets. So the vast majority of what's right. So I know, I have a lot of freedom that way. Part of what that has done is obviously given us a lot of freedom in what we've done, doing things free and open to the public and partnering. But there's so few. So I do want a semester that I am trying to meet the needs of faculty across the university. So we had a fantastic experience through NIFA and Margaret with the Now Project three years ago. But we can't justify bringing them back because I have to move on to do dance or film or so this is like time to develop the relationship. Well, not only that, but the continuity. As we're saying, and we're hearing all the time here, it's not a one-off. It's not a hit and run kind of thing. And yet in the course of our work, there are choices that have to be made about how many different touches there are. And that's a trade-off that we're talking about. I have another question, and maybe this has come up in your work, or maybe it hasn't yet. But in terms of some of the stuff that you've heard in the room the last couple of days about the risks around trauma, the sense of the cultural differences, all of those risks that we've identified, in particular, and we'll hear from you guys really. Let's hear some of the learnings that you've had as well. How are you currently positioned to take responsibility for those risks? And what are your sense of competence there? Yeah, you want to jump in? Can I just jump in in terms of something I've been thinking about in terms of the cultural differences? And we're not dealing with the risk for our audiences yet. But across the street from us is the US Coast Guard Academy. And I would love to have the cadets come. And early on, we had a performance. I think it was Gilbert and Sullivan early in my years there. And two cadets came to the box office, and they didn't have enough cash with them, or something like that. And I chased them. And I said, no, no, come in. I'll let you in. I'll give you free tickets. I have the capacity to give you free tickets. And they wouldn't do it. And I think it was a cultural thing. And we are the liberal arts college on the hill. And when we were in all women's college, there was a lot more mixing between the cadets and the women. But that doesn't happen anymore. And so there is that cultural barrier. And along, I mean, then my other experience with the military community coming to our events was this was one of my first years at the college. And we had the Eroica trio, piano trio, classical, great musicians, beautiful women, with great photographs. Our audience was more than 50% single men from the submarine base. And so let me ask you, Robert. So these cultural differences, and I want to get deeper. But I'll take it a little bit. I'll take it one more step then with you. What? Why does it matter if they come to your theater? To me, it matters because they're an important part of our community. They are part of our community. And this actually also gets at some time in my hesitation. Because am I just wanting to do this because this is au courant? Or, you know, and these are, you know. And I don't know. That isn't for me. My choice for drama or comedy, I go to drama. I've done a lot of work in the prison systems and working with female inmates and male inmates. And they wanted to do the heavy drama that I wanted to do. And so these are stories that are part of our community. And I want to expose our student community to this community. I want to diversify their experience. And that's just part of me. I mean, I've always been a... Go ahead. What I was going to say that you're kind of touching on kind of the approach for some of this material that can be sensitive. And I, again, I see this on the same spectrum and trajectory as work that we're doing with non-veteran communities. And you and I were just together in an international theater project where as a campus-based presenter, I'm still meeting with students who have feelings about some possible triggers with some very challenging theater work we did in January. So I don't see these as all that different in terms of the care and the time and the thought that needs to go into not just telling somebody about what we think they might want to come to and trying to take care of them in terms of triggers they might have, but helping them understand what we have and then allowing them to choose what they may want to see. And one of the big revelations for my educational staff with the VA was that they didn't just want to come see reentry, although they did, but they didn't just want to. They wanted to see African drumming because they had never seen it. Some of them had traveled in Europe and really wanted to see classical music. So again, like getting away from this monolithic, but also remembering the time and the thought that needs to go into helping people understand what it is that we're inviting them to. And David, can I just make a little follow-up on that? Because one of the things Michael alluded to the other programs we do. In addition to Military Family Night, we do Operation Date Night and we do Heroes Night. So with Heroes Night, we honored the World War II veterans, the Code Talkers. We honored the dog that found Bin Laden, the MWD servicemen and women who work with military working dogs. And we say there are things that you, we have a rule and it's a three-question rule. What do you want, what do I want, and what do we want together? And so whether it's with our veterans' partners, our artists, any other communities we work with, we say what do you want, what do I want, and then what do we want together? And we work on that sweet spot. And some of the things are mutually together and some of the things are different. And just as, yes, they loved coming to see Maurice DeKalb and B.J. Iyer in holding it down, but they also loved coming to see White Christmas. It was a big night. We had 300 families there. And it was a Broadway show and it was a big ticket item. So it is about not treating the group monolithic. It is about the notion of communities and it is about cross communities and making sure there is integration. We've heard a lot about kind of the, there's been a kind of sense of care, careful, being careful about the work, about the audiences, about the veterans that you're inviting into process. And how are you careful? And how are you not, in a way? Like how far is that over the overboard for you? Or what's your sense of that? This is a good segue onto what we were just talking about with Margaret and Colleen were talking about. So 18 years ago, we started a program in Australia, Jail for Women, and it's still going with local artists, with Pat Groening. It was called Keeping the Faith Then and now it's been journey home for 17 years. That was the first step for me in the organization where I knew I was way out of my depth as far as what do I know about this culture? Zilch, so let me talk to people who really do, let me work with an artist who really does, Pat. And let's find artists that have the capabilities and are passionate. So that happened, luckily through Pat's great guidance and coming across the right personnel at Australia, which is by the way, is a Sheriff Joe Arpaio, Joe. At the time. He's no longer our Sheriff. Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who was very infamous. Sheriff Joe's Joe. At the time, yeah. So Pat wanted absolutely to be in one of his facilities. We found the right person to do it. So the point is that was this jumping off point for one to know, to be really smart about their approach, careful is another word for it, but we also did a piece with John B, a company from Senegal, a dance company about Rwanda genocide. And we have Rwandan refugees in West Phoenix and they became a part of that whole residency carefully. So I think really it's having the advanced conversations, letting the artist lead you, like Linda and Carpetbag led us on what they wanted to do because they had the experience doing it and we had people on campus who had the experience working with PTSD veterans. So I guess it's going on an investigating tour early, finding out what your community and your constituents from those particular communities, if it's a really sensitive situation, what those many different opinions are and how to approach respecting all those opinions while still programming residency that's impactful. So that can be tricky and it's never perfect, that's for sure. I have a couple more themes I want to get out before we break off the table. One, Margaret, you raised it, but anybody, please jump in. You talked about your interest in this work as something that has a kind of a different dimension for measuring quality or measuring, you have a different expectation of it and someone else had said earlier that the art needs to be valid as art as well as valid in service of whatever the goal was in this work. And I wondered how you all are feeling. I'm sure there's a range of opinions. I don't want there to be a consensus. I hope there's not just a yes or no question, but this question of when you're doing this particular work, not just any work, but this particular work, what are the goals of art qua art and what are the goals of impact and which is leading or are they in the sort of Liz? Wow, Liz, we're really pulling on you today, all day. And that image that she gave us. Let's talk about quality. I love our Carla's face. Make Carla talk. Make Carla talk. I'm sorry, I can't even get to that. Sorry, I'll get you there for sure. Sorry, Carla. It was written on your face. That's a really hard one. No, that is something that we have to grapple, I mean as presenters, we have to grapple with all the time. And if we're not grappling with it and we're not bringing people into the conversation with us that are challenging how we are making our kind of decision about what's quality and what's not, then there is no, I would just say sort of personal and professional growth in terms of how we are serving, whatever it is that we're serving based on our mission. So I'm not trying to get around the question, but it's a question that I still find a difficult one. Is quality a fixed point for you? Does it change based on the forms or based on the project? It's within context of what the project is, yeah. And who's defining it for you? What the goals are, what the aims are, and where, what the journey is gonna be and what's happening along the journey. And in your, coming again to the people who have experience in this, with artists working in this field and with communities in this field, are you finding, what's the conversation about quality there? Both with the artists and then also with the communities. I feel very strongly that we present quality art. Doesn't go on our stages unless it is. And I feel very strongly about the artists that we've worked in this process are exquisite artists, artists that we would dedicate time and resources to. Artists that often maybe don't have the resources they need and we try to figure out a way to give them more resources so that you see it's never important for us to have the premiere. We like what we did with BassTrack, we could have, you just come here and you spend as much time as you need to get it right. And that's important to us, but this is art. And I am very, very, I am serious about this. And how do you know what is art? Heart, head, gut. Thank you. I sort of start by approaching something again because I were educational first from sort of the three legs of a high-red stool which is teaching research and service to the community. And we've had projects that I have not always felt were exceptional, but there was a lot of learning that happened. And again, I have that privilege of not worrying about selling the seats, but still worrying about filling the house. So I don't need the money, but I want people to experience it. So it's a hard line I think for me. I think the one that I mentioned which was English language, no theater. We presented one traditional piece in English and then one newly developed piece in the style of and we had no clue how that was gonna go. Thankfully it was received really well. In particular it was received really well from the academic community to say this is a place we should be exploring. And why were you exploring there? One of the ways that I bring projects in is because the faculty bring it to me and that was essentially what happened. I had a faculty member who said, oh, I saw what you did with the Nile project. We like that model. I have this company I'd like you to work with. And the company was international and well-respected and had a reputation, but it's not a reputation