 Anyway, I want to welcome you all to the Boston Time Town Neighborhood Center's power center. We are a new center open in partnership with Bungalow Community College in May of 2017. So still this year, but we're just open. And this is a really important partnership. And through the center, we hope to use arts, education and culture to connect people across generations together here. This is historically a really important piece of land, parcel 24, where in the 60s, over 200 families were displaced. And now we're reclaiming this history as an important part of Time Town history and giving space for people to connect. So it's really important for us to partner with people like Arts Boston to present things like this. So thank you again. I should also say welcome to the very beautiful Fire Foundation Theater, so I'm not in somewhere. Newly named, so thank you for being here. That's all I want to say, housekeeping notes. If you haven't found the restrooms are ready. They're right outside the store, around the corner. And with that, I'll introduce Katharine Peterson from Arts Boston. Thank you. Good evening. And thank you so much, Cynthia. We are so happy to be here this evening. And welcome all to Paving the Way, a conversation with leaders of color in the arts, and followed by the Network for Arts Administrators of Color Holiday Party outside, which I know will be terrific. I can hear the conversation and the buzz that was going on beforehand. So I know there's a lot to talk about afterwards. Thank you all for being here. And thank you to our terrific panelists and our wonderful moderator. We have three friends that both I and Arts Boston have known for many years, and one new one who we're so happy to have here in Boston. So thank you so much. Arts Boston, you know, is an arts service organization. And the service that we are doing now is expanding and changing as an arts service organization. And the Network for Arts Administrators of Color is part of that change, where we're working collectively to address the need for greater equity, diversity, and inclusion in the arts here in Boston. We focused on audience development and engagement for over four decades. And we realized that this work is not just about who's in the audience, but it's about who is making the programming decision and who's in charge of who's on the board and who's on our staff. And this is work we're committed to at Arts Boston in conjunction with the rest of the arts community and the rest of the city and region. This change takes leadership. And that's what the Network for Arts Administrators of Color, Boston, NAC Boston, is all about encouraging intentional conversations about representation, fostering an environment where we can work together to be better at inclusivity and recognizing and supporting talent. And the talent word seems the perfect segue to introduce my colleague, Behid George, who is the audience lab director at Arts Boston and also the founder for the Network. And so on and so on, I want to add my thank you also from Arts Boston for the Bar Foundation support for the audience lab. So it is my pleasure to introduce Behid George. Good evening. We are so delighted to have you all here at this evening. And I will say that we might still have a few other people coming through because I do recognize that it's a little hard to find the Carol Arts Center. But we are happy that you found us this evening. So when I started the network in July of 2016, I really wanted to focus on a few different goals. I wanted to provide a space for Arts Administrators of Color to convene. I really wanted to also make sure that we were highlighting and making visible these fantastic, fantastic Arts Administrators that we have in the Greater Boston Area. And I also wanted to be able to provide professional growth and opportunities for Arts Administrators to really move forward on the leadership track. Because we need that here in Boston and we think that this is a really great and vibrant end to end diversity, but it's not always reflective in a lot of the Arts organizations that we know and have come through. And so when I started the network in July of 2016, a lot of us thought, well, maybe about 30 people at the most might reply and say that they would come to that very first convening that we had. 80 people responded. And it kind of blew our minds, but it also really hit up against the assumption that there aren't enough qualified Arts Administrators of Color in Boston because there are. And we're up to about 200 people now, and it's all been really through word of mouth. So we are delighted to have you here today. So this conversation is the first in a series of three around the use of Color in the Arts, really sort of championing and hiding and giving the Boston area the opportunity to meet these fantastic leaders and hear about sort of who they are, where they come from, and how they sort of maneuver their way through the Arts sector. So we're very, very delighted to have them here today. Before I introduce our fantastic moderator, I do want to say a couple of different thank you. So thank you so much to Cynthia, Karthik and Giles for allowing us and partnering us with us here at the Power Arts Center and the Boston Chinahead Neighborhood Center. And also to Hal Brown, so Stiltly, thank you so much for why you're shooting this event for us today. I'd also love to thank the advisory board because without them I couldn't do this work. So thank you to Adamumi Oki, who actually moves to Atlanta, and she's helping us from Atlanta, to Chris Guerra, to Audrey Serifin, to Todd McNeil, Carmen Kajaran, and Alessia Mitchell. And also of course, a huge thank you to Bank of America because without their support, it would be a little bit challenging to run this network. So thank you all. And without further ado, I would like to introduce you to Todd McNeil. So Todd, Todd is a media coordinator at the Boston Lyric Opera, and prior to joining B.L.O., he served as the Marketing Fellow of Arts Emerson. Originally from Dallas, Texas, Todd has spent the last few years working in Boston as a classical singer and arts administrator. Todd is a member of the internationally acclaimed group, the American Spiritual Ensemble, and has appeared with Wildwood Parks for the Arts, Cincinnati Opera, the Princeton Opera Festival, Boston Youth Symphony, Orpishra, Metro West Opera, and Central Square Theater. Todd has a graduate performance diploma from the Longy School of Music of Bard College and is currently working on his master's in Communication Management from Emerson College. So, whoo! Thank you, Vicki, for that lovely introduction. As Vicki said, my name is Todd McNeil, and I serve as the media coordinator for Boston Lyric Opera. Thank you all for being here for this very important and timely conversation. But before I get started, I wanted to introduce everyone to our very distinguished panel. First up, we have Ben. Come on down, Ben. Ben hires the executive producer and chief strategy officer at Boston Children's Chorus. In this role, hires is responsible for providing strategic direction for the organization, working closely with the board of directors, representing the organization, locally, nationally, and internationally, raising support and awareness for BCC's mission and overseeing all choir activities. Hires has held positions at the Boston Youth Symphony Orchestra and served as the executive director of the New England String Ensemble. Ben earned a BA in philosophy and political science, a master's of theological studies, and a master of science in arts administration from Boston University. Thank you for being here, Ben. Good. Next up on our panel, we have Miss Candelaria Silva-Collin. Candelaria is an arts consultant, facilitator, and nonprofit professional currently serving as the chair of the board of designators for the George B. Henderson Foundation. Candelaria also coordinates the Huntington Theater's community membership program and is the program manager for the Fellows of Athenaeum Trust Fund for the Boston Public Library. Previously, Candelaria was director of three nonprofit