 was the idea of the education departments as sort of incubators of change agents and within the organization and how the education departments relate to the rest of the organization. And so we have a great quick fortune to have three very different organizations here with us represented on this panel who are innovators in their organizational structure and in their education practice in their own distinctive ways. So I'm going to start back here then talk about their process. I know I think we're going to pause at various moments in the conversation just to ask for questions sort of throughout. So the risk of that of course being is that I'm going to have to be bossy and say normal questions. And we are moving on. So there's, you know, that just dispenses everything. Anyway, so I would like to introduce our wonderful panel. We have pairings from three organizations from the artistic leadership and the education leadership. Sorry. You have to why. I don't know. And you can now argue who's the peanut butter? Who's the jelly? Who's the bagel? The cream cheese? You can form the center for as much as you want. So on the table we have Ryan Bacchan who is the executive artistic director of the Cleveland Public Theater and his colleague Faye Hargan, who is the director of community ensembles. We have Chris Moses who is the associate artistic director and the director of education at the Alliance Theater. And Susan Booth who is the Jenny Spurz artistic director of the Alliance. And over here we have two people from P. Robert Dorey Theater, Jessica Das, who's the artistic director. And Jeremy Morales is the education director and also on the board of TCG. I just want to mention that because it is so wonderful for all of us as an education staff and education directors to have that education, to know that there's that education. For each of these institutions and how the education department relates to the larger institution and sort of the ruffling of the kinds of programs that you run and what you do with it and what's the relationship between education. So yeah, we should try to figure out how to split this up. Brief context on pre-rep that'll kind of inform the rest of this conversation. We're very unlikely theater. We're at 100,000 feet in the Rocky Mountains in Southwest Colorado. In a county of 750 residents, we have the unique position of being a theater nonprofit in the economic engine of our town. We bring it, but we sell about, you know, 20,000 or so tickets every year in Crete bringing tourism through. We produce eight productions, two of which are fully produced education department world premieres and our Ted Waters new play program every year. And we reach many more people outside of Crete through our education programs, which is how we can talk about. Another thing that's unique about us is we run in rep and I sometimes like to say we run in extreme rep. We hire a resident company of 90 people from around the country every season and they produce all of these shows including everything in the education department as well. So there's this wonderful cross-pollination that comes with rep. When you're doing rep, you can't do one thing. And I suppose personally one of the coolest things about the way education works at CRT is kind of exemplified in some ways by my journey through the organization. I feel like many of the leadership of CRT were developed as artists through the education program. I was commissioned to compose six scores to six original education department shows as I was coming up through the organization. And many other people and other artists have the same storage experience as the education department kind of made us who we are. So as the education director I run five different programs within the department. So we do community outreach which is residencies and workshops with local communities and schools. We also do the kitchen production which is a new work that Jackson is talking about that we produce every year. So we have the opportunity to bring in a playwright, director and artistic team to work with students in the room which is a really exciting opportunity for them to be able to mount a production from the idea and then be able to collaborate with the playwright in the room to produce this new work. And then we do our summer day camps which we do in the summer to provide opportunities for students that are interested in, you know, dabbling a little bit or curious about a specific area of expertise in the theater field. And then we run also the young audience outreach tour that is also an original piece that we produce every year and then we travel all over the Southwest around Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Oklahoma, Arizona and Nevada. And then this year we're expanding to two tours which is really exciting for us and to help pool funding for the second tour. And we'll be expanding out into the Northwest Kansas and then Southern California. And then the last program which is kind of a new program that we've been in partnership with the artistic team as well as the managing director at CRT is an internship fellowship program which is an interview that we are exploring a little bit with and then trying to see and evaluate what are the resources that we need. And so the really exciting thing I think of what we're doing is we're really taking the idea of rap and really infusing all the work that we do. I feel really lucky to be in a place where it's taking some work and it's taking some challenge, you know, and a learning process for us to be able to really start learning and listening to each other about how we can continue to collaborate and be more effective and also be able to utilize our resources more effectively. Let's turn to the alliance. Yeah, I'll start. So we're at the Alliance Theater in Atlanta, Georgia. A couple things that are I think worth noting is that since the inception of our theater 50 years ago there was this commitment to producing work from all ages. So that's just been a kind of governing aesthetic from the beginning. So the education department at the theater involves both producing work for all ages. So we do have a series of programs starting with theater to the very young for zero to five-year-olds. We produce shows from elementary school in between that age group, middle school where we're conceiving a pretty large-scale idea around high school performances. But that's one element. There's