 Hello and welcome to discovery conversations about the power of the arts to connect us to each other into place. I'm Victoria Rogers vice president of arts at the night foundation. During me today is Henry Tim's author public speaker, creator of giving Tuesday and president and CEO of Lincoln Center for the performing arts, preeminent performing arts complex here in the US, and home to 12 performing arts companies and educational institutions, dedicated to music, dance and drama. Lincoln Center for the performing arts, the Met, the New York field, Juilliard, New York City Ballet, the film Society of Lincoln Center, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, jazz at Lincoln Center, Lincoln Center Theater at the Vivian Beaumont Theater and the School of American Ballet. If you have questions and we hope that you do today please submit them through the show. If you're using zoom, use the Q&A button at the bottom of your screen through Twitter use the hashtag night live and in the comments section of Facebook live stream. We'll get to as many of them as we can throughout the conversation. Now Henry, welcome to discovery. I'm very pleased to be with you thank you for the invitation. Oh, you're so welcome. Hold on a minute I've got a chat message here and I want to see what it is. So last night you tweeted Tuesday, 10s of millions of people did amazing and generous things in every country on earth, with over 2.4 billion generated in the US alone. For those who don't know, tell us about the creation and ongoing evolution of giving Tuesday, what enabled it to literally transform giving around the world. Well, let me start by thanking I know many of the people who will be joining us today will have participated yesterday and giving Tuesday, and it's, I have to I had an experience yesterday which is I think in a year when they after the day are experiences of social media have been negative. Right. It's been bad news. It's been awful things. It's been worrying things. Yesterday was the first day I've had this year where actually my social media and it's largely to do with the algorithm they feed me but my social media was actually pretty joyful. Right. It was actually a whole bunch of stuff from around the world of people doing interesting things of helping each other of being generous to each other and supporting each other. One of the reasons giving Tuesday I think has had such resonance in previous years is it tells a different story than the one we often tell about people, and actually especially the one we've told in some ways this year which is, you know, it's a world where people are being driven apart from each other is a world in which people don't trust each other is a world where people can't be kind to each other. One of those themes, giving Tuesday was designed to counteract right it was always when we first thought of this product it was always this idea which was like this Black Friday and Cyber Monday and you remember those images of kind of people lined up in front of stores fighting over televisions right you remember those kinds of images we always thought well what's the kind of philanthropic counterpoint to that, which is which is what you know where we're giving Tuesday kind of began its life. And it's just been amazing to watch it to grow around the world and it's truly a project which has only grown because of the generosity of people who take it and make it bigger, right they grab it and they take they take it somewhere you would never expect I was learning yesterday about a campaign in Sierra Leone this year they did a special campaign around masking as a sign of generosity, but actually the act of masking is something which is an act of giving to your society and your community and, you know, it was a reminder, much needed for me a reminder I think of the essential goodness in all of us. I agree with you and you, you really created that when you were at the 92nd straight why right. Yeah, we were. So we were thinking a lot interesting and you know something which you know a big topic today really is like how do you. How do you reimagine these great institutions. Right if you think about the, you know, the, the 90 second three why 144 years old as an institution how do you reimagine what it does and how it does it. So what I was trying to think about then was the, the, one of the great challenges of any institution is your mission becomes your model. And what I mean by that is, at some point you try and solve the problem and the way you solve the problem is a certain kind of model which exists at the time, and then a lot of time passes and you can't get off that idea and so the 90 seconds are all right. In decades gone past if you wanted to engage around philanthropy, you would have organized a lecture about philanthropy you've had a philanthropy class you would have gathered people and got them to the building to engage in a topic of philanthropy but there wasn't really a way of distributing the message of the 90 seconds three why. And so giving Tuesday was an experiment say okay how do you take one of the values of the why, and you know the why is a Jewish organization serving people with all backgrounds but was very focused on the idea of about being charitable and philanthropy, how would you scale that beyond the four walls of the why and so giving Tuesday was was born in that spirit. And I remember that the great conversation at the beginning, one of the big decisions we made out giving Tuesday was not to brand it right not to not to call it the 90 seconds street wise giving Tuesday right and anyone