programs, including Act Roxbury, where she conceived planned and raised funds for its signature programs, including the Roxbury Film Festival, Roxbury Open Studios, Roxbury Literary Annual, and the Roxbury's Rich Holiday Shopping Guide. Candelaria also provided leadership in the creation of the Hiberian Hall, and originally is from St. Louis, Missouri. Candelaria received her BA from Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont. Thank you for joining us today. Thank you very much. And last but not least on our panel, we have Chris Edwards. Chris Edwards is an actor, director, and five choreographer and educator, and the newly appointed artistic director for the Actors Shakespeare Project. Prior to joining the Actors Shakespeare Project, Chris served as the artistic director of the Nevada Conservatory Theater in Las Vegas, as well, I have to turn the page over, sorry. As the associate director and director of education and apprentice training with the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival in Cold Spring, New York. In addition, Chris co-founded the Point of Entry Theater, an education-based company dedicated to introducing inner city youth to heightened text, both classical and contemporary, including Shakespearean productions and hip-hop theater adaptations of classics in collaboration with the Lincoln Center. Meet the artist program. Chris received his MFA from the University of Minnesota in association with the Goddard Theater. We're here, Chris, and also welcome to Boston. So, as many of my fellow artists in the room, most of us can all remember our first artistic experience. For me personally, I come from a long line of gospel and blue singers, so my introduction into the performing arts world is going up with my grandparents, going to church, singing in the Yadie Empire, the Tenning Empire, and if there was a porky empire, we were there. And so, fast forward, I went to college on a vocal performance scholarship, but my parents were always on my back about finding another program that was practical or sustainable. And so, while I didn't believe that was true at the time, I picked up a double major in mass and speech communications, and it was from that program, and in those courses that I was introduced into the world of arts administration, fast forward now, I've been living in Boston for three years, and those dreams and goals and talks that I had had with my advisor four years ago are now becoming a reality, and I'm just now starting my arts administration experience in Boston. Knowing that about myself, I wanted to ask our panelists some of their earliest arts memories. So, Ben, would you like to start us off? Sure. Good evening, everyone, and thanks for being here this evening. Todd, I had two examples that I would come to mind. One is when I was younger, sort of like you spent a lot of time with your grandparents, and so I finally remember Sundays with Sinatra. And so, I think sharing that love of music with my grandmother in particular got me interested in jazz, got me interested in big band and things like that, so I definitely recognize my grandparents for that. Sort of fast forward to college, I've shared this story before in some settings that I was a tutor and there was a fellow tutor that I had kind of had a crush on, and I knew she played the oboe, and I was like, oh, it'd be really cool, really slick of me, and I'd like her to go see an orchestra play or something. I know oboe's in an orchestra. I should not have to play her exactly, but I know that would be a good move. We went to, I was a BU student, and we went to hear the BU Symphony play at Cyber Foreman Center. Got there a little late because we were college students, and had to sit in the very front row, and they were playing Rachmanov's second symphony. And so, the evening was great. I was blown away by the concert and by that piece sitting there in the front row, and the relationship didn't really go anywhere. Friends or whatnot, but what I did take away that evening was a love for classical music and orchestras and things like that. And so, I think when the opportunity came to work at the Boston New Symphony Orchestra while I was a grad student, it was kind of a good fit. Like, oh, I kind of know what that's about. It really gets me excited. It moves me to listen to this music and help young people achieve that as well. So, it kind of set the groundwork, I think, for my movement to arts administration. Yeah. Can you hear me? Yes. So, I grew up in the theater of the Black Church in St. Louis, Missouri. I was actually baptized in the Mississippi River. I've written a children's book that I'm trying to get published about that experience. So, singing was a huge part of my life, but it was also blues and country music. One of my grandmothers used to listen to the Grand Olafri. I mean, I'm just so proud to be here. I remember that. Gina Turner came on my street. I went to school with one of Miles Davis' sons. I went to school with Joe O'Booie. And a lot of people, I took dance lessons across the room. He sang music at the film studio. I had snuck away from home and went to a Black artist's room the night that Jimi Hendrix was died. And so, it was just constantly culture, a lot of music, the Staple Singers' Cousins sang in the choir in my church. So, they were just like all of that. And I remember also meeting Sonia Sanchez and Ari Evans at Audemars Board that came to my high school. One of the things about the first high school I went was all Black. It was a lot of people's discrimination kept them from taking them to college level. So, we had a lot of people and doctors who were teaching at our school. And so, they treated us as though we were college students that made us exposed to so much. And I also remember going to theater at Loretta Milton, and finally seeing Nina Simone at a concert that she, and Sly Stone at a concert that he actually showed up at. So, it was a good question to think about, but she didn't see us. So, when I came to Boston to go to college in Northeastern, the Bay State Banner had started a couple of years ago before I came to college. And I literally wrote to this and I used to do reviews for the Black newspapers and say, well, what's kind of reviews for you? And that got me started reviewing theater and all that. So. Well, I feel like the odd man out because you all seem to have very vibrant youth around the arts. I, however, did not. I grew up as a military brat. I lived in, I was born in Holland. I lived in England, California, Ohio, Delaware, Las Vegas. And my only connection to the arts was that I would go into my room and draw quite a bit. I was really into drawing when I was in elementary school and junior high school. And I was sort of that kid that would always win the little best artist of the seventh grade, best artist of the sixth grade. But somewhere along around the time of high school, something kicked in for me because, you know, I come to a very new college family where art was not practical things. Something kicked in for me and said, well, you need to go to make a living because you can't do this with art. So I forgot it from about ninth grade all the way through to my junior year of college. And what brought me back to it was that I had to take a class because I was a business major in undergrad and I had to take a class at the time it was you had to take an art, one arts and letters class in my whole curriculum. And it was like, maybe photography, maybe acting. And so I took an acting class because I wanted to go to law school. I was hooked, needed, and all just sort of came rushing back. Side note to that, I didn't have the time to think I was doing art. But in high school, I was also a lead boy, a bright dancer, and a backup dancer. And I used to step and do all that stuff. But that wasn't art to me because I had never had the nurturing of what art is. It was just a form of expression. It was a way for me to deal with my anger and it was a way to get girlfriends, but. So my junior year I was able to get back to it and it all sort of rushed back and I was able to sort of connect all the