 and I'm the Executive Director at ASU Gammage. On behalf of the International Presenting Commons, Global Pillow and HowlAround Theater Commons, I'm delighted to welcome you to the Festival for a New Age Models of Responsiveness, Flexibility and Resistance. Before we continue, I would like to draw your attention to and thank our ASL Interpreting Team, Vanessa and Amber from True Biz ASL. This event is also being live captured on the HowlRound. Should you have any further questions regarding accessibility, please private chat Abigail Vega. A reminder that we are live streaming this session right now on HowlRoundTV and a welcome to those of you tuning in on the live stream. For those of you in the Zoom, at times we will be using the chat function. So we ask that you use the chat respectfully. Remember, nothing is private on Zoom. I would like to acknowledge I am zooming in from the ancestral lands of 22 sovereign nations in Arizona. And we work to honor traditions and native people and work together to make a better world. We invite you to share your name, pronouns, where you're calling in from in the chat and we thank you. In May, 2020, a small ad hoc group of US-based presenters began gathering together to discuss the challenges facing international work. Last January, this group put on a session at ISPA, APAP, and under the radar symposium. In March, I hosted an event about the history of presenting. Just over a year since we met, this group has grown into include creative producers and has self-defined as an emergent, evolving volunteer group of United States based performing arts presenters and creative independent producers who have joined forces to keep international cultural exchange and engagement alive and vibrant now and in the future. IPC does this through advocacy, active listening, resource sharing and collaboration among the performing arts presenters, artists, producers and funders who work together to build more sustainable practices and funding models for the future of the exchange of work around the world. Our mission is in service of our increasingly diverse communities throughout the country. IPC celebrates its roles as a part of a global cultural ecosystem and by partnering with artists and presenters from all over the world. IPC does its work through a commons-based approach and is currently organizing with the support and thought partnership of HowlRound and financial support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Our values include artists and other cultural workers, creative practice and a culture of care advocacy and shared leadership, reciprocity, celebrating diversity and diaspora and global dialogue, addressing structural racism, equitable practice and a commitment to learning and change, interdependence, collective action and network building, climate consciousness, sustainability and reducing our carbon footprint. The genesis of this event is rooted in an amazing occasion that Sam Miller brought a number of presenters together at Jacob's Pillow and thus our connection with the global pillow today. We see today as a pilot for the potential future of IPC events rooted in peer exchange. So we appreciate your willingness to jump in and participate and offer feedback after the event. We're excited to learn from each of you in our breakout sessions and we encourage you to use the chat function throughout today to share new models, to share all models that you are excited about. We will aggregate what is shared and send it out after the event. Abigail shares in the Zoom. First up, we will hear from Christy Edmonds and Dina Haggagah. We wanted to bring together two colleagues whose leadership efforts are linked through the United States artist. Dina, the former president and CEO, now at the Andrew Mellon Foundation and Christy Edmonds, the inaugural recipient of the USA Artist's Bresford Prize. Their work on behalf of artists across disciplines and cultural realities include the formation of artsrelief.org, which became a collaborative framework across multiple national service organizations to generate urgent relief support for US artists at the onset of the pandemic. In a moment of immersed transition, we are interested in pairing them to reflect on the critical impact of international presenting to get our IPC form underway. So good day to everybody and thank you to IPC for inviting me to be in conversation with one of my favorite people of all time, Christy Edmonds. And also to be able to talk a little bit about this work, about where our field is and what's happening both in our country and abroad and our responsibility to both of those spaces. Before we get started, I just want to say Sam Miller's name out loud, which is someone I did not know, but I really want to make sure that Sam is lifted in this space. And I think Sam's life is the reason I've gotten to know Christy and it's just delightful to be here with the Jacobs pillow community. Hi Christy. Hi Dina. Hi buddy. So Christy, I think just before we move forward, I am in Brooklyn, New York. I am here just to ground where we are. Where are you? Are you in LA? I'm in LA. I'm in the unceded lands of the Tongva and the Chumash people in Los Angeles, California. Yeah. That's beautiful. Christy, one of my favorite things about you is I never know where you are. And sometimes that means physically and other times that means spiritually or globally because I feel like your mind is everywhere at once. And I think before we kick off, I would love for you, given the context of this conversation to just share a little bit about your curatorial background, how you've worked internationally, both abroad and at home and sort of thinking out how we've arrived at this conversation today. Well, thank you. I feel like for me, the work that I've done started with me as an artist, started with me realizing that I was an artist that was more effective at finding form if I was in collaboration and then finding that the relationships that one has with other artists in collaboration, I had a knack towards how their own work might be lifted differently. And so really curatorial for me was not about arriving in a space from some academic perspective or credential, but from making things happen for the mobility of ideas, if that makes sense. And you mentioned Sam, Miller and Sam and a lot of the people that will be speaking in the course of the day and Jacob's Pillow, these are the people who literally when I was a young artistic director and practicing artists really invited me into their world and therefore expanded my sense of both responsibility, potential and capacity around international ideas, right? I was living in Portland, Oregon at the time I had started PICA, the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art and I was starting to think about how does the program in this particular area of the Pacific Northwest with a lot of diversity and diasporic communities but isn't exactly on the main kind of frame of urban metropolitan art capitals offer itself differently through international exchange practices and the mobility that would happen in that community. And that's when I founded the Time Based Art Festival which then led me to the Melbourne International Arts Festival where I lived overseas and so on and so forth. But it's really these folks and I think it's what you're gonna probably be poking on is these are the people who saw something in my capacity and wanted to exchange their knowledge with me that could accelerate how I might be in collaboration with them around how we really hold up these exchange routes. One thing I'm really struck by Christy is I think for me in my own personal practice PICA was really formative and I think something about de-centering the New York LA access point of how culture is made in this country something about thinking about culture as inherently being both about place and about how we think about place in a larger context. I think the thing if I can mirror out even further is like your work internationally and back home has also felt like it has de-centered how we think about the United States as a, I don't know what the word is it's not like a cultural superpower but it just reminds me that culture predates this country culture predates all these borders like that actually this type of international collaboration is about returning ourselves to something that just predates all of this crap we find ourselves in which I think has led to IPC even forming to begin with. So I just wanna hear about where you are as a person where the coalition is where you all are because xenophobia, the pandemic, travel bans it's something about it just feels like we must maintain that tension, you know? Yeah, you know, when I first started doing this work and again as I referenced from the being having a bit of a ton and a support mechanism we were working at the time and this was in the late 1990s, right? So I was in my late 20s and you know it was like we forged something in our ability to work globally and internationally at a time when we just had a whiff of certainty. There was a whiff we could see a few years ahead we could really forge these trust relationships across cultures globally within our own networks inside of the United States. And we literally were working in a tremendous recognition of our interdependence, not just the