 Hello. I think you're there, yeah. Well, hopefully you've had a good afternoon of knowledge sharing and prototyping and throwing our jargon around that hopefully has now made some kind of sense to you. Hopefully you've had a chance to flip through the workbook a bit. And on page 32 of your workbook, we've actually inserted a couple of pages for you to note down people that you've met with, that you wanted to remember for later, to contact, and all of that. So do flip to that. Sometimes I know when I get home, I have a whole stack of business cards and don't always remember who these people were. So in a little bit of self-interest, it was for that that we put some things in the workbook for you. So thank you for all the energy that you put out today and for being really great participants and listeners. Just wanted to chat for a really brief moment about the grant program component of Audience Revolution. As Kevin Moore mentioned in the session earlier today, we, TCG, has had a very long-term history of commitment to audience engagement and community development goes decades and decades back. We develop our programs really based on listening to the field, listening to feedback from all of you. And our programs change and morph as they go on, because we want to make sure that they're as relevant as they possibly can be. We listen to people at think tanks. We recently had a joint think tank with our partners at the arts presenters and Dance USA. I know Scott Stoner is in the house somewhere. Scott right there. And Suzanne Callahan is also in the house, I hope, somewhere, but do ask them. And our brilliant own Lisa Mount facilitated that meeting. We had a small group of representatives from the theater, dance, and the presenting world to really explore the idea of does it make sense for our three disciplines to come together as a cohort in a convening to talk about these kinds of issues been in a larger way. So a lot of that will unfold. I think as we're developing our grant program, Kevin Bitterman sitting right up the front here is my partner in crime on the grant programs. And we actually haven't written the guidelines for the audience revolution grant program yet, particularly because we wanted to wait until this convening is over so that then we could debrief what we've heard, what we've learned, and try to incorporate that into the program. What we have learned so far from the last round of the grant program, and those were 10 grants of up to $65,000 each, we have learned from different convenings and recipients that there's an overwhelming desire for people to travel to see each other's work. We've also learned that there is, as we've been talking about through this convening, a great value in peer knowledge and learning together. So both of those bits of learning that we've got are going to be incorporated into the grant program. There will be approximately 10 to 15 travel grants, specifically, so you all, if you get a grant, can travel to see the work of your peers. What we also saw actually in the first round of the grant program, that there were three of the recipients who were working together with our partners in the Latino community. And we looked at that and said, well there seems to be obviously there a natural cohort, and what if we had a grant program that supported that? So we're trying things out for the first time. We're going to be learning from this program as much as you will in many ways, but we're going to be awarding larger grants to a smaller cohort. So there will be three grants of 300,000 each. And the big plus I have to acknowledge and I'll bring up Cheryl and Kemiya from the Duke in a second, is they have been fabulous, fabulous partners and really recognize the value of unrestricted funds, funds that are specifically for general operating needs, that are not linked to a project that you have to deliver on. And so that again will be a feature of this program. So we will be continuing to share the learning both on TCG's circle. People, recipients will be blogging about their experiences because while these cohorts are going to be benefiting, frankly, a relatively small group of people, hopefully their learnings will ripple out to the larger field. And there will also be other opportunities in the upcoming conference in Cleveland where we'll be able to report out on this convening here and the other things that are happening. So I know a lot of you have come up to me and asked for a lot of specifics. What are those guidelines gonna be done? When can we apply? And so that's just a little general, but basically because we wanna listen to you. So be patient with us and we will send that out and we're gonna launch the program in June in Cleveland at the national conference. So hang tight on that. So as I alluded to or mentioned earlier, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation has been our long-term partner in this work that we've been doing. They've been constant and committed friends of theater who really keep our feet to the fire at TCG and keep us honest. And really evidence of their commitment to the field is the general operating support that they really said should be a part of this program. They've got their own programs, which I'm gonna bring Cheryl up to talk a bit about building the man for the arts. So please thank and welcome Cheryl Ikemia. Thank you so much. It's really a pleasure to be here. It's very rare that the funder gets to talk to everyone like this. And I really want on behalf of our staff, Ben Cameron who's known to many of you having been here at TCG for many years. And Lillian Osay-Boteng who's here with me today and Zebra Rahman who's one of our new staff members. I'd like to thank everybody on behalf of our crew. And as Amelia said, their process of developing the programs and learning from the community, first going out into the community and finding out what is on their minds and what's important to them is also our process as well. And so, but we do have guidelines this time. And we're ready to go with our program building demand for the arts. The, this program I'd like to explain to you is part of our $50 million initiative that our board gave to us right after the crash actually, 2008. Our president and Henry went to them and asked them, can we still, there's still a huge need out in the field for artists. And we know that times are tough and our endowment portfolio went down by a third. And, but the board was willing to take this risk. And so it's a 10 year