on this call who's in the public sector can probably imagine the conversation which was like, we're going to do this thing called giving Tuesday, but we're not going to say credit for it we're not going to make it the 90 seconds free wise giving Tuesday I remember I was talking to one of our board members at the time, who said this is great I love this just explains me where the wise logo is going to be, will it be between giving and Tuesday and I was like no no no we're not going to, we're not going to, we're going to put our logo on it because we make it about asking it won't ever be owned by anybody else, no one else will be able to take it somewhere new. And I think that decision was was pretty bold back then, and actually has really proven proven proven the right one, our current CEO of giving Tuesday, she talks about the importance of unbranding this idea that we as institutions actually have to be less focused on putting our stamp on things and more focused on actually how you can be a part of something and not eat up all the space. And I think that's a very resonant idea today. I think so as well. So, you know, less than a year into your position as the new president and CEO of Lincoln Center coven 19 basically shuttered in in person interactions. You know, the landscape for artists and for organizations over across our country we've seen at least a $14.6 billion negative impact today. That's just with not for profit organizations if you look at the entire creative economy. It's $150 billion and almost 3 million jobs that currently don't exist. You know what we're getting a couple of questions about that. But as you look back at the almost 10 months, what stood out to you. Where did you find grace. And how did you galvanize your team to really change your programming as you pivoted a lot to digital during that period. Yeah, I think, I mean, look, I think once we've seen you think back now. I remember the there was a video of the first lockdown in Italy in Siena where they remember this video right this is yeah singing from the balconies and it was a chorus chorus as a way of showing solidarity and it was such a kind of meaningful metaphor for the for the coronavirus and then I think I think we saw in New York and I know I saw it. I know you see it across the country too was was this moment at seven o'clock each night when everyone would come out their windows and they would they would clap and we remember we in New York. We would see so many amazing moments where you would recognize that actually there was this moment at seven o'clock at a time when everyone was so fearful we were all being kept apart. There was a moment I always saw this in artistic terms there was a moment this kind of like the community orchestra came to life right everyone go out their windows bang pots of pans and there was a clarinetist down look down the road from me and like you have this sense that it showed us what the arts do so well which is they help us connect with other human beings in a meaningful way and so important this year, and I think there's a kind of metaphor for the work of the arts not just Lincoln Center but the artistic community everywhere. What everyone did was they didn't stop music they didn't stop creating they didn't stop connecting they just found new ways, often unsatisfying ways actually but found new ways to meet their mission. So I think the thing that I've been inspired by this year is you just look across the country at the organizations and individuals who have found new ways to meet their mission, even though their models have changed you know the acts of service of everyone in New York Philharmonic driving around in a pickup truck to take parts to people. You've seen countless performers performing for free seen people doing concerts for medical workers, you know the artistic community as a whole. I think has just excelled at a time that it's been so badly damaged. It is excel and actually creating service for for the country and I think one of the reasons there's such a great need for greater support for the arts in general and of course from the new administration is because the arts have served so fully this year at a time of such a challenge, and we're going to need a huge amount of help to get back on our feet. Didn't you also turn Lincoln Center into a place for people to come and get food I know you did voting. Yeah. It's not just a place for arts talk talk a little bit more about how you are really involving the community and because you're serving the community. Hey look I think we think of ourselves as a cultural center and to some degree is community center right and that hasn't always been true right that isn't always the case and so I think thinking about. We've got a lot of work to do to reimagine our relationship with our local community, which is from the very beginning was was controversial and in some cases tragic is very difficult and uncomfortable beginning of Lincoln Center story. And over the years, we've got to distant from people closest to us, and so there's a lot of work that we have to do to start to rebuild that and so we've been very focused on work around the census for example we became a polling place for the first time. We've been, we've become a food distribution bank for the first time on campus providing the food insecure in our own community with with some support. We've always had music that that was the you know we for all of, I think it's fair to say of a kind of a more civic focus to our work. We never forget the fact we're a cultural center. So it was wonderful to watch