the experiencing the art form. We feel like that is critical for every age group. So we want to make sure that we have a material that is designed and created with that audience in mind. This is professional theater for those folks. Then there's the idea of making. We have classes and opportunities to roll up your sleeves and learn about this art form for all of those same ages. This goes all the way through with adults. The summer camp is like you probably one of our busiest times because it's going throughout the year. And in fact it's that and now there's a boom in the film market. There's so many adults who happen to be curious and want to learn more about entering into this profession. And then the other side is kind of crudely stated, but I say used. I think applied theater is what may be a more sophisticated version. But how do we use our art form to advance other disciplines? Ask this through partnerships with the public school systems in Atlanta. There's some really dire statistics about public education in our city. And since we traffic in an art form that can promote literacy, we've really taken that on as a major area of operation. So we're going to have a conversation between theater to help teachers teach literacy in the classroom better. So we're in over 400 classrooms a year, minimum of 12 sessions, working with educators to use our art form in the service of larger hands. And then on the other side, we're also doing that for our corporate community with programs that take that same philosophy. How do we use theater as a way to solve the effects of the problems in the corporate community? It started out pretty pedestrian. People were asking about presentation skills and those sorts of things. But the more we listened, they were asking us for help in customer experience design. One of the funniest examples is this Chick-fil-A reached out and wanted to figure out how best is that to be a drive-through. So we have this simulated environment. We use theater in that setting to actually help them figure this out meaningful. A really meaningful application. We just worked with our Metro Chamber of Commerce to use theater as a tool for promoting civility in the workplace. So we have the data to understand power dynamics. In total, it's about 95,000 people were serving through all of these programs. And it's roughly a third of our programs. So just context-wise, as Chris said, the Alliance has always had a commitment to reaching all generations. The Alliance has also long had a service equal. We are not interested in theater as a pen. We are interested in theater as a means to a community pen. How can we be the exclusion of somebody else's challenge? And I will just say this. Some years ago, there was a local chapter of young audiences that had come to be a part of the arts center where the Alliance Theater resides. And then we were asked to look at a merger. And as part of a strategic consideration process, Chris and I were sitting side-by-side in a meeting where a consultant said, I'd like to know the mission statements thorough for your theater and for your education department. And we both did head swirls, looked back and pretty much simultaneously said there's absolutely no difference. We have exactly the same mission, expanding hearts and minds on stage. So we're sort of the middle size of the theater. Passion and raised consciousness through ground-breaking education programs. Ground- sorry. Ground- we can switch that. Actually, ground-breaking performance and life-changing education programs. We are modeled in kind of a strange way. We have a core of artists. There are five people who are in a core ensemble, which is primarily a devising group but not always. And about four other artists that are sort of constellated in this core. These are artists we're investing in year-round in their professional work. Those artists also participate not only in their own research and play development, but in our season of plays. We do radical theater, sort of theater that no one else in town would do. And a lot of new play development. And then we have this next kind of run of work that we do, which is educational work, yes, we would call it, where we serve 800 children and family members who live in public housing with ongoing after-school and summertime programming. We're in residence in four public housing states actually. We have a teen program in the summer. Many teen programs, we employ children aged 14 to 19 to write and produce their own plays and perform in parks throughout the city. The median council income of those children is $18,000 a year, so these are very poor families. We also have a program where we develop original work with homeless men who are in the treatment center that we've done for many years. And a couple of other New York programs working, one of them working with immigrant children. And then we do these big community projects where we're dealing with social justice outside of the theater. And other weird ways, like we have an event called Station Ho, which happens in a church that was a stop on the Underground Railroad, and we apply that lesson to contemporary issues of social justice. And the cool thing about CPT is those core artists travel through or actually run are the most important part of every single one of those programs. So education programs are run by that core ensemble and those core artists. They are the education program in some ways is the center of theater. And so the cool thing is not only is their research and their development and their work going out into the community, but of course those artists are being changed fundamentally. And that change that comes back through all those layers. Community ensembles, a heavily involved education program that is in partnership with our public housing. So running that program and the chance to be like in the weeds and in the clouds. So being both developing for classroom. In the past two years, we've been tripling that program so that's how we have expanded to that 800 and really advising and that expansion. And then also with our, you know, there's a lot of like chorus layers at the People's Public Theater, which is why it's such a dynamic and awesome place to work. So our education and our community engagement, there's a lot of epithet movement between those. So I also work with Raymond and the community in a community ensemble group called The Actual People of Cleveland, which