You were an ISPA Global Fellow earlier in your career. How did that experience shape your professional journey, and what aspects of the fellowship still resonate in your work today?

I was so grateful to be an ISPA Fellow. Coming from the Pacific, we can be so geographically isolated sometimes, and it was incredible to meet other like-minded souls from around the world on the same journey. Being able to stay in touch and communicate post-ISPA has been so rewarding for me. The time and space to come to ISPA and view the work we do every day on the ground is such an opportunity for growth and reflection. So many delicious minds to learn from and be inspired by.

Could you introduce VOU to our community and share a few projects you’re most excited about right now?

VOU is a social enterprise from Fiji. We provide accessible creative education pathways to vulnerable youth and provide employment for youth and women in Fiji. We are proud to now be sustainably employing 82 creative industry professionals through the work we do in Fiji and internationally. We run a tertiary dance program called the Conservatorium of Dance, and we give 20 scholarships annually to youth from urban and rural communities around Fiji who otherwise would not have been able to attend university. We provide accommodation and allowances to these youth while they study. Upon graduation, we guarantee employment within the VOU company. Once they graduate, they go on to either work in our Fiji resident shows or our internationally touring shows.

In Fiji, we run the VOU HUB for Arts, Culture, and Activities, which hosts our resident shows that we showcase to the local community and the tourism industry. We also host international artists at this venue. For our international touring shows, we have the Fijian Flying Circus, which is currently touring around the world. We also have our creative team working on an exciting new show that will launch in 2027—we will keep you posted on that!

VOU believes in bringing people together to share in our common humanity. In a world of AI, where people are often questioning what is real, the energy, spirit, and mana of the Pacific electrify the space and remind everyone what it is to be ALIVE!

Come visit us in Fiji!

You’re joining us again in New York—what are you most looking forward to at the ISPA 2026 Congress, what makes this gathering meaningful for you, and as someone leading significant work in the Pacific and touring around the world, what perspectives or priorities do you hope to bring into the global conversations taking place there?

I am really excited about finding international touring partners from around the world to collaborate with for the VOU touring shows, and I hope to connect with new audiences. I have also been invited to the Live Arts Lab by UNESCO the day before, and I am so intrigued by all the creative minds that will be present. The performing arts stand at an important crossroads globally at this point in time. We need a dialogue on how we navigate forward in a fragmented and isolated world. Artists have the power to heal and commentate; however, how will we support the important role that artists play in the fabric of society? Because of the situations in which we find ourselves, platforms like ISPA are now more important than ever—to unify and amplify the views and needs of the arts community.

Thank you, ISPA, for bringing us together in uncertain times!

Leading Through Global Perspectives: Josephine Ridge on Arts Leadership and ISPA 26 New York Congress Focus on Resilience

In an increasingly connected yet complex world, arts leaders are navigating unprecedented challenges while fostering international collaboration and cultural exchange. As one of the co-chairs of ISPA 26 New York Congress, Josephine brings a unique perspective shaped by her extensive international experience across Australia, Canada, and beyond, combined with her leadership role at the Banff Centre. Read on to discover how global perspectives shape effective arts leadership and why resilience became the defining theme for this year's Congress.

Your career has spanned continents from Australia to Canada with deep focus on the arts in diverse cultural contexts, how has this international perspective shaped your approach to leadership?

I think perhaps the first thing to say is that I have worked in a whole range of art forms and disciplines. I've worked for companies that have had extensive international touring schedules and also worked with international festivals. Of course, each of those specific areas has some differences, but there are always going to be similarities.

Having had a breadth of experience, one of the things that I have noticed is that in terms of leadership style, in terms of working with and collaborating with people, the similarities really outweigh any specific cultural or regional differences. I think that's partly because those of us who spend our lives working in the arts share so many values and have so many foundational principles and beliefs in what we do—belief in the arts and the importance of culture, and the importance of working with artists to help them share their voices and share their work.

I think that deeply rooted foundation impacts and influences the leadership style of so many of us wherever we happen to be. But another aspect is that working in an international arena, makes you really appreciate the value of the various cultural perspectives and political perspectives that come into play, which are either directly affecting or impacting the perspectives of people across the world in different areas. That has to lead to a thoughtful and tolerant response to difference. That is where there's great interest—when we're talking together and we're people from different places, it always creates such an interesting dynamic. It should foster respect, it should foster curiosity, it should foster an understanding of the importance of difference and valuing that. That really has to impact the way we lead as leaders, because we need to instill both those foundational values that I talked about with the respect for difference. Those two things combined must surely inform how we work as leaders in the arts.

You are one of the two co-chairs of the ISPA 26 Congress - "Resilience: A Global Dialogue," can you share how this theme was chosen and why resilience felt like the right focus? How might the insights from your work at the Banff Centre inform the conversations at the Congress?

I think it was very clear as soon as we started talking as a committee and with the ISPA team that we needed to find a way to directly address the challenges and complexities that are being faced by all of us around the world to different degrees. In doing that, the question then became: how do we do that in a way where we are looking for the positive, looking for the areas of constructive action, looking for areas where we can develop topics and themes that are looking ahead rather than perhaps feeling overwhelmed by some of the things which are going on politically and culturally around us? That very quickly leads to a concept of resilience—needing to understand where we are and what is influencing the world around us at the moment, and then saying, "Okay, let's sit up. Let's talk to each other. Let's find the best ways through this through dialogue."

The Banff Centre has a long history of commissioning and presenting work but is also recognized as a significant educational institution. How important is the educational component today and how is it manifested?

The Banff Centre is a post-secondary institution, so training and providing developmental professional opportunities and creative opportunities for artists through the training programs that we run is the raison d'être for the Banff Centre's existence. The training programs that we run are aimed at artists at all stages of their careers, and I feel really strongly about the importance of that. Artists—whether they're young and just coming out of college, mid-career, or later career—have different needs, but the importance of providing artists with the opportunities to really fulfill their potential at whatever stage of career they're at is vital.

The other thing about the Banff Centre is that we offer residential training programs across every art form as well as hybrid art forms, and interdisciplinary art forms. That's again a key component of what we do because it allows fantastic conversations and collaborations between artists not only at all stages of their career, but also working in different art forms. We have programs running concurrently, so there are many opportunities for the artists in those programs to meet and experience and share with people from other disciplines.

The training programs have mentors who are extraordinary artists and teachers who come from all over the world, and the participants themselves come from all over the world, so we have this international layering. In this way, Banff Centre offers a space for cross-cultural, cross discipline dialogue and it does so in an environment of extraordinary beauty and power which impacts the experience of anyone who spends time here. Artists who come through our programs often come back as mentors or faculty themselves, or they will return and join other artists who come to do production residencies, creation residencies, and invited residencies where artists come to start, continue, or finish the work that they are in the midst of creating.

How do you perceive the fringe model evolving and how is Festival Off Avignon responding to those changes?

We are currently at a turning point in the evolution of the festival itself. Not only our festival but the landscape of the festivals and touring in France. We often claim to have a cultural exception compared to other countries around the world. Our cultural model relies heavily on significant public investment in the arts, which contrasts with the approach in Anglo-Saxon countries, where the system is much more focused on private funding.

However, what we’re seeing in 2025 is not just a reduction in funding, but a complete absence of funds for culture in certain regions. For instance, in the Pays de la Loire region, which was once one of the most dynamic in terms of culture, the cultural budget has been cut by 73%. This means that the balance that was once supported by regional funding is now collapsing. This is just one example, but the situation is similar across the country. You can’t imagine how many festivals have already announced that they will not be holding another edition in 2025 due to these cuts.

