 Okay welcome back from break everyone we are rounding the corner to our last panel discussion and then we'll be opening up for a group discussion. My name is Michelle Coffey I'm with the Lambent Foundation and I am moderating an amazing panel international cultural exchange mobility and the future of US civil society. I'm moderating this with my colleague Barbara who will also introduce herself. Hi I'm Barbara I'm the director of the trust for mutual understanding. My job right now as co-moderator is to establish the thesis for this panel so I'm going to tell you what we're about to talk about and then just hold on to those concepts in your back pocket and we will continue to re-talk about them. So thesis I'm going to give you an overview so general thesis international cultural exchange and what we mean by international cultural exchange is the international movement of artists and the sharing of ideas. So international cultural exchange is fundamental to a healthy and progressive civil society. It creates nodes of contact between Americans and people from other cultures and promotes understanding respect and empathy and by creating a culture of diversity and respect for different cultures cultural exchange builds a bulk work against xenophobia racism nationalism authoritarianism everything that we've been talking about today that is upon us in this troubled moment in our history. So unfortunately at this time when cultural exchange is more important than ever there is a crisis and not only in funding of international cultural exchange so over the last decade financial support for this type of work has been dramatically cut and what compounds that is there's also been a massive increase in the costs and the complexity of doing this kind of work. So Michelle and I hear our representative of grant makers funders who are concerned about promoting civil society everywhere who are also trying to be thoughtful in our grant making about the intersection of arts and social justice and we sort of issue a call to our fellow funders that we urgently need to prioritize cultural exchange and the international movement of artists and we encourage other funders to join us so we actually had a panel similar to this at the grant makers in the arts conference which was in Denver recently so this is sort of the next iteration of that. Just to give you I know there's maybe some people who like facts and figures in the audience today so just to give you one fact and figure from America this is a new resource from American for Americans for the Arts it's called Arts and Social Impact Explorer and here's the good thing to take away fact-wise. Nine out of ten people who participated in arts projects say that their participation in those projects reduces isolation encourages cooperation and builds community networks so there's a positive fact figure take away. Michelle you briefly introduced yourself. Let me give you a little bit of context. Again my name is Michelle Koffee and I run Lambent Foundation. Lambent Foundation focuses on cultural arts organizations where artists are at the center and we fund in New York, New Orleans and Nairobi and believe in the intentional African diasporic flow happening between those three locations. So and I'm the director of the Trust for Mutual Understanding and at TMU we support exchanges in the arts and the environment and the intersection thereof between the United States and 30 countries encompassing and I'll draw a little map with my hands which might make no sense but Central East, Southeast Europe, the Baltic States, Central Asia, the Caucasus, Mongolia, Russia. That's where we work. So we have three esteemed panelists with us today and I'm going to go down the line starting with Kim and let them briefly introduce themselves. Hi my name is Kim Chan and I am an arts worker and cultural organizer who has worked out of mostly New York City and Washington DC. I have the great joy of having every single one of my jobs be at organizations where international cultural exchange is a value and a financial priority in the work that we do even though it's really really hard and I completely endorse the findings of Americans for the arts because that work has not only transformed my professional life but also my personal life. Thank you. Hi my name is Nave O'Roll, I imagine I'm not Sonny who had a I've got family members so I'm spipping in to that role. I'm based in Chicago and the curator and I prefer the term arts worker as well. I oversee a residency program at the High Park Arts Center, an 80 year old community focused art space in Chicago which has a studio arts program, an exhibitions program and the residency that I oversee supports artists and curators both Chicago based and visitors for deep-dive research focused residencies. We also support and initiate exchanges with community focused arts organizations across the country like Project Roar Houses and Internationally. Thank you. Matthew. My name is Matthew, I run an organization here at the Artcult Times, a non-profit that works broadly in the field of what we have come to now call cultural sustainability. We've been around since the 90s doing research, legal research, advocacy, not to work in a lot of cases with our affiliated law firm, I'm also an immigration attorney, with our affiliated law firm, we handle visas for about 5,000 musicians and actors coming to the US each year. We work with the government when they work with us, we sue the government when they don't work with us. We have a variety of other projects, artist residencies programs for artists at risk, a legal hotline for artists who run immigration programs, that kind of thing. Great, thank you Matthew. We're just going to start with Megha. Megha, do you mind telling us a bit about, I know you talked earlier about High Park Arts Center and now just a tiny bit, but can you, sorry this is, I need to put it closer. Could you talk to us about the inherent, is international, it seems like it is, international cultural exchange in the DNA of High Park Arts Center and how does that impact how you work with artists, what is that, how does that influence your work there? Yes, absolutely I can talk to that. It's a great question. It is in the DNA of the program certainly, but from a kind of interesting perspective, the organization itself, High Park Arts Center, which I had a chance to talk a bit about with my guest, our residents on the back. The organization itself is very locally focused. It's, as I mentioned before, it is supported and established exclusively by artists in 1939 in High Park neighborhood in the south side of Chicago, and it's meant to be an incubator for artists at every stage or any stage of their career across the city. So the goals really of this program and all of the programs of the organization is to enrich, art making, enrich the dialogue for art practice across the city. About ten years ago, we moved into a permanent home at Baker Hays in the United States, which is a huge step. One of the things that we reported was working space for artists for the very first time. So it was an exciting moment to think about what a residency