different aspects of who I was as an artist. Fast forward about, I don't know, 10 years, I became an arts administrator because I was really big into working with kids from, you know, disenfranchised youth like I was who had no one to sort of mentor them through their interests. And I worked with a lot of kids in incarcerated youth. And whenever the company I was with needed somebody to do something, I was always the person to say, yeah, I'll do it till you find somebody else to hold the fort down. That, you know, that job became the next job. Yeah, I'll do it. And then just doing that, I sort of worked my way up to being an artistic director and an arts administrator. Awesome. So Chris, you just kind of touched on it. But for the both of you, Ben and Candelaria, when did you know that you wanted to pursue a career in the arts, whether you'd be an illustrator or as a performing or visual artist? I always get frustrated by things that I can envision that don't happen. And so I just, and I, when I was younger, I didn't think that I couldn't do things for other people. It's funny, there are a lot of things I haven't done for myself as an individual, but I could always do something for a group. And at Roxbury, which was the cultural economic development program that I was the first director of, I literally saw an ad in the banner for this new thing called cultural economic development, Mass Cultural Council is funding. But I had administered other programs, but I didn't have, I don't have an MBA. I'm old enough that it wasn't required so much in administration back in those days. But I clearly was very organized, very passionate, and talked my way into things. And I just say, we could do this, let's do this. And then I know lots of people and I would invite people I knew who could do things that I thought would make a vision happen. So for me it was like, why doesn't Roxbury have open studios? South Indian has open studios, why doesn't Roxbury? They're all the filmmakers in Roxbury. I mean, you know, why doesn't Roxbury have a film festival? Let's have a film festival. So that's always been sort of my motivation. And I think the precursor to that was I did a job for a youth called Youth Rap at Roxbury. It was a joint effort of Roxbury Community College in Wentworth Institute of Technology. And one of the things I did was a speaker series where we had everything that any kid said that they were ever interested in and we had a speaker come and talk about it. So we found a black pilot because a kid said he wanted to get a pilot. And we just showed people jobs and then we realized we had to take them to places. So we took them to hotels, we took them to theater. We tried to dispose them. So all of that was sort of, you know, got me into the administrative role of organizing it. But mainly I think it's the passion of being a service to people which is from my church background and why can't, why don't we have, we're so rich in talent. Why don't we have these organizations or something to support that? Todd, I wanna pick up on two threads that I heard from Chris and Kendall Lariat. I think it sort of got me to where I became an arts administrator. I think one interesting connection that Chris and I had, I also thought I was gonna go to all the school in college. I was actually the president of the Hong Kong Preval Society. And I think that was thinking about how could I be of service to some sort of society? You know, all seems like a potentially a good way, right? But then I decided not to follow that path. I actually worked with adjudicated youth in between undergrad and graduate school and I got a degree in theology. So again, sort of trying to find my way, maybe of some type of service to the world or to the community. And then I had an opportunity to work at the Boston Youth Symphony Orchestra. And I think again, what clicked for me was that connection of how the arts can sort of make a greater impact on not only young people but the world in general. And I think this career and this passion for helping other people find their own passions sort of fills that opportunity to help people and provide a way for people to find their own voice, find their own level of creativity or expertise and things like that. So Kindle Art is saying about service. I think for probably many of us, arts is not only a passion and a craft but also a way to give back. So I think that's what I would add. Yeah, I think that the spark that got me was that I had my father's best friend found an old record in his collection. It was actually Maureen's Black Bottom on record and I'd never heard anything like it. And I sat there and was like, oh man, this is amazing. Cause I had taken a few theater classes at that point and I said, this sounds like my family. This sounds like all my family and Southern Ohio and the rhythms and the joy and the pain and all of that. So that, I went to go, after I heard that record that I went to go see a production of Two Trains Running and I sat in the audience and said, it was Larry Fishbone, Vernon and Roscoe B. Brown doing a monologue and I said, I need to do this. I need to do this. And I think that was, the seed was planted about being an actor and I said, someday I'm gonna be at August Wilson and I'm gonna talk to him and tell him how important his work is. And I did get to meet him in graduate school and I did get my first professional performing gig at the number theater in Minneapolis where he got much of his start. So it was just being inspired and just having that one family friend say, I can't really do anything with this but you may be able to make something out of it. And from that moment, I was able to make something out of it and I think for me, that service always comes back to, yeah, I wanna serve a community but whenever I walk into a room with students, particularly I'm looking for that one kid who may have been like me and I know where there's a thousand kids there's probably way more than one. So I'm always searching that kid out and trying to be in service to that person and the hope is that there's osmosis among the group. Thank you. So this next question is for Candelaria and Ben. Both of you decided to stay in Boston after moving here for school. What progress of any have you seen in terms of diversity and inclusion? Right. Question, right? So I sort of backed some facts. I came here in 1996 for undergrad, sort of left her for a little bit of time as I mentioned to do some work with some adjudicative use. Came back 2001 to, but since about that time, certainly obviously I think most of us recognized the conversation around issues of diversity and inclusion have grown. So I picked up my girl in Southern New Jersey, a rural part of New Jersey. I was one of two Asians in my high school and things like that. So coming to college and to Boston really sort of opened up the door in a lot of ways to a lot of different people in diversity. So I think for me college was that door. So that's one thing. And I think in terms of, as I entered the arts sector, back in 2003, it was some preliminary understanding. I think it's sort of, so when I worked with Boston and New Yorkers, I wanted to try to give specific examples to them, I think that's helpful. They still have a program of the ICP program, the Intensive Community Program, and that was geared towards reaching underrepresented people in classical music, right? And started out small and got more funding and grew and things like that. So in terms of my own experience, kind of recognizing one sort of person who knew classical music a little bit and then understanding the racial and power dynamics of classical music, at least in my face of employment, a program that they were trying to grow and run was a way for me to kind of get to understand like there's work to be done for folks that have access and whatnot. And since then, as I've gone to other organizations in particular Boston Children's Chorus, I mean all her organization is geared towards being all-encompassing and welcoming. But I think generally as a sector and as a community, there's just been way, obviously way more