necessarily of the touring circuit that you would find at APAP. Really quickly I know we're gonna get into a bigger conversation. I'm really hoping Chris Dwyer is still here cause I know she's working on something that relates to aesthetics. That's all. And then the earlier comment that came up and anybody take this please about our tendency to run towards the drama, run toward the drama, run toward the fix it so that was described as something that artists are drawn to. And let's remember that we're delegates from a much larger field of practice. We're not talking only about ourselves or to ourselves but what's your response as a presenter to that prompt? That's a provocative statement. Echoed a couple of times. And if I'm catching, I loved the idea, the statement earlier that those who are veterans have this advantage on understanding the human condition. And I think when I think about us doing this work and my desire to bring those parts of our community who don't have any connection to veterans or to the military service, to bring that audience in so they can get a glimpse and understand more fully, that's what I really want. Yes, to have veterans in the audience is great. To have our core cadets. But it's the great wash of people out there who are not connected to this. So I mean I loved flipping it that way and thinking that these are people who are actually advantaged in our community in the same way we approach international artists and those who have different kinds of global connections or different diversity understanding that they bring to the table, I think it's the same thing. So I love that flipping of the idea. Yeah, I think it's recognizing and appreciating multiple forms of value in terms of what people bring to the table. So the way vets have a certain perspective that we can all learn from, that could be true for someone from Southern Dallas who was in a food desert, who was born and raised in a city and knows the transportation system better than someone of a different sort of privilege. So I think part of what we try to do is foster spaces where that learning can happen, that mutuality can happen. And to the trauma question what we kind of lean towards, for me it's gotta be a combination of things. So I think it's always, can we strike a balance? It's good to be able to empathize and it's also great to feel joy. I love that quote from the re-entry piece, the difference between happiness and joy and being joyful. So I think we try to introduce that to the spaces and the moments that we help create as well. And Susan Fader asked a question earlier that I want you guys to just respond to and then we'll break. But it was a question about what's needed. And I'm trying to get at that a little bit here as to what, from your perspective, you guys are kind of stewards of the infrastructure that a lot of this is relying on. And we hear it needs to be over time, it can't be a one-off, our staff is thin, we're focused on the engagement. What are some things that if you could wave a wand, you would fix? And money is maybe a mechanism, but what is it fixing if it's money? What are just a couple of things, they don't have to be deeply thought through, but just on the top of mind, what is it that is needed? What's missing? Just really quickly, we were talking about the value of those intermediaries, the people like art. And I think if I could have like six mentorship sessions with somebody like that who would zoom into my community, help me think things through, maybe accompany me to some meetings that they could broker that I couldn't myself over several years, maybe not six a year, maybe there's three a year. But where there's a trajectory where there's maybe a three year commitment where I get that with a clear goal coming from me about where I wanna go from where I am right now. Yeah, interesting. I mean, and it's just building on that. I mean, it's sort of a culturally intermediary. I mean, it's a, I'm entering in a world that I'm not familiar with, you know, and I'm not familiar with my Latino community. And it's that same somebody who has that cultural competency, yeah, thanks. Madison had that contribution about the lexicon. Did that strike you as something that you would like to have access to and continue to build out? Other things like that? I mean, sort of taking under that, I just feel like it would be great to have kind of multiple kinds of discourses that are occurring around a particular project. So that could be, that could be, you know, verbal, that could be panels, that could be, I mean, that's kind of standard things, but also articulation in writing, things that start to get out in multiple places as opposed to the focus entirely in that one space. And David, I would like to take it deeper. I think that those of us associated with the academy, our students in fine arts departments and art and institute and design departments are learning how to do take our places, but they're not learning the depth of what it's going to take and learning how to do these kinds of things. And I would like to see a different kind of learning process happen there. For whom? For the young people who are going to graduate, come out, become presenters. Present, okay, people headed into this part of the work. Specifically into this part of the field to really learn. And so it becomes a part of their core curriculum and they get it and they understand it and we will have less on-the-job training at all of this one. I think one of the things I appreciate about working on Now Project was the time and the effort that was given to us sharing resources throughout New England about what are you doing for educational, what experts are you bringing in? And so, I mean it would be wonderful if we had that opportunity to do something like that for every project that we do. Cause I know it's not the case. Great, and Clyde, take your comment and let's move out and you keep going with your comment. Let's move back out and pull other people in. You know, a toolkit may be on methods of collaboration, several case studies of things that work and don't work. So you don't repeat the same mistakes that others have made. I know we've done that with our students. We started a fellowship program. We're introducing a minor into our curriculum around engagement so that they can do that work while