program should be. To support artists in that in-between stage, so no longer taking studio art classes, not in art school, but it's also not a finished, polished exhibition. It's about everything in between. A residency is meant to be a very public-facing program where we also are activating and inviting our public and our audience into understanding a more holistic idea of art making. The creation, the problem solving, and then eventually the finishing of the work to be exhibited. So an essential piece of this is invitation to visitors as the artists and curators into our hyper-local context to of course support their practice, but also in their equally to challenge our own thinking about art making and conceptual practices. And to think about what the social, political, and cultural questions are that underline an artist's work. So a few questions that we do try to ask are, what can Chicago artists learn and share with a visiting artist and curator? What does posting look like in a deep way, thinking about long-term relationships? What are the commonalities across practice? And how are contemporary art practices tied to a specific culture and location where they are born? And then what are the shared through-lines that come across culture? So these are the kind of questions that really surround the work that we're doing. There's been really great learnings from these strangers that we are trying to actively use to evolve and transform the institution. And I'll just say that this notion of mobility is really in opposition to sort of an idea of movement tours. The organization is located very far from any tourist center, it's in a residential community where people are going to school and living in New York. And the goal of this technology is really for us to engage in the kind of exchanges possible to really enact learning and change both in Chicago and in Los Angeles. Great, thank you. Kim, let's move to you. So we're talking about the importance of international cultural exchange right now. And Mega just gave us a good example of how Hyde Park Art Center thinks about exchange. But will you give us an example? I mean you said in your introduction that this type of work has impacted you professionally and personally. So can you give us an example of a project that highlights the importance of what we're talking about with this type of cultural exchange? So is this, am I talking close enough to the mic? Okay, so I can tell a story because we are at Baruch College, which is also a part of the City University system of New York. And I think that one of the international cultural exchange themes throughout my career at many different organizations has been really focused on exchanges between the U.S., Mexico, and the mythical land that some call Atzlan. Which may or may not have been a reality. So in my most recently as the general manager for the Penn World Voices Festival of International Literature, I worked with a Mexican writer who's now based here in New York named Alvarón Rique. And a cohort of undocumented students who are enrolled in the CUNY system here. Several of them quite brilliant, quite inspiring Baruch students. And over the course of the past three or four years, we created really an extended family and a creative workshop where the students were able through writing to break through their isolation and to find peers where they were no longer afraid to share their stories. And through that project just this past June, we actually published an anthology of the work that came out of this program. My work, working with Mexican artists dates back to like the, because I'm old, the early, the mid to late 80s and the border arts workshop when I, which was based a multinational group of artists and activists based on the Tijuana San Diego border. And I became very close working relationship with one of those artists named Guillermo Gomez Pena and produced his counter-quincentenary trilogy in Washington DC. One of the projects that I did with him, which I think connects back to my work with the Dreamers is, was called the Temple of Confessions, in which we brought in the conceptual artists from Mexico City, Cesar Martinez. And in the Temple of Confessions, there was a temple of fear and a temple of desire. And we solicited the audience through a phone, through a dial-in number, like 1-888, called VATO, and to confess their fears and desires about Mexicans, as well as also in the gallery. And then in the culminating event of this performance, Cesar created a life-size jello mold of a naked man who we served to the audience as the last immigrant and had an entire ritual surrounding the last immigrant and the fluctuating borders between the U.S. and Mexico and Aztlan. And I think that, you know, that was 1996. But the deeper we get into the undocumented debates here in the U.S., the more and more I realize, like, I need Cesar back. And I need him to reimagine with us now, or to just repeat the jello man all over again. And in between, you know, another one of our projects along those lines in terms of engaging these issues on the centenary of the Guadalupe Hidalgo Treaty, which was the treaty in which I think it was a third of a Mexican territory became part of the U.S. So imagine border issues when you go to sleep one night in one country and you wake up the next day in another. And so for that treaty, we did at the Smithsonian Museum of American History, a binational dialogue called the Guadalupe Hidalgo Treaty Dinner Party, where we had a philosopher, some Guillermo, an immigration lawyer talk while being served dinner by white people. Wow. Kim, I really appreciate you taking us back to 1996. Yeah. These issues are not new. They're not new. And I really, we all really appreciate everyone's voices that permitted this stage for today. And my question that I ask myself is, where did philanthropy go? Where have we been as funders to stand alongside such fierce cultural producers? So thank you for the reminder of 1996. I think that's where we left off and kind of want to talk about this declining or acknowledge the fact that there's been declining support for your work. There's been declining support for our work. I also kind of want to acknowledge some a little bit of happiness that I have that finally U.S. philanthropy started to acknowledge criminal justice reform and gender inequity. Reproductive rights, many of our justice issues that many of us have been fighting for for a very long time, that philanthropy somehow has seen that sparkle and directed monies towards that. But in doing so, we've missed the folks who've always been at the forefront and those be cultural producers, cultural activists. And in doing in wreck and ignoring the cultural producers in this work, we have created harm and discord and disconnect. And that is one of the purposes of this conversation in this panel is to figure out what can we, what are we seeing? What can we do about it? What are we doing about it? But Barbara, could you, you actually did a TMU did amazing research, mainly because TMU has always been here. But could you show, share some of that data with us to reinforce that