is now in its fifth year. And this is a group of theater makers who are of Cleveland who are self-identified as Latina, Latinx, Latino, Hispanic. And that company has grown from about 12 to 35 active members and we are now in the process of a strategic plan and like what does the future look like for that company. And then also we are in the process of starting initiatives with the Arabic-speaking communities. So how does theater serve as a platform for multiple stories in Cleveland to be heard, respected, cherished and to teach? So if I can state with you guys for a moment, I knew that Raymond used to be the Education Director of the Cleveland Theater. And it sounds like that's sort of a common theme, but there's a lot of sort of porosity between artistic and separate common mission statement about how your education work and your artistic work are just overlap where they don't and how you communicate artists who come in and are sort of community and maybe just to say how your job is different now and sort of what different parts of your career you're using and what continuity you're in there. A big thing for me, so I came through, I made a lot of theater, as many of you did, my high school and college years, and at some point became disillusioned and went to work with Jersey Kratowski, so I was in a very narrow-minded, I was almost saying, kind of a way of thinking about theater, quote-unquote, and really missed that sort of how theater also needs to be connected to community. And so, but I think for me a lot of, I was just asked, will you go do this? Will you go teach here? I didn't know what I was doing the second day when money was suddenly shifting and a lot of theaters in the, I guess that would have been the early 90s, and suddenly theaters like, oh, we need to have education programs, let's hire an artist to go out there and we don't know what to think back to right now, but just send them, it'll be fine. And that's how I learned, and it was just a job for me. And over the course of a few years, I began to have these weird experiences where I'd be teaching like a movement theater workshop to MFA students and two days later doing a similar workshop with a group of homeless men and saying, oh my god, these men are so much better at this and they're so much more ready to be vulnerable and actually really curious about the craft that this is sort of more exciting to me. And so I think for me what just started happening, whereas it started sort of as a way to make ends meet while I did this other thing, shifted into something where this has to be a part of my practice, even though I continue to be told throughout my career by other artistic directors like, hey, when you put your resume out there to work at other theaters, make sure you take all that education stuff off. Because god knows no artistic director can hire you once they see all that, which was really eye-opening for me and for me that just made me more want to be like, we're gonna have these things stay united. And then I would just say when we, when I took over the leadership position, I wasn't the education director anymore because the artistic director applied for the leadership role. I told the board from the beginning that education hadn't explicitly stated in the mission, which it had never before, so that we could stop having the conversation about why we're doing these things because that should just be part of it. As it was. I mean, you guys are an enormous institution. You have a season. There's a lot of how do you clean college division of being an artistic institution to all of those various stakeholders. Somebody really smart at one of these conferences a bunch of years ago, if it's not in your budget, it's not in your culture. If you take that very seriously, this is ironic. I'm much more interested in showing it and doing it than yeah, think about it. We have a commitment to new work and it's very little to do with aesthetic and everything to do with belief that you have the luxury of living in a radically diverse community and diversity of aesthetic and education of age, political view, and religion. If you have that luxury, then why would you put work on the stage that automatically privileges people who have canonical literary, right? Got to look at classical theater, seriously. But it's not us. And what's cool is, is the theater as a whole started shifting to almost exclusively new work and production. Chris was commissioning these amazing voices to create work for three roles, right? As opposed to motivated by the saying back to the means to an end, now more than ever, the capacity for empathetic and compassionate stability is terrifying. So, we're doing the same thing. I do it a little bit more with the grown-ups. You think it's a full conversation title? Okay, let's start with Dan. We recently did a first in our 50-year history capital and endowment. One of the first major endowment gifts came to support Chris's work in education. Here's what I love. The gentleman who gave a, let's just call it, really healthy six-figure gift had never donated more than $30,000 to any single organization before this life, right? So that's the Dan Reardon part. The director of education part. I accosted Chris in a hallway once. This is partly director of education and partly the assistant director. I accosted him in a hallway. Yeah, and Chris was working in our education department, and every time there was a meeting, he had the best idea in the room, and he doesn't stay in his lane, and that's a virtue in the alliance. You don't really do that as a practice. And so I accosted him in a hallway, and I said, what do you want? Where do you want to be? Where would you like to end up? And because I can't ask questions without the answering them, this is a fail. Could you imagine being an associate artistic director? Yeah. It's not an honorific. This is my primary artistic colleague, and that, for the most part, I work with grown folks, and he works, well, he works with grown folks and practically in utero. It's just who the end users are, but absolutely not a division of the alliance theater it is the alliance theater. Can you talk about how that integrates even more from not even an administrative point of view, but from a philosophical point of view, as a colleague who's very interested in integration from the artistic office down the line in between departments, I'm very, very intrigued about how this