they're still undergraduates. But you know, being in Dallas, a lot of this is like brand new for people. You know, our large institutions and our local philanthropic base and it's hard. There's a whole lot of education and I'm like one person. Yeah, okay. So the outer circle, what are you hearing that you wanna pick up on? What offers do you wanna make to this particular part of the conversation? Anybody have a? Yes, hi. Yes, there we go. Hi, I'm Adrienne Jefferson, Connecticut Office of the Arts. But I'm actually going to come at this from a perspective of the work I used to do. So I used to be the Executive Director of the Writers Block Inc., which ignites social change on the page and the stage for young people, primarily young people of color, ages 10 through 17. And what they would do is choose subjects and topics that they felt were relevant to them about social change issues that they wanted to put on. The stage, never did I ever hear them talk about military, veterans, or PTS. They don't know about that. So there is a disconnect. And it's interesting to me that, so I wrote some notes down, but it's interesting to me that there is a disconnect, but there is, and the reason is, because in certain black communities, you're taught that the military is bad. And it's bad because you're already underrepresented in America. So why would I go fight a war or why would I go do service when America is not doing justice or service to me? And so this is the mentality of some black communities. But what I think would be interesting, because I'm still on the board of directors and I still, for the Writers Block, and I still work with these kids, is to maybe push them in the direction of looking at it from commonality. So you think about Chicago, right? Shiraq. They call it Shiraq because they compare it to the things that are going on in Iraq with the daily deaths of young black men. You think about even reform when you go into prisons and you come out, they want to go back in. That compares to people who come from Iraq or war and they want to go back. So there's something there, there's some kind of connection that I just wanted to bring to this group to have us think about that. So when we're talking about engagement or arts presenting, how can we connect to young people to get them to understand the issues but also understand there's not much of a difference? Yeah, good. Marty, you have a mic over there. This is so extraordinary. It tired me out, which is hard to do. But it's so extraordinary and I thought two quick things and then what I was gonna say, but just I wanted to thank everybody for this gathering, for what everyone's done, but also for you and Carl and everyone who's organized it. It helps, obviously, to choose a deeply meaningful area to start with. But I hope this is some sign of what we as a community are building capacity to do with our time because we're sure gonna need it. I realized all these parallels between this production, the show I did called City Water Tunnel Number Three, years ago between reaching out to the Sandhog, the miners community and the Department of Environmental Protection Workers in New York City's municipal force and talk about a very structured, disengaged, you know, from they didn't, there was no way they were coming to DTW for, you know, let me list the ways. Dance Theater Workshop for the three of you. Thank you, Dance Theater Workshop in Chelsea, in New York City, you know, off, whatever. So I knew early on, I mean the show was in large part for them and so how do I do that? And so I got, and without really a lot of support at the top, I mean, you can't convince municipal bosses to give their workers time. So whatever's gonna happen is going to be on the lunch break and the same with the construction people. You're just not gonna get it. And so that was in the hog house, you know, when they were above ground before they went down. It's a trailer on site. So I went around to the sites and did tiny excerpts and let that be its own thing, which a lot of the groups who've been showing their work have figured out to do. And then in the lunch hour and the DEP, you know, you've got like 300 people eating lunch, how do you figure that out? But a bad effort is better than no effort or a failed effort. And then we designed a video with the help of Mary Ellen Strom, a video because these workers had worked their entire lives designing the tunnel and being secretaries and engineers and civic engineers and assistants. And they'd never been there. And so we took this incredible footage of the tunnel and built a thing you looked through, positioned it very strategically where they were out of sight of the boss's offices and designed this wonderful thing with Tony Givinetti's help where you started it and stopped it. It only ran if you put your hand on a cut out of a hand and it stopped instantly so that if someone showed up on the hall that you knew, what are you doing looking at a video right at work? But then the thing I wanted to offer to everybody is they still weren't gonna come. So that was that and that was that. But the first opening night of the show was a benefit for the 25 minors who had died by that point. It started in 1970 and this was 96. And so what do you have in a culture when I was working with the police? The police is a partner structure so they were partnered one on one with a poet, that buddy system, right? And this was a benefit to raise money which they had no memorial, they had no recognition of these folks. And charging a set of $20, it was $100 a ticket. And they came and then they could talk at work about it. So then they could tell their families to come. So just figuring out what's the culture, what the opportunities, what's missing and how can we make that work for the better of the whole. Yeah, I have a question for the group and get a mic here too but let's see if anybody wants to first respond to that question. We have gotten into the habit now, this afternoon, of talking about, oh, it's not that different. And it's like working with ethnic, at least specific communities or it's like working with X, Y, or Z other community. And for some of the military professionals in the room, is it different? Do you, when you hear that equivalency, is that scary in terms of the way we might be approaching the workers? Oh, it's