initiative, building demand for the arts is the third element, the first two elements of the program are the Doris Duke Artist Awards and the Doris Duke Impact Award. And Rachel Ford who's running that program is here also, if you have any questions about that, but it's about giving virtually unrestricted funds to the artists who are chosen and we'll have 200 by the time program is over. So this program building demand for the arts was another way of thinking about how we can help artists. And build relationships with organizations. And so the program is open to the jazz, dance and theater community. What we wanted to do was to help strengthen the relationship between artists and organizations over a longer period of time. And it's more so about bringing the artists in to think about building demand, not about making a new work. It's about going into the embedding of the artists in an organization and working with different departments. And I was just with the marketing and engagement listening to what they were talking about. And so it's helping, having the artists go into different departments and thinking about how to build demand. We see artists as a great resource, probably an underutilized resource for organizations and who can bring in their creative thinking and experience, you know this already, they would help to conceive, plan and execute a strategy for building demand. And this is something that we feel will help to build longer term relationships between artists and organizations because of what we've heard in the past about artists dropping into an organization and then really not feeling a part of that organization but what we wanted to do was to build a more sustained relationship so that together the artists and organizations can reach out into the communities that they want to build relationships with. So basically this program is that, our first, it's sort of a learning process for us too as well, building demand for the arts has gone through two rounds and in the first round we felt like perhaps we were rushing the relationships before fruitful discussions could take place and testing of ideas, just piloting some ideas and also reaching out to the targeted communities. So then we bifurcated the program so now it's exploration and implementation and actually this year we will be doing both the exploration grants and the implementation grants and I know it's a lot of things for me to explain to you but basically all this information, the grant sizes for exploration are 20 and $40,000. It depends upon the organizational size and the artists have to be on site for 30 days over a 15 month period so it gives us a lot of flexibility to the artist and the organization to plan. Implementation grants are larger, they're $55,000, $110,000 and they also depend upon the size of the organization. We're hoping that there'll be more opportunity to really delve deeply into an idea, to execute an implemented plan and to evaluate the program. So like funders are always interested in evaluation but we are going to offer a lot of help along that way with the grantees. So important things, oh also the best kind of artist for this program is not one who's within the ranks of the organization but close enough to have shared goals and values. They must have some prior experience relationship with the organization and in addition the artists need not be from the same field so for example a theater could bring in a media or a visual artist or choreographer or whatever you define and to help think about a different way of approaching certain ideas that you want to or communities that you want to reach. So as I said we're going to, the implementation grants are going to have more of an evaluation component to them as well and we'll provide additional funds for that. And all of this, I know it's a lot that I have to explain but all of this is on our website so our guidelines for both programs on the website there's a big overview paper that really explains the rationale behind our thinking and Alan Brown who we've been working with to help evaluate the first round of grantees has a working paper which is called Building Demand for the Performing Arts and that's also on our website which is ddcf.org. So look that up. The important thing is that we have a deadline coming up and this is for the intent to apply which is going to be on April 24th and it's really just to put your name in, say this is the artist that we want to work with and that's basically it's some basic information but the full proposals for the exploration and the preliminary applications for the implementation are due on May 29th. We're going to have a webinar that is discussing the first round of grantee organizations and they will present their progress, their challenges and this is going to take place online, well a webinar on April 28th between two and three p.m. Eastern Daylight Time and you can get all that information on our website. So just to get some feedback about what happened with those organizations and what it meant to have the artist on site for that period of time. We also have two webinars on the application process on May 5th and 14th so that'll give you sufficient, I hope sometime to really grapple with the questions that you have. One thing that as I said before this is a 10 year journey for us and so we will have one more round of implementation grants in 2018 if we feel like there's sufficient interest from this year and so building demand then we'll conclude with that round. So it's a finite program with, and we feel like it's complimenting so many of our other programs that we're doing as Amelia said with TCG, DanceUSA and arts presenters. We have multiple programs working in this area of audience engagement so just check out the details, the information that's on our website and tune into our webinars and I must say that having been here for this day and a half, I'm so grateful for the opportunity for you to be open and to let the funders listen because often I think the perception is that we don't listen, that we don't really care, we just change our priorities overnight and turn everything upside down but really it's our opportunity to be here and to listen and to hear what your concerns are and your needs are and your generosity and sharing with each other that is so rewarding for us and I must say that I'm so grateful to be here and very humbled by all of the incredible work, the fantastic work that you're doing in your communities and with the