Some festivals will finish forever this year and some said that they will take a break for 2025 and maybe they will start again in 2026. And so, the paradox is that as the crisis deepens for everyone in France, our festival continues to grow even more. We never have had as many shows as we have now. Every year we have more venues which are opening their doors in this little city of Avignon. It's a medieval type city, we're surrounded by walls. So, we have 18,000 people living inside the city and we have during the summer almost 250 different rooms for venues.

This year, we hosted 1,600 shows, performing nearly every day. I’m confident that within the next three years, this number will reach around 2,000. As it becomes increasingly difficult for companies and producers to secure touring opportunities, they are more eager to participate in our festival, seeing it as one of the last remaining gateways to survival in such a challenging crisis. This growth is beyond our control.

How does the Festival Off Avignon position itself in relation to other festivals and organizations in your community? Do you see opportunities for collaboration or ways to complement and bounce off each other’s strengths?

For quite some time, the Festival Off Avignon has served as a platform for selling shows, making it a significant marketplace—though some hesitate to use that term when discussing the performing arts. In France, there is often discomfort around the intersection of money and art, unlike in the U.S. or the U.K., where such discussions are more commonplace. However, the reality is that over the past 25 years, the festival has evolved into a crucial hub for show exchanges and collaborations. It is now the most important gathering for performing arts professionals in France, attracting around 2,000 buyers from across the country. Our relationship with national and French festivals is largely service-oriented, helping them discover performances and curate their programs.

We don’t really have partnerships in the traditional sense, as there is no true equivalent to our festival in France. We are the only ones doing what we do, in the way that we do it. I realized this even more when I attended the International Fringe Congress in Stockholm this summer, where I met representatives from fringes all over the world—many from the United States. I was surprised to see just how widespread and well-integrated the concept of a fringe festival is in Anglo-Saxon countries, whereas in France, it remains much less developed. Officially, there is only one recognized fringe festival in France—ours.

There is a major organization in France called France Festivals, which brings together many festivals. However, we cannot be a member because we are a fringe festival. They do not consider us a "real" festival since we don’t have an official artistic direction or oversee the creation of shows. This has always been a challenge for fringe festivals—they argue that because we don’t directly manage artistic creation, we don’t fit the definition of a festival. The reality, however, is that we do have curators within our festival, but rather than a single curator deciding the entire program, our structure is more open and decentralized.

We have 150 different curators—the venue owners—who each program their own spaces with various shows. So, while we do have curators, they operate independently, and this decentralized model is part of what defines our festival.

That said, we are now building stronger connections—not just with festivals, but more importantly, with networks of buyers and programmers working at regional and national levels. This shift has been driven by the growing difficulties faced by these professionals. When people are struggling, they become more open to collaboration, and the need to survive fosters new partnerships.

So, to answer your question, on a national level, development is still quite limited. When I became co-chairman of the festival two years ago, there was no international development strategy in place. We had no partnerships with festivals worldwide—but that has been changing, as I’ve worked extensively to build those connections.

I’ve traveled widely, visiting many places to establish partnerships, and as a result, we are now part of the global fringe network. We have developed strong relationships with Edinburgh and Adelaide, the two largest fringe festivals. We’ve established real agreements for cooperation and share a common vision on how to support each other and strengthen our partnerships.

Additionally, we are now beginning to build connections with more traditional, curated festivals that are not part of the fringe network but are increasingly interested in collaborating with the Festival Off Avignon. They are eager to work with us because they want to promote artists from their countries or showcase selected artists and companies they support. As a result, we are now establishing numerous partnerships with international festivals and cultural institutions. For example, we have formed collaborations with Korea and Romania, including a partnership with the FNT Festival in Romania and the Busan International Performing Arts Festival in Korea. Additionally, we have agreements with the Shanghai International Festival and the Wuzhen Theatre Festival in China. These partnerships are helping us expand our network and create new opportunities for artistic exchange on a global scale. For the past two years, we have introduced a "Guest of Honor" program, where we invite a country to take part in the festival. In 2025, that honor will go to Brazil, and we are now establishing connections with institutions and festivals across the country.

Our vision for international development is to solidify our place on the global festival scene. We aim to be a key destination where buyers from around the world come to discover new artists. To support this, two years ago, we launched a special initiative to attract the next generation of creators to the festival. The concept is simple: we partner with universities, conservatories, and performing arts schools worldwide to connect emerging artists with industry professionals and opportunities.

Each year, we invite delegations of young students from various institutions who are still in their early studies to have an immersive experience at the festival. This allows them to discover the festival from the inside and learn that it exists as a welcoming space for when they're ready to present their work on the international stage. We host 10 to 12 student delegations each year, and we believe this exposure will inspire them to return in the future with their own productions. As this new generation of creators becomes familiar with the festival and sees it as a supportive environment for their work, it will attract more professional buyers, who will recognize the potential for fresh and innovative projects.

To wrap up, our ambition is to establish ourselves as a key destination for international touring. Currently, we host only a small number of foreign delegates—around a hundred—which is minimal compared to other major fringe festivals. We are far from reaching our potential in this area. It’s not that people aren't interested in the festival or that the experience for buyers is poor; the issue is that the festival hasn’t yet been recognized as a primary place for international engagement. Our challenge now is to change that perception and position ourselves as a must-visit destination for international buyers.

The French cultural network has historically been one of the most well-developed in the world, yet its participation in ISPA has been limited. What motivated you to join, and how do you see ISPA complementing the work of France's cultural institutions?

The French market was one of the most significant in Europe, thanks to the cultural policies implemented after World War II. You can’t imagine how many venues there are in such a small country that made touring possible. However, as I mentioned, the venues still exist, but the funding has dried up.

French companies, producers, and artists haven’t traditionally been focused on international touring, as the domestic market has been so strong for many years. However, this has left them less accustomed to thinking globally. I often speak with Canadian professionals who share that they have always had to support international touring because their domestic market is too small to sustain their artists. For them, exporting talent is essential for survival, as the market simply isn't large enough to support them.

I am in charge of international development. We are committed to expanding our global reach and fostering partnerships worldwide. ISPA is a wonderful place to meet colleagues, partners and to imagine the future together. That's what I expected from my participation. I know that it's only when you meet people, you can really imagine some projects, cooperation and future. Everything is possible when you have more than 560 professionals together. For us it's not only having some partners, but it's also changing our way of thinking of work. The networking is not so developed in France and especially here in the Festival Off Avignon. And so that's something that we have to learn now from some organizations, not only on the capacity to meet other people, but also to see how it's possible to make a strong network.

I’ve also been reflecting on the future role of our organization. It won’t just be about organizing and coordinating the festival; we aim to become a true platform for exchange and a think tank that imagines the future of performing arts. During the three weeks of the festival, we bring together a wide range of professionals, with everyone who matters in France’s performing arts scene present at the Festival Off Avignon. I’m convinced that we have a key role to play in shaping the structural landscape of performing arts in France, but we’re still figuring out how to do it effectively.

I believe that my participation in the ISPA Congress and membership provided valuable insights into practices we can adapt to our own system, allowing us to play a similar role in supporting the performing arts. I’ve read about why ISPA was created and how it’s organized to support the global production and creation chain in the performing arts. I’m confident that, at our scale, the Festival Off Avignon can play a similar, important role.

Tell us a little bit about yourself and your career

Creative Scotland is the national funder for the arts, screen and creative industries in Scotland – one of the four UK arts councils and similar to a Ministry of Culture in other countries. As Head of Theatre, I and my team support artists living and working in Scotland to develop their ideas, provide support to bring them to life and ensure that work reaches the widest possible audience both within Scotland and, in many cases, internationally. Before this job, I was a theatre producer / programmer and an agent for international theatre & dance, touring work world-wide.  And back in the mists of time I was Deputy Director of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.  Having been brought up in Luxembourg there is internationalism baked into my DNA!

Could you share insights into how your company's funding priorities have evolved in the post- pandemic era, particularly concerning projects and initiatives it supports?

