Ep. 1 | Embedding Anti-Racism in Strategic Planning: SPACE on Ryder Farm

(upbeat music) - Hi folks, welcome to Changing Arts, a podcast of conversations with people working on the ground in the arts industry to make change in their organizations and in our field. I'm Tom O'Connor, I'm an arts strategist and marketer as well as a trained educator and social worker. Change happens at every level of the arts ecosystem from the industry level to the community level and down to the individuals who get the job done. Each month I'm sitting down with the people who are really making that change happen. Thanks for joining us. Welcome to our first episode of Changing Arts. In this episode, we feature a discussion I had this summer about the strategic planning process for Space Unwriter Farm. Space Unwriter Farm is an artist residency and organic farm located in Putnam County, New York, just north of New York City, and they were founded in 2011. This past year, a team of us worked with them to devise a strategic plan which would actively center anti-racism and justice work and serve as a blueprint for the company's next chapter. The conversation features Space Unwriter Farm, former executive director and founder, Emily Simones, who at the time was finishing her tenure, as well as consultant and co-facilitator Edie Demis and working group member and residency alum, Deepa Purohit. I served as a co-facilitator in this planning process, so as you will see, I sometimes answer my own questions and several times in this podcast, we reference an article on white supremacy culture by Tema Oken and there is a link to this article in the show notes. I highly recommend giving it a read. There's also a link to the full strategic plan. I hope you enjoyed this really rich conversation. Welcome, Emily Edie and Deepa. I'm so thrilled to have the three of you on as some of our first guests on the podcast, so thank you for agreeing to join us. Today we're going to unpack Space Unwriter Farm's strategic plan and talk about really what the arts and culture fields can learn from it and from you all. So one of the main reasons we've been so eager to talk about this is because we really think it can serve as a model for both an outcome but also a process with justice and belonging at its core and we'll talk about that more as we go, but this is particularly for organizations who want to, I think, embed anti-racism in every aspect of their organization and something that I know we've all talked a lot about in the course of this process, so. Really, really looking forward to diving in with you all. You're all such thoughtful and eloquent folks. Emily, can you talk to us a bit about this moment at Space and really what the importance is of the strategic plan while you felt it was important while the board felt it was important and really what it needed to address? - Yeah, sure, thanks for having me. It's a big question. Space had sort of started and stopped and restarted strategic planning efforts. I would say over the course of the last three years, we, the organization is in our 11th year and we actually had not produced a strategic plan up to this point. So that is one reason is that it was high time coming out of the pandemic. It felt like, wow, it is a new day. It is a new sector. A second reason is space committed in 2017 to granting 50% of our residencies to folks of color and other underrepresented voices and the events of June 2020 had us really recommitting to our stated goals of being a more anti-racist organization. A third piece of this is that I am leaving the organization. So it really felt like the confluence of those items felt like it was high time to put forth a document that would really sort of vision the organization into the next five years. With respect to anti-racism, it was critical to space that anti-racism, the values of DEI were not a side dish, we're not an appetizer, we're not a nice optics exercise, but we're rather the roots of the plan. How this strategic plan was facilitated, the group of people that were brought together to design this. - I really just want to underline the point you made about DEI and anti-racism being central to this plan and being a grounding presence in this plan and not being, as we talked about a lot in the beginning of this process, not being relegated to say one pillar of the work. And I think that we see that in a lot of our organizations with the best intentions, but not necessarily understanding how that particular pillar weaves through everything, this is mixing metaphors poorly, but weaves through the rest of the pillars of the plan. So that was, for me, a particular excitement in jumping into this work. And to that point, I wanted pivot to ED, our co-facilitator for this work. Since anti-racism and DEI were a major focus of this plan, we agreed early on that we would focus there, not just in the content of the plan that Emily was talking about, but in how we designed the process as well, and as we started to touch on with the way we structured it. So I'd love for you, ED, to just talk about that, how we ultimately did that, and how that took shape throughout the process. - My was very excited by that sort of mandate, if you will, that Emily and Space's board chair, Janet Olshankskyp threw out to us. It was a great opportunity to really apply things that had been on everybody's minds over the course of the summer of 2020, and sort of live those values and commitments, and it started by really collaborating and co-constructing the plan with Emily and Janet, and with our third co-facilitator, Ken Eby, who had been Space's advisor and consultant in furthering their anti-racism work. So it was a great opportunity, and then, of course, Space is an organization full of artists and activists and makers of all sorts, and so process is just embedded in the culture and the ethos of the organization and the people that make it sing, if you will. There was the working group that really did the