philanthropy disappeared? Sure, yeah, absolutely. It's just actually I'll just share sort of two quick points. So some of you, some of you who are in the audience who are in philanthropy might remember who are in arts philanthropy might remember this publication titled promoting public and private reinvestment and cultural exchange based diplomacy. I know Kim remembers it because she saw it on the table and said, I remember that. And she said, we might need a new one and agreed. So this is from 2010. This is, this was commissioned by the then president at the time of Robert Sterling Clark Foundation, Peggy Ayers, who ran that foundation from 1979 to 2003. And it covers a time period from, or 2013, excuse me. So this covers a time period from 2003 to 2008. And in this report, there's a consistent reference to the top 10 funders of international cultural exchange in here. And so now in 2019, those top 10 funders that they talk about, six out of those 10 no longer fund an international cultural exchange, including the commissioner of the report, Robert Sterling. Clark Foundation. That's the first bit of update. But and the second is that, and this is not to brag on the trust for mutual understanding at all. But from the time period between 2009 to 2019, the trust for mutual understanding is the top funder and international cultural exchange. And that my friends is pathetic, because we are so small. Our budget is, you know, I mentioned we fund in the arts and the environment and the intersection thereof. So our total grant budget is usually around 2.5 million. And around 1.5 or so of that goes to the arts every year. So that lets you know how robust the top funder of international cultural exchanges. So, yeah. So that sort of paints the overall funding picture for you. Now we're going to go over to our expert, Matthew, to tell us a little bit about what are some of the additional barriers to this work. I think what you said at the beginning about how the collapse in funding really corresponds, unfortunately, with the staggering increase in the cost and complexity of giving artists in the U.S. Very basic primer. I think probably most people here know this. They'll just be on the safe side. When foreign artists come to the U.S., they almost always need some kind of visa to do that. Usually, if they're performing, they're going to need an employment visa. It doesn't matter whether they're Iranian or Canadian, the process is pretty much the same. Getting one of these eases, typically costs between $2,000 and $10,000, doesn't matter if you're coming for a day or if you're coming for three years. It's sort of cost that much money. Getting an artist's work eases is a two-part process. The first part is handled by dueces, such as immigration services. Once the process has gone through their review, it moves on to the State Department. Their job is to figure out if you're famous and important enough to get it to deserve to come to America as an artist. Once they decide you are, it moves on to the State Department, which decides if you're a sabre enough human being to allow you to come from the United States. This has always been a hard process. I started doing this in the early 90s when the police laws were fairly new and we thought it was terrible then. We had no idea where it was going to go. What we've seen mostly is that the first part of the process is really difficult. All this keeps getting worse, but not in a politically politicized way too much. The second part of the process where artists go to the U.S. and see locally and apply for visas, this has collapsed for the last three years. This is going to sound ridiculous, but even artists from Western Europe are having a lot of trouble. Famous artists are having trouble, so you can imagine what that means for artists coming from the little south. It doesn't matter if they're coming from a Lincoln Center or a Kennedy Center, we're still seeing huge problems with these artists from the name. There's a lot of legal issues around why that's happening and whether it's justified, there's also a lot of loss into that. The fact that it matters while we wait for the government to address these issues, most of the work that's being done is going to immigration lawyers. That's had a huge effect on driving the cost up. In the last 25 years, the costs of bringing artists to the U.S. have increased by 2,000%. That's including the costs of legal fees, human fees, but on average, that's the cost. In the last 10 years, almost all U.S. presenters have been forced to hire legal counsel help them. There's a few holdouts, which still does a great job by themselves without hiring lawyers, it's amazing. Again, when you bring lawyers in, obviously, as everyone knows, the costs fell massively. In the last two years, the travel ban, extreme vetting, and the general degradation of the administrative services and processes of the U.S. State Department have contributed to a situation where all artists' visa processing has become less predictable and more arbitrary. The effect is that presenting foreign artists has become massively expensive when it works and when it doesn't financially have a strong effect. The situation is so bad that even renowned artists are not going to use this. If you're tuned into this, you'll notice in the entertainment media, there's just tours getting canceled, institutions getting canceled. It's a really common process, and that has just created a situation where we'll get into a little bit of how the ripple effects have been happening, especially when performing arts, but that's kind of an overview of where we stand right now. And then just to piggyback on that, just to give a couple examples of what are some of the challenges, a couple specific stories about these visa issues. I'm going to use probably several times during this panel, CEC Arts Link is an example, because they are one of our long-term grantees. This is also their assembly today. So CEC has been a grantee of the Trust for Mutual Understanding since 1992. So example number one is CEC. Yeah! Right on. So last summer, CEC had a fellow from Lebanon who had already been to the U.S. before in 2013, and they were funded to lead a project with the Cleveland Public Theater's new Arabic Theater Group. So this fellow was initially told by the U.S. Embassy that the visa would be issued, no problem, but a week later she was asked to fill out a specific form that maybe many of you in the audience know. It's called DS5535. It's the extreme vetting form. She submitted that, and her application then went into limbo. Finally, she did receive her visa two months later, but that was six weeks after the project had ended. Next example, last example for me is Cronus Quartet. So again, this past summer, the centerpiece of their annual festival was a commissioned work by Hawa Kaseh Mehdi Diabate, a renowned Malian singer and griot, and Diabate had been to the U.S. many times before. So again, in both of these examples, this is not someone coming to the U.S. for the first time. These are people who have been here before. Again, Diabate's application was delayed due to the extreme vetting