I think we are only beginning to understand the scale of permanent change which Covid triggered. But in the immediate aftermath, and the implosion of theatre finances brought about by enforced venue closures our top priority was to help steady the ship for individuals and organisations.  This included emergency one-off funding.  Now, the on-going volatility of production costs and pressures on fundraising are creating their own and more persistent challenges. 

In Scotland / UK around 75% of the creative workforce is freelance, and support for individual artists feels more important than ever.  We are seeing major changes in the way people choose to make and present work.  Individuals can respond more flexibly and quickly to ideas and opportunities.  Our project funding (available both to individual applicants and constituted companies) is deliberately open in its creative focus which has particularly benefited multi and inter-disciplinary artists.

One area of work which got a boost from Covid restrictions was outdoor work.  Many of our theatres have outdoor space which had previously never been used for artistic purposes.  I think it simply hadn’t occurred to them that this was an option. But with closed buildings, there was a real opportunity to programme differently and develop knowledge and skills within venue teams.  It is a genuine pleasure to see how this work is now being incorporated into current and future programming plans.

With many funding organizations retracting from international engagement due to various factors, is this a consideration for Creative Scotland and if so, how might it impact your funding strategies moving forward?

Scotland is a small country (pop. 5.5m) and we have a rich history of international engagement. Our latest Strategic Framework promotes International as one of our 6 priorities.  We recognise the delight which fresh ideas, perspectives, stories and voices bring to audiences.  And for artists, creative collaborations and access to an extended market-place may be vital to ensure a sustainable creative career or business.

Internationally, Scotland is probably best known for its festivals which have always relied on international participation, evident from the first Edinburgh International Festival now 78 years ago.  

But new ways are also developing.  Use of technology as a creative medium and as a way of amplifying international connection is now commonplace.  This also responds to our growing need to adopt more climate friendly ways of working.  A tension which sits at the heart of international collaboration is how to simultaneously meet our obligations to the planet while also protecting the uniqueness of in-person relationship building.  The fact that International is prioritised within our Strategy, gives me comfort that time, space and budget are understood to be vital in getting this right.

Considering the Edinburgh Festival's global reach and significance, could you elaborate on why supporting such internationally focused events "locally" is a strategy/priority for Creative Scotland?

As will be familiar to many ISPA members, festivals play a huge role in raising the profile of artists and productions.  This is certainly true of Edinburgh in August where 4 festivals take place simultaneously:  The Edinburgh International Festival; the Edinburgh Fringe; the Edinburgh International Book Festival; and the Edinburgh Art Festival.  We are particularly fortunate that, perhaps due to scale and history, artists in Scotland are able to attract a remarkable range of international collaborators, and that those festivals provide a rich source of content for international programmers and presenters.  Careers can be made by just one amazing connection.

I also believe that festivals play a big role in inspiring those who are yet to become our future artists. All the Edinburgh Festivals have programmes aimed at children and young people, and although not scientifically proven, there is no doubt that audiences are more adventurous within a festival context and likely to take a risk on what shows they will attend.  These are often the moments which stand out as pivotal in taking a decision to pursue a creative career.  For Creative Scotland, success is a creative sector enlivened by the diversity of those who create and present work here.  And the international friends we make in doing so!

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself? Where are you from, where are you based now, and what is your current position?

I’m currently working as the CEO of Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay, Singapore’s national performing arts centre. Prior to this, a large part of my working life was in various government organisations, developing and implementing policies and initiatives mostly in the areas of the arts, culture, and creative industries. My personal background is in literature – and I am an old-fashioned reader and maker of physical books.

2. You worked at the Esplanade for a number of years before becoming the CEO. Could you please share with us the most substantial changes or initiatives you implemented during your time as Esplanade–Theatres on the Bay's CEO?

I joined Esplanade in 2014 as the Assistant Chief Executive Officer. The CEO then is no stranger to the ISPA community – Benson Puah, a past ISPA Chairperson!  Benson retired in August 2018, having built a solid foundation for an arts center – and that’s when I took over the role. 

One of the key things I continued working with the team to develop is exploring the social impact of the arts – in partnership with schools, teaching artists and community arts practitioners, as well as the social sector. These initiatives with artists look at the impact of the arts with vulnerable youths, isolated seniors, migrant workers, and women in crisis. We’re now in the midst of seeding more research and documentation of such projects, and starting classes to share the knowledge and practices with a wider pool of artists and social sector workers.  And while inclusion is at the heart of Esplanade’s vision as “the performing arts centre for everyone,” in recent years we’ve tried to look not only through financial and other demographic lenses, but to “catch up” in creating a more welcoming environment for audiences and artists of diverse abilities.

Another area that I am passionate about is the role of the arts in Singapore’s creative future(s), and hopefully in exploring this, connecting the arts to the next generation of artists and audiences. Many of these issues are not unique to Singapore.

The first obvious one is technology and the accelerated digitalisation of everyday life. Esplanade’s digital transformation journey started probably in 2016, and we are still learning. Esplanade Offstage will expand beyond containing podcasts, videos and docu-series, essays, and educational resources. In the coming years, we are looking to enabling curated access to Esplanade’s extensive digital archives. All our performing venues are undergoing a major digital infrastructure revamp over the next three years. And just this year, Esplanade, with Singapore’s National Arts Council, have opened up more opportunities for artsXtech lab processes.

The second obvious issue is climate change. We have made a commitment over the next few years to make a series of changes to both our building and our operational practices that affect waste management, water and energy harvesting, and consumption. We are re-examining our approach towards travel and artist riders, and are starting to speak with artists keen to explore more climate responsible ways of making productions.

A third issue for the arts in a small city-state like Singapore, in an increasing complex and divisive world, is how inter-cultural and regionally collaborative artistic work can slowly but surely articulate a different future than the current reality of war and protectionism. It helps that Esplanade and Singapore are located in the heart of a dynamic, very exciting and diverse region.  We have been making new work with arts centres and artists in the Asia-pacific region, and leading or participating in these multilateral commissions is invigorating for the programming team. Two years ago, we also launched an International Residency for performing arts research. My colleagues did this, recognising that not all conversations and processes need necessarily lead to a production.

I can go on and on about the social, regional, climate, and technological opportunities for the arts and Esplanade. Of course, the elephant in the room is who will invest in these efforts, however necessary or exciting it seems to all of us arts workers! So as CEO, given a challenging economic and funding climate, a large part of my work is about identifying and reaching out to the partners, allies, supporters in industries and communities beyond the arts – to build more lasting connections. It is especially so in Singapore’s context where philanthropic giving at all levels to areas like education, poverty alleviation, and healthcare are significant and well-established, and rightly so, but giving to the arts and culture is still nascent.

3. What should we know about the artistic landscape in Singapore?

For a city-state with a resident population of only 5.5 million, Singapore’s artistic landscape is truly diverse. In part it reflects the historical diversity of our migrant society and our location in the heart of Asia. But it is also a reflection of how open our society and economy are to the world. For instance, if you visit Esplanade on a buzzy weekend, you may encounter a classical Indian dance performance in the theatre studio, an Indonesian performance artist in our visual arts gallery, a visiting Japanese metal band in our livehouse-style Annexe Studio, a contemporary dance performance at our mid-sized theatre, the Singapore Symphony Orchestra playing in our concert hall, a duo singing Chinese popular tunes from the 1960s at our open Concourse Stage, and a young Singapore bedroom-pop band on our Outdoor Theatre stage.

4. As a long-time ISPA member and a member of the Planning Committee for the upcoming New York '24 ISPA Congress, January 9 – 11, can you share how does your perspective influence the upcoming program, and what you are looking to focus on in the 75th anniversary year?