major lifting, which was a combination of board, staff, and resident artist alums, and the other wonderful thing about Space is that many board members are artists, so we had crossover there. But we had these interesting checks and balances that were deliberately designed to kind of up end a top down. Here's the plan, the working group finished it. Yay us, we put in all these extra hours apart from our jobs, and did it, that was really important that we have sounding boards throughout. We reported to the board and the midway through the process to bring them in. We had opportunities through another group that represented the same cross-section of the community, which we called the review panel, who really had an opportunity over a long session to reflect on the work at that point. I think Tom, we were about what three quarters of the way through at that point, and challenge us on a number of points, and their questions and comments really resonated. We had many voices with different roles. Tom, yourself, Ken, Emily, and Janet, and myself again, none of us set ourselves up as expert consultants, or top down leaders as founder and board chair. We came in there into the work curious, and on a playing field with everybody else. I think for me as a facilitator, I recognize now the roots of this current strategy work in my work as an educator, because I think what happened in that process was we deliberately made a style, a process, that where we, as you said, weren't authorities, it was collaborative and reciprocal. And that, to me, is really a kind of disruption and a non-hierarchical-- people talk about kind of flat leadership, which I don't really-- that doesn't resonate with me. For me, it's this reciprocal and dynamic relationship. And lastly, what it's left me with is really thinking about how, what our obligation is in this sector to throwing out so-called best practices, and excusing behavior and structures and systems, because they fall under this banner of best practices. I really want to challenge a field to think about next practices. There's something about that reciprocity that feels to me at the heart and kind of equity at the heart of this work and this approach. Something that I will just add that resonated for me quite a bit, and not only was there a resistance to the idea of best practices, there was also not only an invitation to interrogate practices, but something of an expectation. All credit and UED, I believe, with introducing the Okun work around the characteristics and antidotes of white supremacy culture that we use throughout the process to really think about not just how are those characteristics showing up within the space ecosystem, but also how are they showing up within the process in the product that we were delivering as we went, and really having that accountability layer that was not just about holding the organization accountable, but holding ourselves accountable. I think even helped further to eliminate any perception of there being any kind of hierarchy in that process. That's not as though everyone in that room has been doing anti-racism work for their whole lives. There was a whole range of level of comfort with this work. I think another outcome of this sort of reciprocal vibe for lack of a better word. Was that people felt like they could participate? Because there wasn't a quote-unquote authority figure, it allowed folks who might be earlier in their journey to dip their toes in as they saw and as they felt comfort. There was a place for really everyone who came with an open heart and clear intentions to participate to be a part of that conversation, I think, and in that way, this sum was much greater than the parts. This is Deepa. I feel like one thing to pay back on what Emily was saying is that alongside the expectations around everybody participating, there was an expectation that was very explicit around what Emily's voice would be in the conversation. In a conversation to change positioning of power or to investigate new ways of positioning power, we had to be very explicit with each other of when Emily was speaking and not speaking, not to shut her up but actually to open the space. And yet, there was also a desire and need to have her perspective and institutional knowledge and all her expertise come into the conversation. So I felt like that was really on the facilitators, the agreement with Emily and Janet both, because Janet also has a strong voice in the development and there's been a partnership there, whereby Janet, as the board chair, really participated as a participant for me, someone who didn't even know her coming in and was learning along the way and would state those learning. So I felt like that's an important point to make around what is the expectation of participation and different types of leadership that are available on the screen? I want to give myself credit for stepping back, but I think it was easier for me to step back because I'm leaving, right? And so for those listening, you know, if you're not leaving in organization, but you know you have positional power, how are you creating a space where you're not the person everyone is, you know, coughing their head to listen to? You know, it has to be incredibly intentional and I think that the ground rules that Tom and Edie and Ken set and folks shouldn't just do it when they're on the way out. I think that in the vein of sort of making space that I would encourage leaders to work out on the way out, as you said, very much to allow that space to occur and just to kind of name it, the specific ground rule was, Emily will not speak first in response to open questions. That was agreed to at the beginning of every session. That was not the only ground rule. So we were not doing that punitively for Emily. We would encourage any leader to allow that space and to be surprised because I think that's one of the things that really rose to the surface for me in this process. The variety of perspectives