 Today, knowing that we have a plan, that we have examined the future of TYA, what did we discover today? If I don't know you, my name is Nina Meehan, I'm the Executive Artistic Director of Bay Area Children's Theater, and I'm also the Board President for TYA USA. And I'm going to do some conclusions today, guys. All right. Here we go. Here's what I learned today, and I hope you guys agree too. We are a group of dedicated artists who want to build a better future for our entire world. We see our work as a tool to empower young people through our work. Children are seen and see themselves. And we've had a really wonderful day, with lots of beautiful people from our industry coming together, because we are only as strong as all of us together. One of our first challenges that we talked about was our funding model. We have the same business model as our regional partners, but without the same opportunities for contributed income, and we had some brilliant people say some amazing things. TYA does amazing work with few resources. The artists that we are working with, the administrative staff, they are preliminary and preliminary, primarily emerging, sorry typos. So the model requires a lot of teaching, which of course requires resources. Our donors age out as fast as our audience, says Steve Martin. We have 10 years, that's it, and then we lose them. Another challenge we talked about today, and yes, I'm doing the speed version of this because I can tell that everyone in this room is ready for that glass of wine at the end of the day. Representation! Guys, we all believe in the power of children seeing themselves represented in our stages and in our leadership, but we have a problem in our leadership. We do not have enough diversity. We need to push our entire industry to fix that and move forward. Stories of difference are American stories, inviting, open, relevant to all people, says Idris, thank you. Cast people who have traditionally been marginalized, oppressed, bullied, cast them wisely, bringing them to the center of the story, and also it did not make it to the slide, but figure out how we can fund associate artistic director positions so that we have pipelines for leadership. Recognition! While our work is building the next generation of theater artists and theater goers, we are often seen as treated and treated as second-class citizens. TYA is marginalized. Like all marginalized groups, we need powerful friends to stand with us, says Kevin. And Mary Rose said we all worship in the same church. Again, we are the strength of each other. Let us rely on each other. But the wonderful thing about today is that while we talked about our challenges and we know our challenges are great, we also have incredible opportunity. The numbers that we learned, I mean, I don't, how many times have you been able to sit through data presentation and get teary eyed and get like goose bumps? That's opportunity because our numbers are telling us our work is important. Our work is critical. So we're going with some solutions. These solutions are from all of the tables we're talking about today as well as our amazing visions and there are so many more in this room. These are just some samples. Go early. Go often. Start them young. Start with, stand with powerful friends. See the wealth already around us. It's so easy for us to get trapped in our own sense of maybe we're second class citizens, but we are, we are wealthy. We have so much great resources. Equalize our theater ecosystem. Invite the youth to the table. Take the time to learn about your true audience. And I think this one at the bottom, it starts with you, then company, then community. It allows us to give a framework for how we can get there. And yes, I know we have so many more solutions, but here's just a starting point. And again, we are as strong as our own community. Commitments. I heard a lot of commitments today. We can only move forward if we not only see the solutions, but we also make the commitment to take action. Those commitments included intentional unity. Okay, artists competitively, which will ensure voices of diversity can and will be represented on our stages. Make advocacy a priority. I'm just going to say like a personal one on this, I know how important advocacy is and I get so lost in my day to day. I mean, it's like I'm chasing my email inbox every day and I forget to email my own city council person, let alone the state legislator, but it matters and it makes a difference and there are a lot of us. Like outside our own walls, I love the fact that we talked about the fact that YMCA's have theaters and churches have theaters and schools have theaters. We forget that. We get really stuck on, but is there a lighting system? Who cares? Make the art figure it out. Our audiences are our future global citizens. We cannot be a world that is only thinking about ourselves and about where our own borders are. We are living in a world without borders. Social media took care of that, guys. The children of the next generation are not going to be thinking about borders the same way we are. We need to be ahead of that. Bring art to the kids. It's not our job to ask anyone to go out of their way. Art is only going to happen if we make it a part of their existence. Actions. So these came straight from you guys. Got milk-style campaigns. Theater is for me, yes. Radical listening. Do we understand our own relevance? Advocate to TCG that TYA is not an add-on, but is represented proportionately. Explore the connection between organizations and community college, higher education. Consensus