conversations happening, people sort of trying to understand what they can do to be more inclusive, to understand their blind spots and things like that and understand things like privilege. And so I think through this conversation, the other conversations that are in Boston is going to kind of try to unpack that a little bit, but obviously it's complex and it's a journey, right? Candle art always, what have you seen? Well, I think that just being in this room with this many people in this art center is evidence of incredible progress, but it's like we're having some of the best of times and the worst of times at the same time. I'm a person who's always sorted for the good, always found my people, the tribe of good people and always did a lot of cultural stuff. But when I first came to Boston, I literally could see pretty much every play in Boston. Now I can't. There are so many theater groups. There's not enough strong black theater although people are working to make that happen that have a physical home. I think Boston was a raggedy, dirty city. You can't even imagine how different it is. And so there were neighborhoods that I did not go in. I was around, my son was growing up when this Charles Stewart murder happened and they were questioning a lot of black men and some black young men about that and being really oppressive. So we certainly, I can walk in virtually every neighborhood here and feel comfortable. I can walk in virtually every neighborhood here and see other people of color, even though we know from the report of the globalist, if it's the report they don't live there, they see it's not important. But, so that's the parallel with Boston that you have more diversity in some ways than ever and yet you still could, you can live a very blacks-only life here. You can live a very whites-only life here. You can live a very Chinese-only life here. A Vietnamese-only life here, that's your choice. And I really stayed, I decided to leave here and then I met my husband, my second husband and I was like, oh, well, this doesn't work out. He actually did my website for at Roxbury, writing for the Roxbury Film Festival and asked me out after the film festival and I literally told my daughter. I told her I was moving back to Charlotte, I was tired of Boston, if this doesn't work out and then he's never gonna leave, he's a Bostonian, so that's what I say. But I found my tribe here and I found things that I could do but I'm not uncritical because particularly in terms of ownership, I think I would tell, one thing I just wanna say once on my mind is that if you can't own in Boston, then go own in Detroit and Jackson, even if you live in Boston, find something to have your bank. Owning and looking in retrospect, despite red lighting, I wish that we had more of a consciousness of the importance of owning buildings, right? If you own your space, you have so much more leverage and control than when you don't, so places that were undesirable became desirable and now a lot of people are priced out and that's one of the things that you really, really worries me about a lot. I just have one more thing to add and that's something that Kendall Arden said. I think that the art sector in Boston, there's a lot of organizations and I'm not so sure about other parts of the country because I haven't lived there or worked there but I'm honored to be in this room and then in a sector where there are a lot of arts organizations that care deeply about issues of race, social justice and things like that and I've been as a part of Boston Children's Chorus, part of the Boston Cultural Change Network that came out of the Boston Foundation and like this network, a network of organizations that connected people and organizations together that cared about these things and that started maybe four years ago. So I think for me personally, if I didn't live in Boston and then I didn't get into this sector, quite honestly, it very well could have been possible. If I went to law school, right? Got in my law degree, worked at Fancy Law Firm, I may be very not as, I don't want to use the word woke, but I mean, as conscious as I am about these issues because of the path I took through the arts, quite honestly. So I think for me, I'm less to have gotten to where I am in this journey because of the arts and the arts organizations in Boston. Sticking with the two of you and that question, you kind of just touched on that then. Who do you think are some of the organizations in the city that are doing the work and doing it well? And it's okay to say if it's yourself or your organization. You know, for me, it's a both and. I think certainly Arts Boston has taken a lead by doing whatever it took to attract Vicky George and finding a way to support her vision. And I know, so what has to happen? It can't be a project. It has to become an organization. And it has to figure out how to exist so that if Vicky goes away, if Arts Boston goes away or has new leadership, it doesn't go away. And I think that's what I mean by ownership. I think a lot of organizations, the dark, is it the dark and collective? Front porch. Front porch, Arts Collective, that was dark and co- it was another organization. Or who are networked? They're doing something. But I think it depends on whether you're talking about really big institutions or not. At the Huntington, the Community Leadership Program and I'm in the sixth year of, but there have been times when there've been only maybe three people of color who work in the whole organization. So even though they're trying and even they don't, they get all of August Wilson's plays, except for one of all people's alive and all of that, in terms of who actually gets a paycheck. And then we expand and now there might be 11, but then another year you go back to being three or four. And people, in some ways they're trying, and I think lots of groups are trying to do different things, but one of my frustrations is seeing people do things now that we did 30 years ago, but for some reason it didn't hold. So I think there are a lot of efforts, but I think that figuring out how to create not just diversity, but inclusion and parity. Parity is the word that I'm looking. You know, like if the Huntington, if lyric stage, if the symphony may say the next 50 hires were people of color. If that were some of the goals, that would be for me really exciting. In Boston, and from St. Louis, I grew up with black doctors. I always had black teachers. So to come to Boston and go to a public school and found out there were no people of color in some of them, to go to Boston City Hospital, which is now Boston Medical Center, and at that time, on one hand you could count the number of black doctors who just blew my mind. So a lot of institutions in Boston still can be very white and are still very fragile in terms of the numbers of people of color. So I can't think of one organization that's got it right. I think there are a lot of organizations that are trying, but I can't think of one that I would say, well, this is the exemplar. And you might say one, and I'll say, oh yeah, I forgot to pick it up. I'm also old, so you are a black doctor. I mean, I think one way to look at this is like a chicken and egg problem, right? And we're the network for arts administrators. And so is there a representation in the arts leaders of organizations, right? So that's kind of one thing over here. And then the other thing that kind of Larry was talking a little bit about, which I do think the Huntington has tried, and if you're in the sixth year of doing this and making it accessible, is audiences. And this is the business of arts Boston, right? Our audience is diverse, and why or why not? So for instance, at a sort of a much larger and a level of presenting, Arts Emerson, I think it's made some strides towards programming and presenting where it's going to track different audiences. And they've also invested in terms of the staff and from what I can tell, sort of programmatically of reaching out and creating programs that are going to reach people where they're at and their interest, right? So they have this