 Good afternoon everyone! Good afternoon! Can you hear me? Fantastic! Hi, it's so wonderful to be here in space with you all. I'm Jamie Galoon. My pronouns are she, her, hers. I am the director and co-founder of Hallaround Theater Commons. I am a white woman with brown hair and glasses, and I'm wearing red lipstick. On behalf of the International Presenting Commons, and Hallaround, I'm delighted to welcome you today to International Presenting Now, Collaborative Models, Practices, and Pathways Toward a Sustainable Future. A huge thank you to Susan Feldman and everyone here at St. Anne's for having us. It's wonderful to be having this conversation about international work in a place with such a deep commitment to it. We are live streaming, as you will notice, on Hallaround TV. So a big hello to everyone tuning in. We're so happy that you're here. And as part of our live stream, we are offering live captions by the National Captioning Institute and providing ASL interpretation by Pro Bono ASL. So thank you to Selena and Travis. And a reminder that because of this and for accessibility purposes, we are asking everyone today to have a mic when speaking and that you be mindful of the pace of your speech and that you begin with your name, pronouns, and a brief visual description as I just modeled. So for those who are tuning in online, we also invite you to use the chat function on hallaround.com. We'll be looking at that chat discussion. And when we open up into a full group conversation, we'll be trying to bring some of your questions and comments into the room. So before we continue, I'd like to offer a land acknowledgement. At Hallaround, we hold ourselves accountable to the work of undoing oppression and advancing equity to overcome our country's bitter history of segregation and racial inequality. As part of this work, we must start by acknowledging that we are gathering today on the ancestral and unceded lands of the Lenape people. We pay respect to the Lenape elders present and future, the traditional custodians of the lands on which we convene today. We encourage you to learn about and support branch of knowledge led by River Whittle, Caddo and Lenape, and Catalyst Dance. Branch of knowledge is dedicated to acting as a bridge between Lenape people, resources, community and land here on Lenape Hoking. Many ally organizations and Lenape people are working together in active decolonizing practice. Additionally, Adrienne Wong of Spiderweb Show has created this digital land acknowledgement that I'd like to share. Since our discussion today is shared digitally to the internet, let's also take a moment to consider the legacy of colonization embedded within the technologies, structures and ways of thinking that we use every day. We are using equipment and high-speed internet not available in many indigenous communities. Even the technologies that are central to much of the art that we make leave significant carbon footprints contributing to changing climates that disproportionately affect indigenous peoples worldwide. I invite you to join me in acknowledging the truth of violence perpetrated in the name of this country as well as our shared responsibility to uncovering that truth through dialogue, partnerships and learning. Thank you. Before we continue, I want to say a few words about Halround that may be unfamiliar. Halround is a free and open platform for theater makers worldwide. We amplify progressive and disruptive ideas about theater and connect diverse practitioners. We envision a theater field where power and resources are shared equitably in all directions contributing to a more just and sustainable world. We have an online journal where artists share their thinking a live streaming television network that we are witnessing right now. And we also partner with the Latinx Theater Commons to advance the state of Latinx Theater in the U.S. We're proud to co-manage the National Playwright Residency Program with the Mellon Foundation. And finally, we incubate collective action and organize in-person convenings like this one around urgent issues facing the field. We do all of this based in the Office of the Arts at Emerson College in Boston and Emerson who are our partners in this work. It has been a great pleasure for Halround to advance our core value of global citizenship through working with the International Presenting Commons organizing over the past 32 months virtually until we met in person last night. And it gives me great great joy to introduce the co-champions of this event who are part of a large, incredibly dedicated committee who are listed in your programming that make up the IPC. So I'm going to pass it over to David House and Colleen Jennings-Rogensack and acknowledge that Olga Greie-English who is also co-champion sends her regrets from Los Angeles where unfortunately she's recovering from COVID although we know you are watching and we wish you a speedy recovery. David, over to you. Thank you, Jamie. I just, yes, please. I was going to invite us to give you a hand for the incredible team at Halround who have kept us together over these 32 years. They do this work with intention, with commitment and they keep driving us forward. So thank you to Jamie and Abigail and many others who are responsible there. I am David House. I am the Vice President of the Office of the Arts at Emerson College and the Executive Director at Arts Emerson in Boston. I am a black man with brown skin with round silver glasses and I'm wearing a navy or whatever jacket with checks on it. So it's wonderful to be here with you today. I'm going to give us a little sense of how we arrived here. As Jamie mentioned we had been gathering for 32 months. In May of 2020 Halround began gathering a small ad hoc group of US based presenters to discuss challenges facing international work. In February of 2021 we put on a session at ISPA, APAP and under the radar symposium and in March of 2021 we hosted an event about the history of presenting and in June of 2021 in partnership with Global Pillow the IPC put on a global digital convening called Festivals for New Age Models of Responsiveness, Flexibility and Resistance. So as you can hear we have been busy. We've been a linear path but we've stayed together in this incredible journey and we're thrilled to continue this journey today together in person. So over the past year plus the group has continued to wrestle with the steep challenges of this moment while aiming to reimagine international presenting for New Age. And as Jamie mentioned last night for the first time we were all together after those 32 months and countless hours on Zoom I should add to celebrate each other to celebrate the journey and then to prepare for today. So last night was the first in person meeting and today we will look ahead exploring inspiring new pathways for sustaining and furthering global exchange in international touring in the United States. Since first coming together IPC has grown smartly to include creative producers and has self defined itself as an emergent evolving volunteer group of U.S. based performing arts presenters and creative independent producers who have joined forces to keep international culture exchange and engagement alive and vibrant now and into the future. We've mentioned this August group of people who have been gathering for the 32 months and I just want to take a moment to recognize those members of the steering committee who are here with us today so if you can just raise your hand so we can all see you and be proud and raise them high. Yes. Many are here today. There are many who are not able to be here with us physically but here in spirit. Many have been with us for 32 months. People have come in and out as our lives have adjusted to the moment they were in but it's been a wonderful journey that we've been on together. IPC does this work through advocacy active learning, resource sharing and collaboration amongst these arts presenters, the producers that we mentioned as well as funders and artists. We're doing the work to build a more sustainable policies and funding models for the exchange of work around the world. Our mission is in service of our increasingly diverse communities throughout the country. IPC celebrates its role as part of a global cultural ecosystem and by partnering with artists and presenters from all over the world. We do our work through a commons based approach and we're finally organizing with the incredible support and thought partnership of HowlRound. And now I'd love to turn it over to my esteemed colleague Colleen who needs no introduction to offer a few remarks. Thank you David. I'm Colleen Jennings-Rogensack, Vice President of Cultural Affairs at Arizona State University and Executive Director of ASU Gammage. I am a black woman wearing a black beret and thanks to Susan Feldman standing in St. Ann's warehouse. The analysis of this event is rooted in our desire to bring together artists, presenters, creative producers and funders to uplift innovative models and explore new collaborative practices that emerge during COVID and that can contribute to building a sustainable and robust ecosystem for the presentation of international work in the United States and to develop resources to support U.S. artists writ large IPC is premised on the belief that global live art exchange remains essential to the world in particular to the cultural health of the United States as a wide whole and diverse individual communities that presenters and artists serve across our country. We have intentionally structured today's convening as a conversation circle as you see in front of us and a listening circle of which we are all a part of. We chose this format because we wanted this to be an evolving conversation that could invite participation from many people rather than a formal panel. We'll begin by hearing from the conversation circle and then opening it up from contributions from the listening circle. We ask everyone to practice active listening and consider what perspectives you have to add. This is not the only conversation. Intently we decided to be U.S.