 So first, at this point we're going to have each of the groups have a representative come up and report back on recommendations, ideas, and sort of a simple description of the discussion that took place in each of the smaller groups so you get a sense of what happened in the group that you weren't involved in. And then we can look at how we can implement some of these changes and hope that this will carry the discussion out into the next, into the cocktail hour and beyond and so that we can actually see some change. So our first group that's going to report back is the group on hybrid forms and international collaboration and Valejo Gardner is going to present. I was just saying we had this amazing note taker and we felt we would be remiss in not bringing her up with us because she kind of set the standard by which note takers should be judged. These were the notes that we took for the meeting. We started off trying to define hybridity. It is either the intersection of cultures, whether it be internationally or artistic forms, also the intersection of narratives. We very quickly settled on artist-centric producing. Artists need time to learn from each other, to share resources, and to advocate for each other's art. Labels. They can be useful for audience development, but challenging for the individual artists. Art forms vary across and within cultures. The question came up, does our notion of hybridity come from a Western perspective? With time, work can become intercultural rather than cross-cultural. So having a cultural awareness and a cultural competence. Hybridity comes from seeking other forms to find ways to engage with questions that we don't yet know the answers to. Part of why we can achieve this is to create hubs that can connect both artist to artist and community to community that came out of a discussion of technological hubs. There's the challenge of engaging in hybrid forms without losing the traditional. That was kind of left up as a question. We want to acknowledge that audiences are and can be hybridized. They can arrive with their own perspective, but they can also be seated with engagement activities either before, during, or after the performance. Or artistic producers can make conscious choices to hybridize their audience base. The impulse of the hybrid is to peer into the void of what is not and to see what is. Using outside our artistic boxes and presenting boxes using non-traditional partnerships, particularly reaching into scientific communities or technological communities or different venues. Using technology well, that also means having a place where artists can incubate their ability to use that technology and being very aware of our audience. I think that pretty much summarizes it. It was a really interesting discussion that raised a whole bunch of problems, but I feel like also set some ideas for how to solve a lot of those issues and a lot of those problems around how to create successful hybrid collaborations in an international community. Or something like that. Okay, next up is the group on visa, taxes and practical challenges. JJ Alfar, are you gonna give that report? And colleagues, okay. Super fun group dealing with taxes and visas and all of that fun logistical nightmare inducing work. So we had a team of fantastic experts in the room that, I don't know, joined us, that really sort of gave a brief overview of the basics that you need to know, but also alluded to the fact that this is a much, much larger and more complicated issue that really does come down to a case by case basis when you're dealing with either visa applications or processing taxes for artist stipends. Yeah, by the way, my name is Mary Helen Young. I'm from Visiting Arts in London. Just to give a little bit more information. We talked about some really important resources that are out there and one that just launched today, apparently, from the organization TAMISDAT. And they have a free hotline and also a website talking about troubleshooting for bringing artists into the US. So the website is T-A-M-I-Z-D-A-T dot org forward slash avail A-V-A-I-L. Did you get that? Okay. No. T-A-M-I-Z-D-A-T dot org forward slash avail. Which stands for artist visa assistance info line. And they have a hotline phone number. Ready? Here it comes. 718-541-3641. You can call that number and get help from people. And just briefly, the other great resources, artists from abroad, from the League of American Orchestras. And Nadjine Lee was really helpful and had a lot of great information for us. And they've put together this guide. So you can download that. That's free about visas and tax. So just a very brief overview. I think for most of the people that in terms of visas, we're going to be dealing with either 01 visas or P visas. And the basic breakdown is that individual artists of extraordinary ability, those are going to be people applying for 01 visas. Those are going to be your rock stars, the main artists that's coming. If they're coming with a band or a group or a company that accompanies them, that backs them up or support personnel of any kind, those are going to be 02 visas. Those are coming with the 01. So they can't be independent of the 01. They come as a package deal. And then we found out that P1 visas are for whole groups. So if you're bringing an entire theater company from another country to the United States, you need a P1 visa for that whole group. Let's see. You also can file for a P1 visa for a whole group, even if there's only one person in the company that's coming from another country that needs that visa. You would still apply on behalf of the entire company because you're basically saying that that person is integral to the creative project and that they can't be done without them. And I just want to say for all these rules, it's struck me that there always seemed to be an exception. So we would describe a situation and then the experts would be like, yes, well, maybe, but you could do this X, Y and Z. So there are there are hard rules and hard categories that you can do, but there's also there's always an exception. I'm not sure if that's helpful. A couple of other interesting points that we learned if there is a labor union that represents the artist that