book club that doesn't just meet downtown, it goes out. So the play we can go from, and I actually need a program manager to the front end of the library. So oops, I was interested, I'm sorry. They are. And I think the example came to Larry about Arts Boston and Vicki. So I would say, and I don't know all the inner workings, but I remember when Vicki was first hired and came here to Arts Boston. And I think I heard her conversation that of that new person, Vicki, she's interested in this network. And like getting that jump started and she made it happen. But would that happen if Vicki didn't come here? I don't know. Or if they didn't hire a person of color, if they didn't not. And so I think it's a good example of when you have that representation in cultural organizations around your team new and different and good things could happen that you might not know happen until you put the right people in place, right? Exactly. So I think it's a little bit of a chicken and egg for different organizations. And I know some of these other talks are gonna get into, so the nuances of cultural organizations that are predominantly present white culture or white art forms versus arts organizations that are predominantly cultural or organized by communities of color. Because I think there's definitely a difference there. And is it a question of diversity and inclusion? Because I think you can have that at an organization that's predominantly sort of white culture or sort of Western art form. Because I think all artists are for everybody, right? But again, it's about who's in charge and then all these kinds of details. I would be remiss if I didn't mention the Alamo Lewis School and Center that used to be here. And the Museum of the National Center of Art for American Art still exists. Black Nativity is going on and ends this weekend. And it's 44th or 45th year. And they're trying, if they finally get the designation, they will have across from Rubble Station, a new museum, and they'll be able to return to doing the things that the Alamo Lewis Center did. But again, the infrastructure for arts organizations of color has been a little difficult to maintain in Boston for a variety of reasons. Thank you for that. Now Chris, we're not gonna leave you out. Yeah. Right? Chris, you were beautifully employed in Nevada and now you've moved to Boston. So you've been here for about three months now. Right, or give or take. So in your short time here, what is your perspective on diversity and inclusion in the arts in Boston? Well, also compared to other cities that you've lived in. Relative to Las Vegas, this wouldn't happen. Matter of fact, you couldn't even get all the artists in the same room, black, white, green, whatever color or culture or gender. It's just not vibrant in that way. I was at a university that's first or second most diverse university in the country. But these sort of conversations are just not happening in the States or in the city. And the arts community there is just now coming to a place where they can come to a room and talk. Theater by itself just recently is just starting within the last, I would say, two years we're starting to talk. Visual arts probably within the last three to four years. So this feels like a cherry to me relative to Las Vegas. New York feels very similar to Boston. The thing about New York, I would say, in my experience is that it seems like though art seems to be moving from New York across the country or across the provinces, I think it a sense that the Boston intellectual sensibility is actually maybe driving this conversation a little more than I think you all gave yourselves credit for. And I would say as a newcomer here and I'm really loving that you're so, hopefully I would say that we are giving ourselves credit for in a few years. But these conversations, from the moment I hit the ground here, I found folks are willing, able and want to have these conversations. Folks and even actresses for projects, actors around town that I've spoken to, Victoria, we were in contact literally two weeks after I landed here. So I think you can, I don't want to give yourselves a pat on the back, but I think you can know that I think you're probably on the forefront of this in the country as a group trying to make a difference. I don't know about infrastructure of the institutions in Boston, but this energy in this room right now and the energy of just a little bit, I've talked to you guys on the phone and in the other room is certainly comfortable. So I would give ourselves a little more credit. Todd, I was just gonna just add and you sort of said we could pet ourselves on the back a little bit. I'd be risked in not mentioning Boston Children's Chorus, which many people are familiar with, and just to say that, so BCC is celebrating its 15th anniversary, so we're founded in 2003. I like to tell people it's the same age as the Lenny's Acombridge, which has its significance as well for Boston. But originally, it was founded by a not a musician, a social worker, a person who was giving his career towards the service of others, Ruby Jones, but really in the DNA of the organization was the mission of being diverse and being inclusive and being welcoming of all people and using arts as a tool, right? And I think people use theater as a tool to accomplish this, people use dance to do this, but in terms of an actual organization that needs to, as a business model, we need to raise money and hire people. At the very core was again this DNA to be inclusive. And I think sometimes, well in many cases, organizations, arts organizations, they're coming at it sort of down the road about how to be diverse and inclusive, right? It's not at the center, it's not at the beginning. An organization that was founded in 1850 in Boston was not thinking about being diverse and inclusive, right? And so they're on a journey, as I've said before, but I think for us, you look at the Boston Globe thing where they're counting people, if you went to a BCC concert this past weekend, the numbers would have astounded the Globe recordings about how diverse it was, but very intentional, very top of mind, et cetera. There's one other thing I would wanna say. There is, one of the organizations I've worked with who seems to have a sense of this in a very strong way is the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon. They really pressed this. And I think the challenge is that whatever your genre, whatever your organization is, that we sometimes tend to silo ourselves and say, hey, I wanna be diverse for the Boston area. I wanna be diverse for Roxbury or Jamaica Plain or whatever it is, but Oregon has taken the approach that they're in a very small town in Ashland, Oregon, but they're trying to make their company reflective of the United States. And I think that's a way to look at it because I think what happens is folks get, they get afraid that they're gonna alienate the base that they have. But if we're all Americans and it's a melting pot of people from different countries, let's try to reflect the country that we're in, not just the streets, the neighborhood, or the city that we are in. And I think Oregon has really been very successful around that. This question is for Ms. Candelaria. So you told us earlier an interesting story about a career challenge that you experienced that you weren't expecting. Can you share that story with everyone else in the audience tonight? Is that the one about, that we talked about on the phone? Yes. Okay. They're actually two of them kind of related. I found out while I was at Roxbury, I was at Roxbury for nine and a half years and I did just so many programs that you can't even imagine. And I was often, I was on the Arts and Services coalition with Catherine Peterson. I was the only person to cover on that. I was often the only white person to work with. Anyhow, I found out by accident, this woman somehow came up and she says, oh, there was a job that came up that they, it was with the city and that they decided they were talking about me and off, coming to me and asking me if I wanted to apply for this job. But they