 Thank you everybody. Thank you everyone. Have you here today? Let's introduce, thank you. Hello, hello. My name is Victoria George. I am the audience lab director at Arts Boston and also the founder of the Network for Arts Administrators here today. Before I introduce our moderator for the evening and our panelists, I'd like to introduce you all to the Executive Director of the Boston Center for the Arts, Gregory Ruffin. Thank you. I just wanted to say hello and welcome to Boston Center for the Arts. Is this anybody's first time here in Baza theaters? Oh, wonderful. I love seeing the newbies. This is great. So we here are the nexus of the Arts in Boston. We are the place where people come to incubate their art. They come to experiment. They come to explore. They come to collaborate. And it often starts right here in these spaces. So we are very happy when somebody comes in and says, I've never seen this space before. I've never been here. And it's your opportunity to come and try something new behind us, Company One, who's one of our resident companies, has been here at the BCA since they're founding. That's given us a space to be able to have this evening. So it's really not BCA that's given up this space, but Company One. So if you haven't seen Hype Man, get here before 24 this weekend. Come back and see it because it's absolutely phenomenal. So we are very, very pleased to be able to have Ample Line Voices here. And thank you so much for bringing Arts Boston and the programming here to Boston Center for the Arts. Thank you so much for allowing us to use this space and to be here this evening. And also a huge thank you to Company One for letting us do it. If you haven't seen Hype Man yet, you are missing out on an incredible, incredible play. Production, acting, everything is fantastic, so please make sure you see it before it's too late. Because you'll be mad. So thank you again for letting us use this space and programming as well for letting us use this space. So this is the second in the series of three conversations featuring news of color in the arts. The first one we did back in December at Hype Arts Center, which was fantastic. And we have a few of the panelists here this evening. And so we are really just trying as best as we can to have the Boston community, the arts sector and beyond learn about and hear from these wonderful leaders of color who are in the arts. The narrative that we often hear is that there aren't enough qualified people of color who are either leading organizations or even involved in the arts community and that is false. Very much so. So without further ado I'd like to introduce to you Christian Guerra. So Chris is our moderator for this evening. She is the art collection and program manager for the mayor's office of arts and culture. Chris oversees the physical and intellectual care, custody and maintenance of over 500 works of public art owned by the city of Boston. Chris also supervises the Boston Arts Council's submission and approval process of public arts projects and guides the development of city commission projects like the Boston Artists and Reference of Boston Mayor. And important part of Chris's position is to advocate on behalf of the collection for resources act as a liaison to the community and work to safeguard artists' rights and prioritize cultural equity in relation to the city's public art program. So welcome to you all and welcome Chris. Thanks so much for inviting me today and I will quickly move into acknowledging our meeting speakers. Susan Shinsen is the Festival Director of the Boston Asian American Film Festival and the Managing Director of the Chinese Historical Society. Associate Artistic Director of the One Theatre of the World's Best Cultural Center. Director for the Theatre of Changemakers. About Pushing and Mission Driven Work. And Expert Owing Organizations. What are your professional values or your organization's values that play into decision-making around the program and project development that you do? Specifically I'm going to call out Veronica. Thank you very much. It's a pleasure for me to be here. Thank you for invited us to be part of this panel. I am a performer. I started my professional career when I was 15 years old. When I had the opportunity to be on a stage and see that I have the opportunity to share a message and the opportunity to be in people's minds somehow with my art I decided that I have to have a mission. How am I going to do what I'm going to do about it? So as a young person I was worried about me and the Jews, right? Because as a Jew you're always having problems and issues because you are learning about the world and nobody understands you and things like that. I just saw myself and all those people and I decided one of the things that I think we need in this world is love. And I'm very romantic and I believe in my life like that. And I am a living proof that love is a powerful tool in your life. And that's my mission. My mission is just to make sure that people understand that love is a powerful tool that accounts within you as a default. You don't have to add it. It's right there. That's your mission. So I was happy about everything. I didn't get mad for anything. The world take me places. I got married. I have a daughter and thank God singing has been my life and I've been making money out of singing Mexican music with my big hats. And also as a young person I felt the pressure of being sexy and pretty and always exposing your body. But I tried to learn a couple of times on stage but I couldn't do it. Because you know, I always am having and kissing people and everyone on the streets I just took my mother and she said, you don't have to say hello to everyone. And I'm like, why not? And that allowed me to do who I am. And that I took it as another powerful tool for my life to be myself. So being covered from bottom to top gave me an enormous power of being myself. And always being myself everywhere I went. Then I came to the United States again and I used to sing in Spanish for Anglo people. They really loved me singing and expressing but I didn't speak English so I was trying to say everything with my mimics. But it made me stay here in the United States and then I have to learn the language a little bit. And then I ended up in Boston for a long vacation and I saw the lack of representation of the Latino community arts and culture, the traditional dance and music. I love dancing and through my singing career I got the opportunity to travel to different countries first, I mean within Mexico first and then within Latin America and learn about the traditional arts. Again, it's the traditional arts that brings the value, the family values, the values that brings community together. So that's my value and that's the value that I wanted to share with the mission and mission of the Veronica Congress Cultural Center. So I started working with the community and again it is hard because the community really needs something, our children need something that really looks like them. They need all those and they also need to know that our cultures, that's another thing that I learned here in the United States in traveling different worlds. It doesn't really matter where are you coming from, where if it's in Asia or in Africa, whatever, the values of bringing people together which is family and love are the same. It doesn't matter what is your skin color or your language, those values are the same. So our mission, I decided to open the Cultural Center because I really didn't see a place where we really foster those values through traditional arts. And every decision we make in the organization it's based on that. We don't really like, if there's money there for a brand, you know, it doesn't align with our values, we don't do it because that's why we open the place in the first place. And our mission is to promote Latin American arts and culture as an engine for stronger communities and economic growth. Why engine for stronger communities? Because of that, because we're losing our children, the parents are losing their children