-based. We know that everyone is not here. Understand that this is a conversation and not the conversation. We are so fortunate today to have planned this event alongside our capable moderator and fellow former presenter, Emil Kang. Emil J. Kang is program director for arts and culture at the Mellon Foundation where he leads the grants making program that centres individual creative accomplishment and conservation practices while advancing a diverse and sustainable arts ecosystem. Previously, Emil worked at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he served as a professor of practice of music and executive and artistic director of Carolina Performing Arts a major multi-discipline performing arts program that he founded in 2005. In 2016, Emil was named special assistant to Chancellor for the arts and founded Arts Everywhere a major learning and engagement community-wide initiative dedicated to integrating artists' practices learning and engagement in the lives of the entire community. Previously, Emil served in a variety of roles with orchestras and symphonies across the country. Most recently as president and executive director of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra Emil continues to serve as a member of the National Council of the Arts having been named by President Barack Obama in 2012. Everyone, Emil. Okay, everyone. Oh, I see my colleagues over here. Oh, and we're in this boat. Keep me real. Let's see. Thank you, Colleen. So, deep breath, everyone. Deep breath for me. Good afternoon, everyone. As was mentioned, my name is Emil Kang. My pronouns are he, him, his. I am a middle-aged Asian-American man with salt and pepper hair, glasses, blue turtleneck sweater, and I'm getting older by the day. It is my sincere pleasure to be with you today, be here with you today. I'd like to first thank, start by thanking the members of the IPC Steering Committee and all the members of the IPC for their leadership, engagement, and commitment to dialogue and change. Secondly, I'd like to thank the outstanding team at HowlRound Theater Commons for their continued leadership and moving our field forward. They continue to be tremendous partners with us at the Mellon Foundation in so many ways, including, as Jamie mentioned, with the administration of the National Playwright Residency Program. I want to give a special shout out to those who are really involved in planning today, and they include, and I hope I get this right, Jamie, Abigail, Sierra, Joshua, Vijay, Ramona, and Allison at HowlRound, and Kevin at Arch Emerson. I'll ask you to please join me in a round of applause for all of them. I want to apologize for those who I have my back to. It's not intentional. Although there are times I wish I didn't anyway. It's great to see some of your friends and colleagues here. The conversation and listening circles gives us a way to get into deeper dialogue, I believe, with such a large group of people here and online. And as you can gather from the program, the group here in front of you today are mirroring those around the listening circle, and they include presenters, creative producers, artists, and funders. We have structured this conversation so that for the first 50 or so minutes, the conversation circle, that's this group here, will engage in dialogue, and Abigail will be our timekeeper, so thank you, Abigail. We ask that everyone in the listening circle to hold any questions or comments, but please do, as mentioned, engage in active listening. At the appropriate time, just after 50 minutes, we will invite your little participation. And we'll be very interested to hear you all expand on the perspectives that have been offered so far. Our sincere wish is for an open, transparent, mutually beneficial, and generous dialogue. To ensure that, I will ask everyone, especially those representing institutions, to use this time to speak as your human selves, and not to speak on behalf of your institution. By that, I mean, I hope, that we will all be able to express more than answers to questions, but our own respective vulnerabilities and truths. As we have an equally important audience on Zoom, I'd like to start by letting everyone know who's here in the conversation circle. I'd like to ask each of you to share your pronouns, affiliation, and offer a brief visual description all in 30 seconds, or less. Please. So, I will start to my right to you, May-Lin. Good morning. My name is May-N-Wang. I'm the producing director of the Ronald O. Perlman Performing Arts Center, which will open in fall of 23. I use she, her pronouns. I'm a Chinese woman with black, starting to gray hair, mid-length, and wearing navy blue. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Michael Orlov. I use he, him pronouns. I am the director of state, regional, and local partnerships in international activities at the National and Down for the Arts. I am an aging, middle-aged and aging white man with a receding hairline, sadly, and a wearing a gray sports coat. Hi, my name is Mara Isaacs. I'm an independent producer and founder of Octopus Theatricals. I am a white woman with brown, unruly, curly hair and glasses, and wearing a turtleneck sweater that is mostly black with a touch of gray and tan. My name is Rika Eno. I use she, her, hers pronouns. I'm a mother, entrepreneur, and founder and producer of Sozo. I'm an Asian woman of Japanese descent. I'm wearing a flowy, structured outfit today. I'm Duyun. I'm a composer and performer. I am short. I'm forever young and nice to be here. Oh, what do I wear? A big heart. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Ronnie Pinoy. I am Laguna Pueblo in Cherokee. My pronouns are she, her, hers, and I am delighted to be director of artistic programming at Arts Emerson, as well as joyfully covered in freckles. And with a very loud laugh, I have been reaffirmed earlier this morning. So, let's see, did I do it? I did it. Visual description. Long brown hair, white sweater with a big black flower on it. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Zeba Rahman. I'm an Indian. And I use the pronouns hum, which means we and Urdu and all the female pronouns. I'm wearing a red jacket and have sort of middling salt and pepper hair. Hello, everyone. I'm Edgar Mita Montes. I use he, him pronouns. I'm the deputy executive director and curator of Red Cat at the Roy and Edna Disney Cal Arts Theater. And I am a queer and Latinx wearing a black sweater with a black and white flower print collar and glasses, blue glasses. Thank you so much. My name is Samora Pender Hughes. I use he, him, his pronouns. I'm a musician, composer, filmmaker, interdisciplinary artist and the creator of the Healing Project. And my identity is its own panel, but I never know how to answer this question for visual, but I'm a person of mixed descent and I'm wearing a very fly green serpent outfit. Hi, everyone. My name is Roya Amir Soleimani. I use she, her pronouns. I'm the artistic director and curator of public engagement at PICA, the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art in what is known as Portland, Oregon. And I am an Iranian-American woman in my late 30s. Dark, brown, almost black hair, pulled up, black shirt, olive pants, black shoes. Oh, right. Thank you all. Just so everyone knows, we have three roving microphones in the circle, so I'll ask you to share them freely with each other, but know that they're always going to be hot, so please, if you are not using it, don't rub it up against yourself or anything like that. For lots of reasons. At least, out here in public. Thank you very much. As a reminder to everyone, I'll be monitoring a conversation with just this group. And I have a series of prompts that we'll use to get the dialogue going, but I invite all of the members of the conversation circle here to feel free to add to redirect, move, change the conversations that we start with. And remember that this is not a conversation between me and you all, but with you and each other. So I really hope that we can find a way to be able to re-in-dialogue with one another, and to pretend to shout out everyone else around us, because this is what we're hoping to achieve. And a reminder, the title of today's session is International Presenting Now, Collaborative Models, Practices and Pathways Towards a Sustainable Future. I don't get into these kinds of dialogues often, and we tend to want to talk about all the challenges and problems we face, but I want to make sure that we're keeping the topic today on international presenting. Any questions from the conversation circle? No? We ready to go? All right. Well, let's get right into it. Our first prompt. It'll bring us in at a very high level intentionally and includes a set of questions. Feel free, of course, to respond to any or all of it. They are, again, very general high level. What has the global performing arts field learned to date from the COVID era and the pandemic? Two, are there ways that international presenting has changed for the better as a result of the pandemic? And then three, what are the opportunities and challenges for international presenting now? Would you like me to repeat them? Or are you all set? No? Good. Anyone want to get us started with some very pithy answers? In the combining questions one and two, what have we learned to date and changes for the better? One of the happy side benefits of developing work for digital platforms which many of us, I know, have done in various ways during the pandemic is that we discovered that those digital platforms created access. And for us in particular at Octopus in collaboration actually with some people in this room at NYU Abu Dhabi and Arts Emerson, we took one of our digital platforms and turned it into a platform for international collaboration. And so actually created a project with artists in Kenya that was broadcast in Abu Dhabi and in the United States. And that project has continued as we have gone back to in-person programming, we have found ways to continue this collaboration with the same group of artists and different US presenters as a way of creating access for both the artists and the audiences to work that they would otherwise never have a chance to see. So that's a happy story. That's great. Thank you. Ronnie? Yeah, I'll just echo the period of the pandemic I think really led to a lot of us asking some questions about intentionality and I know I'm not saying anything new and saying that we all were asking the questions of what are we really meaning to do, is it effective and in particular I think for creative producers with SIPA, the creative and independent producer Alliance with IPC and with others you really saw an intentional mobilizing around are we really doing what we mean to do should we be doing it differently better in a more climate just way and also who is being left out of the conversation. So I think there has been while of course space and time and going and things reopening I think took a bit of a redirect of attention I think that all of that intentionality and awareness of the way in which we're doing work even if there's ways we still want to shift it I think that's still happening and that was a real beautiful part of that time that we had to be away from each other. Thank you Ronnie. Yeah, I have been thinking a lot about the ways in which the interdependence of our field was revealed in the wake of the pandemic that organizations and artists were facing an increasingly vulnerable situation and relied on each other to stay afloat. Institutions relying on other institutions, artists on each other and then everyone within communities and within the broader community that is our field nationally and internationally. But really some organizations went away. Some artists stopped practicing. People made radical decisions and were also left behind. A lot of changes that we all experienced and yet it was a moment for us to realize I think our resilience but going forward the ways in which we have to support one another and work with each other collaboratively to build both informal and formal systems of support and resource redistribution and exchange are going to be critical if any international presenting given the barriers is going to be possible. I think I forgot to say my affiliation when I was introducing myself. I take care of a program called the Building Bridges Program at the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art and just picking up on what you've just said one of the things that I feel this room has which is more valuable than money is imagination and since we belong to the species that indomitable human spirit and it's that which gives us the capacity to reimagine to pivot very quickly and adapt and everything that follows from that and I am reminded of one thing that it's a pre-pandemic example one of our grantees the Georgetown University Lab for Performance and Politics was in 2014 I think it was Derek presenting Syria the Trojan women and the inevitable happened which is that the women the actors in this piece were denied their visa and what the lab and its organisers did was create a summit with the Trojan women with the Syrian women on Skype in those days this was 2014 and also the audience they collected an audience so it was a full house and there was a very poignant moment when the ladies on Skype asked why were we denied our visa and quickly one of the organisers pointed the mic to the State Department representative who was in the audience