the musicians of the Philharmonic playing for those clients who were lining up for the food bank. So you have that kind of combination of the two and I don't think for what it's worth. This was not for me a reaction to the coronavirus. I think we were very much pre coronavirus. We were very much recognizing I think that we as an institution have a lot of work to do as many cultural organizations do to reconnect with people who have felt too far from us and and and in some cases we've kept too far. So I think that work had begun I think it's intensified this year and that no question. And you must have seen that across the field Victoria I mean you like as you look across the the country alongside the great damage which has been caused. I think there is kind of a story you can see about resilience and optimism. I totally agree with you in in some really unexpected ways I've been excited to see some of these new hybrid formats that are coming out. One here in Miami that the Miami City Ballet did where they commissioned a choreographer he worked with the dancers over zoom. Then they went in and filmed following guidelines and created duets that weren't there. But I found it really moving as I did one of the concerts that I watched on you know Lincoln Center's feed where they were they were playing to to frontline hospital workers and the man is sitting there and the woman with tears in their eyes and you know they're socially distanced or safely distanced from the violinist but that connection that experience that was offered to them. I mean having a musician playing for you like that or some of the others that I've seen both at Lincoln Center and other places where artists are just making themselves totally available as they do and conveying their sorrow sorrow their laughter their feelings through their own artistic genre and I think that's what artists do best they give us a different lens on the world through their artistry and for that I am eternally grateful and makes me both on an individual level and certainly as a grantmaker to want to support this creation, you know the artistic creation and what that means for us so we've got a question here from Peter to this do you believe that the previous business models for the arts are still valid. Yes, or is coven forcing arts administrators to rethink how to deliver against mission. I think a bit of both so I think I mean the previous business models. You know I think there's going to be a world in which we're selling tickets and lots of them. I think especially once we get to a point where the pent up demand for congregation will be so significant. I mean on a personal level, I will happily spend two years going out and never sit on zoom again. I mean it really you know there will be a point of which given the opportunity I think the demand for people to be people is going to be pretty significant Henry we have we have no, we don't know what you're saying with that. So, so I do think that's going to be so I think they'll be a real I think they'll be a, they'll be a big demand when the time comes, I do think what will happen I think one of the. You know that there are two, there are two bits of the story for the performing arts right one is the kind of tragedy and the trauma as you point out at the start, especially to many individual artists. And another part of this is there has been a transformation that there has been more experiment in the digital space by necessity, right, not by intention. I remember in them, we used to do this thing at Lincoln Center every summer which is we would bring in arts educators from around the country for a summer forum. It's a great thing right so we have 100 hundreds people will come to Lincoln Center, they would fly in and they'd have you know three or four weeks together and it would be a life changing experience the people who came. Before coronavirus we were having conversation internally and saying it was an intellectual question at the time. Would we be better off doing that every year, or trying to build a digital network of 10,000 arts educators right who never met in person but you would create a digital network to share best practice and ideas and solidarity and all the rest of it. And we had an interesting conversation amongst the team which is which would you prefer and some people want the in person 300 and some people like the 10,000. But that became not an academic exercise for us because we couldn't convene anymore so we had to think about okay how do you scale this in some interesting ways. And so I think what what I my great hope is is that what will end up happening is people will hang on to the best parts of the old model, and then build alongside it what we've learned from this new world and how we start to connect around that. And my optimistic optimistic optimistic prediction is that we'll end up with people getting the best of both worlds that will be able to actually add to our existing model with more digital. And I think it's also better saying look you know night foundation has done some really interesting and useful work in preparedness for this. The fact has got a lot long way to go to kind of catch up with digital, you know we have unnecessarily resisted it in many ways, with the argument that somehow it's lightweight and trivial and an unimportant. And that can often be true of the digital world, but it isn't always true right there is. There's absolutely meaning and substance to be found in digital lives. And so I think our job going forward is is as artistic organizations is, is how do we identify the same quality