 I'm gonna go ahead and start bringing folks into the room. Hi everyone. I think maybe we could go ahead and get started. Okay, let me go ahead and stop these wonderful slides. Wow, it's wonderful to have you all here this afternoon. Thank you so much for joining this session. I'm Laurie Baskin. I'm Director of Advocacy at Theater Communications Group. I use the pronouns she, her, hers. I'm zooming in from the lands of the Lenape and Wappinger people in Near Peekskill, New York. And it's just great to have you all here. My visual description is I'm a white woman with shoulder length brown hair that's turning grayer every day. I'm wearing a maroon colored blouse and I'm in my family room. Nice to see you all. This is a really wonderful opportunity and an important moment to talk about advocacy. And so I'm gonna get us started. I'm our moderator and then I'm gonna invite in the folks who are speaking today and then we are gonna open it up to a conversation with all of you. The COVID-19 pandemic is certainly a crisis beyond anything that we could have ever anticipated. Crisis sometimes presents opportunities. Theater staff and trustees across the country have stepped up over the last 14 months or so beyond anything we've ever had to do before to advocate for federal relief in the face of the dire needs in our field. And that advocacy activity has yielded tangible and impressive results. $16.25 billion to the performing arts and entertainment industry through the shuttered venue operators grants. Nonprofits being eligible for the first time ever for forgivable loans through the Small Business Administration Paycheck Protection Program and freelance workers in our field having access to unemployment assistance for the first time ever that had never been available to freelancers before. I think we've shown more than ever before advocacy works. As we move through recovery and reopening this is also an opportunity to build on this success and not simply return to the way things have been done in the past and the way they've been done before. This session is meant to provide an opportunity for us to discuss how we can join together to build toward more substantial and sustained support for the arts from the federal government. I'm curious to know how people's advocacy has changed over the last year. What are the current needs in the field and how can we advocate to address systemic inequity in funding, policy and training? This is our opportunity to dream big together, raise awareness, build skills and advocacy muscles and move toward positive change. For me, while I am moderating and facilitating this conversation, this is also a listening opportunity for me to hear from some extraordinary arts advocates and from all of you, some insights and answers to those questions that I just posed which will inform my work going forward and TCG's focus on advocacy. As you know, TCG has a new mission statement to lead for a just and thriving theater ecology and I really want that to show up in our advocacy work. So I'm going to ask the spotlight now to be shared with the following folks and then I'll call on them one at a time. They're gonna share their statements, their advocacy vision and goals and their experience in about five to seven minutes each. Then they're gonna have a little conversation amongst themselves and then we'll open it up to the room. We have a lot to accomplish in this hour and 15 minutes so I want us all to just be mindful of that time so that we can really get through this conversation and yield some interesting and important charges for me and for TCG. So Gary Anderson is the producing artistic director of Plow Shares Theater Company in Detroit, Michigan. He will go first, followed by Maria Lopez de Leon, the president and CEO and a board member of the National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures, NALA. Then I'm not sure if Mary Catherine Nagel has joined us. I hope she's here in the room. She is an attorney and an accomplished playwright and then last Nicole Salter, TCG's board chair, but of course also an actress, playwright, educator and all of them, extraordinary arts advocates. So I would like to turn the microphone now. Ah, and Mary, Mary Catherine, you're there. Hello, I didn't see you before. Great, so we're all here. That's terrific. I'm so grateful for the time and thoughtfulness and engagement of these folks with me today and for all of you because we really wanna have this conversation together. Gary, I'm turning the microphone to you first. Thank you, Lori. I've been thinking about this deeply for the last 14 months because it's provided me with the pause as I've been calling it, has been inviting us with an opportunity to really re-examine the challenges that we had put in our own way in regards to being strong and influential art patrons and citizens in this country. And one of the things that keeps coming back to me is I have a strong desire about seeing how we can get more funding for arts education but looking at it in a far different way. Lori knows that my daughter, my youngest child is a child of autism and the thing that actually broke her out of her shell was the arts. It was actually looking at Disney movies and becoming engaged in that. And since we each found out that she had an appreciation for music, we were able to get her into a choir. And today, the fact that she is a 26-year-old adult who can engage in conversations with other people is because of that art experience that transformed her comprehension of social clues that many children of autism don't capture. But I've also been thinking about this a little larger. If you are between the ages of 22 and 29, your life has been hit in really dramatic ways repeatedly in the last 15 to 20 years. You have been part of the period in which we had 9-11 where buildings were destroyed and fell down and we were attacked. It actually erased our arrogant assumption that we were able to have a fortress against the challenges of the world. We also went through a great recession that had an impact on a generation that's getting their foot in the door of new employment. And we've now had this pandemic. And all three of those have been stalling matters of this 22 to 29-year-old generation, being able to get their foot in the door and be able to get off. And what I'm fearing is that this last one, the pandemic is going to erase a whole generation of artists that are gonna decide that there's something else that they would rather do with their lives and we're gonna lose them. And so what I'm thinking about is that we might wanna go back and pull a program from the past that was an extremely effective. In 1973, this country initiated a comprehensive employment and training at CEDA. And it originally started as a hiring program that was designed on just getting dollars into the communities and then allowing them to be able to bring in people for entry-level positions and providing them with expertise and mentorship. In the few years, thanks to progressives in San Francisco, that program was adapted and turned into an arts program, one that was so successful that it provided funding for the foundation of theaters like Canumber Theater in St. Paul and Crossroads Theater in New Brunswick, New Jersey. It was, and it was so successful, unfortunately, that when Ronald Reagan took office in 1981, it had an end date of 1982. It was replaced by a simple job program that took all the art opportunities out of it. But it was a tremendous generator of creativity and powering communities to actually support artists with that were able to retain themselves in those areas. And I think that that's