then and he said it was just a bad day I hope I'm not mangling this Derek but I think this is what he said and I bring this example up because of what the lab did in response to a crisis which is they could not put on a live performance I'll stop there Thank you I think just thinking about self reflection I think what happened is taking a step back to think as to what what brought me into the arts to begin with and so thinking about how the lack of access I had and to think about the access that I wanted to give folks we continued working to work with artists through the pandemic but it was really kind of thinking about what difference can I make right now during this time and we had projects that were leaning into working with video so we paired up a lot of artists with those who had that kind of access to finance and things like that and so we worked with Chilean artist Guillermo Calderón who had a project that was to come to where we were and made a film with it that was really about the democracy shifting in Chile and so we partnered with Arts Emerson to be able to give the resources to be able to make that film and then have both of our audiences join together and team through Arts Emerson and also to our audiences at Red Cat so this collaborative kind of thinking really quickly and pivoting was really important for me and thinking about why it matters and why working together matters even more I just wanted to respond quickly to what Rani you said about intentionality and I've been thinking a lot about the move from sort of this short term value extraction to long termism as I like to call it this sort of notion that performances aren't enough and how do we especially as producers and actually shout out to producers in the room and greater producers that are doing this work this attention towards process as the product and how that ultimately stretches the timeline of our work together so I've been thinking a lot about that and what that means in terms of equivalence in our sector is giving a kind of more decision making authority to those on the edges so artists and producers in my case and for me it translated into work like ethical and equitable contracting between institutions and artists it has also translated to mentorship and coaching work to empower artists to become entrepreneurs and these are fast-tracked by the pandemic but things that have been in need for probably decades first of all I'll give a shout out to all the federal employees in the room I'm the only one it's really humbling and inspiring to not just be in a circle with so many incredible folks but being surrounded by colleagues that you've worked with over the years and Ronnie brought up a couple of words that inspired me to think about flexibility there's something I learned and this is in my perch not as a producer not as an artist but as a funder flexibility and having the ability to allow folks to do work in different ways and going to what Rika was saying we need to be able to let work take place over time and there were some really inspiring conversations that happened at the beginning of the pandemic very much about how work is going to be produced how work is going to be created and I learned a ton about flexibility and that's something I really take to heart one other thing to mention it's not something we learned it was more of an affirmation of how much we need in this earth and creativity and the arts I think there was no better exclamation mark than the past two years and how important it is that we have access to the arts whether it's in live form, in digital form and some kind of hybrid that my wife is a school teacher and so for the first year and a half we share an apartment and you know six feet away from me separated by a wall and what I found so incredibly inspiring she's a math teacher but every day there is some form of artistic inputs being given to the kids because they needed it and again I think if we all not this room learning but the greater world we need the arts more than ever and it was a great experience in a very bad situation thank you Michael I just wanted to take this moment to thank to those of you who paid the artists during cancellations because you're not only paying one artist you're paying the household the lively blood also you're not loyalty to the organizations moving past COVID. I also wanted to thank to those organizations who stood up to governments that we had wars happening I saw organizations who bypassed the rigorous board meeting structure and really called for refugees and for funding immediate fundings for the war refugees and I saw so many Ukraine artists being able to survive that day so I was also thinking about when we are thinking about when artists are thinking about making work putting our stage sometimes it's not about this proscenium that we are thinking is a piece it's about human connections I wonder about this kind of organizations what we are doing here like in the end at the core what are we making is it that from end to finish line or is the beginning to end line is something more flexible as you were saying and to defy COVID to defy war to defy political coup and so on so thank you for paying and thank you for coming up together with us thank you Julian Samora yes, totally echo all of that and also picking back off of that speaking a little bit from the artist's perspective of just a few quick thoughts come to mind one is I definitely I think that there was a real reckoning around the artist's ability to survive and what the artist's economy looks like in every field obviously I can speak to it most specifically through music and then learning through the other disciplines but without touring there was no musician was able to live because they had no health insurance they had no livelihood and so I think the bad part of that was that obviously people were wrecked by the situation and that they realized that that was a long-term framework for them to survive as is the positive part I think is that that number one that was seen by the wider world hopefully and also that it was it opens up a space for it to be realized that that type of process cannot be enough where an artist has only one means of survival which requires them to be very unhealthy with their body and do one show and then travel to another show the next day and travel to another show the next day and we have so many artists dying young and so I think that that's a big concern that I would like to see and I quite frankly think that the institutions are interesting space with this because it does go back to that long-term that you all are talking about the ability and the privilege to be able to have a physical space or a digital space whatever really just a context in which there is a larger budget or pot of money that you can build something over time with a collective is so much better in every sense than the model of having to go out and do this one thing here and do this another thing here and do this another thing here the next day and we're so used to doing that that is what we do but I'm very excited about the possibility of flipping that of the institutions that are interested in working more with those long-term models and then I think connected to that because of the shutdowns with the institutions with COVID there was possibly some opportunities for the artists to work in those long-term ways even more directly with the institution not only to build their own projects but to transform the institution and to have a say in what the how the institution is operating if the institution is open to that and you know I've been lucky enough to have institutions like for the artists where we just were where they were open to me you know working with them on transforming their security practices because we're working on a project on the prisons or open on making all their projects you know finding a way to make the at least certain day we were able to do the whole thing free but I know that's not possible sometimes so at least making certain days free doing extra community outreach or international outreach to place you know people that aren't going to be on the normal PR media lists you know and so I've found that that was an opportunity that maybe wasn't there before because people had to have the turnover of this is what's coming next and this is what's coming next so I hope that's something that will continue as well great thank you Samora did you want to add something I was only going to try to bring the conversation full circle back to the international part of the conversation which is all of these themes are coming up because for the last three years we have increased our sense of isolation both within our immediate communities and certainly you know we can all talk about what happened politically in this country and a kind of political isolationism that COVID then then created thank you a very real isolationism and when you talk about the challenges of international presenting I think that in the field at large we have all felt the setback of people's audience habits aren't the same none of our habits are the same and I think we have to kind of reopen the pathways for how we collaborate as a community within this country to support international work and how we make those truly international more porous between the countries I wonder if we can speak a little bit about that porousness because I think you mentioned your collaboration with Guillermo Calderón and you know I think it hasn't been very much lifted up here but I wonder about that sort of that question of access and of literal metaphoric distance and the ability for the community your community to be able to engage with artists across many many distances because of the pandemic and how we going forward as a field do a better job of trying to find some balances around the immediacy of actual presence versus a long distance virtual relationship and can we actually find a way to try to create a both and reality going forward and what does that look like and I wonder how you all think about that and not think of it as these are problems or we can bring artists here the opportunity to be able to actually access all kinds of perspectives and forms of artists and I go back to Rika and I see you have a mic now Rika but talking about the idea of process of product there's this notion that I'm studying called real virtualities that there is a real blend and synergy of physical and virtual spaces that I hear a lot in this space especially about oh in person is always so much better than virtual or there's a sort of binary understanding of our world but I think increasingly it's both and so you know how are we embracing that in our process and I think about Netflix success for instance with you know hits like Squid Game for those of you who watch series like that or Money Heist you know they took the sort of defragmentation approach and put the onus on their international producers to create content that appeal to their audiences instead of saying here is how it works for Hollywood so you have to make things this way and that has led to I think you know over 80% of their new subscribers during the pandemic being outside of US in Canada so I'm thinking about that and thinking about our virtual artists that are creating in these spaces you know for me the cultural cue from something like that isn't like okay so let me program a Korean artist for Asian Heritage Month or Multicultural Series that my cultural cue from something like that you know if you take Squid Game again as an example it's as much about the popularity of Korean culture as much as it's about you know the widening economic inequities so my cultural response to that will be okay so could we find a Korean new media artist working with an