that sort of cross-pollinated and the amount of times that people said, "Oh, I didn't realize that was happening," or "I didn't realize that person's perspective," or "I didn't realize that artists felt that way," or any of those kinds of things. They were only coming to the surface because the space was there to allow it but also to invite it. And I think that's just such an important aspect of how we constructed this together. I wanna turn to you, Deepa, and talk about being a member of that group. I'd love to just have you talk a bit more about what your experience was like working with board and staff in this process. Anything that opened your eyes to a new viewpoint or just something you hadn't previously considered before for joining this process? - I would say the biggest revelation for me in shifting or rather maybe just opening my viewpoint was that this process that we went through is not a discreet process. It can be used in the execution. We were practicing it as different layers of different groups throughout the process. But oftentimes when people think about strategic planning, I think they think of it as a discreet thing and then we execute. And the reality is we came up with so many different ways of operating, so many revelations about the ways of operating that some of this could be put in effect right away. When I say practice, we practicing it is like a small group of people who might be alumni residents of the program, the board, the staff, and there were staff members very involved in this conversation and the ED or whoever the leadership or whatever the leadership might look like. So it's not like, okay, we've done this. So now we're going to execute this. What are the pieces of this strategic planning process? Meaning the operationalizing of it, the different layers of feedback and discussion and conversation that should actually be now implemented and kept as a part of the way we operate as we put this strategic plan into effect. Yeah, the other thing that came up for me that has come up for me in some of my various work outside of with nonprofits, outside of faith is really this tension of time and slowness, which I think speaks to some of these pillars of white supremacy that we really discuss deeply and investigated deeply in the process around the urgency, around this, we don't have enough time. There's never enough time acknowledging the idea that time and slowness are in tension with how we've been conditioned to work in the nonprofit world is really, really important because it's not going to change everything radically, but it is going to open the space for the discussion. I felt like in the processes, we were finding these seeds to give ourselves time and yet we were on a time constraint. We had a very particular deadline. We needed the strategic plan at a certain point in time. We needed it to be rolled out. It needed to be rolled out in a very specific way, the various groups and then to the larger public. I felt as a member of the working group that we were taking the time that the facilitators, Tom, Edie and Ken were allowing us space to talk, to converse, to debate, whatever it was. The third thing I was thinking about was really this idea of leadership. So in my work with nonprofits as my day job, I'm often talking about with leaders about leadership and the nexus of leadership and communications and how those are interwoven. And this came up a lot for how we communicate, what we communicate, when we communicate. Where does that lie in the philosophy of leadership? And I felt like in this experience to me, the layers that we created. So Edie, you were talking about this sort of flat leadership. You're not very much into that terminology. When you were talking about that, I was thinking about the layers of leadership. And I was like, well, it's not layers because it's not hierarchical necessarily in the way that we were operating. But I felt like it was interwoven. So it felt like almost like a quilt. I started thinking a lot about many indigenous communities that sit with councils. It is not the chief who is making the decision. It is a chief who is often listening to the council of elders, to listening to various representations of whatever that group of people, that community of people, may call it a tribe, are really wanting and desiring. And I would not reference our continued struggle in our political structure to achieve that. But I do think there is something around the idea of councils and advisory groups. And you all, as facilitators, layered those in and brought in even more people. There was another ring of leadership coming in to push on the work of the working group and of the staff and leadership. I felt that these structures of leadership were being examined as we were doing the work. And so then the question about leadership and what leadership looks like as we seek to dismantle, quote unquote, best practices that aren't the best anymore. I think the core in that is what are the leadership practices? Yes, there are operational practices. But what are the leadership practices that we're looking for? And what are the communal practices? So the last thing I'll say is this idea of the dinner table being at the core or the communal table of nourishment was sitting sort of at the core of what we began to strongly emerge in our conversations around the core functioning of space on right of harm, taking that core value and saying, well, if you're at a communal table, the conversation is lateral. Everybody's influencing each other. So how do you take the core of your organization and its essence and then pull it into the structures of your organization as you look at leadership and as you look at operations? I think about nonprofit practices as sort of intention with and also writing the marketplace. And the marketplace is in philanthropy, it's in donors, it's in seasons, particularly for artists. What is the season that we're in? And we talked a lot about