decided not to because I was doing so well in Roxbury with Act Roxbury. And I said, so a group of people who never said anything to me, talked about me and decided that I was doing so well in Roxbury and with Act Roxbury that I should stay there. And nobody ever talks to me. It was gonna be another zero in my salary I found out. And then I also had that happen to me when my first husband had died and I was a single parent where there was an opportunity to travel and somebody said, well, she has young children. So no, she can't do that. But nobody had come to me. And finding that out later, people making decisions about where they're placed. So I always tell people where I sit is not always where I stand. And my vision, I thought Roxbury was a location and I spread the word about what we were doing very widely. It was never just Roxbury-centric because not being from Boston, I didn't have the neighborhood thing. I did things here that I didn't know, oops, they don't go there and we are not supposed to go there. I didn't have it. I thought it's a part of Boston. I never thought like, I think that's sometimes an advantage when you come from a different place. I saw this richness in Madapent. I didn't know that people in Cambridge didn't always come over to Roxbury. I didn't know all those stupid divisions. So I didn't pay attention to them. But people do. I was so visible that people, there was somebody talking about me who denied an opportunity to me. So I think that when I tell young people on the other end of it, or people who are still active in their career, I'm at another stage in my life, is that opportunity comes when it's gonna come and you should follow it. So if you work someplace for two weeks and this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity comes along, you gave them a good two weeks, go for it. Because I've lived long enough where certain opportunities that you let go because you say I'm being loyal and I haven't been here or here yet, it never comes back. Sometimes another better opportunity, but sometimes it doesn't. So I think that people should not ever limit us and I don't wanna limit myself. Everything I've ever done, I didn't know what, how to do a film festival? I didn't know. But I know I've got money and I can figure out how to do it. And I can do it with filmmakers and do their own places to show film and okay, and let's put it together and da-da-da. So it really hurt me. And the same thing is that if you create, institutions can create criteria for things and then they won't recreate them. So the other painful experience I had where I was, my name was put forward to get the substantial financial grant and then they went on the technicality that I wasn't exactly the executive director. So I was, my program was part of the Madison Park Development Corporation. It was called Act Rocksbury. I wrote the grants, I created the board, I did everything that the organization did, but that was the technicality that ended up costing me the stipend. So my thing was, if you could create the criteria for the stipend, you can decide this is an acceptable case. Let's do that. So sometimes people box you. And so what I've tried to do is never box myself and to never absorb those messages, but those were blows that sort of, it hurt. I will say it hurt, yeah. Thank you for sharing those experiences. You touched upon how you work through, what were some other ways that you work through those challenges? Well, letting people know that I'm interested in everything. I mean, I really am a person who loves everything. I could, I like all kinds of music. I like dancing, I'm a writer. I just, I love the, to me, the idea of being of service and the idea that arts are healing, arts are incredibly healing. In the community outreach we've done as a Huntington Theater program, we have people who are homeless shelters. We have people who have suffered trauma, who are actually coming to theater as a way of healing them. I think that we have to push beauty and culture and art in the same way that people push drugs and consumerism and racism and stupidity. So I've become less passive and not assuming that people know I think you share. So one of the things I do is I share, people know I have all this email list and I share information about, I have information for artists, for photographers, for parents of young children, for parents of middle school, Nicole and this year he'll tell you, get emails from me about the things that are going on. I think you share information. I think you sometimes give people feedback quietly, privately on how they think they can up their game. I think you have to be willing to be the only black person or Chinese person or Vietnamese person or a Puerto Rican person in the room and not be afraid of that. And when you do get certain opportunities because I've also had other opportunities where I said, oh, they asked me, I'm not prepared. And I have to say, a lot of people did a whole lot so that Candelaria Silva could be in the place to be in this room. And if I invited into that room, I belong there. And I have to not have the self-doubt because sometimes I have been paralyzed with self-doubt and feeling that I wasn't worthy. They've been finding out years later that you had more people attend your events than these other people that you thought you had up there because I'm a scrapper. You know, I didn't have, like I said, I'm not very elegant in sort of my background, but the brain works and the creativity and the vision is there. And so I've had to often not ignore the fact that I belong in all the rooms that I'm invited to, but I don't want to be alone. So I'm always trying to get other people invited as well. Just from sitting up here with all of you, I feel like I'm already, I'm taking in as I'm here in YouTube, you speak, but personally as a young person of color in the arts, just now starting my arts administrative journey, trying to figure out if I want to go to leadership route or what steps I should take to get towards that leadership track, what is some advice that you can give to myself and other people in the audience on how to climb the ladder? I think this network is a good start because what I would say is, you know, creating and having a network. So when I was starting out in my career, I think the idea of what a mentor was or a network of people, it was very far. And quite honestly, it wasn't so many years later, like the concept of having a mentor or mentors, even as it appeared in sort of my professional development. So I think people are much more savvy now and more sort of educated. And so I think it's a little bit more common. And I think like this network in Arts Boston and the work they're doing, you know, helps facilitate that a lot more because I think, you know, to combat this being the only in a lot of situations, you know, having that network to fall back on, whether they're your peers, whether they're different art forms, different art organizations or, you know, having the people that have sort of paved the way for us, you know, obviously there's a great, a lot of learning, sort of not on the job learning that you can get from those conversations. And I would just say my personal sort of challenge is sometimes sort of the same as Kendal Laurie is that I've had now. I've had opportunities to kind of step up and I didn't feel like I was ready and sort of trying to analyze that and not sure why other than my own sort of, you know, lack of self-confidence at the moment, I would say at the time, you know, I was always grateful to be where I was at and give it 110% and I think, you know, for anybody, hopefully you're measured on the merits of your effort and how much you care about the work that you're doing, et cetera. And I was fortunate that, you know, there's opportunities were still there for me and, you know, I think partly that's because of the work I did, but also I think there are people out there who, you know, look out for you and want to support you and be just so they don't have to make those connections. I guess I'll piggyback off of that. I think find yourself a mentor