my approach that if we're talking about fixing what we've been doing in the past, that we might wanna seriously think about how we think about this younger generation and set them up so that they're in a much stronger position than they currently are. That's great. Thank you very much, Gary. No problem. You're finished, okay. We're gonna be back to you. We are gonna be back to you. I'm gonna turn it to Maria now. Over to you. Hola, buenas tardes. Hello, my name is Maria Lopez de Leon. I am the president and CEO of the National Association of Latin Arts and Cultures, Nalek. We are an organization, a service organization for Latinx Arts here in this nation. We are 32 years old and we provide opportunities for artists, arts leaders, organizations to really engage and with each other. And we provide training. We provide funding, networking opportunities, leadership development, professional development. And we work all across the U.S. and in Puerto Rico and also work inter-culturally. We are one of the founding partners along with CIP culture, Alternate Roots, First People Fund and PAI Foundation of the Intercultural Leadership Institute. And advocacy is really central to Nalek's mission. We really think that it's important to address the policies that are really impacting our communities, Latinx communities and communities of color. And we always lead from that position to work alongside our communities. And our communities of artists during this time, of the pandemic and the racial injustice that is happening against black communities in the economic crisis. And the artists have always been at the forefront. They are the truth tellers. They speak with integrity and create beauty and they reflect the best of who we are. So we really feel it is important for us to work and walk alongside them. And we created, Nalek created the Advocacy Leadership Institute back in 2009. We just convened our 11th Institute. And really we found it necessary to engage policymakers, both at the federal level, at the local level and state levels, to talk about the issues that matter most to our communities. And so we bring in artists, arts administrators, other cultural workers. And we provide training. It's a two month training that we provide and really provide tools to enhance the way that our fellows, how they talk to policymakers and we help them understand and clarify the priorities that they want to present. So we help with the very immersive training. And it's a lot of research that they do on funding and we try to cultivate a deeper understanding of the governmental frameworks that are shaping cultural policy here in this nation. And we, for the last two years, we have had to convene the Advocacy Leadership Institute virtually and but that has, it has not really dampened the desire for people to connect with their elected officials. They have been connecting virtually, talking to congressmen, connecting every year we go into Washington, we have a meeting with the National Endowment for the Arts with all the discipline directors, the chair. And during the Obama years, we were always welcomed at the White House to talk about the issues that impacted Latinx arts. And as our Advocacy Leadership Institute evolved, it is not only for Latinx artists or Latinx leaders, it is for anyone who is interested in joining us. We are a smaller group. We normally have anywhere from 25 to 30 folks. And while the two month training is done via webinars and it's virtual, then we spend three days in Washington, DC where we actually visit with policymakers there and really focus on the issues that are impacting our communities. And part of our Advocacy also has been, of course, around funding and resourcing, you know, communities of color, Latinx communities are extremely under resourced. And we are always working with philanthropy and others to have those conversations and really help to shift the thinking that exists, that has provided very little to our communities of color here in this nation. And when the pandemic first hit, we joined together the partners of the Intercultural Leadership Institute and did some collective fundraising because we knew that the other funds, relief funds that were being distributed, we're not going to reach our communities. We're not going to reach the artists, you know, the Maria Aches or the organ player and the church in the South, you know, who lost opportunities during the pandemic until we created our own relief grants. We shared over $5 million in funding and we are still distributing some of those funds to artists, to organizations, in rural communities, to artists with disabilities and we are collecting data. We have our own, we're not using a common application, each of us is doing our grant making in distinct ways but we did decide that there was certain data that we wanted to collect. And so it will tell a story of who our artists are and what the impact was on the funding that we provided and we use different metrics, you know, knowledge to distribute the funding. We looked at poverty indexes as well, you know, and looked at, like I said, rural communities, looked at artists with disabilities, immigrant artists. And we just feel that it's important for our voices to come together and align to address the issues that have, you know, impacted our communities for so long and that many times mainstream advocacy is not addressing at all. And one more thing, I'm sorry, when I introduced myself, I go by the pronouns she, her, I'm calling from Yanaguana, also known as San Antonio, San Antonio, Texas, the lands of the Kuala Lutekan, Sakaranca was in the Apache and I have been here, my family has been here for many, many generations. Thank you. Thank you, Maria. That was lovely. So important to hear what Maria has been working on. This work has been refined and developed over many, many years. And yeah, I think we're interested in hearing how mainstream advocacy perhaps can and should change. So I'm, you know, from Gary, I heard arts education from Maria. I heard many things, but including, you know, changing funding streams, both public and private funding streams and how to make that happen we can talk more about. I wanna turn the microphone over to Mary Catherine Nagel now. Again, an attorney and an accomplished playwright. And Mary Catherine, we're interested in your goals and vision and priorities for arts advocacy. Thank you. Thank you so much. It's an honor to be here with you all today. Good afternoon. My name is Mary Catherine. I use she, her, her pronouns and I am a citizen of the Cherokee Nation. My nation today is located in what we understand to be Oklahoma. Historically, prior to our first removal my family actually lived in what is now considered Northern Georgia. And we also were in parts of what is now Tennessee and North Carolina and South Carolina even parts of Kentucky. So very excited to be here with you today for this really important conversation. And I think that, you know, this pandemic, you know, just wanna echo some of what has already been said that, you know, it's been incredibly challenging in so many ways that I know we've all been touched by it good and bad. And we've lost, you know, I know in the native theater community, we've lost some very, very cherished members. It's been a lot of loss and in our tribal communities we've lost a lot of elders, a lot of people who carry our culture and our language and our stories. And it's been a time of huge loss. At the same time, and without discounting the loss I've also seen how I think the pause in terms of live theater being performed and the ability to bring people into a theater for