American scholar that would bring together a design team from Global South and design a lab for two years maybe at the end there is a performance maybe not so that's sort of where my mind is going when I think about virtual and physical and you know there is things like Microsoft Mesh right that allows people to engage virtually not in a solo siloed world but in a much more collaborative world so I think that technology is advancing in really great ways to allow us to include not just sites and visuals but also haptics and sense even and I know Samora you did a piece with virtual reality element included in that but artists are doing this work we don't have to make it up right so we're just following the lead of the artists thank you Rika anyone else Samora I would love also to hear because we were talking before about that specific collaboration so I won't talk too long but just because you mentioned it it just made me think that and I'm sure this is how people are thinking a lot already but the way that I ended up doing the VR project version of the healing project is just from the question of like this is the only way that we can get it to these people right this is the only way and so instead of saying oh we just can't get it to those folks it was like oh that's the way to get it there so we have to do that how do we do that right I had no idea how to do that then the next version of what we're doing with that for the project right is well we can't get that into the prisons because J-Pay you know connect all these evil companies they won't let them have access so we have to create a book version because that's the only way we can do it is mail it in the send it in the mail right so I think that like following this thread of um asking the question first um what is the best version of who does it has to who does it have to get to who does it have to serve then figuring out the way how to do that it seems to me a much better model than the question of how does this work the easiest way you know um and I find a lot that that's the question that's being asked instead um yeah no I think uh and talking about learning um and lessons learned during the uh pandemic but also just thinking about um uh creating work internationally or commissioning new work internationally um uh how does it reach the communities that you're working with in advance and so part of the thinking of developing new work is thinking about uh not being afraid of the technology of the zoom that we think that we've over zoomed but to think about um how we can bring in our communities that we're serving in the cities that we are um that are reflecting the work that is being made across the borders and um begin to kind of think through what that connection is even if it's virtual and then also if you could as as a as a place of gathering invite folks to come there who don't have access to their own internet service perhaps or um to kind of just think about elongating that process throughout the time so that when they do come and make that work um they already have a connection to that artist um when they come to present the work um or do something in person I think that there is a fear of like uh the lifeness being lost in the in the uh context of technology but I think that there is it actually gave us an opportunity to try to figure out how to connect and elongate that kind of relationship with artists and the communities that they're serving and who you're serving in your communities as well um thinking about digital communities actually they exist and they really uh are really um robust and so how do we also think about that as well um I'd like to add to the technology question and also the uh point about porosity in the collective working in the collective and how rich that is and it reminds me since we're sitting in circles of the Zulu practice of Ubuntu which is um a practice well in one dimension of it when somebody does something bad in the community the entire community surrounds that person for three days and three nights and never leaves them and that includes children all the way up to uh elders in the community and every single person including children tell that person something good about them and after three days the circle opens and the person is free to go back to his life and I think that sense of empowering and using the circle to reinforce the good and the value of people as opposed to you mentioned fear but in a slightly different context but fear drives so much isolation and separatism that in this moment of crisis and really using what we've learned from the pandemic to our benefit um I think a lot about Ubuntu and its value Thank you Zeba I want to keep us going I do want to follow one thing you said about not having to make it up and that artists already have been doing this and we need to follow the artist so then I wonder what going back to the examples that you gave around collaboration and working so what is preventing our field from working in this way what is preventing our world from listening to the artists from working with them from looking at the marketplaces not a place for finished product but a place to consummate relationships what's standing in the way in your mind as a creative producer I think there's hope in the sense that I don't feel like on a daily basis there's a kind of a wall that's preventing us artists don't see that wall when they're in the mode of creating I think that it's a bit like growing from the concrete cracks we just kind of figure it out so there is an incredible amount of entrepreneurship and innovation outside of the art sector that artists that are dealing with technology I think are constantly looking for clues outside of this particular sector so as producers we're learning from that as well so conversations with tech industries, civic entities what have you are kind of part of our daily lives now I think in terms of funding and sort of how we're often forced to kind of think programmatically about how we fit into boxes I think that's the biggest challenge is that there is this gravity pull towards thinking about our work in boxes and sometimes literal like theaters so we just have to be really co-creative together about space and audience experience I wonder, I just want to follow up about those boxes Rika Samora you and I talked briefly about and I'm sorry for jumping in but briefly earlier many months ago about some of the challenges you had about dealing with those boxes and I wonder if you can just share a bit about that story of sort of the complications the presenters felt with the multiplicity of your humanity sure, yeah I mean essentially just to give background for context very quick so I obviously grew up and was a practicing musician for most of my life and have become an interdisciplinary artist creating different types of things for I would say the last 5 to 10 years and I had already established myself to a certain extent as a musician and so once I started wanting to make things that were not music that was film and that was exhibition and that was you know whatever and also things that weren't inside of one genre even I found that even when I was able to articulate what it was about and what it would do people would still get stuck on the question of well but you're a jazz musician like are you going to play the piano and like solo and I was like nah like I'm not about to do that so you know it got very confusing for people I think for whatever reason and I think you know to give credit or to give understanding to it I think to me it comes down to the reality of trust I'm sorry right so what I understood it to be was we know you can do this thing do we trust you can do this other thing you can do it and I get that because I understand that there's only a certain number of slots for people to program there's money involved and everything that being said it does limit the artist's ability to expand and I think one of the most exciting elements of this moment right now is that there are so many artists that do not want to be defined that are expanding themselves that are not saying I'm just this one thing and I'm only going to make this one kind of music or this one kind of dance and we venerate like the Donald Glovers of the world in that are able to transcend because they've gotten to this you know point of famous to where they're able to transcend that but I think when you're not that it is very difficult to transcend those blocks in every situation from the labels to you know the institutions to the funders they really want you to be able to be inside of this one context and so I think that yeah that's something that I'm excited to see people transcend I hope that answered thank you and then me and I I wanted to point out that when we are making anything digital is actually very very expensive sometimes even more expensive than putting on a live show and also it also needs to have person to person real time collaboration for the artist I mean from the artists it's not something that you sit at your desk and voila and you're making a Netflix looking video it's it's not happen and the editor charges a lot of money they charge on a market rate and we're not even talking about equipment so I was also wondering like I feel like there is a lacking of the presenters to the finished product and I wonder about the corporate sponsorship right because I know I see eyes and I know how hard it is but when I hear this again again about this like you know the use of products and the artists just like we are running around the circles just like how can I get the projector how can I get the glasses how can I get those video who is the video player like who's the editor who's the colorist going to make those happen and it's that kind of scale is completely different than you make your iPhone and do something and because in the finished product we all want something fancy and we say we have $7,000 to do a 20 minute piece and you say what thank you thank you just wanted to respond to Samora's point about boxes and not being in boxes so what I'm at the pro min and we are producers and presenters right and one of the things that I because of my background with under the radar and as a creative producer really sort of respect and want to fold into that impulse right just whatever you're doing let's not put a box around it but what's very this is part of the producer the creative producer side of it is how do you create the structure in which the artist can be free to make the thing but there's so many union structure those are the boring conversations but that's the thing that we're doing right and so the thing that's been sort of going around my mind since this morning is this idea of like Jerry McGuire right this idea of of course process of course artists but there's the do we do we just have one client right and as an organization and the pro min like that is not our remit and the mission and so we have to go like who are who are our Cuba good juniors you know that we have to concentrate on and so like we can't as an organization I keep thinking about it and me as a producer in my time of how can we how do we sort of identify the artist and have that long term process right and then there's some other projects that honestly just have to be more transactional right and we can't be we can have so many projects that is about that process because we want to be able to put our resources our producers are you know our general management mind contracting minds to sort of like go into that so that is when when the meals like be a human that's what I'm struggling with because I want to do that with all of the artists who are working with but then I would we would have three and that is sort of not the that can't be sort of the you know all of