because some of the parents they don't speak English and when the kids are in their teenage age they don't want to speak their language. If they don't start when they were very little they won't do it. After when they're 15, 16 years old they won't do it. And then they lose the bond with their families. Because parents cannot really tell them what's good or bad because they don't speak Spanish neither. So the bond is broken and nobody will bring them back. So we just want to make sure that we started from the very beginning so that bond which is love it's not broken. So that's why we open it. So then our values is to teach inspiring perpetuate those values that bring the community together. So that's why we at Veronica Rulos Cultural Center when every decision we make, we make it based on that. And it is important because this is the message after your life experience. I have a daughter, she was a beautiful dancer and we moved. We went to Florida and she danced beautifully. She loved dancing whenever you know dance came to her body and music. So we went to Florida to the school and she wanted to audition for a school and they asked her what would she represent and she said, oh I'm going to dance a folkloric dance from a cuba team or Columbia I don't remember. And the lady said why? No, not something. And so she came to my house and she said mommy why are we doing all this? Nobody cares. And I'm like that lady don't care. Everybody else will. Don't pay attention to that. Then later on we came back to Boston and my daughter passed away. She was 17 years old. Then after that I had cancer for stage cancer. I'm a cancer survivor. When they told me that I was a cancer survivor was when I decided to, I need to do something in this life because what I have inside it can stay there. I just want to make sure that people understand that okay, material things are important but those are just material things. We just need to be more focused on what we really enjoy, create memories, make memories with our children, with our families, with our neighbors. We really need to hold hands and be together around arts, around culture. And that's why we are there. That's why we are in this Boston at Veronica Rizca Center. Thank you very much. We look more like the people on this panel and the people in this audience. More diverse. I really reflect on the people that live in the city of Boston. I really reflect on their ideas and their interests and their passions. So, for summer, when your institution developed programs and projects addressing serious issues, what do you imagine the impact will be on Boston audiences? Figuring it out. One of the things that we are focused on in terms of the idea around impact and impact for the people of city of Boston is to move toward action. So, a lot of our work has been about voices that have not been heard in figuring out how to amplify those voices and figuring out how to do a better job of continually amplifying those voices so that what's reflected in the city of Boston and not this kind of like artificial sense of Boston but like really everyone that lives in Boston can be reflected on stage in the audiences on our staff, on our board. And now the goal is to have an impact of action. So, we're really thinking about how do we not only encourage people to have a theatrical experience which creates empathy, quite frankly, like helps other people to see themselves in situations that maybe they wouldn't see themselves and helps them to have a better sense of understanding. And then move toward a what can I do to make change. And so that's the impact that we overall hope to have. It's hard talking about things that are serious in this art form but it's necessary. It is hard to help people understand that this is just a stepping stone. Like it's great, it's going to be wonderful when you all come here and see Hype Man before it closes on Saturday. It will be wonderful when you do that. It will be even better when you decide to maybe get involved with Black Lives Matter. It will be even better when you decide to think about your allyship. It will be even better when you think about well what can I do in my professional life to make sure it's more reflective of the people that I see in Boston and that's the impact that we're trying to have. And it's been a slow but steady race that didn't happen overnight and it's not going to happen overnight. And it's a part of that steady growth and development that we are pushing ourselves through that will help us to continue to make art that will then push through the idea of the impact that we really want to see on this city. We want to be a lasting institution. We want to be an institution that leaves an indelible mark on Boston. Boston is intentional. There could have been a bunch of college kids who went anywhere. We could have gone to New York but we chose Boston because there was something about what wasn't happening in Boston that needed to be addressed and I feel quite frankly that we've done that portion and now we're on to the next stage which is bigger and better and harder but necessary that I do it. I lived in Boston and worked in Boston since June 1st from Dallas, Texas. So my top answer is I don't know I just got here. Again I think green game the experience I have from Dallas, Texas. I come from a community cultural center that was owned and operated by the city of Dallas in a historic neighborhood doing work from the African diaspora. So 10 years of that work and even growing in a cultural center you get to understand the vital role that arts plays in community. So impact as an arts administrator that is graying early trying to measure impact over and over again I just said you know come experience a program and you see impact for yourself. So again when you talk about moving young people from an arts education place to a place where they are the producers and sustainers and bearers of culture so that's the kind of impact that I'm accustomed to. And understanding where I come from in Dallas and just like the theater offensive we work strategically in four communities, Roxbury the South End, Dorchester and Jamaica Plain the culture happens in community it belongs to community and it's not something that's always exported and highly resourced and then sold back to the community or you bear community to come to where you are to experience it. So again how do you kind of keep culture in the community and uplift what's happening organically in community. So I know from experience and kind of believe that that's where Boston is and where it can be so the work that we do as a community center cultural institute as an artist and cultural institute is like how do we eliminate barriers to resources but also how do we center community and artists of voice. And our largest program is with Queer Youth. Now at one point in my life I used to be a Queer Youth. And you know I grew up in a family that let me be as sassy and opinionated as I wanted to be. So I can say from experience with Queer Youth you know if given the chance they can kind of lead you and guide you and tell you the kind of impact they can have if there's an opportunity there. So that's our largest program. It is a program that keeps us on our toes because the Queer Youth brings fire every day. But again and we're interested in how does art defeat racism. How does it give access to some other kind of social and also hiding the reality of what Queer trans individuals in particular especially Queer trans people of color are dealing with. So looking at intersectionality and how in Boston which is kind of different from where I come from in Dallas we're creating trans people of color also dealing with things like immigration, homelessness and things like that. So I think the impact again is unmeasurable. Sometimes it is a just safe space. Sometimes it's a place to be in a community with people who understand sometimes it's a warm meal and a lot of times it is fierce cultural production. We're talking about the work that you're producing and the people that you're working with and them being an