procedures, and then eventually was issued, but on the Monday after the scheduled performance. Move back to you, Matthew. These are horror stories, and we're telling horror stories in a way because we want, if you haven't included into what's going on, we want you to include into it. But we also don't want, because there's a risk to telling horror stories. The risk to telling horror stories is that it's a great story, and then these people will not want to try. And this has become one of the hugest problems that we're facing when working with U.S. arts presenters and arts organizations, is that the result of the increased cost and predictability of these processes leads the centerpiece to a role to do more with international artists. I was having a conversation with Susan Feldman, who's a director at St. Anne's, and then we brought the groundbreaking play of The Jungle to the New York Glass Autumn, and she told me that The Jungle was continuously a huge risk given the unpredictability of the visa barriers to the actors. Maybe, and last year, we got them all here after about ten months of work, but only with the help of some very influential people and some legal assistance. Not all presenters have access to these resources. I also spoke with Jack Walsh, again, somebody many of you might know, who is one of the people who was the executive producer of Selma and Brooklyn, and he said, as a U.S. presenter, I must say twice about attempting to bring up more artists. Ultimately, it always is one disaster, and the arts program has also been able to place their financial themes to improve working with international artists. So, then it just follows up the chain. If the presenters are reluctant to, then the agents and the managers and the people who work with artists are reluctant to take on their artists. I had a conversation with Mel Williams, who is one of the leading art agents in the U.S. for a lot of artists from Africa, and he told me that in 2019, we dropped these artists due to visa risks, cheap, low, sedentary, international, and the music tree in the valley. Every week, we're solicited by artists and managers for representation. Every week, we decline opportunities. In 2021, for visas-inspire, we'll be dropping more. I didn't pursue a whole bunch of artists over the last few years because of the visa and tax rules. Last week, I turned down a legendary brand, a nominated band from West Africa, because I don't want to take on the visa risks. Mike Green, who is a Canadian talent agent, and a member of the Comma World Banking Agency, and one of the board members of the Pacific Management Association said, this is the crucial one, I think. Things with international artists have gotten so complicated that for the most part, we stopped representing artists outside of the U.S. It's partially a matter of costs and a crazy amount of paperwork involved with the visa applications to CWA's, but it's also the difficulty of getting presenters to take a chance on artists who are unfamiliar and who are unfamiliar to U.S. audiences. And this, of course, goes astray for our culture's lack of curiosity and about anything unfamiliar and not part of the mainstream culture. And then it goes up the chain again, and we start finding, and this is something we find a lot in our work, is artists internationally that just aren't interested in coming to the U.S. anymore. There was a time when the U.S. audiences of the U.S. markets were what grew for better or worse, a huge focus for a lot of international artists in the U.S. That's where they came to. I was speaking with Frederick Julius, the director of research and development for the Canadian Arts Presentation Association, which is sort of Canada's eight man. He told me that maybe in the arts sector and public arts funders are attempting to diversify, export avenues and develop reciprocal relationships with markets other than the United States in short, we're looking for other friends. And about three weeks ago, I was in Brussels at the annual meeting of the European Music Export Organizations, and there was two basic things that the entire meeting was about, which is how do we develop audiences and markets for European artists, I don't believe that. So this fatigue extends, really continue with some few horror stories here, but it extends to the presenting community and it extends to, you know, just from our example, from our grantees who are bringing artists from abroad, for example, I will use CEC Arts Link again as another example. So I mentioned that the trust from mutual understanding has been funding CEC since 1992. And at that time, the Arts Link International Fellowships Program was a sort of triple threat funded by Trust from Mutual Understanding, Open Society Foundation at the time, and the NEA. And unfortunately now, today in 2019, the Trust from Mutual Understanding is the only funder still funding that program, the one that brought many of you remarkable people here today. And so because of that, in 1992, there were 50 fellows that came, and in 2019, the number's been reduced to 10. And then Global Fest, Kim, do you want to give us a little Global Fest update? Sure, how many people here are familiar with Global Fest? Okay, so Global Fest is a world music festival that was founded here in New York City 17 years ago and which really transformed the discussion between people who are already world music presenters and the rest of the presenting field and really made a market for a type of music where we knew there was a market and an audience for it, but some of the less imaginative presenters or curious presenters maybe didn't know. And so with Global Fest, the producers were able to leverage that interest through a festival but also through a professional development conference that happened at APAP and through a touring fund to sort of echo what Michelle was saying about how funding disappears. When funders shift their and it's not that funders should always have the same priorities and only fund the same organizations, but the vulnerability is such that here is a major international investment and sort of run and started in a very DIY way and one of their largest funders, the Ford Foundation adopted a new funding strategy and Global Fest was no longer one of their grantees and the festival nearly tanked but they did find a way to survive but I think the sort of hand to mouth nature every year is something that presenters in the US have a hard time escaping. Yeah. So this is impacting presenters this is impacting arts organizations in the US but we're looking out at the audience and so many of you are artists coming in from outside of the United States and so Kim can you speak a little bit to how this impacts the artists themselves? Well I mean I think I would agree with Matthew but I know who maybe would have tried to come here previously won't. I had a meeting just a few days ago with a European funder who is interested in starting and funding an exchange program with the US but has heard such stories about the US that he's not sure he can convince the board and I spent maybe 20 minutes going let me introduce you to my network of fellow