all of what this organization this theater is doing um I am thinking about what was said about the value of digital programming and how artists are already working in those realms as you said Rika and um that there's a place for that and that also I think we're all here because we do believe in international presentation and exchange in real time and space and um when I think about also related to kind of post-panda or in the wake of the pandemic when I think about what we're facing right now in terms of the challenges to international and global exchange in performance which is we often think of as funding related or lack thereof borders visas all of these barriers this is also happening in tandem all of the knows all of the we can't do that anymore we can't do that in this way it's not possible any longer all of that is happening in tandem with this moment when we are reckoning with the the fact that this field has been so white the gender the gender disparities the racial disparities and we're saying now now the institutions are going to pay attention to artists of color and arts arts leaders coming up in this next generation now we're going to support um you know queer and non-binary and trans artists all of these artists now are getting their work produced and made and um artists and young arts leaders and arts administrators and curators of color are finally coming up but we're all being told there's no money and you can't travel and actually if you're going to be responsible to the climate crisis you shouldn't be going anywhere and so all of us are contending with um so so so few opportunities for actual in-person exchange for our careers um for you know again artists and arts administrators because we're all in this together but what are we saying to this young generation that is more diverse than ever before because we're finally doing the right thing in saying no we have to scale everything back and you have to put it online I just don't think it's fair and we have to do better for the generation coming up um because that's who we're saying we've failed for so long as a field we have to figure out how to make this kind of work and these kinds of exchanges continue because we owe it to the people who aren't in this room because they're the they're not even just the next gen they're like in their teens their teens you know and they're going to be us and they're going to be sitting in this room and they need to have they deserve to have these experiences as artists and as programmers or plus a thousand very well said Roya I wanted to go back to maybe the original prompt Amiel about hurdles no no it's fine and this is more from the funding perspective I talked about flexibility but also stepping into a space of humility of being a funder and being able to acknowledge that you don't have the answers to everything and that what you were saying before somewhere about not wanting to be put in a box funders have to be able to respond to that and I have done a lot of soul search in these past couple years about trying to figure out how we best support the field and it's okay to be a funder and actually not have the answers and ask for help and ask this incredible room of folks and beyond how we better support creativity in this country and beyond I think that's something people forget humility is not necessarily the best character strength of funders around the country and that's something that I've carried along with flexibility is trying to figure out how we can support I've been in conversations recently I'm not going to take us in a different direction but I'm just using this as an example is the 501C3 system we have the best system we've been using it for 40 plus 50 plus years you know should we stand up and say hey maybe we need to rethink this we don't have the answers being humble and actually asking your colleagues questions about how we can work collectively better so that's just it's not an answer to your question as much as an acknowledgement of what some hurdles are well I actually building on what Michael said I wanted to reintroduce the notion of imagination not as an aspirational goal but really as a muscle in response to the question of what's holding us back of course we can think of the things that are not at hand and obstacles I think we probably could be here all day listing them but there's so much that we already have in this circle in this room and beyond that with with imagination and intentionality we can do a great many things because we've seen all of the examples that we already have I mean I'm hearing so much about the porousness not only of technology the porousness of the kind of boxes that we're in the porousness of thinking not about the work as a commodity but about international exchanges something that is a conversation over time it's trust over time and it's there's porousness of time in terms of it doesn't have to just be about the work on stage so I think so much about the building on all of the brilliant ideas that we already know about through intentional and structured networks and then the only other thing I'll offer to the point of Rika what you mentioned about other sectors is that there are we talked earlier this morning and yesterday a lot about international arts exchange as an act of cultural diplomacy and while climate justice and I'll say for me is an indigenous person climate justice is paramount for me when we think about equity and when we think about the crises and the opportunities in our world right now the so many of us know intrinsically the power of artistic experience in exchange to transform and how are we making the case to others in other fields and others who would love to participate but we have to come together across that difference we have to be in a position of humility with other sectors whether it's international policy or environmental rights or you know there's so many possibilities when we exercise imagination and put ourselves outside of our comfort zones thank you Ronnie Mara you want to take us out here I'll do my best I'm going to try to link a bunch of things picking up on what you were saying I think taking that imagination to really try to put into the space what does success look like if we actually are able to move ourselves forward I've been thinking a lot about the boxing and also what we're setting up this next generation for and I think we have to acknowledge that although we don't want to focus on this kind of culture of scarcity the notion of room for error that margin has gotten a lot narrower than I think we perceive it used to be whether or not it actually has I don't know but the perception is there is no room for error anymore and so I think the resistance to risk taking with an artist when they know they're proven over here is that there is no room for error anymore and so as we imagine success and as we imagine what we want the desired outcomes to be I would like to put into the room figuring out how to expand what success looks like so that there is room for error within that so that we can take those risks with artists with collaborators with people that we're bringing in with what our audience's experiences are because we have gotten into a guarantee of experience way of looking at the arts in this world and I think that's the thing we need to try to break out of. I just want to bring this all together by just talking a little bit about the separation from art and artists, the distinction between the two and the relationship that I think for so long our field has been focused on the product as we know and not on the humanity of the artist and I wonder in all the ways that we've talked about here if the marketplace for art can shift to the marketplace of artists and what does that mean that sounds a little manipulative and I don't mean it to be but the idea where we're actually seeking relationships with others and that's what we're actually working on and we're not focused on what the product is and I know that seems quite obvious but I feel like what we're hearing from the artists in this room particularly is that they're still struggling to find a way to build relationships with the ecosystem of presenting and the world both locally and abroad that actually sees them for their full humanity and so what does that mean and how do the structures, whether it's the non-profit sector or the for-profit sector or our world as a whole how do we create the structures that we need that actually can celebrate those things that we're all actually trying to do here and we don't have to answer that question now but I guess this would be just a good moment and is this time to think about opening it up to the larger group here we let me just make sure I move on here so we'd like to now open it up to the listening circle and we would invite any of you in the listening circle who have anything to be able to share to feel free to take an empty seat we invite those in to this conversation circle who are compelled to rise and vacate your seat you don't have to leave but if you feel compelled to leave to feel free to make space for others but please don't all leave at once for those of you who will be joining us we ask you to remember to use your mic and to begin with your name your pronouns and a brief visual description like others have done and please to be mindful of the space you're talking and the space you're taking in this conversation circle for those watching online the HowlRound team will be keeping an eye on the video chat and may bring forth a question or comment or two from you on Zoom into the conversation circle during our discussion so would anyone like to oh thank you Zeba and so we invite any of you in the listening circle to please step forward if you would care too do we have a first brave soul thank you Lindsay hi welcome everyone I'm Lindsay Bostwick I'm a queer woman of small stature wearing a black and white textured dress and I have been at the art center at NYU Abu Dhabi for many years now working in the states at a resource center for emerging artists at NYU and thank you all for this conversation oh sorry I should say she hers hers pronouns one thing I wanted to bring up during this time that I thought about deeply along with my colleague Bill Braygan what is the role and the obligation of those of us working in well established institutions and higher education for those who are more at risk, for our creative producers for our artists, for those of us who want to take risks but from a financial place didn't have to in the sense of our livelihood being at risk for the work that we did so what can we do and I think about artists like McLeet Hedero who is both a brilliant artist programmer and curator and the work she put forward with your babuena with guaranteed how do we not just think of that as a small bandaid but how do we think of that and how do we think about having producers and residents at universities how do we think about providing space so that we're mitigating risk for other people along our field so just a thought thank you Lindsay do you I just want to bring a point and then I'll leave um I thank you for saying that especially in regards to international bringing international artists or communities because a lot of the work is not just about artists it's also about the communities that they're coming from and who they are serving and especially when they return to their native land and what that kind of sustainable dialogue could be and could imagine so sometimes I always think that after care is really important to have after you program that piece maybe that kind of continued dialogue because sometimes it's not just about artists that work itself it's about that community that dialogue that kind of really continued to to shift that ecosystem