you're applying on behalf of that you need a required letter from that union, whether it's that actor's equity or whatever. And you could also have, though, you don't need a peer letter of review and support for that petition as well. The compensation is not a prerequisite for the visa. So even if your artist is coming to this country to do your project and you're not paying them, they still need a visa. If you are some possible consequences, not to be all doom and gloom, but if you are a foreign artist coming here and you don't do it properly and you do it illegally, the consequences could include being banned from the country or being restricted to processing the visa in your own country. So there are real consequences to doing this wrong. So it is helpful that these resources are out there, people that know backwards and forwards, the process, and it's better to check. It's also better to do this way in advance as early as you can. Yeah, they estimated between two months, absolute minimum time before you need the visa, up to six months before it to be very safe. We also started to talk about the craziness that is taxes. The employer, bottom line, the employer is liable for the taxes, and that's 30 percent. So we talked about how you could pad that 30 percent into the stipend. You could include it off the top and then it sort of comes out in the wash when you withhold the 30 percent. Basically, if you're having an international artist come to this country, you really need to offer support so that they can get a tax ID, and that is a complicated... It's not that complicated to get the tax ID, but it is somewhat form-intensive for them to get the ID and then fill out a tax return to get that 30 percent back. More often than not, that 30 percent just goes away. It's just nobody gets it, and the government takes it and everyone loses. So it's better to figure it out ahead of time and plan for it than kind of leave it to the last minute. The League of American Orchestras have an advocacy initiative about making the visa application process more timely. Their goal is 29 days. I think they've got a bill in House Congress. I can't remember the details. And so if you're interested in supporting that, then I would get in touch with them. And worst case scenario, if you're really in a bind, you could contact your US Senator's immigration officer. You can just call them up. And that's like if you've done everything perfectly and you know that you're right, you could ask them for some help. But if you've made an error in the petition, then that's on you. So that is a real risk. But those are some of the risks and resources that are out there. Hopefully I didn't butcher that too badly. Please correct me if I did. And the fantastic experts are still around for further questions. And also, can I just interject? I've taken emails for I'm going to email a group that's interested in these issues. And if you'd like to be added to that email list, then you can just come give me your card or see me afterwards. So next up is socially engaged performance. Jessica Litvak and Johann Flock are going to present. I'm going to give you a website before we start. It's new as of, I think, nine this morning. But it goes to what we were just talking about. And it connects to us and goes to the human rights group, they said, www.artistsafety.net. Right, artistsafety.net. And that's a new volunteer network of support for artists worldwide globally. And we would love you to get involved. So you can email us at info.infoatartistsafety.net. And it's up and going. So thank you. OK, so these are how our notes look. That's how our notes look. And we didn't invent any new words like hybridity. But we did have a vibrant and wonderful conversation with a room full of incredible practitioners and scholars. So these are some of the things we talked about. So I wrote statements here and questions there. Organized I got. We talked about, Johann talked a great deal about this wonderful outdoor theater that he's involved with. You should ask him about it. It's incredible. We talked about community action. These are forms. We talked about forms of socially engaged theater. So doing theater outdoors, community action, strands of intention. So is the intention to give access to engage with the community, give them access to theater, or is there an actual community intention with the theater that you're engaging the audience with? The initiatives, we talked about the initiatives of regional theater to do one play that is socially engaged, that pushes the envelope, that the subscribers have to come to because they're already paid for the season. They're sneaking in that socially engaged piece. We talked about the Linn-Knaut digits ruined when Jewish World Watch was at the door and the idea of having an artistic experience and an activist presence separately but together, a real life context to the piece of art. We talked about using community members as in some productions of Shakespeare in the park that were done as well as Cornerstone Theater does this in Los Angeles where you're using community members, not actors, to engage with the audience. So the audience is also different because it's the community involved with the performers who are not theater practitioners per se or not actors per se. So you get a different kind of community on stage and off. Is that clear? We're going on outside of the theater so therapeutic involvement and impact with community. That's also socially engaged theater. Ongoing involvement with technology, digital engagement with your audience, post-performance. Ensemble work, we talked about Bond Street's work in Afghanistan and the fact that they keep going back and engaging in that community and working with ensembles. We talked about Junebug and Urban Bush Women as two companies who've been engaged in, you want me to hurry up? Gave me this stink guy. So companies that have been doing this kind of socially engaged theater in this country for years, somebody said, and I thought this was beautiful, we must teach and write the forbidden. The next generation of theater artists has a different approach using other tools, social engagement, not necessarily political engagement. Interactive immersive