artists, people that you're reaching out into and making real change. So thank you so much for giving me this opportunity. Thanks a lot Cheryl. Yesterday Hannah and I as part of our prep work had a lot of fun going to all of the sites where you all are gonna be doing field trips tomorrow and we had the great opportunity to spend a little bit of time with Pat Jordan over at the 18th and Vine district so I wanna bring Pat up. Pat is the president of the GEM Cultural Educational Program and Center, thank you. And come on up, thank you. Thank you very much. A little technical magic happening here, nothing to see, nothing to see. Your clicker awaits. Thank you. Good afternoon everyone and welcome to Kansas City. You know, I just wanted to have a conversation with you Willie. I have five minutes to do so. I wanna thank Jeff Church and Joette Pelster for reaching out to me. I started out my career in theater as many of us in arts administration have and that is singing and dancing and acting and grade school only to have gone on to high school and as I was preparing to become a professional, my parents of course saying, oh no, you will need to do something, you will need to get a paying job somewhere. And so after graduating from the University of Missouri School of Journalism, I came back to Kansas City but you know of course once it's in your blood it's in your blood. You can't get rid of it and so I was driving down 18th and Vine a lot and would pass by this glorious art deco front of what is known as the Jim Theater and I kept saying to myself, you know, somebody needs to do something with this. And so I started in my mind, I served on the board of the Kansas Friends of Alvin Ailey, the Folly Theater and others, again you don't get it out of your blood and I said, you know, I started coming up with these ideas and so the folks who owned the theater, the Black Economic Union, heard about that, came to me and said, why don't you do something about this? Why don't you take this project on? And so I said, okay and so eight years later we went through this process of actually having to tear down all the walls of the theater because the Jim Theater really was just a neighborhood movie house. It played second run western movies and there was no stage. So the challenge for us was how do we turn what was once just a neighborhood movie house into something that could accommodate, not only accommodate live theater but also something that would be 21st century ready. So I had these long discussions with the historic folk and finally I said, okay, if you just let us preserve this wonderful facade and you let us rebuild everything else, life will be beautiful and they bought that. And so to eight years later, 502 seats, fifth. Wow. Yeah, I'm proud of it. I have no husband, no children, no. But, so, okay. So after that birth, it was okay, so what do you do? What do you do after you do a theater? I was invited by a developer to come to go two blocks south and this is an old fire station at 21st and Vine. And so I've now moved into that edifice and we are looking at, and I produce art shows and we do multimedia stuff in there as well. But one of the things that I started thinking about though was how is it that we really go beyond our buildings and into the community? And this is one of the artists that I, excuse me, I have exhibited. We have some fabulous visual artists here in Kansas City and fabulous art galleries and doing arts and education as well. Excuse me. But one of the things that I started thinking about is how is it that we impact our neighborhoods? So we are very close to what's known as the Key Coalition Neighborhood in Kansas City. There are 60 acres of vacant land there. There are 200 empty structures. And so I really, and the other thing is, is that I found out during this period of time that we have in Kansas City some 7,000 vacant houses, 7,000 vacant houses. And that is really akin to the ninth ward in New Orleans. And I learned this about four or five years ago. You know, there's stages of realization that you go through when you hear something like that. You know, and you start driving around in your own neighborhoods looking at things more closely and you start thinking about the educational system and you start thinking about the numbers of people who have moved to the suburbs and why all this has happened, why there have been in this particular neighborhood a loss of over 500 housing units. These are other indicators, you know, as the statisticians call them of what is happening in the neighborhood. So when you're talking about art and when you're doing art and you're talking to groups of folk who are faced with these kinds of challenges, you kinda wanna change your tune. So one of the things I started talking about when going into the neighborhoods was the definition of success and the fact that we needed to really take a different kind of look at that. So we talk about this a lot. That it's not necessarily the mansion in the suburbs that makes life happy. What really is, what really is will make you happy. These are some of the things that we're beginning to tackle and in that particular neighborhood. One of the things that I have recently been hired to do is there is a church that is building a community center and they've hired me because of my experience with the Jim Theater to assist them with that. It's being built, $6 million facility, being built across the street from a $70 million East patrol station. The other thing that we're doing, we've bought a house and we're going to, this is what we wanted to look like. This is what it looks like now. I bought another one as well. But we wanna fix that up and put an artist in it to get this particular artist credit ready so that he can buy the house. And that's really what we're doing in terms of community development. We're taking the arts, using it as a catalyst for community development and going deeper into the community and formulating relationships. We'd love for you to help us. If you have some ideas, text me, give me a call. Again, welcome to Kansas City. Thank you for your time. Thank you, just inspiring. I wanna introduce actually Shade Lithka. Got another inspiring woman. Actually Shade is the CEO of the National Black Theater in Harlem in New York and is keeping her mother's legacy alive, Dr. Barbara Antier, in a phenomenal space. Go visit their space or talk to Shade and Jonathan Corry is right there. Ask them about the incredible sculptures in their building