in their native land so that I think super super important and also how to kind of mediate the the west press sometimes maybe it's not about review maybe it's about previews maybe it's about story maybe it's about something because when we are programming artists coming from certain regions they have to go back and still have a sustainable career so that kind of very careful a name that do not just tick off organizational mission statements but their own um livelihood is very important to think about too so thank you very much thank you to you thank you Michael and please feel free to join us but in the meanwhile Ronnie please jump in I'll make a just a quick comment something that came up in some of the mornings this morning's conversation that I think responds to your question is this idea of a co-op model so I think Edgar you might have brought it up so I have to speak for you but I was so excited by it you know the notion that for for larger institutions or individuals you know who really believe in this work how are we pulling together to really support some of the initiatives and people whether it's you know creative producers whether it's artists the systemic change that we want to see how are we all pulling together to be able to do that I think is really important good afternoon everyone my name is Joshua Heim and I am a I use he him pronouns I am a mixed-race Asian-American Caucasian man with black hair black glasses and a black shirt I'm an arts person obviously and I just really appreciate this opportunity in this conversation I'm very new to this particular community I am now the new executive director of the Western Arts Alliance and we have a very significant program in this space around international arts and we do so in partnership with Michael with the NEA the program is called the Performing Arts Discovery Pad Program but I only started this in September before that I had a life in government and I wanted to pick up in the conversation about risk and a couple of things we've talked about Ronnie what you talked about diplomacy I was a deputy director of a quasi-governmental funding agency a local funding agency in the Seattle area and we administered nearly $15 million of CARES and ARPA funds and I oversaw all of our grant making programs and I will say that you know what was revealed in these local, domestic or international is that power systems in general we all know what they are now we saw them and we also saw how tenuous they were and how arbitrary our rules are and I will say from the point of view of a funder right we as a government funder we have a lot of rules and they all went out the door my colleagues at the city level my colleagues across the country at the government level the NEA all of a sudden we were getting money from places where we don't normally get we didn't have to report in the same ways many of our private family foundations excused the need to prove outcomes what so talk about imagination it is possible what did we learn what did we learn over the last two years is that anything is possible and right now we have the opportunity that that door is closing really quickly with regards to whether or not we're going to go back or what these new rules are which I think are actually really fuzzy but specifically you know you're bringing up risk and I will just say that one thing that we learned in our practice the place was called for culture and now even at the western arts lines or WA is it is not right to put the risk at the tail end of the transaction which is the artist and right now right the artists are bearing 85% of the risk and it took heaven and earth to work with our government partners to actually for us to assume that risk and the way that we were able to do it was to think more like private actors and more like businesses to going back to what I don't know where you went Michael and talking about is the 501c3 model the right model well I will say that we all should be reminded that in these last two years right the single biggest influx of public funding that we have seen since the new deal didn't come from this community it came from commercial music venues with save our stages they built the advocacy and the message to get I can't remember what the figure was billions of dollars right 15 right like billion it was incredible and so in other words and we have a lot to learn I think from expanding our purview from MFA artists I don't know what the other way to talk about it but to include a much wider understanding of who our universe is because at this point forward I think we all know that partnership has to happen as you were talking about Roy a partnership has to happen artist artist artist institution I think it now has to happen with you know local businesses whether they're commercial venues or not and the last thing I wanted to say is it's more like an announcement I've only been here for three months I don't know what I'm doing but I have this really big important grant from the US department of commerce and we've been given money to send delegates of agents and artists to international markets in Australia in Colombia and Germany it's commerce where do we sign up for that? and this isn't about diplomacy this isn't about conferring national identity and pride this is actually about making money and so although I do agree with what you were saying Ronnie about the importance of diplomacy I think perhaps this is a moment where we need to maybe claw back the importance of business the importance of sustainability for artists that what they're doing isn't charity actually what they're doing is making money for us all so those are some of the perspectives I wanted to share thank you I want to actually just follow up happily on many of the things you introduced because you're actually touching on from a really interesting perspective a lot of the themes that the IPC has been discussing about going outside of our normal networks to create partnerships outside of the traditional art sector and I think that that's something that we should really try to activate maybe in this conversation and I've already lost my train of thought so I'm going to open up another I'm really glad I'm sorry I'm Susan Bowden I'm she, her, I have curly hair it's short I'm wearing a gray blouse and black pants I'm so glad you brought up the and you're with St. Anne's Warehouse and I'm in St. Anne's Warehouse yes which I helped build I'm so glad you brought up the government subsidy of the last few years because that was an incredible influx that basically saved and also the foundations like Mellon, like Gilman like the ones that came up with huge amounts of money to basically save the industry and that can't be denied it was, it gave almost every institution and artist the opportunity to survive so it would be nice if that could become a sustainable thing so it doesn't have to only happen in crisis but that it becomes something over time that is part of the ecosystem the other thing I just really want to acknowledge is the interdependence of the global international relationships so for example St. Anne's is able to bring shows here from other countries in part because we have the support of governments from other countries and there's no one source that carries all of us or any of us so it is that combination of the international governments that give us support huge support in some cases it's the private sector it's the foundations but I think it has to be acknowledged that it's not just us alone in this country trying to figure out how to work internationally it's an international interdependent organism very similar to the to the economic organisms so I think we all have to work at it together so that no one is carrying the full burden I know you feel the burden as a funder we feel the burdens as presenters you feel it is the producer so it's really the interdependence of how we're going to share it in order to support the art so that it can happen so that's my main point thank you Susan just continuing to invite others to join us we have two seats here and a very comfortable conversation circle go ahead Rika excuse myself from the sea I just wanted Germany just reminded me that there is an organization called Purpose Foundation and I think out of Hamburg that is pioneering a kind of what they're calling steward ownership but a kind of new economy that is impacting the creative sector as well and there's an organization that's US based that's called Creative Action Network that has gotten funding from Purpose Foundation to remain a for-profit yet getting a group of investors and philanthropists and non-profits to sort of invest in the for-profit model whereby the organization is sort of led by stewards and the control remains in the hands of the stewards rather than I guess what has capitalism has sort of perpetrated which is this shareholder control and thinking about how the art sector can learn from it in terms of where the control lies and power lies and Purpose Foundation is something that maybe we can take cues from I think there's too much of an outlier hopefully there's more that looks to the hybrid models of impact investment into the creative sector but that's one that has come up in my research so I just wanted to share that Hi everyone, Jennifer Harrison Newman she, her, hers very pale right now a light-skinned black woman it is January with curly hair wearing a sweater with an image of a two eyes and nose and a mouth on it I want to come as my human being self but will acknowledge that I also walk into the room as a creative collaborator, as an independent producer and as the associate artistic director at a new performance venue student center at Yale called the Schwartzen Center so I know many people in this room already from various, various points and I'm responding to a few things that I've heard today and want to sort of frame my questions or my responses in the sense that I'm coming from this a very real place now of a startup within a university whose mission at the moment is, is to be a place for the arts and also a student center so we have several different sort of stakeholders that we're responding to as a maker as a creative producer I am so and have been in many rooms over the last three years and I'm so keenly aware of the needs and the desires of the sector from the artist's point of view, from the presenter's point of view, from the funder's point of view and I'm sort of responding to Lindsay's question about what can universities do to sort of be a part of the, I guess, the answer the solutions just want to put out there that those structures the rules that you mentioned the glacial pace of change in some organizations that as a creative producer who wants to put the artist's work forward who sees the value of long-term relationships as Rika brought up development processes so wondering, and I'm just putting this into the mostly as response to Lindsay is as a new space how to build a structure that does what can we offer what can I hope to offer that brings value to the sector brings value to the artists whether they're national, local, or international how can I think of a space as we're new and starting up what are the things that we can be doing to respond to the current needs Jennifer, thank you I do want to hold some more if you don't mind just I think opportunity for Lindsay if you're willing to respond to Jennifer and then I know there are many presenters in the room who actually could offer some really great ideas for Jennifer too so I invite you all to join us because we have two seats still here for you to join but Lindsay and then Michelle thank you for joining us too, Lindsay maybe over here thank you and thanks everyone for answering this call in a way and I guess one thing that I wanted to