theater. Censorship and self-censorship. Looking at that. Enlightenment movement talking about France after the revolution with the concept of everyone as a citizen, laughing matters, and theater is not just a nice thing to do, but it's necessary. The questions came up are breadth versus depth, more people or deeper involvement. Questions, socially engaged by whom? Question, what is education? Question, how do we get artists to be internationally mobile? What happens when theater moves away from institutions and there's no institution to protect the artists? What are ethical issues in global theater work? Do we have an over dependence on technology? How can the arts use technology to engage audiences? How can the theater community reach and engage with the working immigrant community? How can we democratize the experience and our understanding of the theater and what does the community want or need to produce? These are the questions that came up in our very exciting and ongoing conversation. Thank you. Okay, next up we have artists and human rights and Muriel Borst Tarrant is going to briefly give you the highlights. Hello everybody. This was a very great group with my brother Ali and Sid and David and we had a wonderful collective group of artists who talk into the human rights. Just give me a time, just give me a nudge or something, when I went to wrap it up, give me a wrap up sign or something. As you know, human rights is a very broad subject and so how did we talk about it as artists and one of the things that we talked about was sustainability of cultural identity and funds and one of the things that were brought up with one of my sisters in the group was we can talk sustainability when we are not talking about identity and identity is an issue within indigenous communities themselves within the, and I've had this discussion with people like Mia Yu on what sustainability means and cultural identity in different cultures such as when you have 50 culture, you have one culture but you have 50 subcultures within that community. It happens in the Asian community and it does happen in the native community and we did a very large discussion about that and there was a difference between immigration and migration and how do we collectively understand that with each other with relocation and what is the role of art in human rights and how the acculturation, how do we unify within the acculturation the common denominator of individual identity versus government superstructure and I think we had a very long discussion about that when the superstructure dictates to us what art is and what is our identity and how do we do that with funding. The other thing that we talked about is funding for artists who are right for their communities and theater for a new audience, how do you, sometimes you do it for the new city was there and they mentioned they couldn't get funding because they did not fit in these shoes that were given and I think that we need to talk, we think that we need to talk about trying to fit our way of thinking into the funding and who are we as New Yorkers because primarily everyone there in the room we're New Yorkers for the exception of a few people who are working on international levels outside but those of us who are sustaining within New York City, who are we as New Yorkers should really come into the framework with funders. Funding for people who don't have clear identities and it went back to that. What are the clear identities that we have? There are some people who were born in Jordan but they're not from that cultural background. We have the same issues with native communities here in New York City. We are sometimes relocated off our reservations and we've been here for three generations but still we identify native and we find that with going back to immigration and migration, just trying to sustain that cultural sustainability and how do we discuss that? How do we discuss the cultural identity and develop it for people in conflict zones? Ali really made that point is what is identity for refugees when war is their identity? And that was a big subject that we discussed and how do we take that because that is part of human rights violations. And the right of people to be people, how can artists give the people dreams to identify of art? How do we identify art? When we're working in these conflict zones such as when Sid was speaking in that and women in Jordan as many artists and to gravitate to the work, they're thinking about women's rights. How do we collectively talk about women's rights as a human right? In my communities, it's indigenous women who are murdered here in the United States and Canada and missing and not being investigated. And how do we as artists, how do we go further with that with violence against women all across the board even as a human rights level? And when they struggle with tradition and freedom when we talk identity, one of the questions came up really was if someone wants to study peanuts and they're from Jordan and they're not from that culture, can they just do something and study peanuts? Why is that rejected? And I found that, we found that in similar situations with native culture we're not talking about the so-called native experience which is on reservations and we're talking about being in rap and in urban communities and that's always overlooked. And so we kind of had a discussion about that. How much? Okay, all right. So then we talked about agencies and how do we make and support? One of the recommendations, we had several recommendations that we came out of this discussion and it's grassroots to grassroots funding. Take how do we work with each other? How do we have a common denominator? Identify what is identity? Expression occurs from perceived identity. When oppression occurs from perceived identity meaning someone perceives me as being Palestinian and I'm native and you always and you have to always talk about your cultural identity and then someone always fights with you about it. Fighting for the issue, for what is, we have to start talking about instead of my genocide, our genocide. How do we collectively talk about our genocide? Is racism the same across the board and how do we all have the right to have the same right? And one of the things that Ali said is really what the cultural rights need to be held, or this was with Sid, really want to put this in it, cultural rights need to be held by the collective and not rely on the legal structure for us to maintain our artistic human right. And we came with something else which what funders need to look for is it occurs the funding to revisit the ideas about how to look at art and artists and that we are part as a collective, the same as all human rights, lands and waters, arts are as of equal value. And how do we have artists give people the dreams? The importance of life for people and dreams in collective equality. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, great. Thank you so much. Next up is funding practices in the US and other countries. Adam. Good afternoon, I'm Adam Bernstein, I'm Deputy Director of Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation. Much shorter report. We're gonna catch up on time, David, don't worry. We spent most of our time talking about the different funding models for this kind of work around the world from the decentralized US model with funding from both the public and private sectors with a robust philanthropic community to the more centralized public funding model that's in place in Europe and to a certain extent lesser extent, the rest of the world. And also the static nature of that model in the US which really hasn't changed much over the, really over the last 30 years with a shifting landscape for this kind of funding that's going on in both Europe and in Asia as a result of austerity in the former and emerging economy in the latter. There's not necessarily a lot of commonalities we found here outside that there has been a shift in the public sector from the federal level and many of these countries and regions, again from the federal level down to the regional and municipal levels. In terms of recommendations, there are recommendations that you'd expect and you've probably heard a lot if you've been doing this work for any period of time. And that is the greater need of coordination and sharing of information in terms of funding of what's available. And of course that's part of the reason we're here today with On The Moves new website, which is great. But the need for even kind of a deeper exploration of that going past the usual suspects, the folks who fund this kind of work is a fairly limited pool and we also tend to wear our cultural blinders and sometimes miss other opportunities. I was mentioning that there's more federal funding in the arts from the Department of Transportation, the Department of Education and the Department of Defense than there is from the NEA. But where is that money? How do you access that money? Do we look, are we lifting every rock to try to find those resources? We also talked a little bit about the need not only to coordinate information about where we can find funding but how do we connect those opportunities that exist for artists with funding that's available or ways to connect what they're doing with potential funding that exists out there. And there seems to be a little bit of a disconnect about providing information about opportunities for artists for cultural exchange. We also talked about the obvious role of technology in helping facilitate this kind of communication transfer. We also acknowledged the costs related to the use of technology and the maintenance of it. We also talked about the necessity to be, again this goes back to the comment I just made, the necessity to be more sophisticated in our approach to fundraising and that we had to really again move outside the usual suspects, be a little bit more entrepreneurial and creative in terms of funding possible sources and in some ways inventing resources, making people realize that this is something they wanna do. This is a wise investment of their money for their purposes, not necessarily our purposes. Thanks. Okay, thanks Adam. Next up is practitioners experience sharing, Irwin Mas. Hi, yes, we had a great group and we used Louis Weaver's long table performance installation as our format, having a conversation as if around a kitchen table but we didn't have the cheese and the wine. But so there was a lot of conversation and so our session of course was also very broad, sharing best practices and challenges in international exchange. And we also came to talk a lot about how to share our stories and outlook with and then also influence non-artist communities, funders, policy makers, politicians. So some of the thoughts and ideas or questions that came up, first one was really very simple, back to the basics. Listening, every country is different, realize that every country is different. There is no one fits all policy. What do we want to talk about before how do we want to do that? Also focus on artists action. There are so many research, so many discussions, so many meetings, but successful stories often come from the artists doing it, doing the actual collaborative work internationally. Some great ideas came up of bringing artists into the planning stages of policymaking, of programs, of residencies, actually using artists in those positions. Of course, also cost-effective social media couch surfing. Another financial political restriction that came up or dilemma, for example, that was talked about at a festival in Prague, between China and Taiwan, where there was speak of countries, literally using that word, and by changing the name, what's in a name, but by changing the name to regions, all of a sudden that dilemma or that conflict evolved, disappeared. Another one is getting statistics. For people asking for funds, we know how important we often don't want to do it, but we know how important the statistics are. Some great, helpful ways are the websites of American for the Arts and Transcultural Exchange. Another way of getting artists more into the policymaking worlds, or vice versa, was foundations and institutions using artists in residence in their organization, actually bringing in an artist in an organization that's not necessarily surrounded by artists, but also the other way around. Today's arts festival came with the example of actually having a residence, having