seasons in the life cycle because space is very connected to the farm to the land. What does that mean? And I started thinking a lot about what does subsistence farming practices look like? And how do those actually come into play and connect to spaces structure and how the structure is set up? How can those, just as we can reference indigenous practices of how we make decisions, we can reference of how we operate in subsistence farming because we are trying to subsist as organizations. We are trying to not just self-reliate all the time but build a community of reliance. And I felt like that's what we were doing through this process is we were building this community of self-reliance but the community is big. And so what does that actually look like? And how do we invite people in versus keep it small and exclude people out? And I felt like I was learning a lot about it as we were walking into unknowns. - So well said, Deepa. And you were such an inspiring part of this process for me personally and hearing your thoughts along the way. And I want to just name something that I was thinking about that while you were making those great points is that if this process had followed a traditional structure in terms of strategic planning where it was sort of bored and staff, the voice you just heard would not have been in the process. And those kinds of insights and those kinds of perspectives on leadership and culture and just possibility for how this organization can go forward would have been missing entirely. I thank you for all you brought to this process and this conversation. And I just think it's so important that you are here. - Thank you to Deepa for bringing that tension of urgency and perfectionism into the conversation because even though that comes directly out of the Okun article, which I'm a proponent of and was so foundational in our work together, I hadn't thought about the way those two things in particular interact with each other until now listening to you reflect on it and just how insane it is to have bought into this sense of urgency and the requirement to be perfect. And as we think about artists drafting and the process of making being one of review revise, reflect and revise or whatever catch term you wanna put to that, we don't as administrators or strategists or leaders in the arts don't give us or our teams that same permission or all too often we don't. And it's interesting to think about what exactly needs to be disrupted externally to individual organizations to make that real change. It's philanthropy and donors and board and governance structures that are always on this cycle of deadlines that it doesn't, we're operating in our work practices so far away from what's so special about the creative process. It's critical, I think, to the health and well-being of our organizations and our sector as a whole. I would be remiss especially in this piece of the conversation talking about urgency and perfectionism in particular without just giving a big shout out to arts administrators of color and their leadership in this work. And I had the good fortune to encounter that article we keep referring to because of their accomplice leadership training that took place last summer. And where I think I go back to that in my mind because that very much connects to what Emily was saying about making room for everybody in the group wherever they were in thinking about anti-racism work and process and structures. - I have three quick comments. The first is that back to deepest sort of commentary on the different sort of wrongs of folks that came in. I think a really important piece of this that we haven't talked about is that Ken did a diversity equity and inclusion assessment with the board, with Steph, with the alumni. He had one-on-ones. He had sort of town hall settings. He had many, many, many conversations that he then took and synthesized into a pretty comprehensive like 15-page document about what are, where are spaces, strengths here, where are weaknesses, where are opportunities, where are challenges. That document really set the agenda, right? So I think when we talk about leadership too, it's not as though Janet and I sat down and said, okay, so this is our agenda, right? Which I think is very easy to do, right? And I want to also say, there's many times that I have done that, so it's not like I'm walking on water here, but I think the goals were set by the community, which I think is also, so I just want to give a shout out to that, that there was work before the work. Space's mission is to support artists and activists by giving them time and space, right? It's a very processed, driven place. We don't actually put an emphasis on product. So a huge aha moment I had is like, how can the organization be operating wholly from a place that is product driven? If the thing that we are endorsing, if the mission that we are setting is about process, those are, they fly in the face of one another, right? And so I think a big part of this is how could the process more be in line with our mission? And I think that's going to be different for every organization listening to this. And the third thing I was going to say is per the marketplace, shots fired, here we go. We have to have partners in the philanthropy space. There has to be a co-construction. Like it cannot be that sweet little nonprofits with $1.5 million operating budgets are doing the scrappy, unsexy, dismantling work. And then they have to be held to this entirely white supremacist grant reporting structure. Because yeah, we can do all this really good work in the corner and have a plan that walks and talks very differently. But then every time we're appealing for funding, every time we're telling grantors, look at what we're doing, we're being asked to privilege urgency, privilege product. I don't know how that works. In the Okun article, there is a lot around what is data, what does that look like? How do we define what success actually