say in response because it is something that we've thought about that Bill and I and Abu Dhabi think about a lot is the fact of kind of how do we on earth the larger structural divides that happen in universities around the hierarchy of where the arts fit in and how by doing that by that disruption we are able to access more visibility more funding, more the idea of art as research which somehow becomes more valuable but also answers the idea of process right so when we reframe arts practice as research we're also answering a lot of things and we can access things and we can provide that visibility which hopefully will create some buzz some time, some resources and answer some of those Michelle, thank you Hi, I'm Michelle Witt I'm executive and artistic director of the Meany Center for the Performing Arts in Seattle at the University of Washington and I am my pronouns are she, her I am wearing a black turtleneck but I'd like to reflect such provocative questions and I'd like to reflect on what some big things that I've heard and share a perspective which is we're talking about building things collaboratively over time building relationships with artists and including artists in the fabric of institutions focusing on process which is so critical and also sometimes really needing to have that transactional product out there because that's important too to sustaining our institutions and then thinking about but I'd like to add in the international piece here thinking about international arts exchange is a form of cultural diplomacy a form of working with other sectors and and I think thinking about what success looks like here is really critical to understand because we can as universities, as institutions with spaces and connections to other types of research happening we have we can be laboratories for long-term relationships with artists, focus on the process man was a creative fellow or a melon creative fellow at the University of Washington we're able to focus on process over time but then open-ended a research goal but what does it look like when we start to really think outside the arts box and build relationships with other sectors both within an institution whether it's with the natural sciences or the social sciences or whether it's with climate scientists or others and what does success look like in an international context where we're working across both virtual and in-person platforms over time and I'd like to leave the room with that question because I'm really curious to know what you all would say Hi Bill Thank you Michelle Derek, Bill do you have anything I'm sorry I stopped you from speaking but did you want to add something that first before we mindful of cutting off an artist in the room You were right because I had something else to say that was not about this but I do have something to say about it in universities I'm sorry but just as a current PhD student at a university what I would say is a couple things this is just to think about anything runs this is just things I'm thinking about one is the university tends to be the largest landowner in the city so I'm wondering what that means how that can be affected how that can be dealt with leveraged etc it tends to just be a totally separate part of how we talk about the university is like the university as the arts and by the way the university is also the biggest landowner in New York City and Boston all these different places and as a result there's ramifications to that obviously in terms of gentrification etc but there's also the realities that they tend to be the biggest some of the biggest power builders in the space so I think that I would like to see how that can be challenged in a certain way and also how that can be used since it's there in the sense that for instance because there's so much power there how can we ask artists what they have to say about that how can we ask artists what they want to talk about in terms of challenging the police department in that city because the university is so powerful in that context the other thing the other way I would say it is I would love to see how I think a lot of artists have a lot of ideas but they aren't necessarily always allowed to play out those ideas in an academic context unless they are PhD students or something like that and so I would love to see more context in which the artists are brought in and are like there's some early work done around how can we bring them into contact with these people on campus that are really working on the same things that they're working on and they can affect each other and I just think that that would be really powerful and I think particularly because the university is a place where there's a lot of international work going on that would be very powerful in an international context thank you so much well I think your wish is here we have two additional university representatives at the room we're actually the same person so it doesn't matter I'll hand it over to you first Derek except I don't look like Elvis Costello sorry sorry sorry my name is Derek Goldman this is really really energizing and inspiring to be in this real room I use he, him pronouns I have graying thinning hair glasses, a black jacket and a scarf that enacts a theatrical cliche and I am director of the lab for global performance and politics at Georgetown University in Washington DC and I just this whole conversation has sort of a beautiful reverberations and echoes I would just share one of the interesting things about the lab our mission is to humanize global politics through performance and we're a little unusual in being housed primarily in a school of international relations in the school of foreign service at Georgetown though my, you know, I'm a theater maker and my faculty position has primarily been in theater and I think when the lab was founded we expected that the journey would be about the arts people really kind of getting it and supporting it and little by little we would drag along others in other sectors and in many ways and I think the pandemic actually amplified this our experience has been the reverse of that that the you know we being in Washington with a network of incredible artists around the world, young artists to kind of bring to the table we became, you know, a little bit we were able to be the cool kids in a lot of contexts that that have allowed that for me personally kind of made me shift from kind of migrating to rooms where I felt comfortable and safe and where I knew what my role was as a theater maker and towards rooms where I might be the only artist in the room in and some of them, you know, some of them were fruitful, some of them were less fruitful but starting to spend more time in among climate activists among people working on migration and not always knowing what I was doing there or what the result would be there and then being inspired by our students and our fellows who were sort of doing the same thing and I guess what I would just sort of offer is that I think the the the parts of this the most hopeful thing for us during the pandemic was having having access on a monthly basis to this extraordinary network of lab global fellows who are these 30 artists from different parts of the world, most of whom working in relatively isolate and isolation who self-identify as change makers and it's not false modesty to say the labs program I don't think was about anything the lab was giving them or anything that the prestige of Georgetown University was giving them was really about what they give each other and they became really a kind of lifeline for each other through that process and many of them are very unlikely combinations of people we're not it's not an industry driven model and so I think I'm just coming into the circle to kind of try to sort of like advocate for continued really sort of like put like mixing the stew in very unusual ways and trusting that like this artist working in refugee environments in Cambodia and this artist from Zimbabwe who have totally different ways of defining themselves might have nothing they need except the chance to sort of be together and supported in that work and a lot of the rest of us you know can move out of the way a little bit from that so Thank you Derek. Bill. So I'm Bill Bragan he him I am the executive artistic director at the Art Center at NYU Abu Dhabi so I am representing somebody working outside the U.S. primarily but I'm also a co-founder of Global Fest which for 20 years has been bringing artists from abroad to the U.S. so I'm kind of part of both sides of that I am I've got darkish hair and a salt and pepper beard and glasses and according to Derek I look like Elvis Costello and I had an Elvis Costello centerpiece at my bar Mitzvah and I'm wearing a shirt that's not polka dot but reads like polka dot so my high functioning ADHD mind is flying around and trying to bring a lot of these different points together going back to the original prompt about sort of what did we learn and I think that one of the things in what kind of we learned and held on to was the necessity for ongoing really deep and very candid conversation with the artists that I work with I think Lindsay and I with a lot of people here spent two years having like really personal conversations checking in like every two to four weeks how are you doing what's the situation where you are what's the situation where I am I think that question of equity thing really came out because I think we were all aware that the conditions based on where you were in the world and what your role was in that world was really really different and I think one of the reasons for example the theater for one project that Mara was talking about worked with us and Abu Dhabi and a group of artists in Nairobi and producers working in the US was that we were all really really transparent that we had different things to bring to the table and those shifted based on the conditions and when we had a virtual one-on-one digital theater project that could only be delivered over the internet and there was a nationwide power blackout in Nairobi the artists in Nairobi knew how to actually have the show anyway despite the national background there was a knowledge base that we didn't have what we had was financial resources that we could put to kind of buying the equipment so that they could do and so I think that radical acknowledgement and the communication I think is one of the things that really comes from it I think the sort of Jennifer and I had a conversation a little bit about this topic this summer about the what can you do and I think in that conversation is also then the conversation between the institutions and the organizations about what do you need as an artist what do we have what are the capabilities we have to I think it was mentioned like we have to justify it internally is this research if we're doing one-on-one micro theater it will never ever ever scale the commerce department will never support that argument but maybe cultural exchange will certainly we learned an enormous amount as an institution about sort of stepping into the unknown with an artist but I do also think about that sort of intensity and that shift in the practice and the sort of shift to slower touring and deeper engagements and relationships that also reduce the climate impact and maybe the cost of spending all the budget on plane fare rather than on salaries is to the point that Roya brought up and I think about a lot curatorially that means I'm going to work with fewer artists and as we're also as institutions and now it's kind of this is the speaking personally but I'm always aware that if I really want to deepen that engagement with artists so that we can have an arc and not have it be product oriented and be engaged in the