because I think far too often young leaders and sometimes leaders of color do not know what resources there are out there, whether it's an executive coach, a mentor, a psychologist, whatever, you know. Find someone that you can talk to, someone that you can share with. Sometimes that's your partner. Maybe it's someone outside of your circle. Another thing I think is important is that I really believe people who believe in the company that they're in and that they're willing to put whatever company they work for, they've decided to be with that company for a reason. Nine times out of 10, that reason is for the mission. And if you show yourself to be a person who is willing to put the mission before yourself in the context of when you are on that job, I think that out, I think that truth out and people notice that. If you can be on mission and be working for the company's best interest instead of your own best interest or where you want to be in five years, you can have all those thoughts and you can move through all those things, but when you're at the job, be about the job. And then the other thing I would say, this is something that always goes back to me and this is something my father told me, he was a military man, he's retired now, but he would say in a very sort of rough way, lead, follow, or get out of the way. And I think you get to make that choice every day what you do and you can be in control, you can be the executive director, and you can still follow, right? You don't have to take the onus of feeling like you have to have all the answers to every single question. That's why I think great leaders put smart people around them. I think that's what Barack Obama did and he was pretty smart too, so lead, follow, or get out of the way and it goes across the board. It's from the very bottom run to the top. Some of my, I've never been formally mentored and a lot of people who have mentored me have mentored me from my observing them. I started, I'm known for thank you notes and I'm known for sending sympathy cards, give world cards, congratulations cards. I've written people who I read a profile of in the globe and you've never met them and I've sent them congratulations to come to Boston if you'd like to go out to lunch or dinner sometime. I mean, I just really wanted to do that but the guy who I learned to do that from was, I think Daniel Cheever, I don't know if he's still alive, he was the superintendent of the Western College of Schools where I worked for the Mecca program and I did one of my first presentations which was really horrible, but I was really passionate. So, but I hadn't done an outline, sort of winged it, I learned not to do that but he sent me a very lovely thank you note that was in my box the morning after I did the presentation and I realized he, and then I read a book by Terry Williams who owned the top black marketing agency in the country and she said, keep a stationary store at your desk so that you can always send notes. So, these are people that I, when I meet and observe and I say, I like the way her hair is. I wonder how she does, I like the way she, okay, when she came up to the podium or he did this and let me see if I can do that style because a lot of times people won't consciously mentor you. I would also say in terms of, if you know about an opportunity, share it. If you're applying for the opportunity, give yourself a day or two leave and then share it. So, the reason that you wanna share it is that you may not get it, but if somebody you know got it, then there's gonna be opportunities for you. Third is sometimes the people who you're looking for help for you, expect them to support you or not the people that you think you've given to. But somebody over there was watching you and an opportunity comes. And finally, I would say, figure out how to get visible with search firms. There are a lot of search firms and letting people know that you're looking. If you need to do it confidently, you can write that in your mail. But getting visible with a lot of search firms, there's a lot of opportunities, both in Boston and in other cities, but the search firms don't always find you, so you have to say, here I am, here I am. And that's, again, growing up in church, being egotistical is what they would say. There's always that tension, but if you don't do, here I am, here I am, sometimes people won't know who you are, so you gotta do this one. I just wanted to add what Chris was saying, because I think for me, as you kind of maybe picked up a little bit, I didn't really know what I was gonna do. I didn't track to be a doctor or whatever. I was never really, I was trying to just find my way. And I think whenever I got, I really sort of dedicated myself to whatever that job is. And I never really, I would say, had a real strategic plan. I think wherever I was, I was doing the best job that I could. And I'd say, I have this kind of big, long title now executive producer, blah, blah, blah, blah. But really, my number one job, and I did it this past weekend in the snow, is to make sure the kids who are getting out of their cars to get to the concert, see someone they know, smile in face, and they get to where they need to go. Because I understand when you're coming in the bus and you don't know where it's happening and snowing, you can drop your kid off and double parking and blah, blah, blah. The best thing that you can see is someone that you know, smiling and helping your kids to, you know, alter curve, and that's my number one job. You know, obviously I gotta raise money and talk to people and whatever, but you know, so people do see that, I think. And they know that you're not, you know, too good to do this, that or the other thing. And, you know, quite honestly, it got me that big play. Do my work. Yes, you're right. I feel the other thing I would add is that, you know, when I grew up, you know, I mixed race with my mother's British, my father's African American, and, you know, I'll keep it real. I knew that I could walk through the door and be Latinx if I so chose. But I don't. So when I was growing up, my father said, you will have to work twice as hard as, yes, right? And then what you do is you take that into the world with, well at least I did, I take that into the world with me, and that twice became three to four times as hard. So the only thing I would say is we have to allow ourselves, give ourselves a break and know that we have picked up some knowledge along the way and I'm reading into that a little bit. And, you know, like Ben says, that specter of insecurity and doubt will be there. And can you just sit in the chair and let it sit with you for a minute and not let it drive you? So give yourselves a break in that way. Thank you for that. One more question for all of our panelists. So for each of you this evening. So now that you've shared everything and you've answered all these questions, what are the next steps for the city of Boston and specifically for the arts and non-profit sector? What are some key tools and strategies that different organizations can look forward to and really should take advantage of? I think interestingly enough, last week there was a board meeting around the theater. A group of theaters got together and talked about diversity, inclusion in the boards. I think diversifying the board is a big step because a lot of times the access is just not afforded because the person who's coming in at a high level, a high executive level is not able to connect with those folks that would be hiring them. So I think diversifying the board and then allowing there to be a cross-section of folks on the board, really recruiting that cross-section and I don't just mean race obviously, gender fluidity, accessibility, all of those things because that's just the way that we're moving and then championing, championing, championing. Supporting, supporting people of color because sometimes less be real. We get through the door sometimes and we forgot the door that we came through. Remember the door you came through and support the people that are coming out. Cool, sorry. I mean, there's so much. I