Making in the Time of Covid: A Love Letter to Arts and Culture Community Builders
A big, broad river of anxiety is flowing through our country. The direct impacts of Covid-19, our toxic politics — all bring dramatic shifts to the experience of being at and within an arts and culture organization. These realities can be distilled into a cocktail of organization change no one wants to drink. Or do we?
Covid-19 has been brutal in the United States. The pandemic has ravaged our economy since March; our educational system has been strained in ways we’ve never experienced. And the inequitable public health dimensions of this outbreak have pitted citizens against each other. As is often the case amidst great stress, we have also seen extraordinary acts of courage and self-sacrifice, we’ve seen every day generosity and compassion.
Fortunately, it feels as though we’re in a lull. A raising of the oars in the drifting fog reflect and regroup. As the director of an arts nonprofit, I sense that much is afoot.
Nonprofit organizations play a special role in the U.S., often filling vital service gaps between federal programs and profitable companies. And the impact of Covid-19 on nonprofits has been severe. Nationally, 4 out 5 nonprofits report declines in income accompanied by a 46 percent reduction in staff. This presents enormous downstream effects on human well-being — organizations providing urgently needed health, nutrition, education, and social services in underserved communities are folding. At a time when their demand is rising.
Arts nonprofits, the sector in which I work, have also been severely impacted. Nationally, arts and culture organizations have lost $13.1B in revenue since March. In Massachusetts, the state where I work, 131 arts organizations have reported $21M in lost income, a median loss of $40,000 per arts organization. In the city where I work, we’re fortunate to have a responsive local government; but the resources simply aren’t there. Many arts organizations won’t make it out of this pandemic.
What I really want to say though is that behind these numbers lies a deeper, more complex dilemma that poses existential challenges. And that is the threat posed to the cultural health of arts organizations that are reopening — and the well-being of their staff and volunteers.
The arts organization that I run was founded on the idea that “makers” — the do it yourself (“DIY”) innovators of our age — can build, run and maintain a growing collective dedicated to the practice, teaching, and culture of DIY fabrication. Over ten years the space has grown in remarkable ways, producing experiences, products, and creative companies that bring real play, joy and purpose to thousands of people. Powered by a traditional membership and fee-for-service model, the organization has grown from its humble roots as a 2,500 SF club in 2010 to a vibrant 42,000 SF hub of creativity today.
Covid-19 has brought our organization to a knee; we are steadying ourselves for an enormous transformation ahead.
I am certain that we aren’t alone in the situation in which we find ourselves. In the spirit of open dialogue among spaces, I’d like to share a few observations and invite a conversation among arts space managers — and of course, anyone who enjoys these spaces and contributes to them in any way. If your experience is anything like ours, the road ahead is a long one; the tools of transformation aren’t always obvious. Let’s see where this goes.
Our American Backdrop
Emotions are running high, we’re all stressed the f&*k out. The urgent work to unwind systemic racism in America is pressurizing fault lines. The evidence of Climate Change around us and especially on the West Coast is causing deep grief and anxiety. Some of us have lost loved ones and jobs due to Covid-19 and we’re emotionally and financially drained. The fact that Wall Street is doing so much better than Main Street amplifies the widening social disconnect between profit and people. Of course, the upcoming Presidential election is both urgent and confusing: why does it feel like a mechanized slow motion dance?
All that to say, it is difficult to be a creative in this space. With so much anxiety and anger blocking our impulses to share beauty we work out harder, drink harder, binge harder. We are not healthy. And we are not bringing our best selves to our work. Wrapped around this context is the reality that we cannot hug. We should not high five and fist bump and sit across from each other at a table and experience one another’s presence. If we are responsible, we are socially distanced.
As creatives, this is tough. If nothing else, we thrive on bringing people together, building spaces and experiences that bring release. We create “scenes” that yield movements, movements that produce enduring works of cultural and social value. We pass these down, decade to decade, century to century, lengthening the provenance of techniques and ideas and deepening the legacy of civilizations.
Endure we must. Its not the same though. Our interactions and our work are different. How many times have you heard someone say, “The energy is really weird”? Have you noticed that gnawing pit in your heart, that space usually filled by a visit to an art gallery or community theater? Are your eyes dry, maybe from weeping but also from the battering of a million points of light streaming content at you?
I feel you. And this is the body that shows up for work every day — to listen, to rally, to keep positive, to solve problems, to pay bills.
Workplace As Quiet Space
For cultural creatives, our workspaces are everything. Most of us willingly exchange a tiny living environment for a brilliant place to work. It’s where we pour our souls into our practice. It is often the same space where we replenish our souls — through contemplation, study, and social interaction.