Turning 75 for ISPA is very much about celebrating the legacy of international conversation in the arts, but the more urgent matter is of the future, including the future of what it means for arts professionals from around the world to gather together. This is especially urgent given the pace at which the world is moving, changing. So as best as I can, I support suggestions from the ISPA team that seem to break from “the norm” of a conference; allow for different modes of conversations and experiences; and reflect on how it may be for participants who have not been “regulars” at the ISPA-NY sessions. I try also to put myself in the shoes of younger colleagues, to ask whether they will potentially find inspiration through the programme.

5. Based on your experience, what is one piece of advice you would recommend to emerging arts professionals?

The impact arts workers make on our communities, society, and the world is often shaping what is of value and meaning over time the enduring qualities of humanity are best expressed and realised in the arts. So, to emerging arts professionals–don’t give up. The impact or reward of your work may not always be immediate, but it is discovering what endures over time for yourself and others!

Tell us a little bit about yourself and your career -- where are you from, where are you based now, and what are you working on currently?

My parents came from Japan as newlyweds to New York City, where I was born and currently live.

My siblings and I were brought up in a true blend of Japanese and American cultures. Every year my mother prepared the traditional Japanese breakfast to bring in the New Year, while Sunday dinners were subs and soda while watching the Wonderful World of Disney. Our parents felt it was important to share their appreciation of visual art and live performances. And we all played musical instruments and learned from an early age the value of arts and culture.

Perhaps like most young people today, I did not think about my future strategically and followed my passion and ended up majoring in music without knowing where that would lead me. Luckily for me, early in my career I had the fortune of landing a job in the programming department at Lincoln Center where I worked for many years.

Now, as an independent, self-employed professional, I have the opportunity to experience a variety of responsibilities: curating, producing, mentoring, advising, and orchestra planning, among others. One creative project that has brought me immense joy is working with cellist Alisa Weilerstein. I am the artistic producer and advisor to a multi-year solo cello project called FRAGMENTS, which began as an idea in Dec 2020. Once complete, the project will be six programs of music that each weave together the movements of a Bach Cello Suite with 27 new works, all commissioned for this project. Integrated into the music is a light design and an abstract set that awakens the senses and invites you to listen more deeply. FRAGMENTS had its world premiere this past January at Toronto’s 21C Music Festival, and it just made its New York premiere at Carnegie Hall earlier this month. I love it for many reasons including that it takes a fresh look at what a concert experience can be.

You left your long-time position at Lincoln Center in the middle of the pandemic. In retrospect, do you think that timing and change worked in your favor?

I had countless life-changing and incredible artistic experiences at Lincoln Center. Among other initiatives, I worked on two annual festivals (Mostly Mozart and White Light) and a concert series. I grew up there professionally and learned so much about producing, artistic planning, and what it means to shape a live experience with an artistic vision, both on a micro and macro level. It was a crazy unceasing cycle of planning and producing – with performances and festivals year-round.

So, when the pandemic hit, suddenly, we had to stop and shift gears. There were no live events for many months. It allowed for reflection and an opportunity to try something new.

As I said earlier, as an independent art professional, I now have the opportunity to work in various areas with different people and organizations. It has been invigorating to observe aspects of the live arts through a different lens, and to work closely with young artists. I am really enjoying myself.

Based on your experience, what is one piece of advice you would recommend to emerging arts professionals?

Follow your passion. Talk to people. Meet people who will inspire you. Keep asking questions. Find an aspect of the art form or business that you are curious about or energizes you and follow it. Go down that rabbit hole of discovery. Keep your curiosity alive.

And the ISPA community is chock full of interesting, helpful, and creative professionals. Don’t forget, people love to give advice.

You’re a member of ISPA Program Committee and Chair the Pitch New Works Committee. How does your perspective influence the upcoming program and pitch project selection?

The program committee is a great team of caring and motivated colleagues looking out to improve the ISPA experience and I’m proud to be part of this group. It’s really a group effort and hopefully we are succeeding in envisioning and guiding the programs and activities for the membership.

And the Pitch Committee is particularly special and fun as it offers a window into what artists are creating and developing today all around the world. However, it is challenging to whittle many dozens of applications down to a mere 10 projects while also keeping a balance of geography and discipline.

Personally, I am always looking for the next great innovative music project!

You’re planning to join ISPA Congress in Manchester, June 27-30. What are you looking forward the most during the Congress?

I love to go to places I’ve never been before, and Manchester is one of them.

The mid-year congresses offer a thoughtfully organized cultural experience, often tying in the local history and activities to the ISPA and arts community. I look forward to immersing myself in Manchester’s history.

I am particularly looking forward to seeing the new Factory International, one of the many venues of the Manchester International Festival, in addition to all the exciting offerings the Festival has to offer. Having produced multi-disciplinary festivals myself, I am excited to experience and feel the energy of a festival setting again. I will try to see as much as possible! It’s exciting to stumble upon a creation that unexpectedly excites.

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself? Where are you from, where are you based now, and what is your current position?

I'm originally from Uruguay. My career path was very diverse as I started as a dancer and I worked in Germany for a long time, dancing for a local company until I decided I wanted to go to the other side of the stage. Being an artist myself, I could see what was expected from people in the arts management sector. So, I said maybe I should jump on that sector and bring those artistic expectations and ideas. I studied arts management among many other things - I am addicted to studying. I did two master degrees to bring all this knowledge to the sector. I moved back to Uruguay where I started working for the Ministry of Culture. I was asked to start the new dance school, National Dance School, the National Conservatory. I started the Contemporary Dance Conservatory there. So, I'm the founder and after four years of directing in the conservatory, I was offered the position to be the director of all artists schools in the country. I started that position within the ministry and after that I was offered to be the president and CEO of the National Performing Arts Council. I was there until 2022 last year when I got a job in Washington, DC where I'm based right now at the Internal American Development Bank as a consultant for the creative and cultural industries for Latin America and the Caribbean.

You have moved from Uruguay to the United States. Can you talk about opportunities/disadvantages associated with the move?

Sometimes it's very hard to be far away from your family and people you love, friends. But on the other hand, I really see the opportunity and how from here I can help develop more impact or improving lives of those working in the cultural sector in Latin America and the Caribbean. So that's stronger than the other thing for me. I travel and see my family quite a lot. I know what I can do here, and I can see the results. It's very important to be able to have a broader perspective. In my previous job I was only overlooking one country, right now I can see different situations, compare them, see how one country can help the other. I think that's very motivating.

You have more than 20 years of experience in arts management and public policy, building better communities and promoting change through arts and creativity. Can you tell us what keeps you inspired?

That's a very interesting question. I was talking about that yesterday. I think that the challenge is to keep connected with our communities. That's what keeps me inspired, to see the struggles our communities have and to see how we can help. That's what inspires me. Sometimes you can think that in our job, you can end up in the office without knowing what's happening in the real world. And when you talk to artists or when you talk to the audiences or when you talk to people who work in these industries, you go back to reality. That's what I look for. When I find myself not knowing what to do, I go and talk to the people in the sector, ask them what they need, bring their opinion to the table. What they think matters, what we think in an office has to be a tool for them to make things happen. The whole idea is to involve the community. This is my inspiration.

You joined ISPA as a Fellow and now, just recently, you joined ISPA Board -- Congratulations! How have you been involved in the organization since your Fellowship?

Yes, I was a fellow, as you said, that was my first contact with ISPA in 2017. Then for two or three years, I was part of the organizing committee for the New York Congress. That was my first involvement. And it was very interesting to see all the things that could be done. That's when I thought I could bring more to the organization, especially in terms of diversity. Not only geographically, but also in the way we think the performing arts world. Then I started working in the governance committee. That's one of the committees I'm a member of right now. And very recently I joined the board. The main challenge I see is to bring more diverse membership and I want to help with that. Because I think that's the only way ISPA can move forward. By having more diversity and different ways of thinking.