things that have already been programmed with, you know, tickets and everything else. Has given institutions an opportunity to rethink some things in a way that, you know, at least one, I think one benefit of this, one good thing to come out of all this horrible loss is that I think sometimes when everything gets deconstructed and you can't do anything at all it opens up the minds to think about new ways of doing things. And I've seen some theaters start to approach new ideas and new concepts. And I've seen, I would say a more concerted effort to more inclusivity. And I'm specifically coming from like as a native playwright seeing some theaters actually actively try to engage with how to bring more native artists into the theater than before. Now, some of that I don't think is so much the pandemic and I think it's actually the fact that Black Lives Matter and the horrific murder of George Floyd created a huge awakening in this country last summer. And I think there's work in many ways, many marginalized communities are benefiting from the hard work Black Lives Matter has done to just call into question some of the forms of systemic racism we have in this country, right? And it's sort of making it harder for institutions to stay stuck and refuse to move. And so, you know, I just wanna say that I think, you know, when we have moments like this in the American theater where we literally can't keep doing it the same old way because the global pandemic is preventing us from moving forward in operations at the moment, it's a great moment to stand back and reflect and what's working and what's not working. And this question of how do we fund our theater is a really, really important question. And I think, you know, one that tribal communities and tribal nations have had to deal with for, you know, ever since Christopher Columbus got lost in the ocean because we've had our traditional forms of commerce and ways of life and trade. And then we've had other forms forced on us. And, you know, to be honest, we're all living in a capitalism structure right now. There's no escaping that. I mean, I know people don't necessarily all believe in capitalism, but that's what's around us. And I think instead of just sort of saying, well, we just have to sell tickets and it has to be done this way, I think we do need to start thinking about how do we truly make theater accessible for everyone? And that doesn't mean every single ticket is free and no one pays any money for any ticket, right? But it does mean that we just, when we really do reopen, we don't just go back to doing it the old way. And I know there've been some conversations about, you know, theaters opening up at half capacity or one third capacity, having to charge more for ticket prices. I really hope that doesn't happen because we're pricing out significant important members of our communities when we do that. Now, you know, how do we get more money into the arts? And the other thing that I just want to throw out for conversation is that, yes, we do have a really sympathetic administration, not sympathetic, that doesn't sound quite right, enthusiastic administration for the arts, right? And all you have to do is watch President Biden and Vice President Harris's inauguration to see how much they incorporated the arts into their celebration of taking office. And I actually had the honor of serving on now President Biden's campaign committee for the arts. He had several committees. And I actually started on the native committee and the arts committee and didn't actually get to make every single arts call because sometimes they conflicted with some of my native affairs calls. But I will say that there was a lot of support. And in fact, there was even discussion at one point of a cabinet member for the arts, which has not come to fruition. But the point is that we've got an administration in the White House who I think has a very different relationship and understanding with the arts than previous administrations. And I think we need to think about that and we need to engage and we need to create relationships and we need to build on that. Because I think we all know what the arts does for a democracy and how critical arts is for the health of our democracy and the rights of all of our citizens and the health of everyone. And there's a reason we've been engaging in the arts since time immemorial, right? It's our lifeline and we need it to survive literally and everyone I think has a right to be able to see the arts to access the arts and to participate in them. And as was brought up earlier there are many of our youth who that's the best form of education for them. They're not gonna learn by staring at a lecture for an hour and absorbing the material, right? So ultimately where does that leave us? And I've also been watching during the COVID pandemic I will say that I do a lot of work on behalf of tribal nations. And a lot of what we have to remind people is that when the federal government wants to fund state governments in a crisis they also need to fund tribal governments first of all because they have a treaty trust duty and responsibility to work for the hundreds of treaties that the United States signed with tribal nations promising the funding of our tribal governments the United States wouldn't exist. So there's a duty in the US constitution just to do that. But beyond the lawful duty our tribal nations provide when you're living near or on a tribal reservation and you call 911 oftentimes you're calling a tribal law enforcement 911. Our tribal law enforcement we respond to fires we respond to domestic violence calls we help fund the pavement of roads we've given more vaccination shots in the state of Oklahoma than probably the state of Oklahoma our tribal nations I mean that might be an exaggeration but we do a lot for public health and welfare we've had to tell Congress that we've had to advocate to get we weren't gonna initially get COVID really funding for tribal nations we had to fight for that and we had to explain to Congress why tribal nations should also be funded in addition to state governments. When I see what's happening with Congress and everything else I see oh of course economic crisis we better fund the airlines we better fund this industry we better fund that industry and as the arts industry we all know how critical we are to the economic health and welfare of the entire nation but I don't think we always have done a great job of messaging that to the rest of the United States and especially folks in Congress and me too I'm in that bucket of people who has not done my part to really message that and I think that is one of the important tasks ahead of us is to start to work on how do we message that so that we understand and appreciate in this country not just in Congress but everywhere how critical the arts are and how we can't survive without them. So thank you so much for inviting me to this conversation today and I look forward to the rest of this. Thank you so much Mary Catherine that was awesome so wonderful so many important points raised and yeah in Washington I'm sure your experience is the same as mine it's the folks who show up and ask for what they need that you know the squeaky wheel we cannot assume that others are gonna carry the message for us it's up to all of us. So so many important points embedded in what you said and I know that we're gonna come back to it but I've heard cabinet level position for the arts I've heard funding I've heard appropriate and fair treatment of native folks that tribal governments so much embedded in what you said and more and we're gonna come back to it and