works, because I believe it's the present future. Good. Anybody should feel free to. We don't have to go forward with this. Your powers. Yeah, I think that, well, there's a few levels of it. I think one of the gifts of working with Susan, and by making that clear, both in budgetary that this matters, but also in the name of this was also the way our board accepted it. So it started really there as well. So every executive board meeting was about, what are we doing artistically, educationally? And these things were not mixed off the time that education reported about artistic work that is happening. So it started from that level. And then organizationally, I do think there is this ethos that is partly our city, but also more specifically the alliance where it forced a collaboration with the production department, with marketing development. So it's just, it's held organizationally in a way that I've not seen. I agree. I think it, I hope it is user-state, but I mean, as far as granularly, you know, I tend to have artistic meetings with part of that staff, that's, you know, I know some education report always bad. It's just a Marxist notion. The notion that we have big vertical hierarchies in what we do just blows my mind. So as much as possible, the Liz Lerman idea, you can have a hierarchy like this, or you can have a hierarchy like this, and then it's not a hierarchy, it's a conversation. We are in a cross-industrial where there's been a lot of shift and change in the organization, which change can be scary, but also it gives us a really great opportunity to jump into something new or to re-look at something that we never really looked at if it was specific. I think one of the things that I would say that we're doing in that process is, and that's a lot of the language that I use to devise it. You know, we're devising something that is, as we're learning what's working and what's not, we are cultivating what that relationship is in that environment we're creating for our company to come in and work with us. One of the visions that I see when the artistic team is in collaboration with education is that we look to our community. We are very fortunate in a way that we have a very unique place where it's a really small community, a very diverse community. So it gives us the leverage to be able to have those face-to-face conversations when we're not in the city where there's so many people. So we get to really listen to our community and I think for me, education, the way that I see it is that education is almost like a bridge between the organization and the community. And how do we continue to work and ask each other questions and challenge each other in a way that's going to benefit the organization just as much as it's going to benefit the community. So that's a little bit of how I see us working together more of a devising and learning, really. We don't have all the answers but we're starting to find something that might be the console of something that's really important for us and our community. Yeah, I agree. And I'm totally here to do one. We have a nine-person year-round staff so even if we wanted to have restrictions, there's no way to do it. I think that's one of our strengths as a small organization is having this tight group that is really like all any truly important decision, all nine people are there in a room together and it makes for a healthy lead, I think, between the departments and then all of our all the wonderful juicy artistic blood of our departments gets to mix of it and that's really wonderful. And to the second one, it is so good for an organization to, I think, there's something kind of magical and investment-building for an education department to be in a way the the vanguard going out into especially in a remote place. We all are remote. And the school tour hits all these communities you know, very far from us and in a way the tour, the first people they encounter from pre-rep because yeah, and that's just a really wonderful way to kind of reach schools and children first and use those to help kind of build relationships for the whole organization. So you guys have another question about this relationship between artistic and education and structure. Yeah, come back. Let me figure out about it. This is actually the big question I came here to ask. Do you does anyone on the panel see the work done in education as a part of the artistic curation, not just an extension, but it's on freestanding expression of the company. So are there education programs that do not tidy your season and those that do tidy your season are they a part of the narrative of the theater and then how do you how can you share how you've worked with other departments such as your marketing and your production and your box office departments to support that work. They see artists who are leading the work in the community are also leading the work inside the artistic season that the learning is going to go like this. I've changed when I go to New Orleans and perform. I also grow here. I'm an artist and I create with Raymond I'm part of his ensemble and it's amazing. I can't believe I forgot to say that. But when I go to New Orleans and perform in that professional show experience or performing on the stages in CPT I am changed. I bring my experience into the classroom sharing that experience with Tsunami. And Tsunami is changing me because I've known her for eight years. Right? And those things and I'm a teacher and I'm in the state so we are teaching each other if I say I'm not changed through the work that I do in my community or I'm not learning something and bringing that into the organization that's a gross error. Right? And also it's based like the ecosystem of CPT is also in response to the people who are doing this. So it's like we say hey this is happening how in our community how are we going to address that in our artistic work? How are we going to speak to what's happening so we can have dialogue and be responsible for that? The organization working with all these different departments is that I mean education can the education department and educational programming can't exist without what we do as a total season right as a breath. And in many ways I mean with the history of CRT in terms of how the organization started being a mining town and then from a mining town it became this place to see theater in a very rural and remote place it's also important that