that we put on our stages online, and how do we meld those worlds together in a meaningful way and that certainly bring big priority for Lincoln Center. Yeah, and I've, you know I've said this before in some of these conversations, because I'm, I'm enjoying arts, experiencing artists is sort of this role for me. And because I'm not a digital native, I'm a learner but I'm not a digital native, it's, can we create experiences that evoke that same kind of response in people because for me live performance is just something to behold. But I wanted wanted to say here that we actually have somebody joining us from India. Today, I think that's the somebody that the furthest away that I've had yet in one of these but we've got a couple of questions, you know. I wanted to get back to because it's going to relate to a question that I asked you later in our conversations but it's, you know, how do you think institutions like Lincoln Center can better engage with Native American communities and artists. For example, with Linnafe on whose land Lincoln Center was was built upon and I know that we you and I have talked some about this as well so you don't mind taking that one on. I think all of our, I think we all need to go through a period of kind of read of reinstitution, right, which is by which I mean how do we think about reconnecting with the land that we live on the world that we inhabit the communities that we represent and those that we don't right that's a voyage of discovery and so we've, we put together a project called the mirror project, which is all about how we do two things one how do we as an institution better reflect the world that we live in, and the city we live in. And to also how do we look in the mirror, how do we as an institution look back and look back on the parts of our history that we aren't proud of and reckon with them in a meaningful way. So that that's exactly the kind of way I think that we are going to start to reset a relationship with a number of groups of people who have felt too distant from Lincoln Center and too disconnected from Lincoln Center and our job I think as administrators is to do whatever we can to bring down some barriers and to do whatever we can to make some connections, and that's been a priority for us from from the start and anyone who has come through this year I think feels that that responsibility to even more significant degree. Another one related to this is, you know, have you explored how you develop partnerships with smaller and midsize organizations, and will post COVID 19 world and the arts be smaller with mergers between like organizations in order to survive. That last question I get a lot. Yeah, I think the answers. We've certainly thinking a lot about partnership, although I don't think historically we've been as good at this as we need to get right I think one of the dangers of becoming a big institution is you kind of start to believe your own press a little bit and you get. You lose the capacity to be a good partner to lots of people. So we've done some projects I like a lot there was a project we did with cultural innovation fund, which was a project which connected us to small arts organizations throughout the five boroughs, which was a really powerful way actually of us thinking about how you innovate at scale, and a way for us to learn from, from all sorts of arts organizations who really weren't on kind of the Lincoln Center radar. So our work going forward is actually to is is by necessity we're all going to be hyper hyper local organizations for a while right it's going to be a long time since we have lots of people flooding in from around the world. So I do think it's a good opportunity for us to kind of reconnect to how we engage with the city and we've certainly been trying to do that Lincoln Center the, the, the, the work we've begun, and I want to underscore begun because it's many years of work ahead the work we've begun I think is to kind of reset our relationship, particularly with community groups, and to re engage with with people and parts of the city who have, who have not been part of Lincoln Center as well in the way that they need to be. Here's another question that relates to this conversation. You know our institutions like Lincoln Center turning to internet artists to create unconventional intersections when rethinking the public stage to the personalized computer, and that comes from Jillian. Yes, I think this is a really interesting, I'm actually, I think this is to the something very interesting, we've seen two things happen last year, particularly right, one has been a kind of repurposing of work. So one has been, let's find a way of putting that thing we've always done in halls onto the internet. So that's the digital live stream as a console those kinds of things which essentially is let's just try and replicate the in person experience and put it on the internet. What we've seen is things which are designed for the internet as a stage. Now that's been happening for a long time but you've obviously seen it intensify this year. So there's been a really interesting I think trends in what you, you know that kind of digital arts which is work which is designed, not for a theater and then repositioned but actually designed for the internet. And I think that's been some of the stuff that I've been very struck by this year we did a bunch of stuff with the, the works and process program at the Guggenheim we did a collaboration with them. And it led to some really interesting work which was done which was actually done outside at Lincoln Center on