interdependence of what is now like the IPC but our interdependence with artists, creative thinkers, curators, activists around the world and the forces that politics or the marketplace economies pressurize or make inhuman somehow or are to extract something that is anathema to our value system is what artists, culture, creative producers, all of us are working on and when you bring that exchange practice of an artist from another place into your place they're bringing part of their land, their outlook, their expressive truths, their rhythms, their languages into community with you for the sake of sharing. And we feel that has been under extreme duress here over the past several years. And so coming together in this time is really about us linking our interdependence, our knowledge, our trust, our solidarity within the context of expressive humanity. Yeah. Can I ask Christy, and I don't wanna put to, what has this year been like? Like one thing I'm struck specifically in the visual arts is I've been able to go to a few things where the object can arrive but the human cannot. Yeah. And so the paintings on the wall because the painting was able to get through customs but the actual person could not get here in a very specific way. And just the havoc of this on the performing space and on the presenting community is so colossal to me. Yeah. But I'm really struck by, I would love to hear more about what you're literally facing now and how you're thinking about it. And also when we say international I perceive this as we go and we invite, right? Like it's a back and forth. Absolutely. And I'm just so curious about where you are and what you're thinking about. In the context of Center for the Art of Performance we started to work with filmmakers in different cities, in countries, in places, in their empty theaters, be it Buenos Aires or Seville to find a way to make a performance project that we had an enduring commitment to an enduring commitment to now having to find another way forward. And the economics of that being fulfilled as well. So although our economic resource position has nosedived, which everyone is vividly aware of, that is nothing in comparison to what was going on with artists. And what's the first instinct? How now do I share? How do I give? How do I make useful? And so we invented all the tools that we didn't have to use before to be able to carry that forward. And that is again, the behavioral practice of recognized interdependence. I have a piece, you have a piece, that person has a piece, if we come together we can still make something happen. So for us, we created an online channel as many people would know and built festival apparatus, built different kinds of things. And that has also done something across rural communities, culturally specific communities and global communities where they are in a chat together experiencing something, not the same and we know it's not the same. But there was an ability to absolutely expand a sense of saying we're still here in solidarity with one another in order to carry the ideas, the relationship and the expansion of belonging across all of this. While the politics spun like they did, the pandemic, the economics and we invented other ways, which is what the art and cultural community worldwide does. That's what we do. We create the durable means through which relationship and the languages of music, the languages of dance, the languages of storytelling, that cut across dominant narratives, that cut across what is familiar, which also for audiences, I mean, again, it's a really important thing, right? Familiarity breeds this kind of sense of taste. Familiarity repetition creates taste. Or belief or perspective. And that then gets solidified, can be almost calcified into, because I know it, because I understand it. Well, it's the best. Yeah, exactly, yeah. And to do that is to shrink our potential to encounter the myriad, myriad, extraordinary things that accelerate us out into a 30,000 foot view of a different way of belonging. And to resource that is the exchange of humanity, not the exchange of monetary, not the exchange of political extraction, not the exchange of these other kinds of calcified systems. It is to get to that human core and work in tandem with one another and remind each other across these borders, especially ours in the US, which are so incredibly siloed now, that there is human beings underneath here speaking the drum beats and speaking these languages that may on occasion be unfamiliar or elliptical or provocative, painful to encounter. And yet it makes us awake to the world differently. If you have an artist in your life, no matter where you are in the world, you're linked, you know? I can be linked to communities in South Africa because I've worked with Lady Smith Black Mombaso and also the gospel choirs here of Los Angeles who are like, oh my God, look at what they're doing. And they find and forge relationships they're critical to just the essence of our potential as human beings. Yeah, sorry, that was a little long. No, I will never interrupt Kristi Edmonds. This is like a profound truth inside my body. Yeah, I, you know, I love that. I love this frame as like familiarity is what essentially calcifies us into like a sort of density towards the world. I also think that being, I think the flip side of that is like a familiarity when something really is just entirely foreign to you. And I think it does remind us that we are interconnected and that all of this again predates these systems. This past year I've been thinking a lot about like what art has meant for me and why this matters, right? Cause this year's been tough, right? And it's like, how do you save this? Why, why are we all doing this? Why are we all killing ourselves to like save the thing? And, you know, I think for me, art is the only place I feel free. Like I truly feel free. And I have been children in my life for the first time, like that I see on a daily basis. And I don't want to already start to chip away at that freedom, right? Cause there's little beautiful imaginations are just there. And I think when we protect artists, we protect what I think is maybe the only free state we can be as humans on this planet at this time. And something about the borders and the cutting off and the losing this international perspective just feels like yet another tool to like further limit our freedom, you know, our freedom to engage in a very specific way. And the US is curious because, and I know, Chrissy, you, everyone at IPC must know this in a different way. It predates COVID, right? We have weaponized borders and travel bans. And so many of you have still been working in those parts of the world with those artists, with artists back home to just try to maybe really identify for us the ways in which these borders are fake. And the ways in which, you know, the only borders we want to respect are just cultural boundaries. And we want to engage them out of a place of curiosity and love and respect and not out of a pain and a politic and a genocide, you know, like that's not what we're here for. But I'm curious, and I know we're running out of time, but Chrissy, I imagine coalition efforts like IPC are one of the only ways to drive this conversation forward. And I'm just so curious about like what folks should be doing now to organize and to collaborate. And I think I want to say it's been my favorite part of your practice is I think you've always brought people with you. You've always been willing to follow people as they go. And IPC feels like another model of your participation in something that's like, we cannot do this alone. One theater at a time, one art museum at a time or even one artist at a time. And so if there was just any way to end I'm like, what do we need to be doing to move around this border? I think that it's, I think it's critically important to this group and I can't speak for everyone, but we do share certain values and traits that absolutely we've got to tend to the readjustment of the democracy here and the arts are a powerful tool. It's not about what it is that we make. It's about how we think and how we act and how we behave. And we're doing that in a collective model. We can't do everything all the time, but we have to do these pieces. So this is a group of people who are willing to absolutely address the fissures and the broken fractured places of our American democracy and its history and reparations and all of those things while also recognizing again that there is a global community of creative practitioners. This is happening all over. These kinds of things are happening all over. So we have to help each other, hold each other up across all of these, as you've said, almost fictional borders, even though we get them as an organizing principle and a power principle. And I think the other thing that we have to do is what we always do in the arts, in performance is that we are constantly dreaming through uncertainty. And our ability to continue dreaming through this uncertainty to build possibility is a way to model to our audiences, our communities, et cetera, that one can dream through this uncertainty if we are able to link arms and lean on one another. So this is a group of people who are strategically as well ensuring that the international exchange principles across the creative