Americans who will fight tooth and nail to get this work done because we need you as an ally and you need them. I don't know if he believed me and I hope that network is still here. So we've been sharing dark stories not to silence or not to scare you all know this we now have been able to share data so you're not crazy in thinking this but what we also wanted to do was offer some recommendations we know from colleagues in our own work that we're seeing new artist residencies starting up with very little monies we see people trying to individually do their own exchanges and so I think let's open it up and offer some recommendations so that we can feel collective and not so isolated. Great, I'll start with a funder recommendation from the funding side so recommendation number one from us is that grandmakers need to commit to short and long term increases in funding for international cultural or support for organizations. So for example so for example from the trust for mutual understandings point of view we have been facing we're right in the thick of this with all of our grantees so Russia is one of the countries where we fund exchanges so what's happening in Russia right now is because of the situation between Russia and the United States we're told to go to the U.S. consulate and have your visa interview so the waiting times are incredible and they keep increasing and they're about a year now it's about a year wait time so we immediately had grantees come to us and say look we can't wait a year we're gonna have to postpone all of our projects so the work around is that you can go if you're traveling elsewhere so many grantees are going to Helsinki they're going to Prague they're going to Vienna some are even going to Ulaanbaatar and Mongolia because that's easier that means that we have to be more flexible on our end as far as time we have to be more flexible as far as the size of our grants and if there are emergencies being able to increase those grants and then we also are really exploring with long-term grantee partners multi-year grant making just so that it's easier for them it's making a huge difference but it's an important thing to do let me follow up in philanthropy with a recommendation and this is to offer you guys to see some of the work that we do inside of philanthropy that's not just about grant making and so one of the recommendations I would always say to foundation colleagues is do not do this alone you must work in collaboration you must work in collaboration not only with your grantee partners but with other foundations one the money is so small so how we have opportunities to leverage and increase the money but more importantly there's learning and there's humbling that happens I can give an example of a few years ago US funders used to think that it was so cheap to be able to fund in East Africa because the dollar went a long way US funders didn't realize that for folks to move around three countries of Tanzania Uganda and Kenya most likely you were flying back to the UK to Amsterdam and France in order to come back to Central Africa and the cost were exorbitant one of the things because of funders stepping away over the last ten years was not recognizing the intense let me go ahead and say neoliberal development in other places the airlines that have now are serving East Africa or Central Africa so there's significantly fast and increased mobility among cultural workers and artists in East Africa but the foundations are still working with a mindset that's ten years old and actually working with a mindset that continues to do harm and so when foundations get to work together learn together really learn together making strategies that are no longer doing as much harm another suggestion I would say is for arts organizations and artists themselves to recognize that because there is funding in the US to support cultural exchange many of the artists who are coming to the US are coming to countries that can afford to send their artists to secure and those countries are the countries you'd expect can afford to send their artists to secure and so the voices that we do here in the US from foreign artists tend to be the ones we've always heard nothing wrong with those people nothing wrong with those voices but it doesn't help the diversity of what we're hearing so when you are doing projects in the US and whether you're an artist or an arts organization or a funder prioritizing working with artists or coming from countries where those voices aren't heard that was just in Chicago working with the McCarthy Foundation where they select 10 or 12 small arts organizations in Chicago every year and they set up literal cultural exchange the arts organization in Chicago goes to Ghana to work with another theater in Ghana and Ghana in theater comes to Chicago it's amazing because there's again type of local situations where those artists are standing in people's homes breaking, breaking, making art together and the kind of effect that it is is staggering and that's because in the situation where McCarthy has the where we all see how important it is it's a program in every city in the United States fortunately we don't have that forward do you got it? another information I'm going to score that point from the perspective of I'm going to score that point from the perspective of the arts organization that I would like to acknowledge that while it has become increasingly difficult for anyone from out of the US to travel to the US it continues to be extra difficult and with exorbitant areas for many most of the world really non-hierarchy and less desirable countries so the impact of that to your point I think is that you know countries that have consulates and supportive cultural bodies are able to more effectively export their culture and American organizations and institutions are incentivized to work with those countries and while it's very difficult the arts organization I'd like to think that there is recourse and we have to for the well-being of our programs continue to see the value and to expose to our art communities so you know a few ways that we can think about this is I do think it's important for arts organizations to know that they do have a voice with funders and that they can lobby and begin the conversation about projects they want to do I think one way to go about this is thinking about a visiting artist's trip to the US can that be capitalized upon in a way like a part residency let's say with a stop in Chicago and a meaningful stop in another city so this isn't promoting the idea of kind of hopping among residencies but really having a thoughtful intentional itinerary for an artist to make the most of that the expense of that travel and that journey and that's something that arts organizations can work together to strictly strategize there are a couple of ways to align for arts communities res artis among others where we are hoping to work with those organizations to help them facilitate the connection among residency programs to even explore these conversations and then the other side too is the value of the cross-cultural exchange program US artists