there's a mutual relationship back and forth and sometimes the spotlight is an educational program and sometimes it's that season breath or production that we have that allows us to play back and forth. We can't exist without what we do as a whole and the whole is can't exist without education because a lot of the people that come to our company are people that started in our education programs. So I think there's a natural organic way of co-existing even though we are separate entities but also together that we work side by side I think it's just I think there are different models of working that you know according to the organization it can work and then we're asking each other questions about what is working and what is not and what can we do better to really advance our organization in terms of the mission and then how it all comes back to us because we are an organization that serves our community and we serve in the many ways we have to serve because we're the only organization in a 200 mile radius outside of us so I think it asks of us to have to collaborate in a way that we have to be responsible to what our community is telling us and it's not easy and it's not pretty and it can get dirty sometimes and frustrations but I think those emotions are so important to have there because then how are we going to be able to make art that really speaks to us Yeah, we're doing a lot really important work very very little resources and to not rely like what she was saying is so true about our season I don't think like what we're trying to do with the productions that aren't part of the education department things wouldn't work without the talent Juhami's bringing in two and we have conversations when I'm casting this rep company can I use your cast for the tour in this show I would really love that it does the schedule work out I mean I'm trying to use as many of her people as she's trying to use the people I hire and in the end they just become our people like they're all in one company and then the second thing that I think is so integrated about what we're doing is part of our mission statement diverse repertory season dynamic education programs and new place the new place part is huge the education department we're a prerep is able to say that every season 25 to 35% of what we put on stage is the original work and that's because there's usually one or two on our other stages and two in the education department and our headwaters new play program is really half DOA work and that's the work too that has gone on to coder in other places and you know brought a little freedom to the world that is so huge inside your question there's a nature because of the history of theater in the United States that there's an art and artistic department that has more status than an education department and I think and that might not be the case internally inside of an organization so inside my organization sometimes artistic programs come and complain to me because they feel like they're not getting enough attention or something you know from education that does happen and I just think that part of our mission is because I think what you're hearing is we all don't actually think of them as artistic and education we think they're just two different kinds of art programs but we have to communicate to a public and inside of our field and we get found by that and so we use terms like education director and things like that even though we really mean artistic director and that's like the tension in the title and all these things there's tension between education for adults and education for young people too because Johan is our education director but the artistic associate handles a lot of our audience in Bridgeman which is really kind of engagement in education and it's very much important who I run and how he does and they work together very well and it's yeah the title is that's I think I just wanted to add I think also we you know in terms of our art form we get stuck in using certain vocabulary and I mean like and I hear it in us as well but you know it's like I think that there's a change happening and it's slow that we have to in this room start to shift that mindset so that then we can actually go out and start shifting that vocabulary that we use when it comes to the culture of education within an organization Do you have any questions? I do it's rather existential I guess but why is this happening now to you all? What's what's the shift that's why are you saying this more in terms of the conversation that we're having can you say something more about that more why am I able to sit here now I've been in this field for 15 years and here from this end of the table say that you're really looking at education and in artistic programs as one why wasn't that happening for 15 years so here's a theory Emory Neuroscience his medical neuroscience has partnered with this on a couple of projects with friends and Dr. Mark Rappaport who runs Emory Neuroscience shared a really horrifying series of studies for this a bunch of years ago which is we now have the first generation of grown folks who've received from 0 to 11 more sensory input from single dimensions than from three dimensions and mirror neurons which which are essentially the brain matter that allows us the capacity for empathetic experience have to have a certain amount of three-dimensional input to develop and so we're now seeing a generation of grown folks who literally do not have neuro physical capacity for empathy at the same level than the generation above them and that I get out of that shit but it's interesting on paper when you experience it in practice you understand that we're in an absolutely critical juncture where there is a a generation with diminished empathy raising children Chris alluded to the literacy statistics in our city where only 40% not even 40% of the students in our public school system are reading on grade level at third grade and that is the extrapolator for prison systems going forward third grade literacy we're at a developmental price point and realizing that rather than being the need-mongering ornament of American society we're actually a solution set in an ever-diminishing toolbox organizations where all of the your work seems very uniquely integrated as you've spoken it seems like for a lot of us the their initiatives like engagement and outreach and education that all kind of swirl around the same