community worldwide is not left behind under economic dress so that things become absolutely hyper, hyper, hyper always local, while at the same time taking that local and elevating it into a global exchange practice. We're dreaming through uncertainty and we want to be at the table to advance the high positives that this world needs across cultures and across the planet, not dominant models, but exchanged equitable sharing of our potential. Yeah, I also think it's part of our conversations about our responsibility to the local. Absolutely, and we have a huge responsibility there. Huge, and I don't think we can take the mandate of the nation state on how to treat the local as the nation state tries to shut everything down. So I appreciate so much that art does that. Art might be one of the only ways that we get to do that is our responsibility through the local is thinking through and with one another at a global level. Absolutely. That thing needs to stick. Yeah, yeah. Can't wait to be in a theater with you again. I can't wait either, Dina, thank you. Thank you, Christy and Dina so much. I'm Phillip Beither from the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis here to introduce Congolese choreographer, director and producer, Fostan Linyakula, who makes electrifyingly poetic performance work, exploring memory, trauma and identity, forged by his country's history of brutal colonialism, dictatorship war and economic uncertainty. His work is toured to major festivals and theaters across Europe, Africa and North America, including three riveting engagements with us at the Walker. Over 21 years in his home city of Kissingani, his studio's Kabakos has opened dance spaces, a recording studio, a water treatment plant of all things and is commissioned many new work. He's often directed festivals, including the Holland Festival in 2019 and the Amazing Connection Kin Festival in Kinshasa. He serves as an advocate, mentor, connector and leader for artists across the continent of Africa. As seen in his film, Letters from a Continent, that he refers to in our talk, portraits of 21 different African artists made during the pandemic. He refers in our talk about making work with scarce resources and how COVID has upended the West's false sense of security, there being no insurance policy left against global catastrophe. I hope you'll find his talk for greater flexibility, resilience and hope as inspiring as I did. Can you talk about that kind of responsibility and what its relationship is to your own practice, work and how you might apply that to the notion of directing a festival, say? See, one 20 years ago, I decided to move back to the Congo and to start Ginger Kabakot. It was very clear for me that the only way to survive there and to go beyond pointing fingers and saying, this is not working, this is not working, so-and-so is not going this way. It was to say, okay, once I've said that, what is it that I can do about the situation? And so that's where even the whole notion of responsibility begins. It's like the necessity to make the world around me liveable. So maybe it starts from really personal needs. It's like, I chose to live here. How do I make this space liveable? Because I can't wait for anyone to do it. Can I take responsibility? I take responsibility to begin. And because, again, I say that fundamentally, if I do the work I do, it is not to be alone. Because, again, no one can dream alone or you can never be strong if you're alone. And the question of scale becomes essential because I know that I may not be able to change the world, but I can change my world no matter how little it is. And so I begin there. And if I can do something at that level, I trust that I'm not alone who thinks like this. There must be others out there. I may not have found them yet. Maybe all my work is to identify those potential allies out there, but I trust that they are there. And so I'll take my responsibility, I'll play my part. And this means that because I don't want to be alone of dreaming these dreams in Kisangani or the Congo or elsewhere on the continent, I reach out whenever I see or I sense that there is someone dreaming these dreams in their own context and find a way of connecting. So we were talking about letters from the continent and it turns out to be that kind of project where they're reaching out towards these young artists. And just with one question, where do you find the energy to continue through these trying times? And the many responses I got, 21 responses, it's just enlarges my horizon. And therefore that one I was talking of getting strength, it is really that way. So organizing a festival becomes like an excuse to identify potential allies. People I can dream with, people I can dream of changing the world with. So it could be that every one of us will only change something small in their own context, but by just knowing that that person is doing that there, so-and-so is doing that there, I'm beginning to view this as like some form of acupuncture points. And the whole work now is about creating circulation between these points. And I really believe that in the post-pandemic world more than ever, more than ever, we need that. We need that. Of course, the resources will be scarce. They were scarce before and the economic crisis that we will feel even more in the next two, three years. Right. It will hit us very hard. And we might need to turn more towards the local, to make the local as sustainable economically as possible. But the challenge for me is how do you act very local and yet not to close yourself, not look inwards? That's the challenge. We will have to act at that small level and yet we need to stay as outwards looking as possible. More than ever, we need that. And this is the work we've been doing in the past. And now I feel that we just need more than ever to continue in that direction. As festival directors and curators are imagining a new future, I think it's a moment where people can reset and think about how to do things differently. And what would you advise a festival director in Europe or in the States to do differently? Seeing my experience through the years convinced me even more that we need to learn to improvise. And for many years I talked of improvisation as a core element in my work, but not only as an artistic tool to generate material, no, but as a state of being because we live in very uncertain times. What is happening is that, yeah, I can say that the rest of the world is catching up with us in terms of uncertainties. And the fake sense of security we had before COVID because you had an insurance policy and you cried. It's just not operational. So we need to learn how to improvise with our own lives because we just don't know what tomorrow would be made of. Maybe there'll be another pandemic, maybe there'll be some war, and we don't know. And just having the humility to say, I don't know, but I'm ready to go for the encounters could be a first step. If everyone is just shows the good will, you say, yeah, it's going to be fine. And what COVID is teaching us is really that. It's like, you know, the world is falling apart. We are losing so many lives, but we're still here. Festivals in themselves are not the problem. In fact, because festivals bring us together, they are so needed. We need to break the isolation. We need those fora where we can come together. The question is, how do we come together? How do we come together and stay alert to engage in this deep act of imagination, to find solutions, to find answers and more answers? The better chance we give ourselves of figuring out ways forward, bringing people together is also about taking time to know the people, to know one another, to build trust. There's a long-term companionships. You and I have been talking for so many years. And I don't need you to present my work to be in conversation. And this is the kind... So for me, times it's more useful to have such long-term conversations with people than just hoping from one theater to another, from one festival to another, to present my work. And as I grow, I feel that this is what I need more. And when I look at the younger generations, I'm like, this is what I hope for them. This is what I wish for them. To meet those companions who could work with them. That's excellent. It's like there is movement for sure. We need symbols. When I saw that picture of Joe Biden kneeling in front of... George Floyd's son, I'm like, okay, this is the president of the United States of America kneeling in front of this five or six-year-old boy. It's a strong symbol. But how do we translate that into policy? How do we translate that into new ways of dealing with one another? And how do we not fall asleep and say, oh, that battle is won because Derek Chauvin was found guilty? Right. Because the pushback is so clear. The forces that we have to deal against are so strong. Right. In Europe and even on the African continent. Because that's the sad part of it all. Which is that we deal with our own people exactly the same way Derek Chauvin treated George Floyd. Yeah, it's about understanding the context, understanding the resistance, not giving in and using the tools of imagination to go around. If we can't make them our allies, but at least let's not give them the tools to crush us forever. Because I know that I'll be useless