What is the most memorable conversation you had at our recent New York Congress? Will you be joining us in Manchester, June 27-30, 2023?

Together with Judy Harquail I was leading the Seminar Day for ISPA Fellows. There was this activity where we all sat together in a circle, and then we started discussing what systemic change means for us. It was so inspiring, to see these fellows who just started their journey in ISPA. Most of them joined in in person for the first time because of the pandemic. All of them agreeing that we need a systemic change. We've heard ideas from all over the world in one room. What a privilege to experience that. What do we do with that? Because we meet, we discuss, we exchange ideas and points of view, but then what are you going do with that when you go back? And I found a group of very motivated leaders that wanted to go back and do something about it. So, I think that conversation was just the beginning.

As far as Manchester, I still don't know. It depends on my work here. If my schedule allows me to go there, I would definitely love to do it!

You are the Head of International Programming & Production at CPH STAGE, which is the national theatre festival of Denmark. Can you tell us about your role there and how your ISPA membership supports that?

CPH Stage is the National Festival of Denmark. The festival is relatively young, next year it's our 10th anniversary. I've been working on six editions of the festival so far, developing the international strategy to help Danish artists on international arena. We are doing it by developing a showcase and a meeting place. And now, during the last year, I've also been looking into the programming of the international shows.

We program around three to four international shows a year. (Out of around seventy.) Most of these are collaborations with the partners. I look for works that build a bridge between the art and the people who experience the art.

My ISPA membership supports me in a big way. It allows me to think in higher frequencies and exchange ideas by explorative conversations with colleagues from all over the world. That really helps me a lot. I enjoy open-minded creativity, which was really nurtured by ISPA membership.

I found your podcast: NEW REALITIES – RE:DISCOVERING WILDERNESS very interesting. Did you and your guests succeed to identify and describe the new realities emerging in these years of radical change?

I'm really happy that you mentioned that. I am planning another two series, including one reflecting on Edinburgh Festival Fringe, because this year it was really a big thing the first time after COVID. And there will also be one about the New York scene.

I can't say that we discovered concrete new realities, but we pointed at some tendencies and noticed that something actually is changing. Something in the mindset and the attitude. Empathy has become even more important these years, and you realize that, when you go to Fringe. People are taking care of themselves in another way. It’s still hectic and exhausting, but there's a thought of taking care of ourselves, also by introducing more intimate meetings and not meeting as much in the bigger format. There is also bigger awareness of sustainability. I initiated a digital festival (RE:LOCATIONS) during COVID, and while working on it I realized this is a way for me to avoid traveling so much as I use to.

One of my guests, Sharon Burgess, CEO of ARTRAGE in Perth actually experiments with four-day work week, during non-festival season. It was really great to hear that an organization of that size within the very hectic festival arena actually have the courage and also the resources to work like that. After all, it should be about working smarter, not harder or longer.

There are changes in the way that we program and the way that we collaborate.

The world will also change in the coming years. There is a far-right government suddenly in Italy. And there are a lot of indications that we haven't seen the last of the changes. Being prepared is actually one of the key things that we learned during the lockdowns, and performing arts industry has been reminded that that's actually a thing we are good at, but it's also very exhausting.

Based on your 20 years’ experience in performing arts field, what is one piece of advice you would recommend to emerging arts professionals?

I think integrity. One should never underestimate how much power it actually gives you. So, nurture your integrity and make sure that you are aligned with your own values. That you're accountable in that way. I had a period in my work life where due to several changes in management/leadership in a short time I couldn’t really see myself where I was at that time, and I decided to leave and start my own company. In that moment, I realized how not respecting your own integrity can really undermine your drive.

And then if I can just give another, and that's for women, I would say if you are ambitious and you want to have children, then make sure to find a really good partner who supports you. I've been very fortunate to have had a really good husband. We're not together anymore, but now we have a really good collaboration with my son who is 12. I would not have been able to do all the things that I've been doing if I didn't have a supportive man who actually was open to our schedule and chores negotiations. It's really about finding a person that you trust and with whom you can have a good collaboration.

How did your experience of being an ISPA Fellow impact your career?

I can bring up a very concrete example of the ISPA fellowship impact.

For many years I've been doing workshops, and during COVID, I found a way to condense my workshop training into a 21 days online workshop. Now I've actually done it several times. In November for the first time I’m going to do it as a hybrid version here in Denmark for two organizations.

The ISPA network is the reason why I actually got the courage to do it. The fellowship encouraged me to ask questions. There is something about the American attitude that actually inspired me. Unlike in Denmark, where we have the Law of Jante - simply 10 commandments that are stopping you from thinking and believing that you are in any way, more than the rest. Same as the toll poppy syndrome in Australia.

The fundamentally different American culture and energy that I experienced during NY 2020 Congress made all the difference to me.

You’ve registered to join us in New York for January congress. What are you looking forward the most during the Congress?

I'm definitely looking forward to the conversations, the meetings and the festival circuit in New York. Festivals made with clear purpose can make a huge impact on societies and people. I have a special drive for festivals and this year marks my 20th anniversary in the festival field. 20 years ago, I worked on my very first festival. I was hustling as a director in an independent theatre company and had a lot of ideas and directed, but then somebody asked me, if I wanted to be part of starting up a new festival. I joined a team of five people and we started up a new festival, which still exists in the rains of others. I realized I was way more into festival making than I was into directing, because it had a bigger picture connected with empowering the industry as well as bringing shows to people which they otherwise wouldn’t have discovered or have had access to. Since then I have been contributing to develop further 6 festivals. And that's also, why I'm looking forward to the ISPA Congress in the New York.

I'm from Spain -- from Seville, a small town in the South. I come from a big family and I always wanted to explore the world and discover who I was outside of that circle. So I moved to the UK to do my degree in music as a performer. And that's what I've done, what I still do -- but I’ve always kept a curious mind, and I always wanted to explore things beyond a career as a performer.

So during my studies I was an usher and then house manager at Wigmore Hall in London. And then I focused more of my time on my performing career -- I'm a viola player – and I was soon appointed Principal Viola at the English Concert. And I really loved it, but that was in my mid-twenties and I thought, my God, you know, now I'm a principal at a big orchestra and what am I going to do for the rest of my career? So then I had the opportunity to start managing orchestras and eventually went to work for the Dunedin Consort in Scotland, where part of my role was to expand the organization’s international profile. And that’s when I joined ISPA as a Fellow.

I really enjoyed my time at the Dunedin Consort and spend ten years there, but then the Chief Executive position with the English Concert became available –that’s where I was Principal Viola – I thought it probably was a good idea to apply. It was a very competitive process and I like to think that my membership of ISPA in that context helped to articulate to the panel my breadth of connections and how as a manager I was able to build those relationships at international level. That was in 2019 so I got the job just a few months short of the pandemic. Wow. Which was fun.

You joined ISPA as a Fellow and now you are Vice Chair ISPA board -- how have you been involved in the organization since your Fellowship?

A few years after my Fellowship had come to an end David asked me if I would join the Finance Committee. Years ago when I was managing the Irish Baroque Orchestra I had to learn a lot of finance skills – accounting and reporting and all of that -- and I like to think that I was quite helpful to ISPA in that role. And having done my work on the finance committee, David invited me to chair the Fellowship Committee, which was very fascinating actually. Being able to see the breadth of ambition, what people are doing in the world was really quite humbling -- people are doing pretty extraordinary work out there.

And then I was honored to be asked to join the board and to help the community and the network advance its mission, and when David asked me if I’d consider becoming Vice Chair I was even more honored to have the opportunity to serve the membership in that way. I have only just started in this role of Vice Chair but, um, I think it's a privilege.

What caused you to want to remain an ISPA member when your Fellowship came to an end?