not that different. We're just, it's like what we did before. You wanna say something, Bill? Yeah, good. Where's it? Good, and then, I just wanna make sure. So I had this conversation with a number of people and I think you're asking something that sort of, we've knotted heads on an individual conversation so I thought I'd just bring it forward here. As I mentioned earlier, I was ensconced very much in this our room, the theater making room for 15, 20 years. And then the last five years I've very much kind of left that room and when I turn around and hear what we sound like, I was surprised in some ways at how it feels a little bit alien more than I expected. And it's almost like I went back to my Iowa roots or something. And I think that's where it might be, it's almost like the sound of your own voice doesn't, you don't recognize, you know, when you hear it on a recording. I think it's just, it really gets back to the same kinds of things that we were talking about earlier in terms of allowing people with very different backgrounds, belief systems, political ideologies to be welcomed into a conversation that needs us to be able to speak each other's language a little bit and meet in the middle. Because it can sound a little, I don't know, the lack of better, one thing I've heard from a military friend who's been here, a little airy. You know, it's very theoretical and it's very, we get it and we've been like, we've been thinking and slugging away at these intellectual concepts around performance. But it really sounds foreign to somebody who's never been there. And when we're inviting them into a conversation where we say we wanna have the conversation, here's how we talk. And you know, how do you, how can we get you to talk like us? You know, it's a little more complicated than that I think. Yeah, you have, did you get the mic? You didn't get the mic. Yeah, so I wanna, I'm sorry, Chris has it, okay. You probably shouldn't talk about aesthetics after five o'clock, especially after what you just said. But picking up on what Margaret said, Andrea and I and a group of people have been involved for the last five, six years in a group of projects that are at the intersection of art and social justice. And so in the social justice frame, finally kind of getting to the point where, you know, many of the artists in that group were very upset about this issue of aesthetics and how the aesthetics that they thought they were bringing to their work were being thought of as within the art community, lack of rigor, right? So this notion of that somehow social justice arts projects were needed to be thought of by a different standard instead of being thought of as high quality, plus more. So we kind of took on defining, well, what is that plus more? And we have, it's in press, worked with many of the kinds of qualities that I think people have talked about here, but I think they would need to be, I think there are more that you would add from this conversation, and I think you would rejigger the language to frame this conversation. But some of those qualities are things like disruption, like risk taking, like what we labeled porosity which is, you know, many different ways into a work instead of kind of a narrative typical way. We tried to do something that would be applicable across art forms. And we tried to have it not be thought of as a quality in the way you think of as standard, but qualities that you might pick up on as an artist and articulate and want to be, quote, judged and judge yourself by those qualities. So I just finished the part of this that's designed for funders, which is with funders to really have people in panel processes and looking at funding be thinking differently about the qualities, the kind of the, what would you look at within the canon of that work, so you'd still have the quality that would go along with a dance form, but then you'd look at these other things too and you'd value them in, you might, depending on, you know, what the context is, you might privilege those more. And many of those qualities are about the process of making the work as well as the product. In fact, really more of them are about the process. And many of those qualities have both a process and a product element to it. So this notion of aesthetics, we spent a lot of time talking about whether you would use that word or not, but we decided that we did want to claim it in this context because they do think there is sort of an aesthetics that has come up many times in these conversations about what qualities should be associated with the work without trying to make it too standard. And, you know, it'll be interesting to see we can talk more about tomorrow what some of those qualities might be. You know, some of them are similar to what we've packed into the social justice, but I think some of them take on a different flavor. I've got a microphone back here I'm gonna use. Yeah, that's all right. That's all right, that's all right, that's good. I, yeah, I'm gonna just take a little bit of a risk as somebody who's been listening a lot this afternoon. And just to your question, David, about this thing about, is this like working in other communities? Is this a similar kind of thing? And Hollerown does a lot of these convening. So I've actually sat in a lot of these convenings. And the tenor of this feels different to me. And so I've been trying to get at what the difference in the tenor is because it doesn't feel like, and not a good or bad, but just different. It doesn't feel like a Latino theater commons convening or bringing a group of black theater artists together or it actually feels different to me. And I'm gonna take a risk at saying what that difference is and then probably be wrong, but just, you know, trying to sort that out. Which is one is as I've been thinking about the work, it feels like we're all circled around a kind of common sense of purpose in this room in terms of the ideas around the work that we've been talking about, which are works of connection around, you know, these questions of re-entry, these questions of civilian versus military life. And that even the work that we've looked at, there's been aesthetic differences for sure. But thematically, I think they've been, at least felt to me, you know, covering similar terrain and I don't mean that in any kind of