if I was thrown in jail or killed. I won't help anyone. I so appreciate as do many in my fields in the US and beyond your wisdom and your continued creative approach to huge resistance. And especially at this delicate moment as we move through and we hope past the current crisis of the pandemic. So I look forward to our staying in touch and thank you so much. Thanks Phillip. Thanks for being there. Yeah. To be continued. Yeah, absolutely. Hi, my name is Diane Ragsdale. My pronouns are she, her, and I am an independent art consultant based in the Netherlands. Watching these two beautiful conversations between Christie Edmonds and Dina Hagag and between Phillip Beither and Fostan Lanikila, several themes surfaced. Decentering the US and New York and LA within it. Interdependence, enduring commitments, borders, fact and fiction, equitable exchange, flexibility and fluidity, humility and responsibility and coming together to imagine, improvise and solve problems. We are now going to move into our first breakout. We will give you a couple of prompts to consider and then use a listening circle format to give each person the opportunity to respond or pass. Your facilitator will be timing responses to ensure everyone is heard. We'll also have a note taker to capture your comments without attribution and we will synthesize, summarize and share these in a written report. So the two questions we'd like you to consider in your first breakout group and these will go into the chat now. In the long list of what you believe to be essential for US presenters and producers working in international engagements, what are three goals or perhaps values that need to be lifted up in order to ensure that this work sustains post pandemic? And then the second question, what is one significant change that needs to be made in business models, organizational structures or producing practices in order to advance such goals or values? Enjoy and we will see you in 15 minutes. Thanks. Who's home already, Sarah? Michael, what a great group. Okay, we got lucky. Hello, hello. We'll give just a second to see if anyone else is coming and invite anyone to turn on their cameras if they'd like to join. That way, we are going to address the questions in just a moment, but before doing so, I want to go over just the structure of today and also introduce our note taker for today who's the producer of this event, Jamie Galoon. I'm Diana, I've already introduced myself. Jamie, do you want to say hello? Hi to everyone, so happy to have you here. I also want to note that we have Vanessa with us interpreting in our room because our breakout room is being live streamed right now. So just, you know, be aware that as we're having this intimate conversation, it is both intimate and very public at the same time. And we're happy to be chatting alongside those of you at home who are watching the live stream. That's all I have. Excellent. So as we open up the circle, we're going to ask that you give your name and pronouns, but for go any formal introductions as we'll have limited time for sharing today. Speak from your own experience, try to stay on the general topic that we've brought to the table today. And in order to make space accessible, please refrain from speaking over one another in a listening circle. It's common to simply allow the conversation to pass around the circle rather than having crosstalk. And we ask that you use the chat respectfully as again, nothing is private in Zoom. Before we get into the questions, I'd like to give you a minute or so to just think about, you've heard from three, about three different models, three innovations in a sense. Who is inspiring you at the moment? As you think about models, as you think about innovations post pandemic, who or what is inspiring you? And when you have something, I'd like you to put it into the chat, the individual institution event. And what about it is capturing your attention or interest at the moment. And we'll give you just a little bit of time here. And I'll give you another 30 seconds or so to put into the chat any thoughts that have come to mind on this question. Excellent. I see a couple in there. Theater leaders in Poland from Howard, some particular artists that you're working with these days. Liz Lerman, Michael Muenzo, among others, that's great. As you continue to have these come to mind throughout this session, feel free to throw them into the chat. We're trying to collect these and just identify some bright spots for folks. Okay, now we're going to move into our questions and we'll throw those into the chat. Again, I wonder if there, Jamie, do you know is there a way to do that to throw those into the chat again? I'll give them, but I will save them for the next minute or so. Think again about these prompts, right? There's a long list, no doubt, of things that we think are essential for the work, this international exchange work to continue. What are three goals or values that you find most important? And related to that, what changes are we going to need to make? What major, what single change even would you say we need to make if we want to be able to pursue those goals? So I'll give you another minute to think there and then we'll start going around the circle. Encourage you to jot down whatever's coming up for you. And if it's something off these questions, but related to the, what you've just heard or the general theme, jot that down. Okay, we have about 10 minutes left. So I'm going to get us started. So we have time for every person to go. We'll have a minute per person to just share what's coming up with you. Mr. Woods, may I call on you first? Since you put something into the chat already. Hello everyone. I'm honored to be here to hear and listen and learn. My name is Brent Woods. I go by he is, and I come from Montgomery County Community College. And some of the things that we're doing, that's impacting our programming are, you know, changing the way we look at how we engage with children, offering programming that allows them or access to programming that allows children to want to say what's really on the book. Kids do that anyway. They say what's on their mind, but say it in a way that's artful. And we're really focused on that in, in having them create works that can be presented in front of their colleagues. And so we're working on those kind of things. So that's the big deal for us. Thank you very much for sharing that. And I'm just going to go around the circle here. And so I'll let you know who's next. It'll be Edgar and then Michael Orloff. And then Jacob. Jacob. Edgar. Hi everyone. This is Edgar. He him. It's good to see and be in this room as well. And meet some new faces. What came to mind in the first question. I think about reciprocity, generosity, and meeting people where they are, in terms of when you are thinking about exchange and thinking about international work. It's about learning from one another. And it makes me think about how you support those things for those who are presenting international work. And also. And within the local as well. One of the things that I think about that could help is building relationships with sister cities. Within the city that you're in to develop. Further relationships are built. There's a kind of a system there that, that supports some of that exchange, whether it's virtual or whether it's in person. And of course being active in our politics to make sure that, at least in the U S that we have someone who values culture and have a minister of culture, perhaps or something that could really kind of take this into that next level. Thank you. Perfect timing. Thank you. And yeah, great suggestions, reciprocity. And sister cities. Love that. Michael. Hi everybody. Good. I assume it's me, Michael. I didn't know if there was another Michael. Good to see everybody. And then the two. I'm sorry if I'm giving you an echo. Can you all hear me? Okay. Both of them are pretty challenging to answer in just a minute. I'll just. One of the things I put in the chat. Trying to celebrate those who are working behind the scenes to ensure that artists mobility. International exchange is possible. Is something we can't lose sight of. There is a lot of. Work being done behind the scenes to improve that. And so, I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. Work being done behind the scenes to improve that. And some. I would say. First. Four or five months of this new administration. And that's something. It's not a sexy suggestion. But certainly something to lift up. To ensure that artists mobility. Is in the direction that we'd all like to see. And I lifted up just, you know, Matthew Covey and Tommy stop, but also the work that Heather noon and so many others have been doing. With the artists from a broad website. We all need to contribute to those. Conversations to ensure that at least the visa process on this end. In the United States. Is improving and is allowing. To come freely into this country and. Continue that exchange that Edgar and so many others were talking about. So thank you. I'll leave it there. Okay, thank you. I have to cut you off. I'm so sorry. We've heard we just have five minutes left to get around. So. Jacob. Hi, everyone. I'm Jacob Yarrow. He him. And I'm in Sonoma County, California. A lot of complicated thoughts come to mind when I see these