essential work and yet they seem sometimes to reside in different departments and they also seem to be somewhat different initiatives can you speak a little bit about how you think about those things are they all sort of the same thing to you as this sort of formation of education are they different how how do you try to sort of jungle those those different attention a lot I observe along what the the staff brings in so because I've learned as much as I want to do everything and I want to help and serve as much as I can in my community I can't do it all I'm only one person but what I've learned I think in terms of also leadership it's really starting to think about what my team that I'm working would have to offer so for us I think it's really unique that it's hard to get people out there agreed and to recruit and then also sustain our staff so that there's consistency and so but when we bring in people it's really taking the time to see oh well like Jenna who is now we have a strong person doing our marketing communications work how can I use some of those resources and not only be like here's the things that you're going to work on Jenna but really being able to bring her in and have her take ownership of the programming that I'm leading but have her also feel like this is also my program this is us building a goal of what we're trying to achieve and so it's I think for me it's just really and then get excited about the possibility of like if we collaborate like imagine what we can do together versus what I can do by myself in a bubble because that's what happens with education so collaboration and in the true sense of I guess you know I think the most damaging thing with coded language or something else and we became kind of clear the quality engagement in our theater the power of the work was all around audience about we also realized that the work that it became long long before being like in the education work like that was truly the education in the community so a lot of it was there but I think again it lives out the organization in terms of what we're producing why where we're producing specifically this year it's like some folks over the line we've been on the road you know with us throughout Atlanta trying to narrate the narrative to the complexity but that's much more interesting than trying to figure out how we think about the engagement we talk about audience engagement all of our programs that other theaters might call community engagement we just normally somehow call it artistic but they's coordinating them so is that education is that artistic it's really like those outside outside boxes that sometimes come under or to a colleague or even to stakeholders like a partner you know if I come in and say oh they are artistic directors that are going to be confused so these titles sometimes come up that but these are just boxes and I think for us at CPT the box sort of happens near the end or after something's going then when we're starting we don't say we need a new almost no Latinx theater artist in Cleveland and what can we do about that when in our neighborhood 30% of the community is Latinx as you're going out in the community that you are kind of instituting inside of I don't know if I use that word right or if it's a word but that you're kind of hard wiring inside of your organizations such as language approaches to hosting their practices that are evident in your communities where you're citizens that you're bringing in and hard wiring because there's a lot of the word decolonizing comes up a lot and I'm wondering what are we bringing into the theater that starts to to show the identity and the intelligence of the communities that we're looking to reach having in our box office someone look by language is huge language is very powerful and signage you know when and I think someone spoke to this before but you know when we came in the pictures that are on the wall right the counter the space and how are they affirmed and I also think something in the last five years that we have grown and learned a lot about are like how do you run a community about where people do feel about them and where you're using your skills your skills as a theater producing models and then with your community partners learning okay and how do you what are they teaching you right so it's like not again we have all the answers obviously but it's like and sometimes those producing models have to change significantly it's like sometimes it's okay for someone to be 30 minutes lead to something and for you to keep those doors open or break their own family break their own family and and put a blanket down and figure out a way for everyone ready to feel right even if you're like oh my god they did not turn on their phones so I think there's there's there's that as well of like when do you check yourself and that's something that I'm really excited to speak with the panels before of like where there are opportunities of learning that happen on their side where there were some maybe theater practices that you were anticipating would work that just didn't work you know but they were like oh I just I gotta do it a new way wow that's a learning growth opportunity for me I'm actually adding a new method like sometimes I like to say like you're learning a new language or you're adding another color to your palette that you have that you are gaining some fluency but it's not your state knows this you're learning a new way I think like you said so much better but in a totally different setting like the opposite of the other we have the same experience with our community and that they really taught us new meanings of what accessibility means and what it means to be inviting be inviting rather than look inviting and and for our community being inviting looks looks like face to face connection it doesn't necessarily reflect it's like you were saying an existing fully in the third dimension with your community and the language we use is very important we we are good but we are not lead is a big distinction that we have to really you know so does anybody remember that moment in whatever class or conversation that you've learned that approximately 3% of the American public has this theater on a regular basis tell the truth if I'm alone in this it's going to be you williating how many of you have learned that your first hopefully internal thought was what's wrong with them so maybe the what's wrong