For me it was a no brainer. First off, there’s the financial incentive – when your Fellowship ends your membership is discounted for the first couple of years. It’s an investment in continuing to build those connections and friendships and the confidence that I had gained. ISPA is unlike any other network – it is many different art forms and genres and a wide spectrum of countries. You never know where the people that you meet through ISPA will end up – they might go from running a small troupe to one of the most important venues – and having that connection and being able to pick up the phone and say “hey if you have time for a quick chat I’d love to pick your brain about something or connect about this or the other” – it’s obviously very helpful.

I would also say that for those Fellows who have not been able to attend an in-person congress because of the pandemic – I think it is worth strongly considering maintaining the relationship with ISPA and that they will find that the experience of an in-person congress is so different from what you can experience through a small screen.

How has being an ISPA Fellow and subsequent member affected you and your career?

I think if I could sum up in one word what ISPA has given me, beyond the example I gave about the position at the English Concert, I think the word that comes to mind is confidence. I remember the first year of my Fellowship I was absolutely terrified. I arrived in New York for the congress, which was this city bustling with energy, and there were all these big heavyweights of the industry there. I was intimidated but at the same time I decided to take on this opportunity and actually try to make friends -- and that's what I did. People call it networking, but it really is about friendships with a very particular network of professionals who obviously have a lot of significance in the field, but at the same time, are very welcoming.

And now I feel able to say, you know what, I deserve a place at this table and to be part of the discussion and I do have something of value to add. I have learned a lot from ISPA but at the same time I have learned what I can contribute. Had I not been a Fellow and then continued with ISPA I don't think I would have this confidence. And, you know, that confidence is something that you carry with you everywhere and that you're able to translate to and make use of in many other aspects of your life.

You are currently moving from Chile to Buenos Aires. Can you talk about opportunities associated with the move?

There is always an opportunity when finding new territories but in particular, I would say that Buenos Aires stands as one of the largest Latin American hubs for Culture and in particular, for the performing arts. We are all aware of the economic challenges that Argentina faces and the inflation rates which of course are a barrier to artistic entrepreneurship, but in spite of that reality it has always impressed me how audiences there are absolutely committed to the artistic experiences, participation, and consumption as something very natural in their ways of living and in their social scheme. I have always admired that and I am now going to be able to delve more deeply into the way Argentina has made out of culture one of their more relevant identity values. I am sure there are interesting things to learn in the area of audience and community engagement and how they have transformed a city into public spaces that are part of people's way of life.

What should we know about the artistic landscapes of Chile and Argentina?

I would say that besides the fact that in both countries you will have excellent wine to complement a night out in the theatre, both cultures have a shared history of political dictatorships and a long path in rebuilding democracy. I am sure that shared cultural reality aligns artistic work with deep and critical artistic voices that have been resilient, moving through changes in the last 50 years but that nowadays feel really free to speak out for new rights, freedoms, and empowered community causes. Feminism, abortion, police violence, indigenous causes, the decolonization of paradigms as well as other political realities have always been part of a vibrant cultural scene in both latitudes.

You’re coming from a theater background. Can you speak more about your programmatic point of view?

One thing that has always interested me is how and why programmatic decisions are being made. Many used to think it's a matter of taste or personal points of view but to be honest, at least in societies like ours where there is an urgent need for funding and for professionalizing the arts as a way of living for creators, I would say it is a lot more about being able to find the right opportunities for collaboration. My point of view has always been aligned with the notion of diversity and this includes, of course, questioning a lot of established ideas and notions in the programming world. We need to question once again what quality means to us, also how we embrace the idea of equity in a diverse program. In particular, my interest and curiosity in the last years have been in advocating for arts and disabilities not as a way of promoting access, as most people frame it, but as a matter of ensuring cultural rights. Lately, I have also been trying to understand better the concept of "community", a label that today is almost mandatory for artistic spaces. How can we integrate communities in a way that is less of an engagement program and more of a transformational and useful experience for both artists and participants? As you see, I only have questions in my head, but I like that so much of this new post covid age where there is the possibility of reframing everything we once knew about programming.

You’re on the Planning Committee for the upcoming New York ‘23 ISPA Congress, January 10-12. How does your perspective influence the upcoming program?

Well, I feel my colleagues should answer how am I influencing, but I would like to think it is by bringing precisely new questions on top of the table. I am always trying to see a new perspective on things and pushing myself and everyone into a disagreement. I mean this of course in a good creative way. But I am not afraid of different points of view, moreover, I try to encourage that we are able to find our ways together because that shared path after dialogue and consensus is going to be for sure much more interesting. As a secret goal, of course, I am always rooting for more Latins for the ISPA international community!

In April 2020 you published an article: DIGITAL THEATER A THREAT? How do you feel about remote experiences after the past two years?

Mixed feelings, at least in Chile I feel there has been a shift in terms of how we perceive digital work. At some point, I still feel intrigued as to particularly understand how this new media will affect the way audiences relate to the arts. I see clearly there are opportunities to grow there, to expand territories, but I have seen few cases of groups or organizations that have really managed to develop a clear strategy on this. There is a chance that we as managers and programmers should definitively discuss more deeply. I also must admit though, that as a theater lover, nothing compares to being in a room full of people.

How did your experience of being an ISPA Fellow impact your career?

In several ways. ISPA has been a professional network where I have been able to share with peers but moreover, I have made friends. During the pandemic, on those moments when no one was really sure about what was going on, one of the first networks I felt comfortable with was ISPA. We keep a conversation going through Facebook trying to find answers out of uncertainties. This for me was critical and very relevant. It may sound a bit cliche, but it was really one of those moments when you are able to understand why these types of communities are important not only in professional terms but also in deeply personal matters.

When you understand that the theatre community is as big as the world, then you are able to imagine new alternatives, you even feel brave enough make new decisions such as moving away from your own country. Somehow you feel safe and with the certainty that everywhere you go, there will be a chance of implementing ideas, opening conversations, and collaborating to the performing arts. I think ISPA has been critical in this move.

Please, tell us about the West Kowloon Cultural District, and your role in it.

If you would allow me to describe West Kowloon Cultural District in 3 words, they would be “ambitious”, “redefining”, “vibrant”. The precinct is a new and growing arts and culture hub in Hong Kong, with performance spaces and museums, green open spaces and a waterfront promenade perched on the iconic Victoria Harbour. It’s currently home to four cultural venues including M+ and the soon-to-be open Hong Kong Palace Museum. As Executive Director, Performing Arts, I lead the artistic, operational, and business development for the other two venues – the Xiqu Centre which promotes traditional Chinese opera and Freespace, a centre for contemporary programming and R&D. The third one, the Lyric Theatre Complex designed for dance, theatre, opera and more, will complete in 2024/25. To experience what the buzz is all about, I invite you to visit us in person or online: www.westkowloon.hk.

The situation in Hong Kong has been quite volatile over the pandemic with venues closing and then opening, restricted hours etc. How have you managed the situation with respect to programming and audiences?

I have simply Lost count of how many times since early 2020 we have had to close and reopen our venues or recalibrate our seating capacities. With our venues closed, we have had to quickly recalibrate our programming by turning some of our live programming to online. A very encouraging example came in the winter of 2020 when we had to turn our live-audience production of Waking Dreams in 1984, a co-production with a local theatre ensemble On & On Theatre Workshop, into online monetized offering. A great deal of effort was put into the adaptation, but we ended up with an acclaimed online production and sold more tickets than our original seated capacity. When international travel essentially stalls for visiting artists, we have been turning to local artists almost exclusively, and these homegrown talents have been met with high turnout and enthusiastic appreciation. If there is a silver lining in this terrible pandemic, this must be it!

I have explored your website's video content, and it shows continuous experimentation with digital programming. Do you have any thoughts on future work-models for the performing arts sector, with a focus on emerging technologies to promote the arts post Covid-19?