questions. And some of them are that I'm not sure I'm like the framing of sustaining things post pandemic aren't as interesting to me. Right. Like I'm interested. I feel like there are so many systems. I work for a state university. So changing power structures and financing structures and the relationship. That presenting organizations like mine have with artists. So the, the. It's it is less that in those conversations, the presenting institution is holding so much of the power, so much of the resources, so much of the financing and making that a much less hierarchical. I mean, there's a lot that we can do personally, but as like as an institution, but systemically through everything that will be great. And I'm also in this conversation reminding of the powerful work we've done through a lens of cultural diplomacy. And I appreciate Howard's comment about artist exchange and how the exchanges between artists that are based here and come to visit us from around the world is great. And that's it. Thank you. You packed a lot into a minute and I really appreciate it. And also the questioning of that word sustaining terrific to have that on the table. I'll go next to Alexandra and then Howard. Hi, it's great to be with you. I am not currently working in international presenting, but I can give you a perspective from my research and work with Chilean artists, which I continue to do just watching them and and being in contact with them during the pandemic and seeing how they've been enduring challenges that are in different timings than us in different ways and additional protest movements and just being aware of the context in other countries and being attentive to how while we are undergoing our own stress and tumult that other countries are and other artists are dealing with them with different situations, amplified situations have different levels of stability and sustainability due to political structures and just being attentive to that as you try to work around systems to support them that and be flexible as you can, even though we know that sometimes our institutions don't don't make that easy. But attending to the whole humanity of of their situation with that specificity is is key, I think. Thank you, Alexandra. I really appreciate that. I'm going to move on right away to Howard. Howard shall what's he him. I would just lift up some of the things that I'm certainly learning during this pandemic period where we haven't been able to go to festivals, but I've been hosting through CITD conversations between American and Polish artistic leaders, theater leaders. And they've been incredibly deep and valuable and I think made me realize that in the festival going I'd been doing previously, there wasn't really enough conversation. And the dialogue itself has huge value right now because the globe is shrinking. We all have similar problems in. I would don't want to say similar, but there's a lot that overlaps in all of our countries. And then secondly, I was able to see the Golden Mask Festival in Moscow this year through lives, you know, the video. They did brilliant videos and just to remind ourselves how much we can accomplish, even though I felt it was more accessible. I'd seen it in person before. I felt it was more accessible than ever this year because they did such a good job putting it on the screen and we just need to remember we can connect even when we have these other barriers in place. Great, Howard. Thank you so much. That's so inspiring way to end on your part. Andrew, I think you're the last person would you like to share? And if so, you could start now. Andrew left. Okay. He didn't want to share. So one thing I just want to say is thank you. I know that wasn't much time, but we actually quite a bit was captured. And I want to say I was so heartened to hear from you, Michael in particular, that this is on the radar. And that attention is being paid to visa issues and cultural exchange. And it's important at the federal level. That's really, really terrific to hear. And I want to thank you all for taking the time to share your thoughts on this public live stream this morning. And I hope you stick around and we'll see you in the next breakout as well. Hello, everybody. I hope your breakout group was thought provoking and helpful. In deciding or figuring out your place in the global ecosystem. This is meant to be both for you personally and for your organization. I'm older. Got I English and I use she, her a, yeah, pronouns. I'm an independent arts consultant based in Los Angeles, California, and have been senior advisor for international fairs to foundation. Teatro mil since 2014. The Teatro mil foundation was founded by Carmen Romero and Evelyn Campbell in Chile. I interviewed the general director of Santiago mean international festival, which I consider one of the top three international festivals in Latin America. Carmen Romero is the founder of the festival as well. I'd like to just take a moment to let you know that instead of literally translating everything that Carmen said, I have interpreted. Hopefully that will provide greater context for her comments. Through radical political upheaval that took place in Chile in 2019 and beyond. The other meal has continued to mount a remarkable international festival. Rooted in a political movement, often incorporating works and programs addressing urgent political change. It has co-produced many works that have toured and been distributed globally. In my conversation with Carmen, she tells us of the genesis of the festival and what they're doing vis-a-vis the current political situation in Chile. Thank you. In 2019, massive demonstrations were started mostly by high school students in the Santiago de Chile metro station in protest against an increase in fares. These conflicts impacted how the Santiago International Festival was held later in January of 2020. Carmen, how did you restructure the festival taking into consideration the social upheaval? Well, good morning, good afternoon. Thank you for this conversation. Well, we are the Teatro Amil Foundation, which creates a festival that was more of a movement called Teatro Amil. It wasn't a festival at the beginning. It was born in democracy to take into public spaces. So Festival Teatro Amil really was a movement. It didn't start off as a festival. It was a protest against the tyranny of the dictatorship that was in place when the Pinochet government was in charge. That morphed into a festival and it is what it is today. So what we did was gather three groups to celebrate democracy and take into public spaces that had been given during the years of the dictatorship. The festival now has almost 30 years. So three theatrical companies came together to really take back the democratic space, to reclaim the space. And from there we, you know, the festival has evolved and it's been about 30 years since we started it. So when the social upheaval happened, we continued to be part of that movement that now impulsed a new generation. When the demonstration started in 2019, we really have all along been part of that movement, even though now it's really being led by younger people. And we saw in the streets, in the demonstrations in those young people, art, a lot of performance that was done in the streets. And well, we continued to do the festival in the middle of all that spread. Because it's part of the community, of the neighborhood bars, of the squares. We continue to do it. But we also integrate conversations. We call those conversations necessary and important to talk about what art means in this new stage that we were building. We really saw art in the demonstrations. The demonstrations started from a political protest. But soon there were performances taking place. There were murals being painted. And we felt that the festival, which has always had a commitment to going out into the peripheral cities, into plazas, into, you know, neighborhoods, we felt that we could be part of this discussion. We also convened a number of conversations that talked about the place of art and culture in political movements. We called those conversations Cabildos. And they were open Cabildos, where people came to talk about the role of art in these movements, in this new constitution that we wanted to build. I think I've been through two very difficult years. In 2020, obviously the manifestations and the social discourse, the consternation that just, you know, erupted. We still did the festival this year. It was even more complicated because of course with the pandemic, we had all of the social distancing rules. But we still were committed to doing the festival. We've always been committed to doing the festival. And even this year, as difficult as it was with social distancing and everything, we still managed to have some in-live performances as well as digital performances. And I will just editorialize that by doing digital performances, the festival was able to reach a much broader audience around the world because before you had to fly to Chile to be part of the festival and this year the Adromille was able to bring artists through the digital means to a global audience. I think it was an important challenge to do the festival this year and we work a lot in competitions to what to be international right now and we thought how to manage with people coming from