with us question is something that working with a younger and more completely transparent in their feelings audience base would be a great lesson right we back to the question about engagement outreach all those terms we've finally put our arms around the idea that yes we do crave an audience but that audience could be a 3 year old who spends 40 minutes in the babies in space space that could be a corporate type who's learning strategic storytelling so we can be a more effective in his boardroom or that could be and this is no more and sometimes maybe less important that person that person who sits in the dark for two hours that's all audience and if we're going to change the 3% perhaps we need to maybe so so as we talk about change I'm wondering if maybe that's going to talk about your programs and what you know when you look at your programs you think four years and in the four years and the span of four years that I've been there it's been a constant question of like where are we reaching out where are we losing an opportunity and continue some of these conversations within our our community we started to realize that there has been a huge community that we have not at all in the history of CRT really connected and that's been to the valley community outside of Crete and there's a huge Latino and Native American population out there and we you know the organization the history of CRT itself really being connected to the community but we've packed in certain places and so I think one of the opportunities that we have and a responsibility that maybe that's me speaking is I have the responsibility to to find why we have done that and how we better for me I need to reflect and not say we have we've done it all at least or you know but where can we do better to do that I think as an artist you know to figure Pico inside and say I'm going to really dig in in the places where we haven't and how can we do it together as opposed to just sending off education doing the tour and then we can check it off we've done our outreach part of it but how do we then bring that back and then I was being like oh sorry I was really like to don't tell off that I'm asking the same questions and then these these things we feel strong that we need to do and just sort of I'm always like balancing our dreams and what could we know is out there to be done that we can do with our sustainability as well and figuring out how those two things can become pointed in the same direction yeah can we just I just want to hear from the rest of them and come back to you, alright? Did anybody have a question? Sure I was like one different element of education and what I'm really especially on is the mentoring of the next generation which I think is key I think can make you toward your question is constantly coming up how can we better a full-true question for the organization which is we've what does that mean we've gone from a place where everyone knows everyone and I have a very close relationship to everyone because we're not everyone reports to me and we're not all just hanging out talking about the same things anymore we have to divide and conquer and that's been a really huge we're trying to figure it out and how do we not create those silos and all those things another big issue for us has to do is as the brick city theater program on the public housing expands and our team program expands we begin to really think a lot about sustainability for those teachers both how to attract the right talent because these are very, very specialized teaching environments that are probably unlike maybe brick city might be unlike anything anyone in this room does just never seen a classroom like this it's very weird and so how do you get the right talent but also we have had a horrible couple of years where we've lost family members where parents of parents that we know closely have been shot and on and on where literally they had to reach out because of a parent reaching out to her and had to sort of engage with all these social services organization to essentially I don't want to say track to convince one of the girls she worked with to come in and meet with her in the social service organization and we've just had a horrible couple of years and that's going to happen because we work in the communities of trauma and how do we take care how do we begin to think more about that missing piece of our education program which is about social service workers being in the room there's a huge question for me financially and training-wise and how do I make sure that my staff can get the self-care that they need as long as I don't make a question? No, I should say like knowing how well I mean sure responding in those situations you know like being the well and then seeking that and being able to say to I do not know so let me find the answer let me try to be a bridge for you Question? Yeah, thank you I used to being in education director for a few years and one of the things I was feeling from the room I had to ask the group this is clearly three theaters that I did not experience 20 years ago that were having a symbiotic relationship which is a beautiful thing we all know that a lot of that's the dynamic leadership an artistic director whether they had that vision for birth or whether they've learned it on the job or whatever it is so God bless you guys but what advice might you give not something neat to me anymore but to colleagues here were saying yeah the table might have some of those answers but maybe for the artistic directors specifically to say you know here are some of the language some of the powerful language I could have used at board meetings or with colleagues to get people on board I think this is what was going on That was exactly what I was going to ask right I think these two questions here is kind of like some thoughts right one thing that I heard and it just occurred to me is 50 years ago 60 years ago theaters escaped right people had categories from the world went into a dark theater and escaped we're talking about the theater for people who are going through trauma and the crisis that the theme is like that we're not running away we're running towards and so restaurants close theaters close if no one needs to go to them anymore right why have them so we have some language about why I think theater I think would be really great to hear from the artistic team how do we communicate that to these guys to