reductive way. And so what feels to me here in this room is a kind of common purpose about connection to a community that maybe we felt like we haven't been fully connected to and that what hasn't been, you know, mined and is all of the differences inside of that. And so what happens in, you know, the conversations that we've had often is that a lot of tensions arise because there isn't a sense of common purpose of why we're gathered. And so I feel somehow this sense of common purpose is making this feel incredibly coherent as a conversation even amongst some little differences. And so I just wanna put that out there and I don't know if that's a good or a bad thing or a starting point or does it all fall apart from here? I don't know. But that's what I just noticed having said in a lot of these. You got one? Okay, good. And then Andrea, and then we'll get one over to Jeremy. So a couple of things first, David, to answer from my perspective at least. I was actually asked this question on Sunday when we did an event with the Warrior Chorus in Austin. And one of the audience members, you know, brought this idea of, well, aren't you afraid of universalizing the experience of the military? And I think that in any situation where you are trying to build a bridge between two places that there is that risk, that risk of universalizing the experience that somebody maybe goes in to the audience and they watch what's happening. And they feel as if they've connected with and maybe absorbed some of that experience themselves. And that's always going to be a risk. I don't think that that's a reason not to do the work. I think it's a reason to pay careful attention with how you do the work and how you're witnessing to those stories. So just this idea that if you go in and you watch an experience that happens and in theater, going back to Aristotle, this idea of having a catharsis means that in some way you relate to the things that are happening on that stage and it allows this purging of emotions that happens inside of you. And sometimes that can lead a person to feel like they have experienced that. Yeah, kind of like the idea of mirror neurons and watching somebody lift a cup up and you in your mind, your mirror neurons are firing off and they feel like they're lifting a cup but it's your body that's controlling your action, you're not actually doing that. And I feel like in theater sometimes that there is the potential for universalizing the experience. But when it's carefully done and when the proper witnessing is paid, that it guards against that and it allows people to bridge that communication gap without feeling like they now own part of that experience. And so this is off on a different note but related to what was going on in the presenters and thank you very much presenters because I've never heard this viewpoint and I think it's such a valuable viewpoint to hear. I have a question about just a couple of thoughts, I guess, or a couple of questions, is number one, are you working at all during things like orientations when there are already big gatherings of students and is there a place where that can become more a part of it? Number two, are you looking to bring in speakers in if you do a week of engagement and you have the show as kind of the culmination of that week of engagement, are you working with the military leaders of that area? So if you have a National Guard Troop in your area or you have a reserve component there, they have colonels and possibly generals that are in that area, are they coming in to speak? That, excellent. If that's what's happening, that's amazing. That's really, really amazing work because I know we have Admiral, why am I just losing his name? What's that? No, no, Admiral McRaven, thank you. Admiral McRaven is the chancellor for the UT system now. And it's something that I haven't seen happen yet with UT or with Texas Performing Arts that I think could help is getting Admiral McRaven in who has amongst military populations. I mean, he's a God, you know. I'm a liberal, I'm a hardcore progressive, but in the military I recognize the stature of Admiral McRaven and what he represented. And so having someone like that come in and do some kind of talk about leadership and as part of it, wow, I mean, that could be really powerful. And then the last thing is every presenting organization has large shows that come in. And as those large shows come in, they have to be loaded in. And part of loading in is bringing a crew to load in. Now a lot of times I know that the crew spots a reserve for potentially the fine arts students and things like that are union in some cases. If there are positions that exist, I can tell you from experience that in my reserve unit back in Austin before I got out, there were reserve soldiers there who did not have jobs. The only source of money that they really had coming in was from their reserve paycheck and whatever they could scrounge up from time to time. And so finding work like that, it provides a service to them, but it also allows them to provide that service back to you so that they feel like they are going in and being productive and doing something for themselves as well. And so that might be a nice way to present a bridge at that point. Great, thank you. Andrea. And then we'll get one over here and then one over there. So I want to just say, I find myself saying this in arts convenings a lot. I do not assume that we all have common ground. I actually don't sit here and assume that we all have common purpose or do this for the same reasons or even have the same worldview or political point of view. And I think when we do make that assumption, we forget to have some really important conversations. So I'm just gonna put that out there and talk about specificity and commonality for a minute. I think for me where the area of common experience is, and Rila and I were talking about this earlier in a break, is because I'm specifically focused on work around trauma, which is not the entire military spectrum or military experience, but that's the work that I'm focused on is trauma. There is literally, literally common experience, the psychosomatic thing that happens in the brain and body and in response to trauma is actually literally the same, whether it's trauma from combat or sexual violation or domestic violence or war in your