expand out. There's also a lot of wonderful stuff happening in the chat. I also now wanna turn it to TCG's board chair Nicole Salter and I just also wanna acknowledge Nicole is the first board chair who is an individual artist and brings that particular knowledge, expertise and perspective to the work of TCG. We always try to serve both theater companies as well as the ecosystem of artists and individuals, the theater professionals working in the field but Nicole's voice has lifted that up even more. We've done a lot of advocacy together and I'm looking forward to even more and I'm looking forward to your vision on arts advocacy, Nicole. Well, I don't know if this is my vision Lori. I mean, so many great points were made by the speakers who came before. I feel like what I've prepared is a bit redundant but I wanna say it anyway in part because it is from the perspective of an individual. So like I'd say again, my name is Nicole Salter for those that you don't know. I am located currently on the unceded land of the Lenape peoples specifically what we'll colonally call East Orange, New Jersey. I, my pronouns are she and her and I'm an African-American woman, a beautiful African-American woman. Okay. So we have stuck to this arts advocacy conversation and kept it largely around like institutions and groups but from this individual perspective, I guess what I'm advocating for and encouraging is what I'll call in draft the art worker civic engagement initiative. Like individual art workers. And I'll tell you why or I'll close with why philosophically I think that that's important in addition to the work that's being done. So when we all think of advocacy in general especially when I think about myself before I got involved in this, I don't know about you but I feel like I have no idea what I'm talking about, what was happening, what we're doing, what's going on, what is all this about. So my understanding was something like this. They'd ask, do you vote? Yeah, I do that. Sign this petition online. Sure. Donate to that organization. I don't have much money but all right. Repost this social media thing. Sure. Email a letter. Okay, but I mean, do they even read those? I mean, they just send back automated responses. I feel like I'm wasting my time. Call your representative. Okay, but it's not like I'm going to actually talk to someone who's going to actually listen or explain anything or do something. Show up for this march, this rally, this event and I go, another one. Okay, that was my experience as an individual person, as an individual artist. And what did those experiences amount to? It usually amounted to me feeling very small and irrelevant and disempowered or at best confused or at worst ambivalent, disengaged and apathetic. Not likely to participate in the future. We're individual artists. We need like applause. We need to see the outcome of our work and advocacy work is a long marathon, not the short game. So how do you get more individuals involved in this work? Well, most people in our nation, let alone in our industry, we don't understand how decisions are made that govern what we do, let alone how they impact the process and outcomes. Most who do know something know because, oh, and most that do know something about how all that works, know because something went terribly wrong in a personal way, right? So have you ever had an insurance issue or an IRS issue and you're trying to resolve it and you're like, wait, why can't you see my account balance in the system? I mean, what you mean you a third party institution taking payment? I didn't know they could do that. How is it possible that full covers doesn't cover this? Or this is not your jurisdiction? Interesting. You have jurisdictions? What are those? Wait, don't transfer me to another department. Don't transfer me to another department. Fine, transfer me to another department. I hope, like that's how that goes. We do not know how our systems work. So what I advocate for primarily is education. We do not know what we're a part of and having advocacy institutions don't help us to know or help us to be more supportive or mobilize constituents when those people are doing something. So we're not even really curious to know until something goes wrong, until there's a COVID-19, until there's a 9-11, until there's a whatever, we have to be engaged well before then and knowledgeable well before then. It's like only being interested in your bank account when your money's missing, right? That's not the most effective or efficient way to manage your finances any more than it is the most effective or efficient way to manage your advocacy responsibilities as a member of the arts community. I'll say it again, responsibilities as a member of the arts community. It's important that we know and understand how these decisions get made at the federal, state, local levels that govern our money, our accessibility and our rights before the proverbial SHIT hits the fan. Sure, we can hire damage control then but it will cost less to stay involved than it will to fix a big mess. And hiring lobbyists won't protect us anymore then an emergency room will offer you preventative care. Health maintenance beats ambulatory assistance any day. Treating advocacy that way is like, I said that already, we must maintain, build and maintain relationships with these legislators and policy makers all the time. We must know what's going on, we must show up and put our names and sweat equity on the line during peacetime and wartime. Advocacy starts with building knowledge, moves to the maintenance of relationships and ends in maintaining systems of mobilization, so building knowledge. I had the revelation of how the nonprofit theater works when I attended my first TCG conference in earnest. As an individual artist, I felt like the talents, we were like pawns in the game, we were the frontline, but we were never at the strategy table. And I realized that as an artist, I was perpetually sort of dating institutions, but never getting married, getting wind and dine from time to time, but no one ever took the time or was ever going to introduce me to the family or show me the budget. Advocating for the arts, there is no TCG conference to help you understand how things work. And it's hard to figure out the system and orient yourself. So first and foremost, how do you get yourself educated? That's where institutions like TCG come in and PAA and Americans for the Arts and be an arts hero. They become critical. They are providing you with that information. They are literally curating it for you. You need not invent the real. They've been building and maintaining these relationships with legislators and policymakers for decades. There is no need to reinvent anything. Your best bet is to read their email blasts, scour their websites, sign up to volunteer and serve on their committees. That is our work. And we can begin to educate ourselves pretty rapidly. What do we need to know? What are we going to find out? We're going to find out our value. That's what I found out. Our value, the arts and culture industry added $763 billion to the economy. How much money did you make last year? It went nowhere near $763 billion. I'll tell you that. That's 4.2 of the GDP in 2019. That's more than the transportation sector, the agriculture sector, right? More, but yet those sectors have committees, standing committees in Congress and we do not. That's according also to the US Bureau of Economic Analysis. In fact, since 2001, the GDP, the 4.2% portion that we add to the GDP has been that way or a little higher, up to 4.7%. Despite two recessions, despite two recessions. So the arts don't just reflect a healthy economy, they promote it. The arts industry and culture has a 4.4 investment growth rate and the national growth rate is only 2.2. And the arts and culture industry provides 5.1 million jobs across the country, right? So you and I know the spiritual benefits of the arts. There is not a celebration or a commemoration. There is not a war or a peace time. There is not a graduation. There is not a marking of any significant moment of humanity without the arts. But they don't care about that. They care about this money and we make money. At-risk students are 23% more likely to attend college, arts are, 23% more likely to attend college because of the arts, because of engagement with the arts. 67% of music therapy patients with dementia will feel less anxious and reduce the use of medication because of music concentrated cultural districts that are associated with high poverty communities that have concentrated cultural districts experienced reduced crime, reduced neglect in children, child neglect, and reduced violence. 