the plaza, which was designed essentially for an internet stage it wasn't designed for an in person audience. And I think that is a very promising direction and we're certainly going to do some more work to learn and to understand some of the work in that field and see what part Lincoln Center might play. I'll go on to my next question. For you, Henry is this one is from Hadassah. Are you focused on keeping new audiences that have developed the assume and have your contributions from remote audiences been significant. Yes and no, in that order. I think I wondered about that. So I think we've I think that there's definitely been a world of people we've opened up to like if you to the mall right now that they've had 15 million people watch their free live stream in the evenings. Yeah, amazing service throughout this year to people which is providing free opera to people in the world. You know that's that's had a financial positive but by no means a very significant one right so I think part of the challenges we've other industries went through this to there was a point in all industries in which there was you know very little money to be had on the digital and then that shifted pretty quick. So I do think there's going to be a kind of a shift that will work out some smarter ways of engaging digitally and I think that's going to be a big area of focus for. We just set up a like an R&D lab at Lincoln Center, specifically for that kind of question which is okay how do we think about what the kind of revenue opportunities might be down the line in in some more of those worlds. I think digital diversity in general was on our mind before coronavirus which is one of the good if spooky things about the platforms we have access to now as you can target audiences and where you couldn't before. So, if you're, you know, interested in reaching a demographic between 20 and 35 of people in Brooklyn who love jazz you can target those people pretty accurately. One of the things is you then actually can think more intentionally about curating audiences so who is it you're actually trying to reach and who are you trying to bring to Lincoln Center and how are you trying to make those kinds of connections. So I think there's going to be some really interesting work in the kind of digital diversity space in the sense of actually us thinking about our marketing as a function of our DEI strategy. I think I think that's direction you're going to be really interesting and our teams done some really, really interesting work in that space. I think that you sort of alluded to the program, but sort of the people that you, you're bringing in to do these collaborations are really interesting. You know these these connections between artists and looking at issues, you know with them being able to decide, you know what really what is the project that they want to create. You know, bringing in a phenomenal opportunity to sort of address some of the issues that we've been seeing but you know you and Jeremy Hyman's wrote a book new power that really looks at old and new new ways of looking at power and in that you are too positive that for every business every organization and every political activity, mobilization of networks is the key, if you want to get ahead, and you added to that. You need to do that you need to be committed in a strategic way prepared to think about how you can engage more people, more meaningfully, meaningfully in your work. So how is that playing out at Lincoln Center and then maybe give people we did. There's a link that is posted in the chat, folks for, for those of you I can tell you it's a great read and has given me a lot to think about is I look at you know how we evaluate what's happening in our country and where we can target dollars and have even greater impact so how's how's this playing out at Lincoln Center. So part of the, if you think about kind of the old power world and the new power world, the old power world, which Lincoln Center but certainly has grown up in was one where you know a small number of individuals and organizations had a lot of power that they could kind of store up and spend down on their terms. And there'll be those who see hints about in the grant making world as well right so you can see that there's, there's that sense of a set of institutions that are very important to our world right but benefited from an old power world and what's beginning to shift now is this kind of wave of participation that is defining all of our world right this kind of people's capacity to be engaged is such an interesting and important thing. So thanks for organizations is going to be how organizations who thrive in the old power world start to meet the new power world in interesting ways. And so, I'll give you one example from Lincoln Center we did a thing called Memorial for us all. So it was more typically if you want to have a memorial concert Lincoln Center someone very significant or someone of means would would pass away and they would have a concert at Lincoln Center Memorial for us all was something we did with local faith groups who you know during the height of the coronavirus were all challenged by the same problem which is that they couldn't have services they couldn't have burials they couldn't have funeral services. So Memorial for us all was a weekly concert where we would have in an old power way the best musicians in the world performance that we had you know yo yo Ma and Norm Lewis and people. But New Yorkers all around the city could submit names of people they wanted to have recognized so that the concert