With or without COVID, I believe arts and technology is and will be a strategic driver charting new frontiers for the arts and culture, creating creative disruptions while bringing forth new opportunities unseen before. The pandemic has merely accelerated the rates they are adopted. I am extremely excited, and grateful, that we have secured a major grant to curate a first-ever arts-tech festival titled “Creative Tomorrow” which spans from this August to next March. The roster of programmes cuts across a multitude of genres, from theatre, jazz and world music, contemporary dance to Chinese opera reimagined and retold digitally. All this will be made even more deliciously heady by the curation of indoor and outdoor experiential installations, game art, metaverse engagement workshop and lecture performances. As it will be a mix of onsite, online and hybrid delivery, audiences in other parts of the world can have a taste of it from afar. Stay tuned for more information on our social media.

The Lyric Theatre Complex is scheduled to be completed in 2024, has the pandemic influenced any of your plans for the facility?

Under construction, the complex’s progress has unavoidably been affected by the pandemic. However, we are confident we will make up ground once the situation eases. On the other hand, the planning for the venue, from the programming of the opening season, our international residencies to its hospitality strategy, are going full steam ahead. All good things come to those who wait.

We are looking forward to the upcoming HK22 ISPA virtual congress. What is your involvement in the planning process?

I am very honoured to serve as a member on the Congress Committee which has cooked up a wonderful programme with a stellar cast of speakers and topics made for stimulating sharing. Due to the 5th wave in HK, the Congress will be virtual. But excitingly virtual it is! I very much look forward to meeting you all online May 24-27!

What does sustainability mean for post-pandemic international cultural engagement?

Although the time of Covid has not ended, it is subsiding to the point where we in the United States can dream about our future endeavors. I, for one, have been thinking a lot about how the world of the performing arts has been altered because of our global isolation from one another and how the arts will sustain themselves going forward. Will audience members return to sitting side by side among hundreds of people confident they are safe from contracting a virus? Who will come back to perform on our theater stages and who will continue to dance and sing and act in outdoor makeshift venues in parking lots, suburban driveways, and closed off streets? How much time—and money—will audiences keep spending on virtual concerts, plays, and dances? And finally, what is going to happen to touring performances that require artists and staff to travel around the country and abroad?

Even as artists, producers and presenters, and funders turn their attention to getting performances back on stages and audiences back in seats, it would be a missed opportunity to “just” get back to where we were in 2019. Especially when it comes to the global flow of artists and cultural performances, the arts presenters’ community should be coming up with new ways to make international cultural engagement truly more sustainable than it was before the pandemic.

Among the many important “sustainability” questions on the table for arts presenters: What should the future of international presenting look like? How can we mitigate the environmental impact of international touring, especially related to airplane travel? How will organizations, of all sizes, bounce back from the financial losses of the past year and a half and can we develop new, long-term funding pipelines for international engagement? How can we deepen and maintain the connections between artists and the communities they visit, stay in, and perform in?

Artists feed our souls. Their work provides an essential ingredient to our lives that help us relate to one another. This is especially important as we live in a world where we continue to lack understanding of one another's cultures. Part of a global ecosystem, the arts provide a safe place where we can see the "other" and attempt to understand one another's beliefs and values with respect. This essential ingredient requires the ability to experience international artists in the US and for our own artists to bring their work to audiences around the globe.

The arts community has been travelling the world for years—one night in Paris, followed by two days in Frankfurt, then five days in Cairo. While recognizing the importance of these international tours, artists and cultural professionals must acknowledge the responsibility we have to the planet. All travel negatively impacts our climate, including international arts touring. Additionally, as governments and the philanthropic sector focus on jumpstarting the domestic cultural sector, funding for hopping continents week by week may not be available to many arts organizations for some time.

A group of leaders in the arts have formed a coalition to grapple with these challenges of financial and environmental sustainability of international cultural engagement. Convened by David Dower, former Artistic Director of ArtsEmerson, and MarkRussell, Artistic Director of Under the Radar at the Public Theatre in New York, with assistance from HowlRound, this group is motivated by the worry that unless international presenting is reinvigorated now, precious connections among the community could be forever lost. Calling themselves the International Presenting Commons (IPC) to emphasize the commitment to resisting individualism and giving a voice to everyone involved in the process, they started with around twenty arts leaders and have grown as other presenters have joined the effort. In addition, international presenting networks have been added to the group with the goal of increasing the chances for buy-in for their recommendations from a broad range of presenters and artists.

IPC agreed to expand the notion of what constitutes a presentation to be more flexibly responsive to what artists can make at this point. In addition, they have emphasized their commitment to work in a non-hierarchical playing field. This seems like the ideal value to begin with. IPC’s value statement asks that arts professionals genuinely collaborate with their colleagues. For example, contract agreements would not include exclusivity clauses that, in the past, have kept artists from performing in a specified region for a period of six months. In addition, the group has discussed exploring residencies that are not place-based. A group performing in one city as part of a residency could spend a week or more travelling the region instead of staying in one place. They are also committed to reducing their environmental impact by diminishing the number of scouting trips.

If these recommendations are adopted by the international arts presenting community, it would be a first step in the community’s commitment to mitigating climate change. Some of the natural hesitation to adopt these recommendations will come from those who have traditionally seen their responsibility exclusively to their own organizations and not to the presenting community’s obligations more broadly, including to care for the planet. Or they may worry that it will affect their own roles and reputations within their own organizations. This attitude does not recognize the power of the arts community to effect change especially in the areas of cultural understanding and care of the planet. Olga Garay-English, one of the founding members of the International Presenting Commons, commented that not everyone will change but the more you can model behavior, others are more likely to accept these values.

I find myself thinking more and more about what constitutes a realistic win-win situation: sustainable arts organizations, a healthy planet, and the constant flow of artists reaching audiences across the globe. In the past, artists traveled to a town for one to two nights and then got back on a plane to repeat this process. If we are to commit to reducing our impact on climate change, “touring residencies” that last at least a week or two will cut down on travel and its environmental impact. Hotel rooms, food, and general caretaking are costly. In my experience, audiences love getting to know the artists. Especially in smaller communities, many residents are honored to provide meals for visitors. And some artists are amenable to staying in locals’ homes. With Airbnb, a room in a home can cost less than a hotel, while also providing a deeper tie to the community than a hotel in a business district would. Presenters need to reach out to both the local community and the touring artists to find those willing to try these new offerings to show they can be both efficient and enriching and won’t diminish the professionalism of the field. Without a doubt, the value of having artists active in a community, meeting other local artists and enthusiastic audiences is a win-win situation. By more deeply embedding themselves in a community, these artists can have an enhanced experience, impacting their own art after they return home. Even as these ideas address the financial and environmental sustainability of residencies and touring, they also point to a more sustainable connection between artist and community. 

To make international cultural engagement truly sustainable, it is incumbent on both the federal government and the philanthropic sector to make this particular field a priority in arts funding. Vital to sustaining many arts groups through the pandemic were the grants and loans provided by the federal government though emergency relief legislation and by the support of private foundations who especially stepped up to directly fund artists and the operating budgets of cultural organizations. Yet rising vaccination rates are already leading to significant increases in the cost of travel, from car rentals to airline tickets. And even in the decade before the pandemic, the philanthropic sector had already been cutting back on its support of international cultural exchanges. 

One of the first agenda items set by the International Presenting Commons was to recognize the need for a U.S. cultural arts policy that would include international engagement. Both the National Endowment for the Arts and the U.S. Department of State support international touring by American artists and cultural groups and bringing foreign artists and performances to the United States. We saw how over the past four years arts culture dropped even further from the government’s priorities when the previous Administration disbanded the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities and proposed executive budgets zeroing out NEA funding. President Biden has a chance to not just reinvigorate support for the arts. But particularly as he focuses on rebuilding America’s alliances and its image abroad, he can harness the power of the arts to help achieve those goals. Increased funding and an improved visa policy would increase international offerings for Americans across the country and help bring the best of our artists to people around the globe. Groups like the International Presenting Commons, working with the professional arts associations, can help make the case to the Administration and Congress of the importance of a sustainable international arts policy.