streets in urban centers. That physiology and psychology is actually the same. All of the circumstances surrounding it are really specific and different and may actually compound the trauma or not, right? And such as moral injury or such as polytrauma that happens in a combat situation that might not be the same in another situation. So I think as artists and in doing this work, we have to hold both of those things. We have to hold the understanding of common, the places where there is commonality and common experience and then be really specific. Like what makes good art is specificity, right? And so I wanted to offer that and then put the presenter hat on for just a second and say that in my presenter world, I feel successful when I get people in a room together who would never be in a room together otherwise and actually the art helps them have a deep and meaningful and potentially transformational conversation. So I feel successful when I'm able to present a work and have in the post-show discussion, not a Q and A with the artists, but a community conversation that includes a three star military general, a disabled veteran, Muslim student leaders, and the professor who runs the Center for Global Solutions and a bunch of people who just came to see a show because they like opera or dance or whatever that form is. That's when I feel like community transformation is happening and that my work in that presenter role is to have my own point of view and world view and purpose and reason that I do this and make space for all the folks who don't have the same world view as me to be in a room together so that something might shift. Jeremy. You know sometimes you were gonna say one thing and it just hurts. That's the beauty of the whole structure. But I think it actually kind of relates in an interesting way that I hadn't thought of before. So I was gonna say this problem feels familiar as a public health practitioner and I'm sure we've heard some version of the homily, people who don't know what they don't know think they know and then if you think about the power of the arts is actually to meaningful and useful artists to have people know something they didn't know but you can see where this goes. They didn't know that they didn't know and so on, so how do you break through all that? And I think what Andrea said may be part of the clue because I was gonna say, well, you know, you do what? We do what we call environmental preconditioning to kind of plant the seed, generate a little bit of curiosity if there may be something there that they wanna know more about. But then at a specific level around this topic since and it gets to what Barton was talking about universality, I mean, trauma is a universal part of the human experience, so is isolation and loneliness. So maybe part of this is, okay, well, you don't know about the military situation or veterans but you sure know a lot about what's interesting about what those folks and that community is challenged with and you use that universality as the hook to curiosity and I think there may be something there. Now how you actually promote that out in a community, I mean, there are all kinds of tricks for that. You just kind of make that part of the discourse of universality and that let people find their way to the particular. Yes, go, sorry. Hey everyone, this is Megan. You know, I guess I was feeling moved to say something around starting conversations and I think what's been really useful for me in my practice is this idea of joining conversations, you know, to sort of listen for who's doing the work, what's already happening, what are people talking about, what is needed, which is a very local sort of immediate act and can be a national, right? We can do listening in a national scale but there's something particularly immediate about the local for me and jumping off some of the things from the inner circle, you know, I also wear a hat, not as a presenter per se, but I run a cultural center on a large university campus and I'm always reminding myself I wear a campus hat and I am also community, you know, like I am in community, I'm a community person, I'm involved in a lot of communities so I have to break down those barriers around campus and community or artist and community all the time to remember we are all of those things and like many of you who do that kind of work probably I, you know, we'll get a lot of emails from people with really great projects that might be really great on my campus and think about that role of the intermediary, like is this something I wanna run around and figure out resources and put the time in and how am I gonna decide, you know, if this is a priority for the year and I feel like part of my job in that comes from listening well in the communities that I'm in to figure out is there heat around this? Is this something we need? Is this something that's happening for us right now? Is there an urgency around this? How will this contribute to what we're already doing, to what's already happening? How does this build on who we are? How does this help us get what we're going, right? So not just, you know, does this look cool? But, you know, does it also fit all those other things? Cause then that's the work, right? Figuring out all those connections. So if I can figure that out on the front end, that really helps me getting there. And I guess just that piece of, I was thinking about that, what are the skills around the intermediaries and how might we be passing that along? And I'm curious about that, like how might we be training up people to think about that active listening skill as part of how we do this work? And how do we think about that, even in the gestation process of what do we want to make as artists? Great. So we're a few minutes from ending, and this is before we go into the kind of breakouts tomorrow, which will get a little bit more action oriented. I just want to find out, is there anybody who's sitting on a thing related to anything that's been said all this time that should come into the room before we break into our groups and try to solve things? Is there anything that hasn't entered you're sitting on that you're concerned about? Uh-huh, a couple of things. Okay, so let's go back here to Scott and then to Ann. Thanks. I'm just curious about, in terms of the audience, I mean, are