traveling abroad and then welcoming someone to the US this is that same sort of network building but among programs that are based internationally and I think that's something that the funders can also support that network building so I think there's a lot of possibilities here of how we can sort of leverage the resources we have and to maximize on how difficult it is to support an arts to come to the US but to still ensure that we work together to make it happen that's such a good example and thank you for bringing it up and I think it underscores the need for collaboration and the fact that I'm going to use the buzzword of silo but we're all in our whether that's an institutional silo or whether that's a silo a programmatic focus or what have you but it's not only arts organizations working together and funders taking the initiative to fund that collaboration but it's also funders can work together too and there's an example of this that I just wanted to bring up on the environmental funding side a couple years ago it was the funders fund that was created and it's roughly about 10 larger foundations that have come together and it's an emergency fund essentially for frontline environmental defenders who are at risk so it is possible to do from the funding side as well yeah so my recommendation is to the funders and to the arts workers out there that the funding that has existed has been phenomenal although it's been sort of cyclical in that it's really focused on very pragmatic things like travel per diem visas production residency support but I think that one of the reasons here in the US some of the overall commitment institutionally to international cultural exchange happens in fits and starts is because some of the core support or maybe also some of the advocacy about the value of this kind of work needs to go directly to the boards of directors of the nonprofits and the heads of the university administrations and the headhunters because what happens is there's turnover in the field and so you have the same core group of people committed to international cultural exchange but the people who then hire those individuals replacements may not necessarily have that same level of commitment and won't know how to advocate with the board or the university administration to do this and so I think we really need to also look at if there's going to be more core support to tie the core support to systemic change because even though like I understand and advocate with GOS if GOS is only going to let people repeat this cycle that I think I know there is enough creativity in the field to break out of then we really need to band together and go one level deeper. Brilliant. Just for the sake of time where we're looking at it's five o'clock right now so we will open up for we're going to go over just a little bit. I wanted to give you the opportunity if there are any questions for any of the panelists up here we are happy to quickly field any of those. If anybody has one raise your hand high if you do. And when you raise your hand a microphone is going to come to you because how round is recording this so please wait to the microphone all the way in the middle I think it's like to see changed the systems you'd like to see changed. What would that look like to you what's that what's your vision for that and this is directed to Kim sort of piggyback your last question. So what I'd like to see are boards of directors and people in governance positions and the you know the marketing staff the education staff and the management commitment to international cultural exchange as I as I hear from the people on the producing and curatorial front I think that and I think some of this is just really tied to turn over in the field that often people get jobs in presenting where you know they've come from somewhere else they have a board and also on the staff we had different programs where we tried to coach newcomers and people who are unfamiliar with some of these issues into the community but I think that wasn't enough because we as a service organization were there two or three times a year interacting with our constituents and what we need are the daily reinforcements at that and because I think audiences sometimes understand this more than the people who are making the financial decisions about how to spend the money and the example that I have to share that is when we when I was in DC and we were working on the first US tour of Los Moniquitos from Cuba people were walking up to us on the street like we weren't even going to a show and they had like made food and we're just giving it to us they were like seeking us out and thanking us and asking how could they be a deeper part of their community and letting us know that they had a strong affinity for Cuba because perhaps they were Cuban but they had always been afraid to let people in DC know that because they thought it would be gone because DC is a very mainstream culture that sort of dominated by the US black-white and they were afraid to bring up the Cuban and so this empowered them Also to ask you a question about systemic change from a different angle from running a small arts nonprofit but also in the legal field I often feel like the silos in the art sector in general which separate the way that funders think and the way that artists think and the way that presenters or the arts support organizations think really keep us from collaborating in a way that's not productive About a year ago the IRS created a new rule which made it no longer possible for artists or artists who don't make a time on the US to manage their taxable and so they were going to stop paying 30% taxable on everything in the US This is the first time that it happened for years it was a they called it a central holding agreement it was a way that artists could manage that We were called by they didn't know anything about the council and they didn't know anything they didn't know anything a lot in either but they called an accounting firm and they worked with people and said what can we do about this and called Mike can you get us a meeting with the IRS and then working with the lobbyist from leading American orchestras we put together a team of people who had the pieces necessary to be able to write a proposal to take up the IRS and the IRS said oh, okay sure all of our heads did things like that but a year later it's more or less solved but this was only because there were creative people who were willing to work across the silence I mean in this case we all just knew each other so it made sense but if we didn't already know each other I don't know that we would have known to have done that but I think that kind of collaboration is the kind of thing that's needed in our sector we're not a very powerful sector we're not a very powerful you know aeronomics we're not a military we don't have that kind of power and so we need to be more across sectors and bring our expertise to one another in order to make this connection third three Megan wanted to say oops it is simple from a fundamental structural change to be that arts organizations and others really explore what partnership