all over the world not just the group but directors and they came here, there, I'm not in Chile right now, and the groups working in new competitions, international competitions and right now recovering the question that you did with me we want that the constitution must have inside the arts as a right. So we are working in that, we are working during all the time about what it means to be with the arts in the constitution what it means in other constitutions too regarding the patrimonial regarding education and also I wanted to tell you that this is the constitution, the first constitution in the world that will be a right for parity half woman, half man and we have a quantity of people of our original people so we are changing the culture of Chile we are living in another world and we are fighting and we are thinking how to put inside this constitution how to put inside this constitution the arts as a right and it's very important the integrate of this constitution that we chose one month ago is different is that people from any cases any profession, you have lawyer but you have housekeepers too you have teachers but also scientists, actors these are people who actually write the constitution and the people of Chile voted that the people who are going to write the constitution half of them are male half of them are female and that is unheard of in any country and there is a role that the indigenous people of Chile are going to play a significant role so it's a harbinger of great things the people inside these people that will write the constitution as a lawyer as teacher we are very proud and happy it means theater for the society in Chile thank you very much have a good trip thank you Olga and Carmen for that really inspiring I hope we might achieve some day where the people who are governed by a constitution are participants in creating their own destiny under which they live my name is Chris Lorway and I'm the executive director of Stanford live in California our next guest is located on the other side of the southern hemisphere in Anteira this is our home in Wellington thanks for joining us today thank you so much for connecting across the world it feels really special I've known the institution as the New Zealand festival for so many years and I note over the last couple of years you've changed your name and the emphasis of what you do even year round since our inception in 1986 so a fairly long-standing festival in this region and over the years being a biennial festival I think was the main catalyst for us picking up other events in between our two-yearly main festival and so we ended up also producing and presenting an annual jazz festival here called the Wellington Jazz Festival we also picked up the producing of a long-running opera singing competition for emerging singers here which is now known as the Lexus Song Quest and plus we would also present other events or special tours that sat outside of the main festival day it just felt like we needed an organisation that sat over all of these individual events and at the time we were also starting to undertake a bicultural or what we're calling an intercultural strategy for our organisation and we spoke to local Iwi the people of this land who had had a connection with our festival for a number of years what would be an appropriate name for a company that ran these types of events in this city on this land in particular and they gifted us the name Tafari which is connected most strongly to the God of Wind and for anyone who's been here to Wellington you will know that it's a particularly windy city and I noticed one of the other changes that you made relatively quickly within the New Zealand festival specifically was to really expand the curatorial voice and moving away from the idea of a single artistic director to bringing in multiple artistic voices it felt like it was time to I guess dismantle the kind of tried and true and very traditional festival model of having one artistic director's voice who selected a whole range of program for an audience we wanted to create an event that spoke to a broader number of people and that I think means naturally having a broader number of voices it's really hard for one person to connect with or represent all groups in the community and we also were really excited about the idea of offering artists themselves the chance to play in the curation space I know that it's not for all artists but there are certainly some I think who we know that they bring to each individual project or even a series of projects such a lot of thought and consideration and maybe even a very explicit message around the work we looked at other models around the world like for example the Brighton Festival who invite one artist per festival but we thought well why have one when you can have a few and it tied very much into this idea of breaking down this traditional model but really multiplying the voices speaking to connect with a greater audience more diverse audience one of my favourite things about a couple of festivals that I've attended there is the visitor reception or welcome to country where you spend a half day with some of the local indigenous nations and break bread and share culture and can you talk a little bit about that tradition so the welcome ceremony is called a porphyry and we do we hold one for each week of the festival we're a three and a half week festival and so we have a porphyry at the beginning of each of those weeks where we welcome the visitors and artists for that particular week of the program and that is important for our international guests but I should also say it's very important for us to welcome our New Zealand artists into our festival into our space as well it's a very formal process and there is very much a running order if you like that we need to follow according to our culture the culture is quite fierce and strong it's a challenge to see who are you and why are you here and then people are welcomed onto a marae, a meeting house there are speeches and song as well which is a really lovely thing for an arts organization or an arts event to offer so our team, our staff here we take classes in kapa haka or singing practice and we take classes in today on Maori we've been learning kapa haka as well so that we as the staff can actually make that welcome offer that welcome to our visitors but what is I think the key thing about this beautiful ceremony is that there is a moment after when artists are able to respond and what we find with our artists is that they bring the most beautiful responses into the room I think coming back to what you were saying just spending all that time together really connecting breaks down this idea that this is a tour that you're coming in and out and you don't really get a chance to connect with all the people, we really break that down and the ending of this beautiful ceremony is about sharing food together and you're right, it takes a good half a day but I don't think anyone regrets it Definitely not, I remember the nose touching ceremony as well That's right, it's all kind of I think finally you refer a lot here to the importance of culture and the land and the other things that we're all thinking about is the impact that our industry has on climate and being sort of a space that is somewhat isolated in the world and relies on international touring to connect you Can you talk about how you guys are thinking about the climate crisis in your role in that It's been one of the surprising but happy successes of shifting the programming model of the outcomes that we realised was that we had kind of created even through a kind of guest curator role an artist in residence role as well so these curators were spending a good amount of time with us and what they were creating through their series of events was not just the opportunity to bring in other international artists but also to create events that deeply connected with our local artists so that sparked us thinking about really in a response to climate this is the perfect opportunity to perhaps decrease the number of international artists we bring in for each festival but still offer the same range and number of events through some engagement with the local connection with artists here in New Zealand that I think create a real deep sense of investment and emotion around these events and works here with the audience through the local connection and so that's something that we're looking at going forward particularly now with the border restrictions it does seem possible to perhaps bring new artists from across the world but then create these avenues and opportunities for them to create new work or bring perhaps an older piece or a piece that they have been gifted from another artist however we work it through that creates a series of events that have automatically an international conversation through the creation of the work and I would like to say you were the last stop on my travels as we went into this space and even though I was only there for a short time it was such a wonderful experience and I really applaud everything that you're doing and I thank you so much for taking the time to share that with us today Thank you Chris, I can't wait to welcome you back again Hi everyone, I'm Diane Ragsdale and I'm back to introduce the next breakout before doing