looks like? And I think that is sort of going at the heart of Emily, what you're saying around, how do we co-create, co-construct, what success looks like in a more inclusive way versus data, data, data, impact impact. I'm impact numbers, numbers, numbers. And that's going to show that you're great. You're good. You've got it, you know? Versus quality, quality, qualitative stuff that actually does create impact in very different ways than defining what those measures, quote unquote, are, is a huge part of what the work ahead really is for the conversation between philanthropy slash donors. And I think the individual donors in particular might be the people who have that cutting edge that can speak to it less quantitatively and more qualitatively. What is the feeling that I get when I connect to this place? It's a good place, you're doing good work. I don't have to define it. And like, what are your numbers, numbers, numbers? Because numbers are important. But having that diversity within the people who support that the other thing I'll say about DEI assessment as a working group member, that was the first thing we read. It was the thing that was absolutely necessary to launch a conversation, which then does the thing. It puts it at the center instead of the additional or on the side. I have seen nonprofits and personally experienced them do the same thing. The time it takes is so long for an organization like space that is smaller. Your nimble, Namali has always said this from the moment I met you, we can do this. We can make this change where nimble. And you know what, the changes aren't easy, but they have walked the talk, whatever that is. They have done it. They've walked it, walked it, walked it. And I think that even if you are not nimble as an organization, or you believe that you are not. Because even a half a million dollar organization, million dollar organization, 10 million dollar organization, you can find places where you are nimble. You can find places to make space for this work. And if you don't, because the DEI work does take time, it is in the end going to come. And by chance, they ask. The last thing I'll say about the DEI assessment is that even if it takes time and you're a $250 million organization or whatever, just signaling that you're doing it and you have to take the time, even though your people might get extremely impatient with the process, signals the priority. It just does. And so that in itself then draws up the tension and urgency and taking time and slowing down. And then people can have a conversation about it. We can actually talk about this. And we will get frustrated and fight each other on it when we're doing this DEI stuff. I want it fast enough. It's scaring the crap out of me. All these things can actually surface as that assessment takes hold at the center. And I think that is really, really key. And was key to this, making this a very fulfilling. And I felt like for me as a person of color, and somebody who I would debatedly say, has been doing anti-racist works since the day I was born, you can define it as anti-racist. I don't really call it that. But however, it's defined in this day and age. But to do that work is complex. And I feel like this organization just took it to the next level. Because honestly, in the other conversations I've had in the nonprofit world with other people, I'm constantly pointing the work space has been doing and just took on right away. And that makes me extremely proud and happy to have been a part of it. We talk about metrics and how there's an over-reliance upon them. When we're talking about the characteristics of white supremacy culture, but also weaving that through to philanthropy and funding, I want to just underline the point that accountability and outcomes were certainly not absent from this work. And so that we shouldn't mistake the lack of a metrics-focused process for a lack of accountability as the space community moves into implementation of this work. And as Deepa said, some of that was right away. Some of that is longer term. We really had an intentional conversation about what are those accountability questions we need to be asking ourselves as we go forward to be sure that everything that we are choosing, everything we're prioritizing comes back to the guiding principles of this plan, so that it sort of serves as a manifesto for that work, as opposed to setting, in many cases, arbitrary benchmarks or metrics that things need to be ruled by. It was more about those qualitative aspects of what makes this inline, what makes this important. And I think that was really important to extinguishing factor for this process. - I'm thinking there's a kind of a thread around the accountability and defining that as a measurement, that some of folks in the space community, particularly some individual donors, are on a learning curve about that as a form of evaluation or assessment. It's been really interesting to see some of the, and hear feedback on some of the responses about this doesn't, things like this doesn't look like the plans I'm used to. If we're really striving towards equity, we have to find a way to be honest about the funder organization relationship. Because for me, I just don't know how equity becomes present when you've always got your hand out. So what does that relationship start to look like? And we talked about this reciprocal patchwork quilt dimensional relationship between members of the working group and the others that fed into the planning. But the next layer is, is it possible for us to have that same relationship with the people and organizations, the entities that fund us? I'd love to think that it is, but I'm struck by how Deepa's phrase about a council sitting with councils, how could that arm of the work that we do be part of a relationship that operates in that same way? It would be so wonderful, I think. But how that starts, what the catalyst is, where the invitations are, I'm not sure. I think