45% of medical institutions offer some sort of arts program that's basically one of every two, right? This is our value. They say that we are not essential, but we are integrated in this society, right? So now we know our value. Next we need to know our want. What do you want? So we could be pretty heady people. We could be pretty out there and lofty and imaginative. Our congressional people are not, they want to know what you want specifically. So just like when your mom says, what do you want to eat for dinner? You don't go, oh, well, I could eat anything. And she'll be like, all right. We don't have time for that. Tell me what you want if you want something. And we can fulfill that order. And that's how we need to approach all of our policymakers and legislators. So what's the problem? We lost 2.7 million jobs and 150 billion in sales and goods and services, right? We want to replace that money. We want to replace those jobs. Finally, what do we offer in terms of solutions? There's relief, recovery and representation. Those are the three things that we want. We got some relief, unemployment insurance, the PPP program, right? We got some recovery, the SOS Act. They're talking about the American Family Plan, which is supporting education, which we should advocate to make sure that arts education is a part of, right? They're talking about the American Jobs Plan. They're talking about the Comer Act, which really builds and bolsters the NEA and the NEH, right? There's also the... I'm sorry if you can hear that. I have protesters outside of my window. Can you hear that? Sorry, not sorry. Sorry, not sorry. Y'all protest. Yes, join this group. There's the Federal Writers Project already on the board where they're gonna hire unemployed writers and underemployed writers. There's the Performing Arts Tax Parity Act because I need my deductions back, y'all. Clicks, these taxes are killing me? Killing me softly. We need to look at the not-for-profit business model in general that lends itself to hierarchy, the hierarchy of boards and the moneyed interests of the corporate America that keep ending up usurping the mission of the institution. It always does. How do we create funding that incentivizes funding models and policies that incentivizes community participation in these organizations that we're supposed to be serving, right? Not corporate sponsorship of these organizations. How do we get the community involved and invested not just as consumers, but as part owners? Compensation within these institutions needs to be equitable and regulated. Staff and community-led consensus models of leadership and governance need to be promoted. Audience development campaigns that move the populace into an understanding of arts as service. Finally, as we said, we need representation. Absolute representation. Yes, we need a position, an arts and culture cabinet position, a secretary of art and culture and the associated federal agency with a budget to represent the interests of the creative economy and to regulate the equitable distribution of these federal dollars going to the arts and culture sector. We also need quantitative and qualitative research about the impact of the arts that happen nationally and all the time to prove our purpose. We also need, and I don't know even how to do this, Lori, individuals need access to advocacy. Individuals need access to advocacy. Why is it always the high money proposition? I can't get a meeting with anybody that represents beyond any level, even in my little town, let alone on a national level. How can we make that a part of the culture of what it means to be an artist and how can we make that a part of the larger culture to make sure that there is always space for people to advocate for their needs? So we know how to get involved. You could at least stay informed, at least, right? You could join up, at least join up. You don't have to invent nothing, join up. You could at least get vocal, get visible. You could at least get active, right? These are things that we need you to do because change is, the narrative of change is always told to us like one person did it, but it's never one person that did it. It's small stones being taken away from this mountain by many people. And if we each do something, we'll all only need to take away a small stone. No one's going to have to shoulder any boulders if we all step up. So how do we create a culture of advocacy like that? That's what I wanted to add to the conversation. Yay, Nicole. Thank you so much. My job is done. I can go home. I am home. Anyway, thank you, Nicole. Oh my God, such passion and such, that was amazing. You've been nominated to be the cabinet member and I applaud that. That is just awesome. Wow. Yes, we're going to capture that. Your remarks and all the data that you shared and everything that you shared, there's sort of been an ask for that to be dropped into the padlet. If you could do that at some point, that would be super so people can reference that. Thank you, thank you. Couple of things in response from me. Our advocacy work at TCG has been going on for decades in bipartisan fashion. I want to say that I cannot say that strongly enough. We are a nonpartisan organization and our advocacy is bipartisan. And that is so important to make friends on both sides of the aisle because you never know who's going to be the party in control of the House of Representatives or the US Senate or the White House. And if you've already cultivated those relationships, everything that Nicole just said about having those relationships in place for when crisis hits and we know crisis is going to hit. It's hit many times before. There are floods, there are fires, there are other acts, human acts like 9-11, and now of course the pandemic. It's hard to go to funders. Think of Congress as a funder. Hard to go to them when you're absolutely in need if you haven't already cultivated that relationship. And we need to have that relationship with folks on both sides of the aisle. And I think that we're in the place we are now having had some success this last year because we really have been doing that bipartisan work for a long time. One other thing that Nicole mentioned, do they really read our emails? Yes, they read the emails. Somebody on staff in a member of Congress's office reads your email, especially if you personalize the first line. I send action alerts with links to a draft response, a message for you to send to your elected officials. It takes like a minute or two. I prep you on what the issue is and draft that message, personalize it, hit send. There