so I just want to do a time check and let you know that we do think that we're going to end closer to quarter past the hour we really hope you can stick around so that you can hear the remarks by Kyle Abraham, if you do have to leave early we understand that might be necessary do know that you'll be able to come back and watch the archived livestream so in this conversation between Kari English and Carmen Romero so powerful we heard that Festival Internationale Santiago Amil began as a movement and has been vigilant in making the arts and culture central to Chile's political discourse and even influencing the Constitution in the conversation between Chris Lorway and Marni Carmelita we heard about a festival expanding its curatorial voices, collaborations and opportunities for local artists to fostering deeper engagements with place including importantly with local indigenous communities both of these conversations speak in large part to the relationship between art and government or politics and also what it means and what it takes to foster a democratic culture using the same format as before we are now going to move into breakouts with two new prompts for you to consider and these will also go into the chat number one what role do you think festivals should play in critical social issues facing their host community you can take this to a personal level and think about your own number two how is power or voice shifting in your own institution in terms of curation the balance between local and international focus and the kinds of artists and audiences being curated enjoy the next 15 minutes and we'll see you back here soon hi Colleen I think you might be on mute and I while you unmute yourself I do want to notify everyone that this conversation will be live streamed and I'll be taking notes thank you so much for that I'm Colleen and it looks like we have some of the same people in here but I'll just go through again part of the I am part of the international presenting common steering committee and I'm supported by please introduce yourself hi I'm Fernanda I'm coming from ASU Gammage and I will be taking notes and as we go through our conversation each of you will introduce yourselves and your pronouns if you wish and right now I want us to take a minute just to think about one model or innovation or inspiration point for you that you would like to share with us and for you to put it in the chat and Fernanda will be our timekeeper we're good I'm just going to repeat the two questions that we are going to two prompts that we are going to discuss what role should festivals play in critical social issues facing their host communities and two how is power voice shifting in your own institution in terms of curation the balance between local and international focus and the kinds of artists and audiences being curated who would like to start first well we have two marks so why don't we begin with Mark Murphy this time not Mark Russell thank you Colleen the first topic about the role of a festival in critical social issues in a community there are so many different types of festivals with certain focus the last large festival sorry first my name is Mark he, him and I'm here in Cherokee land but the last festival I was involved in planning in 2018 was specifically focused on connections between Los Angeles and Latin America and it included many artists who were responding to a call for proposals many of the local projects the proposals were due two weeks after Trump's inauguration and the festival happened a year later what was remarkable almost two years later is how the immediate anger and fear transformed into incredibly thoughtful and beautiful and positive thinking about the values in the community especially immigrant communities from various Latin American countries and regions as well as many many others it was transformative to see the artists really integrating the community and of all ages intergenerational into their work in ceremonial and predispatory ways it's one example of course a festival has to wonderful Mark how about you Mark Bussle never follow Mark Murphy one most articulate people in our field but I'll go the a festival I mean my a dialogue with a community is essentially the festival and sometimes I think we may think there's something they need to hear but it's another kind of listening to what they need to what they need to participate in what's going to expand their horizons really and often I feel that American producers are preaching too much and we need to create and invite situations where there's more exchange and sometimes the most the oddest things in my festival will hit this hit the strongest bell it's a an interesting thing I can never never really know what is going to land the most it's very fun the power in my organization has been we've been taking this very seriously and at the public theater and we've we've sort of Oscar Eustis has taken on Sohim Ali as a a co an artistic associate as well as Shanta Fake who is a presenting but more of represents all of our programs as another co-equal artistic force and that's been a big change we've been looking at all of our systems and how to make things more transparent for a large and easier for people to interface with and I think some of that might have been a little bit inspired by under the radar which has a lot of input there's someone has to make the budget work or take the responsibility but my always my staff is deep in the choices that we are making and in the way the festival presents itself so that's what's been going on at the public uh yes I think I've been to shift us to the second question because we are narrowing in time but how is power boy shifting in your own institution and Mark have kind of led us into that in terms of curation the balance between local and international focus and the kinds of artists and audiences that are being curated and I want to just talk a little bit about issue damage because one of the things that we have constantly focused on is community and when we look at the kinds of various makeup of our community there's a large international makeup predominantly Latin American Mexican South American but there are 14 different Asian communities and so we have always looked at how our communities are reflective of the world that the artists we choose are reflective of our communities and I do think that that has not only has always been important but it's something that is even more so now as we look at the second pandemic we're dealing with which is systemic racism and how those international voices bring to light what we are struggling with what we take great joy with and how we move ahead. How about you, Mark or Mark? Well I think I mean trying to make an anti-racist organization is a big concern we proclaim that we are trying to be an anti-racist organization and we're trying to make the steps to go through that and change. It's incredibly time consuming, expensive and but and slow and it's but it is moving. Sometimes I try to link my communities but I'm more focused on what different artists are bringing. It's not necessarily some Chilean artists have a lot to say to many different communities within my community. So finding an artist such as Guillermo Calderón who both Mark and I have worked with really strong art crosses a lot of barriers and crosses a lot of communities. I worry a little bit that community is a great crudgel for the work we do, you know and it's I don't know I'm going to throw that out there just to maybe provoke in a sense but it can be yeah especially when I am spending lots of money bringing in people internationally and then making the connections there why this artist from this place does that make sense? I'm not going to ask Fernanda to jump in with us. I definitely wanted to I mean there's definitely a tie what comes to mind for me is architecture when we think about having artists come into space different audiences come to space I think sometimes we forget that important element of what it feels like to walk into our venues so we can bring these amazing artists into our spaces but how do we curate this moment of hospitality how do we think about what it means to maybe not look like that artist on stage or to actually look like that artist who's on stage and walk into that venue considering not only the architecture of our venues but the neighborhood in which it's set in so I think when we can kind of actually think about those things again threaded together it really makes an impact and the audience sees that the artist recognizes that and it actually can make for an even more fuller exchange brilliant brilliant I think architecture is a very big problem within the US in the way we made these these institutions they're certainly Neil and be afraid here's culture that's the way they were set up and even to break down a place like the public is really difficult we have the public theater has an outreach and we do a several points of outreach one is we do a mobile unit that travels around to all five boroughs and working with different community centers with Shakespeare and other and sometimes musical events and other things and we also have the public works program which works all year round with several about eight different communities centers within the New York City area and eventually puts on a public