actually. She and Jonathan brought Pastor Mike to our attention and I wanted to bring Shade up to just talk a bit, right? So this is that time of the day where the sugar is starting to diminish a little bit, a great art break, but we have something for you that will be that inspiring and that invigorating, which is why I'm up here. I get the profound honor to introduce our last speaker of the evening, who will make you drink the Kool-Aid? Which is kind of what happened with the TCG staffers that were in the audience when MBT put on a state of emergency town hall in response to Ferguson called a state of emergency race resistance and police violence from Ferguson to Flatbush. Michael Walren was one of our panelists at the time. Pastor Michael Walren is the senior pastor of First Corinthians Baptist Church in Harlem. We call him Pastor Mike. And once you hear him speak, you will want to hear him speak over and over again. And it really is a testament to all the folks at TCG putting together Audience Revolution because what they're bringing us is, they're encouraging us to think outside the box. So having a pastor be one of our speakers is absolutely thinking outside the box, but why, well, here's why. When Pastor Mike started out at Zion Temple, Zion Temple United Church of Christ in North Carolina, he grew his congregation from 25 members to nearly 500 in a very short period of time. Pretty cool. But in his first time at First Corinthians Baptist Church, he's grown his congregation from 350 people to 10,000 members in the 10 years that he has been there. Not only has he grown his congregation to over 10,000 people, but in his first time at FCBC, he decided in the last election that community turned out, sorry, I'm not used to reading things. I'm used to like speaking from the heart, so that's what I'm gonna do. So he decided as he was galvanizing the community, he wanted to really find a way to kind of put his message and the heart of his community first. So he did something that everyone in Harlem was absolutely afraid of. He ran for Congress against a 40-year incumbent Congressman Rangel. Everyone thought he was crazy to do it. Everyone thought it was impossible, but that's the thing about Pastor Mike. He makes the impossible possible. And so he ran, he did not win, but he won our district that are filled with his constituents by a long run, completely inspiring. And I think that as we start talking about audience engagement and audience building and community engagement, he is a person that represents the how. And sometimes I feel like the how is missing from all of our conversations. We can identify the issues, but the how do we get to the other side of it? He lives that. And so single-handedly, he is starting a revolution in our community. And there are two fold ideas that I really wanna talk about really briefly cause I don't wanna rob you from one second of hearing Pastor Mike. But in our breakout sessions, we talk about the commitment of community engagement. And he turns it on his head, creating programs at his church like Three Style Fridays that celebrate the art of innovation and creativity. He looks at the community's wellness and he kind of threads it throughout all that he does. He launched the FCBC Dream Center, a transformative space designed to awaken the dreams of community through leadership development, arts enhancement, enrichment, I'm sorry, and economic empowerment. What I find to be extremely inspiring is we were talking about in one of our breakout sessions, the idea of privilege. Well, he's turned privilege on its head as well, taking the pulpit off the pedestal, right? So like as the pastor, he speaks to his audience from one point of view which is that each person in his audience or congregation are actually an evolving community of visionary and dreamers. And he talks to them and relates to them from that space. Lastly, using innovative enhanced experience that are relevant, groundbreaking. He continues to build capacity. As of right now, his sermon livestreams to 147 countries. And last year alone, eight, wait, I wanna get the number right, 80,000 people livestreamed his church services. So when we talk about a revolution of audience engagement, he is it. Finally, I would just like to say personally, he's one of the most thoughtful, intelligent, inspiring risk takers that I've ever had the privilege to know. And Shea said something earlier about self-care, how we take care of each other. All of us who are on the front lines doing the work. I am privileged to say because he exists, he's a mechanism of self-care for our community. He is one of the reasons why Jonathan Macquarie wakes up and fights as hard as he does. So, without further ado, Pastor Mike. Thank you. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. If you try that again, good afternoon. Good afternoon. I cannot begin to tell you how excited I am to be here. I feel affirmed in so many ways. Cause I'm an artist, first and foremost, I believe that. And the arts is such a big part of our church that to have an invitation from TCG has just really made my year, my month, whatever you want to call it, I'm excited. And I'm grateful for this invitation. And I bring you greetings all the way from Harlem USA. And so I'm thankful again to just be here. I'm gonna share some things that I think will be helpful and in some way to talk about engagement of audience or in our world, our congregation. And I wanna first talk about this church and how I came to what we call FCBC. I came to FCBC 10 years ago and before that I was serving at a church in Durham, North Carolina. I have to confess that being a pastor was not on my agenda when I was in grad school. Although I went to Divinity School at Duke University, I did not feel that I had the tolerance or the patience to be a pastor and deal with people and the kind of way I saw pastors dealing. And I tell people, I got backdoor cornered into pastoring in a strange way. I graduated from Duke. Duke had hired me to be a university minister. They were only paying three quarter time. And the three quarter time wasn't that good, but they gave you full benefits. And so at the time I had two children, my wife, the full benefit sounded real good. And so I took the job, but we had a family of four. And when I was making, wasn't cutting it. And I loved preaching. I love preaching. I even, I did not wanna pastor. I love preaching. I love communicating. And so there was a small church in the east end of Durham that won