are over a hundred of you joining here today. If you responded to every action alert and got some folks on your board, the rest of your staff, imagine we could add a zero to the end of that. We generally generate about 500 messages to Capitol Hill in response to every action alert. And that's pretty good. We can do so much better if we all join together. So that's a sort of primer on arts advocacy. We all need to, what did Nicole say, a culture of arts advocacy? And I love that. On the TCG.org website, there is a button on the top navigation that says action. If you look at the dropdown menu under that, the second option is accessing federal relief. All of the relief programs we've talked about, shuttered venues, paycheck protection program and so forth are on this page. But in a big bar at the top, it says sign up to receive TCG action alerts. Please do if you're not already. Now, I wanna open it up because we have about 25 minutes left. And what I really wanna do is hear from everybody in the room. We were gonna talk amongst the panel and that's fine, but I also wanna invite everybody in the room. What are the priorities? I've heard funding, I've heard jobs, tax parity, funding, funding, funding, relief and recovery. So I don't know if we could put it on gallery view everybody so we can see everybody in the room. If you want to share a thought, a need from the field, urge TCG to take on something as a priority. I think if you click on participants at the bottom there is a raise hand feature and you could throw out an idea there or post it in the chat and we will most certainly capture all of the comments in the chat. But I'd love to have a conversation with all of you for the next bit of time and find out is there something that you think should be a priority. TCG is a national organization and we do focus our advocacy efforts at the federal level. There are arts advocacy organizations, I believe in almost every state and of course many municipalities as well. This should be part of every person's sort of portfolio of your work. Somebody at your organization or if you're an individual, please be engaged to the extent that you can. Even if it's respond to an action alert when I send it and I don't send them every day, we're judicious about taking your time. But when we do send it, it's because there's a moment of opportunity but we need everybody to weigh in. But so I'm seeing in the chat, is there a coordinated effort advocating for an arts and culture cabinet position? This is something that we raised with the Biden transition team when his administration was taking office. We did, and I'm seeing Mary Catherine nodding her head because I didn't even know that you served on the transition team. Yeah, we've asked for that. We've suggested it. What I would like to see is if the room feels that that would be a helpful and important thing, I would like to see it instituted in an institutionalized way. So it's not just, well, President Biden wants to have a culture minister or whatever, but it becomes an ongoing position, a standing cabinet level position. And we'll have to figure out how to make that happen. I can see some number of folks on my screen at a time. Raise your hand if you think that that's an important thing or signal in the chat. If you think that a cabinet level position would be helpful. Cool, I'm seeing that. What else? Money, relief money, recovery money, jobs. What else? Does anybody wanna take the microphone? Coordinated effort for internship regulations to actually be enforced. Thank you, Danielle. I'm hearing you about the 20 and 30-somethings that interns should be paid and young people need, we all need a living wage, but especially young people who are entering the field. We still don't have a new NEA chair nominated yet and that has been lost in that. Yes, yes, we need a new NEA chair. That person historically has been the voice at the federal level, representative of the arts in an administration. So we absolutely need that and that will likely happen sooner than a cabinet level position. I don't know if it's a possibility of elevating that person to become the cabinet person, but regardless, both and thank you, Greg Reiner. Who is an elected office in terms of arts funding and democracy? Nonpartisan John Lewis for the People Act. Thank you. I will say that our advocacy is not just about, it is importantly about advocating for the National Endowment for the Arts, but there are issues that span the political spectrum and are of greater interest on one side of the aisle or the other. The tax incentives for charitable giving and preserving the charitable deduction is actually something that appeals more to Republicans than Democrats. It's about personal choice and where people give. 40% on average of theater companies' income is derived from donations. So preserving that charitable deduction is huge. So there are issues that we engage in and talk about. Actually, I'll tell you protecting wireless microphones used in the performing arts is also actually something of greater interest to Republicans than Democrats. For whatever reason, Democrats seem to feel as though that's in opposition to broadband. It's not. There's enough technology sophistication in this country to make both and to share the spectrum between the various services that are needed. Anyway, I never wanted this to be any sort of monologue. So first I'll invite the panelists who spoke if you wanna step up and respond to each other, some of the things that you see as lifted up to be among the most important things and not leave it to me to distill that. Gary, do you wanna jump back in? You were first. So I wanna circle back around to you. Yeah, that'd be helpful. Thank you. A number of my co-panelists mentioned issues of equity and the importance of that. And I think that's actually been one of the challenges in the world we had pre-COVID. Many of the benefits that we've seen from federal support for the arts as well as attention to the arts has been definitely indicated in an inequitable way in regards to both the ethnicity of the artists and the region of the country where we're talking about. And I think that that's one of the things that we need to address. The other thing, and I think it's extremely important when we're talking about our value and the worth of what we do, about three or four weeks ago, there was an article published in Psychology Today that was done by a group of psychologists who studied the impact and the importance of live theater on the general public. And they went ahead and did an op-ed in the LA Times at the end of that week. And what that study found was that we have a tremendous power in regards to helping a group of people, an audience, and in large an overexposure, getting them to build empathy and compassion for other people because we present perspectives that may not necessarily be held by the folks just because they're sitting in the theater. We open up the world to them in ways that are not always done in other capacities. And if anybody's been paying attention for the last four years, we've been living in a country with a huge compassion and empathy deficit where 75 million of our fellow citizens looked at what was done underneath the previous administration and doubled down and thought that they needed four more years of that. So we have a real problem as regards to the civil society. And one of the realizations that I got out of this article was that what we do, yes, it's the touchy-feely component, but it is critical in regards to us trying to re-net this country back together as one. Not always that we agree with everything, but