avid audience and avid producers and co-creators. How do institutions keep themselves attuned to feedback of co-creators and participants when developing work creating work by collaboration and co-creation with these communities. How do they offer feedback and critique and some points of self-evaluation there. I thought Harold was hungry. You know I'll sort of maybe piggyback a little bit on sort of what the panel has already stated a bit. The Boston Asian American Film Festival we are now actually celebrating our 10th anniversary this year. It stems a lot from sort of the fact that you know it's been a conscious choice to do this here in Boston at least for myself. Personally I'm not a film critic I don't have an arts background so coming into this was not something I had ever asked for but rather something that was just needed and the community needed and you know I've kind of come into this role now and I think you know it's still taken a while and I'm still I think trying to embrace it myself but really this idea of the need of the community the sort of roots of wanting to you know justice you know social justice the change that we want to see but then also build a community in that space. It's really trying to think about what is the space that we're trying to have that reflects our experiences especially as Asian Americans I think here in the Boston area growing up just outside of it you know I was not an avid reader I didn't really like studying all that much I watched a ton of television but movies that was something that you know I found you know interesting I remember the first time I saw an Asian American film that you know they were speaking English and Chinese and I understood it and I was like what is this? It sort of blew my mind but it really sort of set that fire in my heart to be like I want to feel that feeling again and I think that sort of that idea that arts have this ability to reach inside of us and spark something inside of us that make us feel alive feel appreciated wanted and understood and I think the film festival has certainly strived to do that in myself as a sort of a person I really come at it more as an audience member and because Boston presented there's a lot of institutions in Boston that present a lot of Asian content specifically Asian American and it was sort of that need that existed and trying to find other like-minded sort of to find my tribe that you know that that sort of is where it's done from and that's sort of how it's grown but I think you know honestly you know I'm human I think that's sort of part of you know the privilege that I had in my role and being a curator and being the festival director and sort of helping establish it as such you know I think I don't often realize that privilege that I have and so you know you're kind of curating and we make mistakes I'm human and I think it's something I'm also trying to you know still struggle with you know these things like you don't always hit it on the head I'm grateful and thankful that there's so many people who have been touched by you know the space that the festival has created and the film the films that we present the filmmakers and you know the volunteers and you know there's definitely a community there but you know there have been times when I think you know sometimes the mark is a little bit off and it's kind of embarrassing like I kind of like did that really happen you know it's something I still struggle with but I think trying to figure out how to be respectful of that I don't have an answer for it I really wish that would happen but it does so you know that's sort of how I feel like I have to I come with it as I make mistakes so and trying to trust in the process of it being a community process and effort and contribution that you know I rely I think on a lot of the volunteers audience participation and feedback to sort of let us know like when we're hitting it on the mark and trying to keep striving for that. To other people on the panel like self-critique and institutional evaluation and kind of just how do you know you're being successful? So in 2010 I believe it's when we made our programmatic shift as an organization that we're going to work strategically in those four neighborhoods there was a couple of things that the organization knew at that point I think the staff representation and board representation didn't necessarily reflect the communities that we were in so we have to change that right so we worked strategically to get more people of color on staff and people not only people of color but also people who were coming directly from the neighborhoods we worked in we worked strategically to get more board members of color on staff and board members coming from the neighborhoods that we worked in so we can have critical voice and accountability from the stakeholders right so the board members and staffs and also how do we create opportunities for accountability within the community so we have a community speak out that has been annually which is kind of like a town hall a creative town hall where community kind of evaluates and also dreams with us around the program that they would like to see. We're working this year and it's been impactful to change programs, we've created programs based on what we've heard and we've been called to action about how we show up and how we can show up better based on needs so now shameless plug so again I don't know a lot so the staff made sure I had every note and print out it's an all day highlighted thing that I was supposed to mention that our next community speak out for us out there is Monday, March 19th at the Little Victoria Center for the Arts and we're taking that model to every community that we show up in and just saying what are you seeing and how can we be a part of that and how can you hold us accountable to that the work that we say we want to do to our mission. Another way again is that we have traditional kind of surveys and opportunities for artists who engage either our artist residency program or community programs to give us feedback but they also know that they have access to us 24-7. One of the things that we're really interested in, we looked at the amount of money that we have and what we can actually place on a project and say where do we have critical impact and a lot of it is in technical assistance, professional development and some kind of creation of programs and so again you cannot do that without being in conversation with the creators or the creators and critiquing you and your process around it so there's a lot of different ways that's ingrained I think in our organization that it shows up on multiple levels and then again if I need to reiterate the youth, we didn't have to create space for them to hold us accountable, they were doing it anyway but we have a leadership and inclusion council that's made up of youth who've been a part of our program and every program that has youth involvement or it's meant for youth has to go to that leadership and inclusion council to have youth feedback. Then when you love so much you need to also show that your work is actually having an impact in the community so we create job opportunities in the traditional arts for youth. We actually in this post fund we have a lot of violence on the streets and a lot of people complain about it or went out with the candles and everything so since I lost a child I really really didn't feel like going out on those activities and I'm like I'm already doing something I'm already making sure that those kids don't grow up with that feeling of hatred. They just hear loving each other interacting with everyone with the intergenerational relationship through our events so we started creating jobs trying to bring those things that we have in our communities like the corn on the cob street corn. Any of you have street corn yeah so that is very popular on the streets on our countries so the first year we shipped the buy from Mexico City and we put the juice to work let me tell you these girls and these boys from Central America I was trying to explain