Few arts and culture spaces in 2020 look the way we did in 2019. The assumptions, appetites, and impulses that informed the design of our spaces have shifted off their center. We’ve had to adapt — for good reason — to safety guidelines that limit occupancy, proscribe behavior, diminish programming, and heighten awareness that we are all living, breathing, leaking sponges. We wear masks and wash our hands with an untrained yet practiced diligence that comes from deep care — for ourselves and for those around us.
Many of our organizations rely on volunteers, and we miss you powerfully. Without access to the public our armies of docents, tour guides, greeters, educators and helpers aren’t needed. And it’s simply not safe to bring everyone together. We’ve all tried training and team building on Zoom and, despite its strengths, when that screen is turned off we return to the same isolated room we started in. We’re not feeding the volunteer impulse to engage, find new connections, meaning and purpose because we’re not able to serve the direct needs of patrons and visitors.
Where I work, the studio environment is another essential attribute of space and creative community. Today those studios are largely empty, day after day. Brushes stand at attention in tin cans; microcontrollers collect dust; unused wood slowly and quietly warps. What had been a place where scooters zoomed down 100' corridors we now gracefully and often silently give way to each other, a knowing look in the eye — almost as if to say, “I know, I’m sorry, things aren’t the same.”
What is extraordinary is that our members haven’t left us. Dues and studio fees are being paid by 90 percent of users. About 15 percent of our members use the space on a daily basis to get work done. These are remarkable signs of ownership, resilience, and ultimately optimism that pervade the organization and keep us afloat. Leaking, but afloat.
A third feature of life within our organization is the essential role of teaching and learning. In the past we’ve provided instruction to nearly 2,500 individuals in the space of a year, generating as much as $180,000 in total compensation to an annual cohort of about 40 instructors. Today, that model is upended.
Tool training and testing. Introductory skill building. Master courses. Our entire “stack” of learning services has relied on hands-on access to equipment in a group setting. Where instructors are willing to teach — and many are not yet there — we’ve put the safety of our instructors, students, and members first. We’ve limited class sizes to training and testing in groups of two; our classes take no more than six students where in the past we might have taken twelve. Most instructional settings hover at around four participants to ensure adequate space between work stations and students. We’ll be lucky if we provide $60,000 in compensation to 15 instructors in FY21.
With this reduction in classes comes a predictable decline of the “symphony of making” — the bubble of conversation, buzz of machines, ting-ting of a hammer and bursts of laughter and emotion at those “Aha!” moments that power creativity. The air feels calm, lacking a charge between particles. We are a more quiet, more open, less busy space.
Our Culture is Dead, Long Live Our Culture
Our American context, the direct impact of Covid-19, changes to space utilization — all bring dramatic shifts to the experience of being at and within an arts and culture organization. These realities can be distilled into a cocktail of organization change no one wants to drink. Or do we?
With so much unexpected, unplanned change in play over so many months — we’re coming to the end of month six — the effects are settling in. They feel permanent. The combined experience of organization adaptation from the policy level to operations can be dramatic. And no one was ready for it. The changes feel forced on us; they feel like a new operating system upgrade that nobody wanted. The changes require new ways of connecting, of adapting, and of being that nobody signed up for.
Things are different. We all feel it. In a nutshell, the lived experience of change within an arts and culture organization can feel like a profound culture shift. But is it?
At the end of the day, we all contribute to the culture of a space. The way each of us individually responds to change dramatically impacts others’ experience of that change. Patience or hostility? Grace or defiance? Negotiation or argumentation? These aren’t necessarily choices, but their center can be hard to navigate. The culture that arises from their expression has ripples. We are all amplifiers or attenuators; the changes we embrace or resist — and the way we engage those changes — contribute to the organization and cultural transformations that are afoot. Whether these are temporary or long-lasting dynamics is a challenge that must be addressed at all levels of an organization — from the board through management and staff and upward from those we serve.
My Gratitude, and A Parting Question
And into this heady equation are thrust the community managers, programming directors, volunteer coordinators and key organization personnel who hold a cultural space together in these Covid times.
I salute you all, because I know how much work it is to hold it together. To connect with and to hear all voices; to adapt to and stand with difficult decisions. To work amidst ambiguity and uncertainty. To motivate generosity and support creativity at a time of loss and grief and anxiety. To bring healing to work places that feel inanimate and lifeless.
You are ferrying thousands of us from a once known state to a new state, from a place of predictability and reliability across a channel of change to a shore that we think will be familiar but we just can’t know.
The culture of our spaces isn’t dead. But without the presence of the generous people who together foster our culture, it can feel that way.
So my question for you is, “How are you doing this?” How are you taking care of yourselves while holding together your spaces of creativity and culture-making? I would love to hear your thoughts — from whatever position you sit in, and to know how you think you’ll come out the other side.
With my deepest respect and gratitude for all that you do. Peace.