looks like where the grantees are considered true partners and for example and there's many formations that do that and think that but you don't draw a guarantee after years of funding you know because guidelines have changed for example but that there's a dialogue there and sort of good faith and trust in the relationship that's with those at the time and sort of what's the nature of that of that partnership and can we sort of resist the hierarchical you know funder personal money and the people who are asking for it into something that is not bothered yeah we have three hands up the best best Kelly and Matthew this is a mostly a question for you building on what you just talked about as a way of sort of building a de facto lobbying I mean you went to the IRS but is it possible for those of us that are working in international arts in the US to form a similar coalition around the problems that you presented around bringing artists in or does that already exist and I'm just not aware of it in regards in regards to immigration issues specifically there is an apoc coalition of a bunch of arts organizations that does lobbying work obviously it's a huge problem and the topic of immigration in the US is such a fraught one that you know if you go to Washington you go to the Hill and you say let's talk about immigration but I only mean artists like you know that it doesn't doesn't carry a lot of weight but there is a lot of work being done there's a lot so yes it exists the performing artists visa working group it includes APAP it includes the unions musicians union the SAG the crew union so these are part of it but the lines is a number of it I'm forgetting a bunch of others there's loads of arts organizations that are part of this it's not enormously active I mean it isn't enormously resourced and it is just there's no office it's just they get together support each other initiatives it would be a lot more fun to talk about so yes there is there is an organization that's stronger I mean it's more participation Matthew do you mind if I poke a little bit linking back to Elizabeth's question though around systemic change that yes it's important to go to Hill and advocate for ourselves but we also need to be advocating for immigration and so the idea of intersectionality between our issues we are all aligned we are all related in this and so how do we recognize that yes we are support here to advocate for artists and culture workers but we also are here to advocate for undocumented workers and dreamers and as soon as we start collectively seeing our alignment with justice issues that would also be about systemic change another group yes it's actually a community I also know that I feel like there are so many problems and they're so huge I feel like this kind of if I had a huge foundation right now and I was looking and said okay do I worry about mass incarceration do I worry about the epidemic or the other but the arts I think it's hard to look at that same and not have that interaction just like you know what we'll deal with the arts over here we're going to deal with the other first I think that's really hard and it takes it takes a really it takes a kind of articulation of the role of the arts play in our society and why it's important and why you know what is the connection between the idea of the negative and the defining of the arts and the class of education support because we do that work we do it dealing absolutely sorry there were more hands up I jumped the key with apologies I have two questions the first is that I really don't understand why the interest in international cultural cooperation has been on the decline for 10 years I would have thought that it would happen under the present administration due to the political so for me as a Palestinian or a cultural working worker working from outside it's a bit shocking to know that the process had started even before so I find it really interesting to know why and what motivated such lack of interest in international cooperation the first question this is the first question the second perhaps also because we also have a problem with foundations we don't have many foundations supporting the arts in the Arab world but we do struggle with their governance whether they have failed governance or not who makes the decision yes it's philanthropy money it's individuals money but at the end of the day how can we make them more accountable this is an issue that we struggle with and I think if we bring this to the discussion of who sets the priorities and how can we push and I think now I'm dreaming a bit but how can we work towards a better governance model where priorities are set in relationship to the needs on ground and not some millionaire's fantasy and and I'm here speaking from my projecting on my own experience working with funders in the Arab region the other comment is about making bigger coalitions in Palestine as because the art sector is very fragile and is very small and it's a bit close on itself the only case where we succeeded succeeded to make changed is when we opened up to other sectors human rights organizations women's organizations and we had a big campaign when investors in the lack of legal framework to protect old buildings were in with the support of municipalities and the government demolishing old houses that should be protected and for years we couldn't do anything as artists and art operators but when we opened up to human rights organizations women's organizations also society organizations we could stop and call for the law so maybe as art organizations we also have to be a bit more open to other sectors in order to impact to make better law we absolutely I can postulate do you want me to try to have a conjecture and then you tell me if you think I don't know so do you think it's education that's why funding has yeah good point yeah yeah yeah no it's a good point I also think it harkens back to what Matthew just said a couple minutes ago about you have these issues of urgency or there are so many issues of urgency mass incarceration yes opioid epidemic yes so and I'm going to speak respectfully about foundations and funders but I do think there is a propensity to self determine what the urgency is and chase the thing that is seems to be the trend of the time to the exclusion of other things and the arts I don't necessarily think is valued as far as a sense of urgency and I don't think there's proper valuing of its role in society I also think what we're talking about is a double whammy of the art funding for the arts but then also funding for international cultural exchange and when the house is on fire at home everybody is going to look inward everybody is going to look at home so they're in the United States right now there are so many issues of urgency and emergency and you have foundations really looking domestically and turning away from working internationally and not really understanding the value of it so there are those of us that are very loud and obnoxious trying to advocate but it seems to me that it's a lack of understanding of the importance of the arts it's a responding you know