it's important that the outcomes of this plan acknowledge is that space sits within a system. And in the course of the work we went through, we talked a lot about systems and what systems are in play, both in and around space, and not trying to do this work in a vacuum. Really thinking about what are those external points? And I'm sure we may get to this in our time remaining, but in implementation, as we've talked about, the reactions to the plan in terms of this, doesn't match the template of what we expected to see from a strategic plan. All that kind of thing is a function of those very challenges. I'd love to hear from Emily a little bit more about the kinds of reactions she's gotten on the ground to this work. - This is not a lukewarm plan. This is a plan that is making a statement. And so when you make a statement, you're gonna get a reaction, right? I have had very positive responses, and I have had, I don't want to say negative, I have had uncomfortable responses to the plan. There has not been a lot in the middle, which makes a lot of sense, because it is declarative. As quiet as it is in its sort of texture, it is making a statement. This thing, hey, we're actually gonna turn this on its head, and you're gonna read something that feels different than other quote unquote strategic plans that you've read. But I will say that being in that room with y'all felt so good, and like not in a like, oh my gosh, it felt so warm and fuzzy. Like it felt so right. It was like, oh, this is a way to do this, that can and will move the needle. So I think I was a little like once we put it out in the world, I just like assumed that would be, what would be reflected back to me? Well, that is not the world. There have been many, many folks who are trying to figure out how to do this, right? And this is now a template. Funders are used to metrics, and I say that knowing that there are course funders out there that wouldn't say that's not how I fund. But we certainly got feedback about, you know, this reads like poetry, where the, how, you know, how many years is it going to take you to do x, y, z? What are the numbers associated with that? Now, a piece of that is that that's an operational plan, which we can talk about, right? That there is a distinct difference between a strategic plan and operational plan. However, I also want to say, people are not, I got feedback from many people. Wow, really bold to publish your strategic plan. I've never seen that. That's a problem. Can we just say that's a problem? It's bold to publish your plan. Why is that radical, right? So I think even the fact that it arrived in people's inboxes was a shift, right? And then a decision that we made was that because the plan is rooted in the values of anti-racism, we foregrounded the key terms and terminology. We put that before the plan. And so we did that. So that once you actually got to the meat of the plan, you didn't feel like, well, I don't know what those words mean. Let me go to the back. Instead, those words were at the top. So you could read the plan and feel like you were included. Oh, God, the feedback that that was arresting. Why put all those terms up front? I'm not a white supremacist. Why is that word in your key terminology? You have to contend with that. And in that, you're going to lose people. And you're going to gain people. But I think that's the key piece of it is that it's not all losing. There are people who read that plan and go, wow, well, I want to be a part of what they're doing. You have to have the courage, which I'm saying after the fact, because I didn't realize I had to have the courage to put it out there. And sort of see where the chips fall. Emily, what you've just described is exactly what going into this I hoped would happen. This is not a discreet. We did it. Here it is. Click the link. We're done. And that the conversations and the journey, the learning that can happen as a result of this plan, every time someone from space, from all these constituencies, talks about it because someone is uncomfortable, is part of the work. I couldn't be more proud of that. I mean, I'm getting emotional. But that every conversation that you've had with this is a springboard. This plan is very much a Rorschach test when people read it as to where they are in their own journey. And I think that there are some folks that are perhaps further along that might read it and think, good for them. I'm so glad this is happening. And there are folks that are going to read it and say, I'm uncomfortable. And when we center the comfort of those people as opposed to the folks who are being excluded, we have already failed. And so I think that to that, and I'm extremely proud, as well, that that's where it landed. And a lot of credit to the group on this call to the many others who were involved in that construction. So something that was sort of screaming at me was just like transparency, transparency, transparency. And it's easy to actually say it, have it in a conceptual space. But to your point, Emily, the courage to just put it out there and to deal with the fears that anybody might have in exposing an inside organ of your body is really-- that's real. That's super real. But it's also the way to dismantle these structures. Transparency is not something that's easy to do. It's never going to be easy to do when you're doing it in its full effect. This idea of positional power, and then, in turn, working within a deeply embedded structure that is the scarcity model, is something also that we have to contend with in those conversations. So how do philanthropists in whatever way, shape, or form see this idea of scarcity? How are they changing and changing the conversation of scarcity? And there are people really starting to do that. And there are people that can't even get their heads around both on the side of seeking funding and providing funding of what that would actually look like if we were living in operating our conversations in