you all tracking sort of, symptomatology of PTSD, how it's conceptualized the experience of the warrior, the warrior ethos. I'm coming here as a representative of Fort Hood. And I didn't really hear questions about that. I didn't hear, there wasn't much inquiry. It's something you already know. I don't know. Again, it's a stranger in a strange land phenomena for me at this point. And I guess I was kind of anticipating a little bit of dialogue around sort of how do we conceptualize this patient population? I didn't hear much of that. And I'm just curious if that's something that you guys are already our SMEs in, or is there people that have working knowledge of that? Or is it that you're just kind of, again, I just don't know what the process includes for y'all. And we didn't get into that very much. And that might be sort of the questions that you were sort of alluding to earlier, so. Yeah, thank you. And we didn't really sort of bring it out. But I'm sitting on that. Great. And as a thing unmind thus far, in a conversation that will go on for some time. Great. Anne. So as someone running a theater company and an independent producer, I feel very torn by, in my mind, the necessity to, I kind of call it cultural archeology, really go through an in-depth process of forming partnerships like I did with art, making relationships with these documentary subjects that is truthful, respectful, friendly, has boundaries, but not so many that the work is dulled. And at the same time, I feel like we live in a world creatively and culturally where it's a numbers game that's rewarded. And so for me, it's a big conundrum. It's like, because you read all the time, like, oh, I've done 125 shows this season. And I don't know, and that's very opposite to an in-depth inquiry that may take, where if it's taking two years to develop a show or a year and a half at a minimum and form these relationships to make sure that the social practice and the artistic practice are well thought out, then how do you survive, in a way? Like, how do you then play the numbers game as well of a certain number of performances in New York every year and serving a certain number of artists? I feel like those things are in direct contradiction to one another, and I feel stuck a little bit in the middle of being drawn to both those places simultaneously, and I absolutely don't have an answer. Yeah, great. So we're sitting here talking about service to veterans and military, and one of the things that struck me is that I believe that ASAP Armed Services Arts Partnership is the only veteran service organization here. And my question is in this space of arts and military and veterans, and if there are other VSOs here, please let me know and correct me. But in this space, where does the veteran service organization fit in? Where are we in all of this? What is our sustainability here? And I think I asked the same question at the AFTA conference three weeks ago, or I can't count, but I asked this question and we didn't have an answer for that. And there are a lot of organizations that I've seen kind of fizzle and pop. And so this is just a kind of lingering question in what is the sustainability of this linkage to the community, this intermediary, which is the veteran service organization. There's 40,000 of us, which is too many. But there's so many of us and where do we fit into this? And is there resource challenges for that 40,000 as well, strapped, right? Yeah, interesting, because we've been focusing a lot on the resource challenges on the arts side, but less so on the service side. So who had, lots of hands, so let's go to Victoria. Oh, yeah, I wanted Maureen to get a chance to, is there anything that you're hearing that has been dropped that you wanna put back in the space before we break out? Let's go back there for one second. She's been listening and reporting this whole time. Yeah, so I'm more of a fly on the wall than a participant, so this may or may not be of interest to people, but what I heard was a little bit of a, I don't know, shying away or a hesitancy to engage with the question that Carl actually tried to put on the table this morning around the politics of it. And I'm hearing some people say, well, this is a political and we just work with the vets without any assumptions. And then I hear other people saying, art is always political or we need to make change, we need to stop this, which to me is very political, to say we need to stop this. And getting back to Andrea's idea of like, let's not assume we all have the same perspective, but what is that conversation if this work is about, in part about civic literacy and cultural diplomacy, like to what end? Is it to stop war? Is it to have better wars, less controversial wars? Encourage more people to enlist? I don't know. And I think maybe related to that, but maybe separate is, I just keep wondering about the title of this event is Art in the Service of Understanding. And it leaves me with the question of understanding what and why. Okay, good. One more and then we're, and we can bring, make it, yes, go for it. Just a very short one to add. I think, I feel like we have seen some truly substantial powerful performances over the last couple of days and I know there's more. But I also wanna put on the table projects that don't aspire to the 40 location tour or the big theaters and that, and neither are they therapeutic in the hospital either. They're somewhere in the middle projects that are local that maybe don't need to tour, that need, but also are substantial nonetheless. And I'd like to make sure that we have that spectrum of art making out there too. Thanks. Yeah, and as this is a, this is the first time this particular group has gathered in this way, we're not gonna cover the whole thing. So it's good to have a sense of what didn't get covered. Some of what you can do in your breakouts is to dig into some of these things as we're, that we've named or where you're feeling wasn't quite enough conversation there. That'll be tomorrow. So I'm gonna hand this back to Jamie who can then tell us the next plan. Thank you very much. So I'm gonna do a quick, just logistical run out and then hand it off to Jane, who's going to tell you a little bit more about these breakout groups tomorrow and give you a heads up on the prompt and things that you can be thinking.