that we have a sense of understanding that we're in, we have a common goal in a change. And it can also help us with our equity issues because I think that we should not just assume that because we have these land acknowledgments and these Black Lives Matter statements that the world, once we've completely reopened, is going to be any more equitable than it was on March 2020. So we need to think seriously about how we address all of these issues because for many of us, the world was not working. It wasn't, and this field specifically was not working. And so everything that we could do going forward has to address in a serious concerted effort, equity. And that means that we have to all address it. Thank you, Gary. Absolutely. And thank you very much for lifting that up. I see that there are some hands raised in the chat. And so, or anyway, hands raised. And I want to call on some folks and then we'll see if the panelists want to jump back in. But I see Jessica. I don't know how to pronounce that your middle name and Reich. Are you still wanting to say something? No, sorry about that. Okay. Well, Lopes, you're next. Hi, I just want to lift up what many of you have said, Laurie and Nicole, about joining and finding your local regional arts organizations, I mean, advocacy organizations. And I want to lift up, do it now. Because right now they're adopting budgets. California just put out their budget. Governor Newsom, May 14th, big increase for the arts, but they had $26 billion to spend from the American Recovery Act. The same thing happened at the LA city and county level. They're right now in the midst of doing their budgets. LA city, the Arts for LA advocacy group, along with others, organized a petition of over a thousand arts advocates. And the city council said they felt the arts advocacy was perhaps the best organized of the groups and the budget went up 30% for arts. So I mean, to Nicole's point, it has value and you can make a difference, but do it now when they're in the midst of those budgets and to Gary's point, once we get the money, then we have to lobby for how it can be equitably used. Absolutely, thank you, Gail. Total support. Yes, to lift up what Gail is saying, American Rescue Plan money has been sent to states and there is a lot of advocacy going on at state levels. I've seen a few alerts. I think it was one from Illinois this morning. Advocate for some portion of those funds in your state and coordinate through your state advocacy organization for some portion to go to the arts. There's one other opportunity happening right now and that is earmarks are back folks. It seems like earmarks are back, surprisingly so. Earmarks, if you don't know what I mean, I'm talking pork. I'm talking lion items and it's money. Elected officials wanna bring money home to their districts. That process is done in the house but the Senate is still open for a few more days. Their requests are due next week. Contact the local office for your US Senator and ask if they have an application, if there's something that you can advocate for for your theater. I see a hand raised by Francine Reynolds. Go ahead, Francine. Hi, Lori, thanks. My request would be as we advocate for increased funding to the NEA and other organizations to get the money out to us. The more I think we can make the case for the livable wage as people have been talking about, I think the more we can talk about just direct general operating support funding and I know that that causes a lot of problems. There's nothing wrong with project support but internally if some of that talk and conversation could be ongoing and I know that it's part of the rescue plan which is great but I would love to see that. I know Greg's on the session but I would love to see that continue after the rescue plan. That's a really good point. Thanks, Francine. The NEA is guided by directives from Congress in how money can be spent and historically this is a result and outcome from the culture wars. There had been general operating support, seasonal support before that and this was a way to sort of control a little bit more that money wouldn't go to controversial work. So, but I agree perhaps this is a moment where we can press a restart button on that. Yes, the American Recovery Rescue Plan funding will be general operating support and stay tuned as I think you all heard Ra Joy say earlier guidelines will be posted for direct grants from the NEA in June. So check out the arts.gov website and I will certainly let everybody know when we hear more specific news. But yeah, I think advocating and that actually probably has to happen with Congress about whether those funds could continue beyond this relief funding in terms of general operating support. We'll continue to talk about that. I see Leah first and then Greg. Leah. Thank you so much. Yeah, I put this in Padlet and in the chat but I wanted to vocalize it as well. I'm part of a lot of student loan reform and erasure efforts but I haven't heard a concentrated effort on the federal level from a number of arts organizations specifically tackling that. And I know one of the issues is a perception that arts degrees, but not all members of Congress but a lot of them believe that an arts degree is frivolous and superfluous. So they don't feel in any kind of desire or push to advocate for it because they anticipate pushback from their constituents with that same belief. So it's been very difficult to get anyone really latched on to helping arts students specifically. And we know that there's lots of scholarship opportunities and things like that. A lot of this artistic drain that was at least of my cohort with the recession was we graduated from undergrad. The recession happened and we couldn't really do anything in the arts field because there was no way to survive and it's happening again with the pandemic. So as soon as we started to get some footing, 2020 happened. So all of the effort and work that had been going on since 2007, 2008 bottomed out underneath us. And what I also mentioned in the padlet was I'm in my mid-30s. I'm not in my 20s with arts student loan debt. I went back to school to get a degree because I know I needed it and I wanted it in order to have a career in this field. But a lot of my cohort at my graduate program were significantly older than I was. I had classmates who were in their 60s and their 50s who were going back to school to get arts management degrees because they wanted to have a place at the table. And now we have all this tremendous debt and no way to pay it back. And they're not sure what to do. I'm not sure what to do. So it'd be really great to see more efforts not even locally, really on the national level to help with this big understanding of student loan debt reform and potentially erasing student loan debt. So thank you. Thank you for that. And I will also check not only the chat, but the padlet. So thank you. Greg, over to you. Hi. So I just feel like he'll do something in the conversation here. So just to answer. Just now, of course I cannot, as a federal employee, speak directly to advocacy or like what you should do or how you should get legislation passed or any of that kind of stuff. I'll do that to Lori and Nicole and Maria and all the amazing people who do that. But I did just want to say I'm here and I think I see my colleague, Lita, here as well. We are just a very happy to answer any questions directly. If you have anything about the process or how we work, particularly for those who don't know, was alluded to the general operating support which we picked up in my years, that not only is that being, that will be the recovery grants. So