can give a very specific example outside of the arts sector just on this topic of helping support arts administrators of color in the sector. The girl scouts, excuse me, big sisters in Boston, some of you guys might have heard the executive character speaking at the Boston Foundation's talk on a report that just came out. They were concerned they went into increase the diversity of folks that were part of the staff and serving primarily on women of color. So a lot of organizations, as you were saying the schools teaching young people of color that have no people of color teaching, right? So they kind of took a look at this issue like what is the barrier? And so for them it was their big sisters or the staff needed to have a master's in social work. And so what they realized was and we can go through all the reasons why it's a challenge for people of color to have higher education or have the top school, private schools and all that kind of stuff. But they said, okay, what we're seeing is there's a lot of qualified people out there who can do this work well but they don't have a master's degree. So why are we setting a barrier for them to have a master's degree? So they changed the hiring process. They had other check boxes for qualifications and so we turned it all around in terms of the people that they could attract. They also talked about living wage and that's a whole other conversation, right? To find qualified people and keep them so that they weren't doing five other jobs or whatever the case may be. So that's a very tactical specific thing that even arts organizations, I think we get sort of trapped but we think about we have to find the best, the highly qualified person. And if our networks aren't diverse, we find even if we're sort of blind with the resume and the names and stuff, well, we're looking for the best private colleges with the best arts training programs and like the numbers show, we'll go to those programs, right? So who are you going to get? So you've got to really think differently about how you want to engage and hire people because until you get the vikis of the world and the Chris's of the world and the Kindle art is and give them the opportunity, your organization's not going to figure out the next new thing that's going to really be transformative. So that's sort of a very specific example outside of the art sector, but it is sort of reflective, I think, of arts organizations and when we're trying to hire. I think it's like, what I think about is when computers, I'm old enough to have computers sort of came through the workplace and there was a lot of resistance because at that time you really almost had no code to use computers and so people were terrified and organizations didn't say, oh this is a choice. Computers are going to be part of this organization, they're going to be totally part of our lives. None of them knew then that they were going to be as they were going to have many computers in our pockets called smartphones. But there wasn't a choice and I think diversity and inclusion has to be the same thing that if we decide that this as a sector, this is what is going to happen, it means it has to be from the trustees all the way down to the volunteers and the box office, that everybody needs training, that every time you have a job opening you have to say we're not going to fill the job until we've interviewed a diverse range of candidates that you can, a lot of times if you can hire personality and energy and have people show you how they would approach problems then you can train them on some specifics of the actual organization but you can't train a personality you can't train eagerness I've read more than all of my friends who have Ph.D. because I read two to three books a week and I have done it all of my life so and I always used to say let me get an interview, if I can get an interview, I can convince them and the other thing in the sector and so I will say that I have a colleague and I mentioned the fact that a boy that I'm on to Mama's Boston is looking to expand their board and I said I would like to recommend you and he wrote me back to say he didn't think he had anything to offer and I wrote him back these are the things that you have to offer and in point that I helped him see himself in a different life and some people don't see themselves as material for certain jobs so if you're with somebody who doesn't have the self-awareness or is modest or is quiet or is whatever they are sometimes being a mentor and saying look this is how I think you should apply for this this is why I think you should do this and then I'm always telling like I do a lot of work with the arts and business council and they have a business on board section and I'm always suggesting people to them let's you know I won't do the monthly meetings for that cohort and everybody be white okay we're going to have some because they're people if it's a program for artists of color and none of the speakers of artists of color is that don't just seem to be sending a message now that doesn't mean I don't have white presenters because I do but it means that they can't be the only ones because I'm not going to send that the same way I do when I used to run programs and evaluate programs if they didn't have any male students involved in arts programs I said this is unacceptable you know because it was so top-handed with women there are boys out here who are talented let's go find some we're going to have to recruit them in different ways so I think you have to be very very very active and I think you have to decide this if this sector can't be diverse and inclusive who else can if the artist can't the artist can't figure it out artist figures things out artist make a way out of no way artist sometimes if you go to the rehearsal the dress rehearsal you wonder how how it happens what happens on opening night what happens so if we can't figure out how to do this and deflect our country and I love what you said nobody else will do it so I think we're going to have to bring that creativity and that never give up spirit and I also the final thing is I'm hoping that the marijuana legalization profits will we can somehow funnel it into arts and education still in tactitude still in tactitude there has to be a way that we can make that happen I got two quick ones because I know we're pressed for time but I think I heard of a theater recently that made it that they would be in their design staff meaning set designer, costume designer sound designer, they will not hire any more homogenized groups they just won't do it they have to be all from different backgrounds and they can't all be from Yale maybe in Boston it's Harvard the other thing is I think another thing that would be helpful is if people start looking at outreach not a one night stand but a relationship a lot of times people look at well if we go to I brought the Hiberian Hall thing well if we do our show at Hiberian Hall we put our art up at Hiberian Hall Hiberian Hall it's outreach to folks of color well it needs to be a relationship that's something that needs to be started a year, year and a half to two years out so that there's a relationship leading up to the moment and what happens when you leave how do you follow up and that's hard, hard, time consuming work and that has to be done well can we get a round of applause for our audience and all of us this evening it's been a delight to hear from each of you so seriously thank you now on to other people that we need to thank so a huge thank you to Cynthia Wu and Karthik Subramya hey I'm so sorry about that and the Power Arts Center for hosting us also thank you to HowRound for partnering with The Network to live stream this series a recorded version of this conversation will be available on HowRoundTV so be looking for the link finally we want to thank Bank of America for their continued support in sustaining The Network for Arts Administrators of Color also the part that you've all been waiting for now please join us in the gallery for a small reception and we hope to see you at the next conversation in February thank you