them how to do it, no let me tell you you know this street corn is just corn but the tradition and so this way we're providing this type of jobs to them so they can feel that their culture is somehow attractive and interesting and through that you can create community too so we have that and we also support aspiring professional artists right now we are supporting salsa dancers they are a couple of boys that wanted to have their project so V-Rock is the home to Mambo Mambo House of Mambo and we also have their style on to salsa so they're teaching there and they're doing socials and they're earning some money and we also have networking opportunities for everyone we also connect those resources with our community last year with the mayor we have an immigration informational session we also have entrepreneur conversations, we bring people on the creative business so people know how to establish their business in the creative sector we also have an area where we encourage youth to use multimedia to give a message as a way to get to know people in business and sectors that probably they would never have the opportunity otherwise so last year we created the through the eyes of the youth which is a video project, it's kind of a blog we started with a magazine we send the kids on summer to one of those racing from Latin America, the Peruvian one interview, the people there, you have to see what they wrote, it's amazing and then we created the video blog and so the kids interview CEOs and they ask them questions like what is your culture doing with your business, how that had an impact on your business and your family, things like that and from those things we create amazing opportunities for this youth and our programs are based on our values, and our mission is community and economic growth so we want to make sure that the arts like myself, I am Mexican I sing in Spanish and that's my business, that's what I do here that's how I pay the organization it's a no profit organization but this humble Mexican is financing everything for my husband, we have spent over $5,000 from our pocket, we don't ask anybody and that's with my art, so that's another thing that I want, the youth and other artists know that they are responsible, they are really passionate about it they really take it seriously, they can't make it happen it's just that they need to work for any other career we have a professional career too, so we have to change that we have to make sure that the community understands that art is a career we are actually professionals, we don't need that like traditional service, so we get the feedback from people and you are welcome to come to any of our events and enjoy what we do there, we work with the old library and we are going to be moving to that building and we will also not only do Latin America traditional arts, but in our business plan is also to open up to other traditional arts that represent that side of the community, so that's how we we are working right now, we are learning as many challenges we have to go through, but we are there and we are working and I think we are getting in some way what are the biggest issues that you are currently struggling with as an organization and what is the change that needs to happen in Boston for the sector to move forward I think money and time, but that's a given outside of those things, I think the biggest difficulty is convincing not everyone believes in the power of what it is that we are choosing to do, and because not everyone believes in the power of what we are choosing to do, not everyone is able to understand the impact that it can have, because they don't understand the impact that it can have, they are less likely to support it because they feel like its impact is going to be small or insular, only reach a few people as opposed to understanding the kind of drop in a puddle sort of thing, where the thing drops and then there are things that ripple out endlessly, and I think that's our biggest challenge is that it would be wonderful if people really took more time to just trust and believe when we say there is an impact not make us spend all this time to prove what the impact is but to just trust and believe that there is an impact to come and be witness to a person having a moment where they are awakened to something and then seeing the effect of that and then deciding to pour into the organization in terms of resources that are finite and also infinite so it supports where it's going to get a little dicey, it supports where people say they want to see the city go and I think people say a lot of things about where they want to see any place move toward but it gets really tricky to have those things, plans be put into action in a more immediate sense which is what I think all places need action now and I think there is a great demand for action now on a host of issues, it's just harder to get people to hear it because they are a little afraid of what that might mean At the theater offensive, our organization is close to 30 years old we have an organizational value in a statement that says defeating homophobia in our neighborhoods requires defeating and I would add undoing racism too and so as an organization right now we are sitting with the complexities of what it means to undo racism what it means to examine the historical impact and also the current actions of white supremacy within our organization, within communities and things like that because 30 years of allegiance to a non-profit industrial complex and models that really isn't serving our type of organization anyway it's time to think through all those complexities and propose and act a different way and so I gave some stats we have a lot more people of color within our organization who are sitting with the complexity alongside our white counterparts and our white allies I'm always down for a good undoing racism strategic, it takes a lot but the one thing that I've come to understand about institutional racism I could literally take it short the way we're going within our organization where we know this is where we need to go because we have the right team, so the boarder, we have the right staff and Boston really is the right community to talk about what it means to undo racism and homophobia kind of simultaneously and then share that with other parts of the world it requires us to bring our full selves like to be honest about histories and systems that we benefit from whether we want to or not and be open to change which is hard because when you are on the privilege side of whatever equation you can sit kind of comfortably, so what does it mean to become uncomfortable and even dream, right? so I'm guided by Black, African Futurism that says another world is possible but we have to start enacting that world today so again we're an intergenerational organization we have some fun times and some conversations that we're having and even things that we're trying, right? so again there's a time element that we know it's not going to happen with an strategic plan everything that we need to do but we're really committed to that type of work so if you're a praying person you can add my name to the altar because again if you have been a part of any kind of social movement and understand or benefit it from the impact of it you know that it's hard but it's kind of required right now in terms of Boston I can use my answer, I don't know I just got here around what the opportunities are but I can talk about like a hope and what I would really like to see and understand is Boston's investment in local artists and the local arts community here. I know what kind of happens nationwide and often times it's the local people but you know the taxpayers the ones that are born and raised and committed to a place that gets a shard of another stick but really outsiders we look at how you're investing in local community to decide if we want to go there or if you want to move so again Boston has this opportunity to either amplify their work and really understand in my radical thinking right and this is probably why they made me