a world of abundance. How are we dealing with this idea that we can't give money to everybody? We have to select who those people are based on accountability measures that we have come up with that actually get people through the next level of that. Those are all really real. They're not something to be dismissed. They are actually a fact of how we operate. But I think the question I really have and going back to putting that strategic plan out there, what are the big, small steps we can take in order to continue to chisel? So it's not like we're going to just break it in our whole system, but I think something like the action of placing that strategic plan out there for all to see is a way to chisel at these much more deeply entrenched structures that are super defined by the scarcity model. And I just have to say it sit on the economic structure of a plantation. Let's just name that. That's what we're sitting on right now in this conversation in the United States, wherever it is across the world. It's sort of a plantation hierarchy. And that is the thing that we're trying to sort of really break down. Thank you for naming that Deepa. I feel like I've just sit with that for just a second and give it its opportunity to sink in. But it's just so important to bring that into the conversation so explicitly. We didn't bring capital F funders into this process. They weren't in the room, right? There are certainly board members that support the mission of the organization, right? But there weren't serious donors in terms of spaces operating budget in that room that weren't board members. But in hindsight, we had all of these other circles of folks. Like maybe there was a step that could have been-- I'm literally just talking in draft-- but maybe prior to publishing the plan to the website, maybe there could have been a meeting with a sampling of funders. But I think like those sort of conversations want to be-- I think want to be a part of this. I also want to be really clear. There are many funders who bounced the ball back to me and said, this is fantastic. And would have been very down to be in a conversation about, OK, how do we work with this? I think there's a total way through this. I think it's gnarly. But I think there are plenty of people who, at least in spaces orbit, would be very down for the conversation. I just want to say the tension between funding and vision. I think as an existential one, we're an identity for an organization. And I think it's important. I think that we see it a lot of larger organizations where the balance between does the funding follow the vision or does the vision follow the funding. We've seen that get out of balance. And those are the organizations that, honestly, in this moment, where we're having this kind of reflection and reckoning and whatever other word you want to use. Those are the organizations that are perhaps the most precarious, because they've let that balance completely tip in the wrong direction. I think that the way that you handled it specifically is so important to the mission, but also to the spirit of what we were trying to do. Deepa mentioned very briefly the dinner table thinking, and I just want to drill down on that for a second. So indeed, I don't know if you know this, but you were a huge part of the change from 2017. Now, when your first year in residence was what, 2015? 2015? Yes, 2015. Yeah, 2015. It was a very homogenous situation at space. Very white, up until 2017. And I don't know if you remember this, but we had a very candid conversation. I think you're down by the lake. And you talked about at least my memory, which is fuzzy. You talked about the opportunity that space had to really have a place that was way more inclusive and way more heterogeneous. That commitment in 2017 was absolutely about racial equity, but it was also about a heterogeneous collection of perspectives. And we're talking about age. We're talking about gender identity. We're talking about sexuality, the whole nine yards. And I just wonder back to this conversation about philanthropy, if one of those seats is also for a funder. I don't know the answer, but I do think that what we make is better and stronger when there are more different perspectives of the table. And what I remember about it was your intentional questions in the conversation and the deep curiosity to go into things that were not so pretty, to find out and to seek out what the experience of people who were engaging with the organization, particularly, for my point of view, the artists, what they were experiencing. And it could have been very easy being one of the only people of color there for you to not sit with me for a while. We sat for a while. And we talked and we went pretty deep. And I got pretty real with you. And you were just listening and taking it in. But not just listening and taking it in in like, hmm, okay, I'll take that with me and do it. But we were in conversation. And I think that is a mark of deep leadership to be able to walk into that with courage into a very scary place to show the mess or someone that's going to open up a bit of the mess, hopefully in a compassionate way. But that's gonna open the mess. You were deeply investigating this piece. Something was drawing this to you. And maybe others on the farm and that there were shifts and changes happening along the way. So I just wanted to put my perspective on that because I do think that comes back to leadership. - It is painful for me to say this, but we're coming to the end of our time. So I want to give us a chance to get some closing thoughts in here for the folks who are listening who are thinking about this conversation and thinking about the outcomes and the space process and thinking about how to apply it to their organizations. What advice would you give to an organization who's thinking about this now and trying to see a forward for themselves in their organization and embark on a similar process? And particularly one