emergency wise to what's happening domestically and it's very much about us trying to form these coalitions of advocacy and working together does that I think so and I would just add that philanthropy is slow it's late super slow and so when something happens it takes three to five years to get to it and something else pops up and so it's been it's distracting it's not responsive because it's not in direct conversation with communities and it thinks that it can actually solve it alone and that will never happen I also think there's this the idea of metrics and the focus on metrics so a lot of foundations are really focused on what is the impact how do you assess the impact how do you measure the impact and you know I always I find myself at funder convenings talking about how we as a foundation we believe that metrics are possible and we know that they are important to many foundations but for us really it's about the process and it's about the depth of the exchange and the relationships that are built over time and how do you measure that that's a really hard and tangible thing to measure so a lot of times I'll have representatives of foundations say to me well then what you do is entirely anecdotal and what you fund is entirely anecdotal and I say yeah that's true it's true but story is important and process is important so maybe that has something to do with it too I think also your question speaks to the inherent interdisciplinarity and how these problems and I think if anything this assembly really beautifully speaks to how tied questions of human rights and social justice and social practice and contemporary art and conceptual practice are so interwoven and intertwined and so even that separation of the arts from issues and problems is a totally arbitrary yes kind of false dichotomy that we need to together collectively advocate for dismantling because fundamentally those disciplinary I think divisions are also very Eurocentric vestiges white supremacists as well so that's also part of this work is to expand the idea the sort of commonplace idea of what art can do and what artists are working on which are huge problems and kind of move it out of this the sort of the niche world that it sometimes operates within yeah we have time for one more one more question who wants to be the last person did you still want okay here it comes thank you one question actually or more like commentary comes from my recent experience I spent a month in New Orleans and that's a very unique place and okay I have two things actually to say one is how you would comment on also the raising criticism towards the funding that comes from what we call toxic funding actually like for example there I encountered raising criticism towards the oil funding like hellish foundation for example another thing is and I I'm completely like supportive towards the exchange and this is what I do as well you know coming here I immediately thought of how I can activate my network and create certain type of exchange between the US and the Baltics but obviously that's kind of difficult and and I met around like 40 artists in New Orleans which was quite a lot actually during this short time and what I encountered is that actually artists are very eager to be exposed to experiences in Europe or like through residencies and different exchange programs and something but actually they don't know so much like they don't know they lack certain type of exposure to information and I think that is also accessible through you know curators and education is one one thing that was mentioned and I think this is kind of an education it's not just like general education but also what kind of education exists within the cultural field and art field in particular thank you Yeah absolutely Shall we? Shall we? Okay So we're we are toxic you want to talk about toxic funding okay that's a tough that's a toughie I can try it please only because of New Orleans Yeah right is a commitment a committed landscape of ours and it's complicated Hellas Foundation is a colleague and it's an intentional colleague specifically because it's a funder that's based in New Orleans and it's not sitting here in New York and so I offer that because it is full of contradictions that's one of the beautiful things about that the most northern Caribbean city you know New Orleans identifies its identity around the Louisiana Purchase and the Haitian Revolution not this country not the United States in a way I also want to say fossil fuel all money is complicated and we should actually be questioning all of it I appreciate Antenna which is the organization in New Orleans that runs the fossil free Fest the other thing that I speak with Bob State about who runs Antenna is that the fossil fuel industry are the employers of black and brown families for generations and so there's a way to resist it but let's also look at the complications and lies that are intertwined in it so I'm one who encourages the excavation of the complexity around race class and privilege in New Orleans is the most magical site to do that in I think and there will not be a simple answer to that Helles Foundation or any fossil fuel money funding we can say no to it and we should start saying no to some of it yeah I mean just one additional thought on that is that so we have a lot of obviously environmental grantees doing environmental conservation work in parts of the world where there is a lot of intrusion by the extractive industries and we do have several grantee organizations that for example work with mining companies and take money from mining companies and that's an internal decision on their part it's a values oriented decision it's a can we encourage communities to use better practices can we encourage remediation can we advocate for local communities that are impacted so I think it's a very individual values based decision and complicated and a really good question so thank you for bringing it up this whole day has been amazing just thank you I mean the the bravery and integrity and honesty and openness and care and your depth of sharing today has been really really beautiful and you know I just I feel grateful to have been a witness to go back to what Amy started with for us to witness and listen to each other and learn from each other that this today has been such a wonderful day for that so to close let's remember Amanda's statement the small scale seizures of power yes we need to do those yes yes we are so this panel is the third of four panels so the previous ones have been the grant makers in the arts and Alliance of Artists Communities Conference today is is panel number three the fourth one's happening during APEP on January 12th so please keep an eye out for that and attend we'd love to have you and just thank you to CEC Arts Link thank you to Boo Frayable and Matthew's colleague both and Simon it's just this panel wouldn't have happened without these thought partners so thank you so much thank you all for being here thank you for the panelists thank you Kim thank you Mega for stepping up at the last minute you're amazing thank you Matthew for your expertise thank you very much