leave Dallas, no you know because I work for the city and encouraging what does like bottom up economics look like right so what do we give the most money to the organizations we historically give the least to and that people at the top of this equation figure out how to sustain and build so you know I'm wondering if Boston is interested in that type of engagement where historically you know organizations that's because of size and staff and that are not required to prove the impact over and over again just because somehow we don't know how they've been able to acquire such wealth we're still trying to figure out how wealthy people sustain wealth what I say is that what I say when I say you know it's off the labor it's off the labor of poor people and largely poor people of color right that sustains a certain type of wealth so again so if we reverse that and that's the invitation I have to Boston let's reverse that and see you know if the top dogs can sustain the ways in which you know these grassroots organizations who we've been giving our bloods within tears and all of our resources that sustain and build there's something that I'm very positive and very humble from the very beginning but being actually investing in the community I also notice that there is no inclusion on opportunities for us as a minority in the institutional you know sector first it was because I wasn't a 501c3 right I was just a volunteer in the community trying to do things so not even myself thought about getting into Boston institutions and getting money because I wasn't a 501c3 then I said okay let's institutionalize what we're doing so we decided to open the cultural center and try to do the way we're supposed to do it so we're there I visit school as an artist as a performer I get hired to go to schools to different cities of Boston and other states and other countries they pay me that's what I do that's my business I charge I charge $800 yeah that's what I pay myself as a single woman Mexican woman and I teach and I give my life to Boston volunteer in the system Boston public schools I really want to see what I do in the ethnic traditional arts and schools so I am trying and trying and trying I apply I never know about grants because it's my business so just how much I don't even have meetings I do it on my schedule my contract I go I do my thing and then I live and so happy blah blah blah and I have a spread and get love from everyone here I have to go so far anyway so I volunteer also I work in a project for Boston public schools I was called the heritage academies we work with Harvard a project from Harvard I just went there to volunteer I ended up being the director of the program I don't know how that worked but I made things because everybody was you know we should teach Spanish with traditional way or just through the arts whatever so I try to bring both together so I just I came out with a project and a plan that we were successfully you know completed the program then I saw the organizations big organizations that were providing the summer programs and the after school programs for the children and that's how I got the idea okay okay we need to do something so we can be like those organizations to bring these activities to schools but it's been so hard really and then I apply as an artist because I want to go to the schools to make sure that the kids get exposed to the traditional arts first Latin American but of course I would love to see all traditional arts represented in our schools then I go to the schools and I ask the kids where is Latin America where is Canada where they don't know they are 7, 8 grade and they don't know they don't know what a circumference is because when I teach dance I talk about geography I talk about geometry and all of those things that are supposed to be in schools so when I go to schools here in the city kids don't know that and so anyway I applied for a grant and they denied it because I really was applying not for the money you believe me it's not about the money it's just that I want to make sure that we bring this to the East Boston community so they denied the grant it was its besters because they said the feedback was because I was probably not experienced with high school so I've been teaching kids of my life right so and then I don't want to apply again because it's a lot of work for me as an arts administrator as a volunteer and it's a lot of work and then the other thing that I see they don't really get it probably I need to teach them the customers I don't know if you have seen a skirt from that is about 16 to 20 yards of fabric and so in all those yards so each skirt alone it's like over $100 and that's cheap because you bring it from other country plus the shipping and everything so when it comes to put on the budget something like that they're it's a lot of work and it's expensive and that's the thing our traditional arts are put under it's not I don't see that they take traditional arts as a fine arts it's a fine art and that's another thing we really need to understand a traditional arts and the arts are fine art it doesn't matter what kind of art so that's the other challenge that I see in our communities and thank God Granted the money for me to go to the Umana Academy in this Boston so right now and another hand so it's not that I'm complaining because they're doing a great job but what I'm saying is that probably the panelists they're not informed they don't know about so that's why we need more venues for us to showcase so I don't know if that happened to you I think this idea of even having this panel and amplifying voices the fact that we're all sitting here in this room it is there's been a lack of information and knowledge or lack of elevation of the need for this I probably as an example for the film festival you know we've been very fortunate and relied on other institutions in the Boston area to support us to recognize the work that we have been doing as valued as important I think without our relationship with Arts Emerson and having access to the Bright Family Screening Room at the Paramount that's a world class screening venue I have filmmakers that come and say they have never screened their films it's such a nice theater before it's like bells and whistles to the 90s and to be able to say that to provide that this tiny little volunteer type organization for them to value that has gotten us to where we are at our 10th anniversary sort of nationally known as a festival worth coming to that we respect filmmakers that we care for their arts that we want to be telling their stories that there is an audience here I think that was one of the biggest things being a person here in Boston that films wouldn't come to Boston, distributors wouldn't bring the filmmakers wouldn't come here because when they did they didn't know where to find audiences. I would show up to places and there would be a handful of us and maybe 30 and then sort of now that we have a space and a vehicle to bring people together I think the fact that we all have jobs as administrators we have privilege and resources and access and the fact that we even have this networking group is amazing that I had heard about at starting I was just sort of like oh my gosh people that will understand the work that will value the work that I do I'm just really excited to be here and I just would probably want to just sort of lead with that piece that I think there's something that we can all do to support one another and help to continue to get our voices and stories told and to make a difference here in Boston because I think is Boston ready to have some of these conversations and I don't think we are like we really are not people think that they are but just given what's happened in the past months, past year I'm feeling very challenged about that as a reality but yet there's still so much more need and that we still can't give up and that we do what we have to do. We have a lot of work still ahead of us but we will continue to try this. Question, thank you so much for our amazing panelists thank you so much