if you're looking to apply for those, we'll be releasing the guidelines. If anyone's on this call listening, you should know that when the guidelines do come out, don't be confused by the fact that you still have to, all the still language, because of the way the process in OMB works, we'll still say project, don't be confused by that. You do have to tell us how you're gonna spend the money but it's still considered general operating support. But also if you've got grants out now that you don't know if you're gonna be able to do those projects, we were given a waiver for at least this year for any projects, we can convert those projects that are existing to general operating support. So if you have a project, you just can't do it because of COVID and you'd rather not have to wait and delay it, you can just convert to general operating. So call Weader Ian to, they'll help you on that. And I also just wanted to say in terms of seeing how the process works or having a direct impact on it yourself as a panel. I see a few, I see Nicole and Francine and Lori and maybe a couple of visitors who recently served as panelists, thank you. And you can speak to hopefully what an amazing experience it was. And encourage others to be doing it. But we'd normally be myself, Weader and Ian or we'd normally be out meeting all of you in person and getting your business cards to recruit you which we haven't been able to do this year last year. So we're even more dependent, especially folks from outside of New York and California. We have a lot of folks in the cube from those states already. But if you're not in those states and you'd like to serve just please get in touch at trinergarts.gov. And then the last thing I'll say just to answer because there was a lot of questions about although I'm happy to answer any other questions general operating support and advocating for that which I won't say how you, how or if you should do that but I will remind you that, you know one of the benefits to you as an applicant of having any project support is it means we're only you only have to match that part that is the project. And it means you haven't given the federal government which now you may or may not whatever administration is in power in the four years that you have to be applying but if it's general operating you've given the federal government window into your entire operations and liability over that. So in some ways you're protected by having to be a smaller project. Just as a little something I learned that I didn't understand until I started working for the federal government. I mean it's anything from things we can't pay for like silly things like a reception cost or alcohol that you serve to your patrons. I mean to things beyond that. So there is a protection that kind of goes both way there just to tease out that that's a bit of more nuanced conversations. Lori was there anything else any related that came up that I could? No, I think that you covered it and that's a very interesting point about applying for general operating support and all of that that that implies versus project support. I also think in the deep recesses of my mind that to change the annual application and request general operating support. I think we have to get a reauthorization of the NEA for that to happen and that is a big political process. I'm pretty sure that that is true. So stay tuned on that. It is something that we think about. We're not running into that process this moment. We would like to see what this administration proposes in terms of a budget for the NEA. We actually expect to hear that next week. We've only seen a big picture budget from the Biden administration and we'll see the much more detailed next week. I am wondering whether Maria or Mary Catherine had any other words that you all would like to share before we close out? Thank you so much. I mean, there's so much to say and I agree with so much of which has been said but I also, I know a lot of people wanted to jump in and have comments and questions. So I don't want to take away from the opportunity for anyone else to speak. So just agree with everything and excited about this conversation and the direction folks are going. Thank you everyone. Yes, there has to be accountability of how these funds are being spent and we need to create those relationships. Everybody talks about relationships and I talked about knowledge leadership institute that happens every single year not just as a response to any specific issues but the reason that we created our own leadership institute is because we felt that many perhaps of the other advocacy organizations were not addressing the issues that mattered to communities of color. So when we go to the hills, when we go to the White House, when we go to the NEA, we talk about the issues that never get brought up in sometimes larger advocacy discussions. And I think we worked over the last year with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus who put forward language that states that there needs to be more accountability for how perhaps the National Endowment for the Arts is reaching out to communities of color, of poor communities and work with them to find ways to provide equitable funding and resourcing to many of the communities that many times are left out. So I appreciate all of the, and I participate in all of the advocacy efforts whether it's a local, national, federal level, state level, but we also have to remind ourselves to look around and see who and what communities and which artists and which organizations are not supported with these funds. We can't just put on their rose-colored glasses and think that everything is okay. There is a lack of equity there and we need to speak to that. Thank you, Maria. I take that to heart and I deeply honor and appreciate all of the groundwork that you and many others have created over many, many years. And I hope to help take up that mantle. And I look to all of you to join TCG and me in this work. It's something that we do together. As somebody once said, it takes a village. It really takes all of us to do this work together. We have power together. There is power in numbers and in all of our voices. Those of you who are theater leaders and have employees and so forth and students that you serve and audience members that you serve and an economic impact in your communities, absolutely. Individual artists too, you contribute enormously to the health and vitality of your communities. So there are many things that we've identified here today that we wanna advocate for. We want a culture of arts advocacy where everybody understands and embraces that this is part of our lives and that we all need to do this together. And we need accountability for how the money is spent going forward and that's gonna be a big piece of what we take on moving forward. There's a lot in terms of advocacy to celebrate. There've been some major wins and hard times ahead and we need to keep advocating together. Nicole, any last words? Yes, thank you. The number of people who have been here is encouraging and I know that we're on our way. I don't feel alone. I just know we have to do the work. Absolutely, thank you very much. Natalie or any other TCG staff, is there anything we need to close out with? Thanks, Laurie. I think just to say thank you everyone and please keep the conversation going in Mighty Networks and on the padlet. Thank you to our wonderful ASL interpreters and we'll see you soon. See you at the next session. Thank you all for your partnership and advocacy. Thank you, bye. Thank you to the panelists. You were awesome, thank you. Thank you, Laurie.