organizing as a tool for community engagement which affects long-term engagement art and ticket sales. Co-commission with lots of companies that is original work and growing on from there. Stop looking up, look about, which is a way to reinvent the conversation around hierarchy. Have conversations with unions and guilds about raising awareness of TYA in their spheres. This one is specifically for the funders and journalists. Show up, please. Show up. And the last very small one. Create a TYA manifesto. But here's the thing. I came to each of these tables to get your action items and what I loved was that every single table had like a list of like 20 and they were all actionable. These were not pie-in-the-sky, oh well, we did a thing and it's going to be cool and let's change the world, no. This was go call your union. This was let's get together and do another convening. This was let's get national attention. If milk can get national attention, TYA certainly can. We're way more interesting. So as we leave today, we are, I'm sorry, Glass of Milk, Children's Theater, right? So as we leave today, a couple of last things that are just some incredible beautiful moments that I heard today that I wanted to capture. Go for it. Let's commit today that we will represent all of our children. Let's be bold and encourage honest engagement, Jackie. Replace the word risk with opportunity. We are only as strong as our collective voice. I am so humbled, honored, and grateful that this is the team, guys. We're here in this room right now and we actually do have the potential to do what we all say we do every day. We all say, oh, yeah, we changed the world through theater. But guess what? We can't do it by ourselves. We really can't. We've all tried, by the way. Like, I know how hard every one of you works. We have all tried. So let's bring our collective voice together and let's really make sure that the future of TYA is bright and incredible. Thank you all for an amazing day. Jonathan, final words. Thank you so much, Nina. That was masterful that she spent the day making that for us and just being able to put all of that in one place for us to process. I'm here just to say a few thank yous. Thank you to YoungArts for providing this container, literally, for an amazing day. It's an amazing space, inspiring space to be in. Thank you to our friends at Children's Theater Foundation of America for partnering on this event and our conference and building such an amazing. There's a really exciting energy between our organizations and I'm excited to see what we can do next. Thank you to TCG for partnering with us on this event and creating this space. And thank you to the NEA for the spotlight on our field. It feels like a huge moment to have the NEA shining a light on TYA in this way. And Greg's leadership is just so inspiring and we're so grateful. And it's interesting to see that slide with the TYA manifesto because we're not just doing this convening. The NEA is publishing a report that we can all go and use in our communities on the back of this event and to take to the people who weren't able to be in the room. So thank you for the investment you're making in our field and for seeing us and elevating the conversation. It really does feel the energy in the room feels like an exciting launch point for all the things to come, hopefully, from this conversation. So thank you. And finally, I want to thank all of you for showing up. This event is only as strong as the people who attend. And I just observed during the day, even people who've been in spaces like this and have been having these conversations for years brought new energy and new ideas. And it feels like we're taking that risk and turning it into an opportunity. It feels that the energy of the day is very exciting. And a lot of us have been on this journey from Atlanta for the TYA USA conference about a month ago to this moment. And I'm very excited to see how these conversations propel us all forward. So thank you. Okay, so some final logistics. As you exit, there's a lot of food left. Please take food so that we don't need to throw it away. Take food to the airport with you. Take food back to the hotel. Please don't let us waste all the food that's on the table. Also, if you are heading straight to the hotel, you can head over to table one if you want to find other people to cab or lift with so that you're not trying to do that to the airport, yeah. Any other logistics that I'm forgetting, Laurie? Thank you, yes. Thank you, Hal-Round. And I'm thrilled to announce too that Hal-Round and TYA USA are going to be partnering moving forward on our conference and bringing the partnerships that you've built with TCG and with all these other spaces to both TYA USA and Asatej Global hopefully next year. So we're really excited to continue our partnership and being able to add to our audience in addition to the people who are able to be in the room, thank you. All right, thank you all. Last thing, I wanted to tell you that we as a TYA community will be convening again in a little less than a year at the Kennedy Center. We'll be partnering with our friends with New Visions, New Voices Festival to create a TYA USA festival around that event, which is focused on new play development. Kim and Deirdre and David are back there from the Kennedy Center. We're so excited to partner with you and to bring our field together. So please join us and we have postcards on the table if you want to grab those dates. We will be together, let me get this right, May 14th to 17th 2020. In Washington DC, I'll see you there, not before.