BCA, thank you so much Company One and thank you so much for coming out here and for the great audience. We appreciate you spending your time with us on a Tuesday evening even though it's nice out and again I would love to thank our esteemed panelists so thank you to Harold, Veronica, Summer and Susan and thank you so much to Chris, our moderator. The conversation in this series will be May 24th at the ICA Boston so put that in your calendar and we've got some wine and some snacks outside so please join us outside I'm shocked that you are not doing Q&A I know, we didn't do that for you so I don't know, I mean not that I have anything to say I'm sorry I joined this but I've never been in a session in a long period of time there is supposed to be Q&A and that was my response Sure absolutely, we can certainly do Q&A or something happened to anybody that has a couple of questions Thanks I joined the ICA last weekend called Seeking Sanctuary I'd involved a string group called Palaver which is a sort of residence as well as people from the Chinese community the Irish community and the Cape Verdean community so they played Chinese Cape Verde and Irish music but that was interspersed with people from those various individual communities in most cases young kids talking about their stories what I realized was that the interaction of those stories was incredibly powerful and suggested to folks over at the BCA that maybe this continued so picking up on your point and I think I don't get your name I'm sorry I started to think about into interaction let's say there are four groups represented here what if there was a collaboration among those four groups as well as others bringing in people from representing those groups to tell their stories and perhaps having music I don't think there should be an emulation exactly of what happened with Seeking Sanctuary but the point of sort of breaking down barriers and where the collective is more than the individual parts and building on that to I think deal with the point you were raising I think everybody in one way or another was raising how do you break through the constraints of how many of them are self-imposed but the others are imposed by the sporadictness of this city but looking at the assets that are there whether they're performers or whatever they are but they're parts of your community and sort of digging out that and giving people free rein to talk about themselves talk about their lives here how they got here what they're doing here what they would like to do here and what is the music that they listened to about that just make a comment that I think that's sort of what in a sense ArtsEmerson has offered the Film Festival that opportunity to do and sort of share their resources with us to be able to for the Film Festival to tell our own stories and to bring our own filmmakers and to curate you know those different voices I think you know we've tried to also you know be intentional about sort of some of the intersections that we try to address in terms of you know mental health LGBTQ issues you know blazian narratives which is probably one of our most successful screens that we held when our audience were last festival but really talking about sort of these multi-racial backgrounds that people come from because it's not black and white anymore and that these are complex things and so you know I think the idea that within our various cultural institutions that we work within to create space and be thoughtful about you know your own curation or just how resources are made available or who you invite to the table makes a big difference so I think one of the things that we kind of notice in our neighborhood model is that those kind of collaborations with amongst artists and even arts organizations are already happening so it was a question of did we know about it or if we didn't know about it were we experiencing it and why and again I think that's why we moved to a model of again keeping art and culture really where it happens and then either kind of making connections so we think about our audience as much as we think about our artists right and who should experience this and why and where should they experience it because I think that also kind of make change on the cultural authenticity if everything is exported and again I think the question for us is you know how do we get the same resources from things that we take out of community into community to kind of sustain it. Our whole model is it's a storytelling model that's based off of a southern model from John O'Neill from Free Southern Theater where storytelling was, the story circle was used to just listen to community right so giving people the same amount of time and the same amount of prompt to hear what was coming up and in that model you find that community and people were not listening to each other even trying to fight for the same causes but there was not a space to just be heard and share story and similar experience so that's the model in which we kind of do a lot of our work but again it's important because I think the risk of taking it out of community is again community doesn't get to experience what they've kind of created and then there's a fact I mean there's a reason we have kind of high art standards if you want to use that right and there's a reason arts districts exist away from neighborhoods right so again it's like what is the bridge what is the connection when I think about my own personal life and like the major impact you know it didn't necessarily come from the symphony because the symphony was one I didn't want to play but the symphony was a field trip right but what was happening in singing Hills, Texas you know whether it was blues, barbecue and you know those are the things and that kind of organic storytelling that kind of shaped me so again like what's the bridge that brings those two worlds together I think it's my question. Thank you guys so far I guess the major questions in my mind when I talk about culture and life are how do you foster trust and money right they're all strangers at first but they really should be all together we're all connected we're all here how do you foster that trust of long lines and then bring the money into those communities because that's ultimately what we're trying to get together like right love trust community along with these projects how do you foster more of that that's not just in a setting like this but like how do you really pump that into the community so to a lot much information and politics and arts and actually have honest conversations that don't just get put into small rooms and don't really go out like how do we get it like daily your community center sounds amazing you're doing great work but how do you really pump it I don't want to get lost here how do you pump the money and the knowledge back into communities that really don't see it trying with some experience that I gained through the five years that I will be here we are the cultural center we receive over 2,000 people a year visiting with our events 2,000 people from different aspects of life different countries you know multicultural families Latino families with different you know other cultures within their family with the dance group we reach out over 5,000 people a year because the youth perform all over the region so we started spreading delivering a message so last year our youth after the performance all during the performance they make a statement especially nowadays with these shootings although I'm really worried about it so I'm humbly doing what I'm doing so I'm making sure that other kids understand that and they think that they have the power of delivering a message so this year we are gathering together with parents and children since we have that opportunity to be in front of an audience and different festivals from a variety of people from different you know cultures so this is what I think and I envision how we can use those resources that we already have as a performing performers and the performing artist area or you with your movie screening how we can