would be a tribute to people they had lost. And so thousands of New Yorkers would submit names each week and we would scroll across the screen as these works were being played. And that's just a small example of I think the kind of direction, which is right for Lincoln Center which is, we're not something a crowdsource Lincoln Center right what we're going to try and do is look for meaningful ways to blend old and new power and bring more participation into our model. And if you want a striking example as to the opportunity. Think about tick tock, which I'm sure many of you are thinking about all the time, and just think about the huge enthusiasm for choreography and dance that is playing out now across tick tock think about the generations of people are thinking of themselves as dancers and performers in ways they never have done before. And there are two perspectives the whole power organizations might take on this. One is, you know this is trivial and it's not good enough and it's not disciplined enough and you know and this is amateur right posture one posture is, there's this glorious opportunity of participation so the question for institutions is how can we add value to those worlds that the question isn't how can we make sure those worlds do what want them to do. The question is what is the the contribution we can provide we can add to that world. So we've done a bunch of stuff this year which has been kind of some fun dance videos which have been kind of providing some expert dancers to teach dance steps and scale those. But I think that the kind of the one extraordinary thing for all of us in the arts right now is there has never been more art, just from a volume perspective right and that sounds like a weird thing to say but actually the creation of our, we've never had more artworks we've never had more audiences. We've never had more people of different backgrounds presenting their arts to a market in a way that that was actually pretty narrowly prescribed in the old power world. So there's going to be a very interesting shift in how institutions are ours, you know, chief amongst them, how we reimagine our work to not ignore that world or minimize it but to connect with it. I think that's a really good question. Yeah, and one last question I told you our 30 minutes would go by in a blink and it has. This is from Carlos here with a Miami lighthouse for the blind. And he says how is your projection to have normal activities after the majority of people get the vaccine, you know with live arts performances normalized. I don't think I have an expert view on that. We have a medical council we put together an income center of who in leading experts in the medical world and kind of the line we're getting from them was, you know, you next summer looking, looking, you know, viable, not definite but there's definitely a good chance I think that vaccination is going to be the key question. And I think just as a closing thought, I think one thing which is going to be a big challenge in general next year is, is vaccination campaigns. And I think the arts community is going to have a real role to play, particularly in communities who historically have distrusted the medical professions. The arts world have a really interesting role to play in connecting with groups across the country in the same way actually the arts community did with the census really did a good job I think in that. So I think as we think about the kind of the great, the great irony is not going to the great irony of the coronavirus is going to be that we end up that we get the miracle which is a vaccine exists, and yet people won't take it. So I think that's going to be a really interesting and challenging and important civic question for 2021 and we're with some others we're doing some thinking around how the arts might play a role there. So I lied. One more question here. But any prospect of a digital performance and art constituent being added in the foreseeable future, just as jazz at Lincoln Center was added in 96 and met live in HD was launched in 2006. Yeah, on the radar. I don't think I think that it's definitely the case that we ought to be we are Lincoln Center. We're in the center for performing arts, which is all of them. And there's lots of areas we've actually historically either ignored or not paid much attention to. So I think one of the things for the years ahead is, how do we better engage with some disciplines we've overlooked. And I would think of digital arts as one of the more exciting ones of those. I wouldn't agree with you more and that you know that that is an interest of night so let's see what collaborations come up. Our time is up today I'd like to thank all of you for joining and for submitting your questions it always makes the conversations even better when we know exactly what's on your mind. A special thanks to Henry. It's, it's just been fun, and that that makes for a great day. And I want to thank the night production crew Justin Raul and Natalia for making this all happen. Remind you that the beats at the top of the show were designed and created by Chris bar our director of art and technology here at night, and the music that will play us out is composed and performed by the amazing jazz pianist and Akron zone City's Theron Brown, and to ask you to tune in on December 10 for an episode of informed and engaged, hosted by our journalism colleagues, what to expect after the unexpected 2021 predictions for journalism and informed communities. Thanks so much for being with us again Henry, thank you so much for the conversation. Bye.