that seeks to center anti-racism and ameliorate white supremacy culture in the way that their organization works. What advice would you give to that organization? - The strategic planning process is a blueprint for your processes going forward. And I think the more that you can garner a village of people doing that and buy into that, the more it's gonna be easier, I think, to then begin to execute on the things you've promised to yourselves and promise to the village of people that are taking your organization forward. And then this idea of it's not decision making is not flat. Not everybody has the same say in the decision making. Not everybody has the same level of accountability, but at the same time when there is communication and hearing each other out and really clear transparent expectations of what your contribution really is in this process, I think there's a higher level of satisfaction even if in the end your idea was not put for us, you feel heard. - I wanna thank you for a term that you put into the process, deep down that I remember very clearly that there's a lot of response to the concept of transparency, but what's most important is a shared definition of transparency. We talked a lot about shared definitions. Since language is often such a trip wire for a lot of people and having that shared language among organizations is a really powerful way to take some of that resistance out of certain concepts. - I would offer asking questions because you want to know the answers. And asking as an organization who are your constituents, who do you serve ask start a set of questions. They can start with an anonymous Google form. You can create it right now. What are the five questions that you have about equity, diversity, inclusion, anti-racism in the workplace? You won't know how you're doing unless you ask the hard, revealing, embarrassing, vulnerable questions. You will not get anywhere close to the root without asking and do not ask if you do not actually have the intention to listen, otherwise it is an exercise in optics and you will do more harm than good. Because without checking in with the folks that you serve, without checking in with your staff, without checking in with the folks who are a part of your community, how can you possibly know how you're doing? - I think I would build on what Emily's saying of around authentic questioning. Maybe one of the first ones is why are we doing this? Why do we want to do this? What do we want to know? Is it because somebody external to this organization said, gosh, it's about time you had a strategic plan? 'Cause that might not be the right reason to do it because it does take time and intention. If you want to take your planning and your strategic planning through the starting point or through the lens of the EI work, you really need to know why you're doing it. And that has to be a genuine commitment. You've got to know why. It sounds so basic, but it's really critical. And I think it all goes back to what we've talked about in many variations on a theme about sort of expectations and best practices. And you have to know who the critical voices are in the room. I think some of the starting point is what was so lovely about where we started was, again, this authentic question and goal of, I think we can bring these two pieces of work together, bringing the DEI work and actions that resulted from Ken's work with the planning. I think by doing that and living in that process, we can marry the mission of serving process and creation to the work of running the organization. I think before you start, it's that question of why and then how can we bring the work of strategic planning into the heart of the mission? How can it reflect who we are, who we want to be as an organization? Because then the message to the world coming out is going to really be authentic and heartfelt. I'm going to attempt to answer my own question here and I'm also going to do it with the Herculean task of following these three amazing lines and trying to say something different. But I will just say that the thing that I am sitting with a lot is that it has to be a process that is rooted in a really clear statement of aspiration and hope, but also directly acknowledges fear. And directly acknowledges what the organization is afraid of encountering, is afraid of processing, is afraid of being called out on, all of those kinds of things. There has to be that level of vulnerability. Without that vulnerability, there is no growth. There is just showmanship. There is just optics. There is performance. And we are all people of the arts. We're no strangers to performance. But in this kind of a process, we have to be uncomfortable. We have to be, we cannot be afraid of conflict. If there's a room without conflict, there is just a room without ambition, without growth, without progress. And so I think that in the design of a process, in the design of who the stakeholders are, in the voices that you invite in, I think that all has to be central. With that, I thank you three for joining me for this incredible conversation. I'm inspired by all of you. I am grateful for your leadership in this process from all the perspectives you brought. Emily, I hope you're very proud of the legacy that you're leaving behind at space, which I am personally very grateful to have been a part of. And I just thank you for this wonderful conversation. Thank you, thanks everyone. Thank you, yeah, great to be with you all. That's all for this episode of Changing Arts. Thanks for listening. Special thanks to our guests today, Edie Dimas, Emily Simones, and Deepa Perohit, as well as Ken E.B. if the E.B. Strategies and Janet Olshanski, Space's Board Chair. This podcast is brought to you by Tom O'Connor Consulting Group, Production Coordinator, and Christine O'Connell. Editing and music is by Roy Latham of Latham Media Supply, and thanks as well to Ronnie Haywood and Jordan Sanford. We'll see you next month. [BLANK_AUDIO]