pageant that is presented at the Delacorte and they spent all year developing this it's an amazing amazing experience and we go back to those communities all the time as far as inviting them as ambassadors to under the radar etc and so the public is trying to put its fingers out there and make sure that we're really talking to a New York City that we want we envision the utopian New York City also where I come from when I'm trying to put together my family why don't you take the last minute and a half we have well I went through a very interesting experience relocating from Los Angeles to Nashville Tennessee and lived here only two months before a tornado closed us and then the pandemic shut us down so my biggest goal is learning more about the community program the 2019-20 season while still in LA and also programming Redcat and I rely very much on information from community partners, colleagues and coworkers it's an interesting situation but we have diversified the programming with a really highlight black artists who are influential in the community and our local programming and to introduce international programming for the first time here from Brazil, Chile and Japan and I think that is what is amazing about this work we have ten full seconds to bring communities of artists together, communities together with artists and communities of our staffs. I'm Melitaji, executive and artistic director at Jacobs Pillow in western Massachusetts my pronouns are she, her I'm so delighted that it worked out that this IPC event would be held in conjunction with our global pillow gala which happens tomorrow night at 7pm eastern there's a dance party that follows so it's a free event if you haven't RSVP yet please do we put the link in the chat we're going to reach out and see what companies that we have a history with have been up to in the past year and sort of at a time of great isolation trying to open up and look outward so RSVP so if you can't make it tomorrow night you can watch it through June 19th it's now my great pleasure to introduce Kyle Abraham to provide a response to today's presentations Kyle is a highly sought after choreographer and artistic director of AIM which is a New York based company whose mission it is to create interdisciplinary works that investigate identity and personal history a skilled educator in April of this year Kyle was elected to be the Claude and Alfred Mann endowed professor of dance at the USC Gloria Kaufman School Kyle and his company have a long history with Jacobs pillow that dates back to 2009 when he made his pillow debut in 2012 he won the Jacobs pillow dance award and in 2016 my first year at Jacobs pillow he joined our board of trustees and now serves on our executive committee I'm so grateful for all the many ways he's given to our field as a choreographer educator mentor and good friend to so many of us to close our event we've asked him to respond to what he heard today and to share his perspectives on global cultural exchange as an acclaimed artist who tours internationally both with his company and as a choreographer even during the pandemic Kyle traveled to Cuba to create a work on the ballet national and then to London to create a work for the Royal Ballet the company will tour to Germany in August France in the fall and in June of 2022 they will perform an untitled love at London in London at Sadler's Wells and also in Paris at the Tafla de la Ville now Kyle Abraham hi everybody Kyle Abraham here artistic director of AIM and I want to welcome you all on the eve of the opening of the Jacobs pillow season both as a board member and as a long time fan, patron artist, performer at the pillow over several several years as a Jacobs pillow award recipient festivals like Jacobs pillow are just so important to artists like myself both as an opportunity to perform in a festival and allow your work to be seen over several evenings or afternoons which is something that's so rare especially in cities not only like New York but in smaller cities like my hometown of Pittsburgh if you're lucky you get to maybe do your show maybe two or three times in a festival setting like Jacobs pillow we're given sometimes six to seven performance opportunities for audiences to engage and see the work you're also performing in a really curated way that has my company or another company performing in one theater and then in such close proximity another artist and their work you're given the opportunity to engage with other dancers, other companies and presenters that might actually be coming to see one artist and when you're in a festival you might take advantage of that time and see both artists or how many artists are on the program so it's really exciting really inspiring and really kind of pivotal to the way that we even have to look at time and how much work we can see live in certain short amount of time this year put a massive wrench in my plans as it did for all of yours I imagine my board had asked me to make a five-year plan about two years ago and as a result I made an eight-year plan and with that in mind I was like okay well let me set up how I'd want the work to be seen over these next few years or next eight years one of which started with a work called an Untitled Love that was set to premiere in Houston in June of 2020 obviously that didn't happen and then another work Requiem, Firing the Air of the Earth that was set to premiere either at Stanford or at Lincoln Center the Mosimoz Art Festival given the pandemic all of the timeframe of the premieres of those works wind up kind of being so much more on top of each other than I had planned I'd also planned for a continued repertory sequence of programming to happen in between those evening-length works and all of that's kind of been thrown up in the air in a way that I'm just for mental health I'm going to say is exciting but it might not really be exciting it's also brought up about a time when I feel like more than ever I'm hearing more conversations from fellow artists and from presenters talking about issues around social justice it's interesting because it's been a part of my work since I was first making a dance to the first evening-length work that we made and toured a work called The Radio Show in 2010 which addressed the only urban radio station that we had in the city of Pittsburgh and its loss of voice to my father who had Alzheimer's in aphasia and how those parallels connected our black communities in Pittsburgh to a work like Pavement that looked at cyclical nature in some ways of brutality and injustice on black and brown bodies over the years and that's a work from 2012 to 2016 looking at mass incarceration but it's great to think that people are interested in looking at and or for these types of works I just hope that it's more than a trend and that the works themselves stay honest and stay earnest when new voices are tackling new subject matter for themselves or for new audiences because ideally you make what you want to make as a black dance maker regardless of what I've made in the past I do feel in some ways that there's a weight on black dance makers in particular to make work that has some political commentary we ironically in this time in particular have even less freedom because we're not necessarily being given the opportunity to make the most abstracted work that we want to make because someone might want us or need us to connect it to the political climate of these times this is one of those things that I think can help the black voice and the black experience be that much more heard because we do not want to be viewed as a monolith we want to make sure that people can really get the breath of our culture and what we would love to share with audiences. Thank you all for really just joining this conversation and for hearing me thanks for making that space what you're all doing is such important work and can affect so many communities in such a profound way so I know this is in some ways it's not the beginning, it's not the middle so I hope that for all of you presenters on this call that we can just check in on where we are at in our steady climb with each other and with artists alike so thank you again for your time and on Linda Brumbach my pronouns are she, her I'm founder and director of Palma Granite Arts a contributor to the IPC and a proud member of SIPA the creative and independent producer alliance it is a privilege to be here with you today and I deeply thank the presenters that started IPC and recognized and invited some voices from the creative producer community into this space as we work together to care for what should be the most treasured commodity in this country and a basic human right our artists and the gift an artist brings to our collective world challenging and demanding awareness with their truth without them there is nothing but we are still here so let's be brave and kind as we build again I just want to thank you all for coming and thank the IPC steering committee and the panelists for framing our conversation and starting us off how around the Mellon Foundation and all of the guest voices from around the globe the facilitators, the note takers Sean Schultz from ASU for making this all possible today let's continue the work but before we do we'll see you with the global pillow tomorrow night let's dance together