process that means I'm saying no to many many many more people and it means that as we're also trying to sort of kind of open up pathways for artists who have been underrepresented underrepresented that's also kind of reducing so that is a stress and a strain I just want to kind of put on the table as we're thinking about finance amount of resources whether that's cash whether that's room in the theater whether that's staff bandwidth and yet the sort of goal to be more expensive so I just want to kind of offer that question out as well. Thank you so much Bill I think what you just hit on is really critical in my mind which is the way I've been doing my work both when I was at UNC but also at Mellon which is that it all boils down to human relationships and how much we care or how much we want to work on behalf of another and the importance there is that it is the commitment to the relationship that trumps all and that we have to find ways to want to work on behalf of others and this is why I'm so glad we have some creative producers here too and I just noticed Matthew's here and Linda's here and Miranda's here I wonder if you can all just join in now we have only about 10 minutes left so I just want us to be mindful of that but please feel free to ask your question or comments. Hi everyone my name is Miranda Wright I'm at the Center for the Arts in West Utah now as of four months ago I'm a white woman with dark brown hair dark glasses and a lumpy grey sweater Bill a lot of what you just spoke about is what is kind of shaking me in the core right now too and I was talking to Jennifer earlier about at my Center I'm charged with bringing in new ideas and starting to spark curiosity around ideas that the current audience doesn't, there's no demand there's no demand so if I'm going to follow this kind of pathway toward business during the pandemic I tried to become a capitalist I went for an MBA, I got an MBA I'm not a capitalist yet, I can't figure it out but I think what we all know is that capitalism or business practices are not going to solve all of the problems that we've been feeling for decades what could help solve problems is capital and access to capital and access to capital for artists, access to land capital doesn't need to mean money so I'm just trying to think through this larger idea and this kind of momentum I'm starting to feel from some of the conversation toward business practice and markets and you know these business terms but actually at the end of the day we just need to leverage capital toward the same goals that we have so this is what I'm, so I guess my question I wanted to leave everyone with is as human beings each of us probably have more access to capital than many people outside of this room and what are we personally as people who are in charge of institutional capital willing to put on the table in a practice of generosity when we leave the room today thank you Marinda, Kathy leading right from the notion of business practices and going back to Lindsay's question about what could the larger institutions be doing two really quick comments, one I think sorry, my name is Matthew Cubby I'm the executive director of Thomas Dot I'm a white man, my pronouns are he, him, I'm got a beard, a glasses and a dark shirt I'm going to answer this question in my capacity in a lawyerly fashion and I think one thing that's really important it goes back to what Rika was talking about in regards to how we formalize the relationships between presenters and artists which comes down from my point of view often to contracts and I want to say that we can have a lot of great conversations about building community and building relationships but then it goes to legal and then it all falls apart but I want to say that as a lawyer in the room it doesn't have to that there are ways to in other industries we have lots of ways of contracting fuzzy stuff and building community into contracts, you can do it it just takes work and it takes having your lawyers on your side so the larger institutions whether it's a large institution that is really hidebound by its bureaucracy or if you're a large institution where you're a big presenter at that large institution and you have the power if it's the latter push through the bureaucratic changes that are needed to come up with better contracts that create better relationships because if you can do it then they will spread those will become best practices throughout the industry that's one thing, other thing unsurprisingly cultural exchange, cultural diplomacy people have talked about visas they're hard but they're not impossible and the big institutions need to take the responsibility to push through the hardest of the visas for the rest of us that's what I had to say here, here, thank you Claudia, Linda you have you want to take us home how much time do we have left? a few more minutes? three minutes, basically my name is Claudia Norman she's an immigrant from Mexico City working in the performing arts and I just want to say that about the learnings about COVID on international work I think I have the opportunity to work with two artists with no access to technology no Zoom with commissioning to create a new work in the middle of COVID and I think to me it's like a deja vu going back 20 years probably 25 years when I started when I moved here and I started working here with no infrastructure but creating a festival commissioning a new work and I think to me the different the big point was what was the purpose of that commission to premiere in the US a wonderful work or really to support the artists in the rural community therefore their families and really that commission have an impact international impact not only because it's somebody from other region of the world but because that infrastructure was able to support an entire community abroad so I just want to believe like this as a thought that we've been able to present international work for a very long time the challenges has been always the same it's about policies about politics but here we are and I think to me is just I'm just really looking forward for the new generation of artists on the importance of having international work on having the learnings that the human relationship with others brings into our lives finally I think presenting commissioning being an artist or independent producer it's about sharing a human experience this is what we are doing after 36 months on Zoom with some of them finally we are learning and just by 2 hours 3 hours of human relationship so we have to keep going thank you Claudia nothing, please feel free well I'm Linda Brumbach from Palm of Ground at RGC Her I'm wearing a green jumpsuit I'm I guess upper middle age I I I just want a few reflections and I'll cut it short from what I was going to say but I thought it was just in terms of our international platforms really beautiful to see what was democratized over the last few years in the space for so many of us we each had our own little box it was the same size we kind of got rid of the color coded power structure of the many of the conferences and we opened up a lot of doors including the creative producer SEPA space that grew from 12 people in a room to almost 200 people now Michael I'm very thrilled you brought up the 501C3 structure I think we discovered maybe 5 people in that room were part of that structure so a lot of them had been invisible through the back door and I'm Samara just in terms of where you are the depth and the value of an artist being in a space with an institutional partner through the process I hope and I see expanding a little bit I think the whole idea and the value of we have to have a world premiere we're going to pay more for a world premiere or exclusivity it just feels dwindling appropriately so away because the value of having not just the lead artist but the expansive community in your community for 3 weeks, 4 weeks, 5 weeks the value of what happens to share that process with the entire community, the production team the people holding the vision of the artist is so valuable and I would encourage people not only to give your space and support your own staff institutionally but the artists are valuable and the people in those communities need to be paid for that time during those pocket those residencies that is deeply valuable shift of I think what international exchange means and can mean in our future thank you Linda well we've run out of time we are now at the end I think I'm going to ask you for some grace because so much was discussed that is I feel incapable of trying to summarize it all adequately and so if anyone else is able to do so afterwards please let me know and I can get some notes from you all I think what it comes down to for me is the capital that exists in human relationships is to acknowledge that artists are the chroniclers of our humanity and that we should be celebrating them as such and that we need to be thinking about capitalism the marketplace in ways that advance them as human beings not to advance ourselves and find opportunities for us to be able to access the capital that we already have and I really do mean that in ways that are much more expensive than of course dollars and cents and I really love Matthew your contributions towards the artists regarding reminding us that we accept things far more than we actually challenge them and that we want to make changes in such ways and yet we don't actually acknowledge the limitations that we've actually put upon ourselves and I'll just mention in closing in the ways that we at the Mellon Foundation have been trying to make some of these changes we are now making grants to LLCs for so many people that was anathema it was something that they didn't know was even possible and as we've done this work at Mellon and I want to acknowledge my colleagues Isabelle and Emily over there on the corner doing all this heavy lifting for so long now is that we are now in a situation where our legal counsel is not asking us why are we doing this or they're not asking us how do we do this they're asking us give us another one or what's the next one and how do we figure this out and there is actually tremendous amount of capital at Mellon for example beyond that we have a lot of dollars and cents but we also have legal capital we have a lot of other forms of support and I really do believe the ecosystem also has a lot more untapped resources than we think we do have and if we can just start in that acknowledgement and the values of each of our own human relationships with one another I think we'll find both the inspiration to act and the knowledge and the opportunities to come forward so thank you all as was mentioned at the very beginning this is not the conversation this is our conversation so please do forgive us if we have not covered everything you believe we should have covered and I do want to acknowledge everyone in the room who joined us today but especially those who braved the conversation circle thank you all very much for joining us and before we leave though I do want to of course turn it back over to the official hostess Jamie Galloom Thank you Amil can we please give Amil a round of applause so thank you all for joining us I want to just quickly again acknowledge some folks without whom this event would not be possible the IPC Syrian committee Susan Feldman and our host here at St. Anne's the support of the Bar Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts and last but not least of course the whole HowlRound team and a big thank you to everyone who tuned in online please take care and for those of you who are here in the room we now invite you to continue the conversation here during a nice little reception with some beverage and nosh until 5.30 thanks so much everyone