an arts administrator, a policymaker in residence. They brought somebody from the Mexican Embassy into their festival for two months to look at how it was run. One last, or actually two more, art as research seems to be getting a growing attention, the role of universities and academia in international exchange. And lastly, I would say what the consensus was, we need more artists in politics. We need more artists to infiltrate. We get to our last report. I just want to mention that everybody who has submitted their email address or wants to, will get a report of the whole day in the conference. So I encourage you to submit your email address. And finally, the last working session of the afternoon was climate action and cultural collaboration. So you have Elizabeth, oh no, I don't know Elizabeth. Okay, that's great, go on. Clearly not Elizabeth. I'm Paul Nagel. So we were climate change. We were charged with going around the table and coming up with a burning question that we wanted the group to consider and then to try and come up with some action steps as a takeaway. So the burning questions, how do we connect with other theaters who are interested risk takers, who are free from perhaps timid board members, especially, how do we broaden the definition of our work past the silo of climate change, which is tripping up people who work on mining issues and fracking issues. How do we broaden the audience so we're not preaching to the converted only? How do we reframe the role of artists and their potential contributions in these conversations to spark people's imaginations and ours how we could be more integral to these conversations? Where is funding to bring environmental artists from abroad? How do we depoliticize the way we are seen in this work in place at more firmly in an environmental and social justice space? How do we support the range of artists who wanna do this work, some who are just not front line advocacy personalities? What are the moments that break through to engage those not already in the choir? What kind of experiences have you had as an artist where you've actually reached people who weren't already convinced? What role can universities play in promoting this activity? How can we open up spaces perhaps emotionally for people to consider these issues without being didactic at them? How do we resolve the need to be global? The story has to be local, but it also has to be universal. How do we inspire hope? How do we stop yelling long enough to talk? How do we engage opposing viewpoints and competing interests in the conversations? And what do we do once we've connected ourselves in aggregated information about our efforts? How do we move forward from there? So our action takeaways were to broaden the framing of what we do as social justice and to do that handy framework are the UN conventions on biodiversity and cultural diversity. Educate funders about the importance of this work, arts funders and environmental and social justice funders. Ask environmental organizations to bring us in to participate in their convenings, events and projects. Use universities as a resource. Lisa from the Earth Institute was talking saying that almost all research grants from NASA and NSA and other government grants usually have what researchers consider a small amount, 30 or $40,000 for outreach, which to an artist helping with the outreach could be an incredible boon. Also think about how artists can be of use and collaborate with the government and community relations offices at universities. Also outreach to Native American networks and especially the Native American university system because they already have familiarity with primordial original instructions. Encourage academic critiques and texts around the work because that body of work doesn't yet exist. Increase connectivity, blog and resource lists that can by nature be international. We actually had quite an international group in our room. So we now actually have, thanks to Chantel, a functioning resource list that she began that has categories of networks, funding, residencies, various resources, conferences and meeting platforms. It's kind of our own little mini on the move guide. And we will as a group be adding resources and categories that will be posted on the website at Artists in Climate Change and also to continue to discuss these issues with a larger aggregated community through the Artists in Climate Change Facebook page. So again, thank you all for coming today to this. What I think is significant event that highlights really what the field is thinking and voting with your feet showed so many turned up how significant this part of theater and artwork really is. We are very, very close to the end of the conference. There will be a reception afterwards and I hope you will have time again to talk and to make a connection as we all know significant things happen actually in conferences in the breaks. So again, really, thank you all for coming. This is the guide. We printed out three books which you can look at outside but we also would encourage you then to go online and look at it Safari. I think rejected the large PDF we had but we'll have a small one. But anyway, there will be three of these books out. There's a lot of out there as we heard today also from full body many others. We need good artists, we need good applications. There are many, many, many opportunities and the work is significant and can be done. I would now like really to ask the conference organizers to come up and really we were just the hosts at the Seagull Center but I would like to ask Roberta and David and Marie to stay here and get a real round of applause. And also with us, yeah, I'm still here. And with us is also Camille Gorm who is an exchange student from Exxon Provence, Transpo, who was the producer of the conference. If there's something more to say. Thank you very much. And I just would like to say the show must go on so let's continue like to feedback to each other, like send your feedback and it's just the beginning, I would say, from this first conference in New York. Thank you very much. Thank you so much. And let's go to the reception. Thank you. Okay, so it's an exceptional group of people and I hope that we take it