deliver a message like maybe we can put together a message that aligns with the same vision and mission and not just keeping it here so we're trying to do that with learning but our compromise with the community is that how we can with the access we have to the community or those audiences we can deliver a message that is powerful and that brings what we talk about here out and spread in the community I don't know if this is really going to answer your question at all let me just preface by saying this but I feel compelled because what you're talking about is that's a huge question that is a huge question I think it's something that we're all striving toward right like how do we make the thing that we care about and have and that has an impact in this world go back into like feeding the people and the areas that need it right like theater is such an elitist art form right it does not need to kind of keep perpetuating those cycles and so I think the closest answer that we are working toward as company one theater and this is going to take some time to figure out exactly what it means but it feels like a step in those directions we started last season we did a production at the library in Copley of a play called Peerless and it was a pure purely pay what you want model and the benefit of that pay what you want model not pay what you can but pay what you want did a couple of things one for some people would never move the risk right two it was it was in a public space right like thinking about what are some of the last vestiges of like purely public spaces the library is one of those things and open for everyone right so you can have someone who is super wealthy utilizing the library and someone who is transient using the library right it is a common good space and so figuring out how to deliver and I'm only talking about theater because that's what I know right but figuring out how to deliver theater in a way that is one really talking about accessibility in all of its forms and also demystifying and like breaking apart the myth that theater is not for everyone and I think that's the biggest barrier apparently because there are forces at play that work to uphold that every single day and until those things start to get ripped away that kind of funneling back into community is not going to happen because a part of what's not being funneled into community is meant to keep it separate from community and therefore meant to retain the position of power in the theater hold in this society and so I think all of those words mean that as soon as we can figure out how to really systematically go about breaking down what those barriers are those other things won't be able to flow through but when we do it will help you know I think that idea about money and sort of access to money and resources that we have for our organizations and the work that we want to be doing is a big one and I'm going to just share sort of my naivete with all of you here I'm not like a big like political activist like I think I'm an activist in the sense like I support things and I would tell people and I would amplify voices and campaigns but like I don't really understand or I haven't really understood how the political system works but there are certainly things within a structure but it's like the establishment there's an establishment that exists that I have always felt sort of like this from like that's the establishment and I'm over here and what I do is here so whatever is within my own confines we're not going to make it happen so it will continue to happen whatever is within my access but as I'm kind of coming to understand and as I try to become more civically engaged and understand how the political system works that there is a need for me to be more vocal about what it is that I do and why it's important and to tell and feel like others also have that capability of doing that I'll just give this one example of what I'm going to give a plug I don't know if Tracy is still here from that creative but you know probably about two years ago I was you know sitting at my computer and I remember getting a call from them being like hey can you join us you know sign up as a thing and give us your support and I was like I don't know I can't get my board to do that that's going to take like whole vote and all this stuff and I've got like 20 other things I'm going to do right now so with my answer but you know I got these like emails about how you could just like sign a petition and I'm like oh I can sign a petition change.org you know I can just click here done awesome process of understanding like the next email I got was like click on here find out who your senator is tell them why this is important and I was like here's an email and I was like whoa this is going to take quite quick and it was just amazing that Allison and the next thing was like oh we're having this like lobby day I'm like lobby day what do you do to lobby day like these politicians want to hear like I've never heard of this this is just like mind-blowing to me they're like click here find the phone number make an appointment and I was like alright let me just try this and there was I had an appointment with my elected official granted I wasn't able to make it because my child got sick that day I stayed home with them but I felt so incredibly empowered to think that these people that vote for policy can change and impact my life because literally just like the year before I had gotten one of my first grants from Mass Cultural Council and then Mass Humanities Mass Humanities what killed me but I got the money and it just made such a huge difference like it wasn't a huge grant but really just a few thousand dollars just just gave me this like sigh of relief that I got it like just that much money and to think that you know if I can help share that story with these politicians that are making these decisions like you know I've heard you know there's current proposals to kill the NEA and the NEH I'm like what is this world that we are living in I just I can't even I just want to go back and add because there's an addendum to my answer and the answer is the addendum to the answer is so that was the path that I talked about and I wanted to talk about what's going to happen moving forward so this summer we are going to be producing a show called Leftovers at the Strand and we're going to do that same pay what you want model at the Strand and the idea of where the dollars come then in terms of the community number one we're like a little collector so we're a night dinner theater company we go around all over the place so we collect people and we say like fall in love with us and then follow us to wherever we go and that we'll all kind of come together into different places and different spaces and so now instead of like it's great Kite Man is here it's wonderful the BCA has been our home for years and years and years and that's a super dope that's amazing but Barcelona and the Beehive don't need your wine dollars in the same way that the area restaurants around the Strand do and so how do we support that and then it's about creating purpose for people who maybe are in those communities to come into the community and discover what that community has and not in a like and now we get the pillage but in a like now we can support and we can know like oh this is a thing another example of that is we do these open rehearsals and our last open rehearsal for Kite Man was at the Dudley Cafe and it was amazing to watch our donors and we know with the typical profile of some donors to theater companies are to watch our donors come into Dudley and have this experience in Dudley Cafe and I was like oh I've never been here before this is really lovely and oh my can I have my wine I suck yeah this is great and then suddenly I get an email from them saying oh we went back and we had brunch there right like it helps to almost and I hate to use this word but destigmatize different places for people who don't go to different places which is a Boston's whole issue and they will definitely eventually give