maybe manage up to our artistic directors and boards boards well you know I'm going to go there because I do think we all we all code switch and all you and I can geek on mission right but Chris will share with our executive committee the percentage increase in dollars and bodies in any given program and it is the most compelling upward trendline of anything we're doing he will never tell you this but we have a very influential board member former board chair who refers to him as the golden child a lot that this particular cohort is most invested in are they most invested in numbers well if you've got an education based story to tell that has that upward trajectory make sure you're telling it or far more important make sure that your colleague has the platform to tell it and this is ironic I'm talking right now don't talk for give your colleague their platform with the people that you report to we need to raise more money so we can do more efficient work and we realize that actually the circle and that was a really powerful sentiment that actually investing in doing more missions also needs more money so it continues this this virtuous circle you know I think that's a powerful metaphor for the board I have the competition a little bit I also am very fortunate in our organization to be more in this relationship but I think that it goes back to funding and who has access to the funding and to advocate for their own funding so who has the voice at the table and that just might be an opportunity of saying and asking the question or is it asking the question about is it possible to have an education community engagement committee of the board I'm just wondering if we could maybe get some voices that are the community on our board to be talking about the same work that we can maybe then talk about mission more holistically also I think that it's important and Colorado the metro area Colorado Denver metro area has a sales tax we've been very fortunate and it was established many many years ago and it just got voted in so we now have 12 years where now the arts organizations are asking how are we stewards for that money that we literally our community has said okay we're going to invest in you so now we're asking about we have a responsibility as an profit of how we are stewards for that money back into the community which I just don't know if there could be more energy especially for us as education leaders to maybe be going to the state level to the federal level and saying how could there be support around this and we promise to be in partnership with you to be the stewards of that money and we're in partnership with you the Natural History Museum the Art Museum of really asking those questions about okay we want to talk about access roll up your sleeves we're responsible for this and how are we paying that for it and making sure that it's working in the community which you know we're so grateful to be in the organization the first thing is I think for a lot of larger arts organizations these days there's actually a sort of fear and jealousy of the education program and so I think you should acknowledge that and then an intellectual argument like if you can deliver on action that's one thing but an intellectual argument is not necessarily going to win the day it might just increase that jealousy and that polarization because that's how we work as humans and so the other thing I would say is like if your programs are delivering an amazing experience an amazing work of art which I think many of us are then having that artistic department in the room and just getting them there and they will remember like something that they got into this field for that is the best thing you can do and the other best thing is when you have guest artists or celebrated artists that might not be guests that are part of your organization to get them involved somehow even if it's in a small way because those are the artists who are going to say when they're leaving the theater I had this great experience where I wrote this play for your theater and I will never forget this next thing that happened with the education program and that's highly incentivizing towards the suit tractors so I think you know think of it less of arguing a case and more seduction I would say I would say Raymond and Alice, thank you for saying those what I was going to gentlemen to say is you have to do the work at CRT when I first started there this was not the relationship that was happening with an education and the rest of the artistic team as a matter of fact it was a very isolated department and I've had to work really hard and we've had to have really difficult conversations of putting things on the table and say like this is not working this is why this is how I feel within the department and Jack's been able to do those same things so you're going to have to roll over sleeves you're going to have to do the work because if you don't do it if you don't create the change the idea of who wants change the image that we saw he was the cold hat up here and at the end of the day you're not going to do the work you're not going to be in there at the meeting then what's the point, right? then why are we doing what we do and so you have to do really the challenging part and you'll be able to do those things if you have the patience and willingness to see what is working what is... I have this question about the act and we're talking about getting attention in the organization and getting education to be as valued as it is if you're having that trouble like two things like convince your artistic director to give it a stage I mean like give it a stage like put it in front you know it's not just going to schools which are so important if you're getting adults to see it too and you're getting we have our board as a whole during the board meeting will sometimes come to our new play festival and see the premiere of the touring show and when the board is seeing they're sobbing at the end of it you've got them they value education and the other one is a little more radical it might be slightly harder to do but get your artistic director to do the work like be a part of the education department direct T.U.A. Asia direct um teach a camp do something to get kind of in the trenches and on the ground and no it'll change your life it's amazing I'm afraid that will be for events we've done today and continue this conversation we'll see you back