us to breaking down those things and get us to that place at least I just got too sick because I thought we were going to do a good thing that's what we're talking about one of the things that kind of motivates me is listening and participating in the Black Lives Matter movement where there's a chance that says I believe that we will win right no matter what the obstacle is but that just belief and then daily I've started to read out loud Masada Shakora's affirmations it also starts with this kind of list of beliefs and I think it's a belief that you know some of us are so far removed from say a thriving Black community that we don't believe that it ever happened right and so even when we read about it and we see films about it it just seems so far from my existence but like transforming our minds to say you know we were once in these kind of thriving self-sustaining communities that were really principled around things like self-determination and cooperative economics and stuff like so it's like they're not as far the big desires and beliefs that we want they're not as far away from us as we think they are however you know the question and it's like well what happened right you know Black people didn't stop being Black you know they didn't stop believing in each other and have self-determination with these policies come in community and you know we can talk about that all night and that's another panel conversation but again it's like how do we get back to being self-sustaining and being thriving and there's something so valuable about our culture that again people want access to it and they did and yeah so again so again I think it's just a belief a belief a belief in affirmations and then starting to create that world because we know what it's like to be self-sustaining we know what it's like to share economics and we know what you know community and cultural wealth looks like if we just reinvest in it at the same time file a press of policies and practices that have resulted in things like gentrification and other things that are a little more and I am the kind of person that likes to leave a panel and have some target objectives of things that I like to do and maybe I'm not quite understanding of the purpose of today so I feel like today when I like to leave with this understanding one what is the purpose of these panels for BCA that might not necessarily be a question for you guys but what is the goal of bringing everybody together to talk about these issues and what are you guys trying to do for that movement forward and then also what are the objectives that we as a community can leave with here today as objectives moving forward because I feel very much that in the arts community in particular in the community of color we have issues around three different areas around access which is the ability to have the chance to work in some of these theater spaces which seem formant to us but really should not be and because our art is not some of the Eurocentric art form and more of a sort of folk traditional style dance that tends to often prohibit us from being having this access to these theaters and two I think funding so the problem that we are going to talk about having grant funding grant applications as an art and unfortunately we have very different levels of non-profit organizations there's your variable established companies that can pay grant writers to write their grants for them there's your middle level those are the people that are like sort of beginning to understand the process and are getting out there I feel like you know much of what we're talking about is more middle level and then there's your grassroots of people who are trying to you know get themselves up by the bridge and they don't really know what to do you know what is being done on that end to help people at a grassroots level understand how to get grant funding and support one another in that process even through methods of mentorship whether that be you know how do I contact you guys about mentoring me you know each one teach one and then my third level is that I really feel it's a matter of your application but not so much just talking to one another but understanding how to get our art out to people who don't normally see that as art so how do we target those areas and how can we do that as a community moving out here forward if you realize that maybe the higher level community isn't doing that for us well so for me this is our first time but I really speak about what I spoke today I always work in and this is the audience perhaps that probably listening to me right now get to know a little bit about what I do and how I do it and otherwise I wouldn't have this opportunity so for me it's a huge opportunity again to express what I'm doing and why I'm doing it and getting to know each other also with the panelists there is always an outcome of this kind of possibilities because I always at the end we continue working with the people that I meet in this kind of panel so that's my aspect my point of view and before you came we talked about we as a traditional artist or ethnic artist our art is not well appreciated or it's always seen under the level and we are a fine arts too so we really want to see and use these panels to bring the attention to those little details and so that's what I think excuse me just to answer some of the other questions that you had one of the great things about being able to run the network for our administrations of color is that we are all in connection with each other so we know about events that are going on we know about grant opportunities we know about all these things that you're talking about and we are sharing them with each other and only with each other and that's really important that's one of the reasons why I started the network was to be able to make sure that we had a space a way of communicating with one another because that wasn't really happening and so that is already in existence and it's already running it's already working and certainly for people who identify as people of color and who want to be a part of the network I mean we are open I am open to that and we will welcome you in the other part and the reason why we are having these specific panels in these conversations is that we don't often get to see leaders of color in the arts talking about their work talking about why they do their work and really showing that they are equally as talented and as smart and as engaged and as loving of this community and also the other leaders that we see having those sort of stages and those platforms and that's why these conversations are happening right now so the internal work is happening amongst us and sharing of information resources and then these public dialogues are to make sure that the rest of the world that we live in here in Boston understands that we are forced to be reckoned with we are actually going to be launching a mentorship program in the spring we also think that's important because again this is a network for making sure that we are supporting each other and bringing each other up and making sure that the next generation behind this is ready to go because they are chomping at the bit and they want it and so the network is really sort of pushing forward to make sure that happens as well so without further ado I just want to say thank you all again for being our really the two organizations that I really think are going to do a really interesting job of reaching out it's a NIFA New England Foundation for the Arts and at Boston really I am a witness and the Boston Cultural Council to the city of Boston is doing great things trying to reach out the community so a big round of applause we can't do this work without money let's answer your question and so you know we are very thankful that Bank of America has set up to say hey we believe in what you are doing we believe in this work and we are going to support you so the resources are out there the people who know about them are here and let's engage and keep moving forward and whenever money comes your way send it our way