If presenters know they have access to a bigger pool of funding—and that that money will be accessible and steady over multiple years—they can make commitments to this international programming over the long term. And the groups and artists who produce and take part in this activity can thrive. 

One thing is for certain. Everyone is anxious to experience new things. Artists want to create. They want to perform for audiences whom they can see and hear responding to their work. The Covid era has taught us that the planet was happier when we were not creating carbon problems. I salute the leaders who have been working valiantly to address these various challenges while placing the value of international engagement of artists at the forefront of their work. And I enthusiastically await the success of their work.

Jacqueline Z. Davis, a member of the NYU Brademas Center Advisory Council, is former Executive Director of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center and former Executive Director of the Lied Center of Kansas.

Recognizing that the Anglo Mexican Foundation is over 75 years old (turning 80 in 2024), do you plan to return to your usual way of doing business, or has the past year given your organization an opportunity to rethink and retool?

The Covid-19 pandemic has represented an obligatory moment to rethink the work the Foundation has been doing over the past years. In Anglo Arts, we’ve used this time to deeply examine our work, identify and maintain much of the solid programme we’ve developed for the last decades, and let go of or transform what needs to be adapted to today’s challenges.

The Anglo Mexican Foundation started a transformation path not long before the pandemic hit Mexico, so we were already diving deep into our role as an educational and cultural non-profit institution. We had just started to work on our social impact model and more specifically, the way to accurately produce social impact indicators to measure the work that we carry out and quantify the results of our cultural programmes, their relevance to our stakeholders, and how they benefit society.

The pandemic has pushed us into being more innovative and creative, to find new ways to reach our audiences, and redesign our programmes, all within the challenge of the sudden digital offer overload. The pandemic has brought the following insights:

• It has made us look closer at the local scene. Part of the work we focus on is how to contribute to the strengthening of the local Arts ecosystem. We have a specific focus on social impact through the performing arts, carefully looking at the communities we serve.
• We have looked deeper within our own organization. Our Foundation has vast experience in bicultural education from kindergarten to graduate programmes through the Churchill School & College, and the Anglo Institute of Education, as well as teaching English and Spanish as foreign languages at The Anglo. We are finding ways to connect more meaningfully with our peers and to ensure the arts are closely linked to our academic opportunities. We are focusing on developing new audiences from our own student community, made up of predominantly centennials and millennials.
• The past year has increased our awareness of the importance of developing long-term, deep strategic partnerships. More than ever, it is crucial to collaborate with other cultural institutions in order to strengthen the cultural sector.
• These challenging months allowed us to develop a model that embraces different resources such as digital workshops or masterclasses in addition to showcasing and to operating in a way that fosters stronger relationships between artists, institutions, and countries.
• The educational component has become one of our leading practices. We were invited by prominent British conductor Rebecca Miller to participate in her Beyond Borders initiative, granting three Mexican conductors' scholarships to participate in a digital seminar led by her, focusing on discussing gender inequalities in the industry, among other topics. We introduced a strategic binational programme with Universidad Panamericana where members of the British Shakespeare Sinfonia Orchestra mentor a group of Mexican student musicians through online tutorials. This gave the university’s orchestra an opportunity to enhance their curriculum by working with professional British musicians which would not have been available in usual conditions. We will continue this partnership even after the lockdown is lifted. As a result of the pandemic, we’re undergoing, along with our partners, a collective reinvention of the ways in which we present concerts, theater, and workshops.

How has the pandemic influenced your ability to connect across cultures?

Working closely with the UK, the pandemic has given us the chance to work together on a different scale. We used to bring UK culture to Mexico and Mexican culture to the UK via travel but being able to collaborate remotely has allowed for a more inclusive way of working, both inside and outside the organization. In a way, it levels the field, invites the whole team’s participation, and democratizes the workplace. We experienced a boost of motivation, creativity, and productivity within the team. For example, although we missed the human connection of participating in the live edition of the ISPA congress, the Virtual Edition: 2021 ISPA Congress made it easier to connect and interact with colleagues who are in different parts of the world without having to leave our office work behind. It allowed more of us to attend (rather than send a sole representative) and participate in the conversation, plus there were cost savings, and it had very little, if any, environmental impact. We think this is one of the main aspects that should remain after the lockdown, at least in a hybrid format.

It has given us the opportunity to develop new digital performing arts projects, allowing us to relate and build on another level with our partners. For example, the new partnership between Shakespeare Sinfonia and the Universidad Panamericana allows both countries to participate in projects remotely while generating large-scale impact for all participants involved.

How have you overcome the travel limitations that the pandemic has created and succeeded in your mission to bring Mexican programming to the UK and vice versa?

We have been able to present Mexican artists and events online in the UK. For example, Mexican jazz musician Tino Contreras performed online at La Linea, the London Latin Music Festival from the Frida Kahlo Museum in Mexico City. On the other hand, UK artists, workshops, and performances have been presented digitally in Mexico. For example, live from London at the Festival Internacional Cervantino and Ian Wooldridge’s workshop from the UK for students in the Shakespeare Competition. In a certain way the pandemic has helped us to see travel limitations as opportunities to develop new programmes and generally, it has invited performing arts institutions to rethink live events. Live performance will always be essential to fully experience the Arts, but we can’t ignore the needs of new audiences and their cultural consumption habits, or how the pandemic has shaped them. We have to learn more about these ways of consumption in order to remain relevant to new audiences, specifically those who were unaccustomed to experiencing the arts live prior to the pandemic. What can we adapt from the pandemic and incorporate into our programmes for them to be more inclusive, more democratic, and with more capacity for outreach?

Generally, the pandemic has taken us through a bittersweet transition process. We’ve experienced financial difficulties just like everyone else in the cultural industry, but we have also taken this time to critically reflect on the work of our organization and how it impacts our stakeholders, and discovered innovative and creative ways to identify and develop new projects and partnerships. More than ever, it has helped us understand how we, as part of a Foundation, can strategically contribute to strengthening the Arts sector through our social impact programmes.

                                Photo by: Rares Helici

Tell us about the Sibiu International Theatre Festival and the impact the past year has had on the Festival and the Romanian performing arts sector as a whole.

In March of last year, the Sibiu International Theatre Festival (FITS) was ready to go, as it has been for the last 27 years. The programme was ready and we had 585 performances from 75 countries planned in 75 venues, with an expected number of 75,000 daily spectators. On 14 March 2020, a state of emergency was declared, everything was closed down, and all of the performances scheduled at the "Radu Stanca" National Theatre in Sibiu were cancelled.

At this point, we decided to cancel the in-person performances, move the Festival to June, and use the Festival archive to kickstart the online dimension. We managed to stream shows from 38 countries. We reached over 1 million people, with spectators from 104 countries, and everything was free of charge. Besides the Festival, we also developed the Sibiu Performing Arts Market, which took place during FITS, the International Doctoral Platform, and Therme Forum. Based on this experience, we decided to try and prepare online versions of all of the performances of the Sibiu National Theatre, a repertory of 120 in-person shows. We aimed not simply to record them as theatre shows, but tried to find alternative solutions in proper spaces to make them into film-like productions. As a result, every weekend, we have managed to stream some of the performances we had shown during FITS 2020. We also developed the Digital Stage, which offers 1‑month, 3‑month, 6‑month, and 1‑year subscriptions, each offering 8, 12, 18, or 30 performances respectively. We are the only theatre and the only festival in Romania that accomplished this. At the same time, we organized all of the other conferences under these auspices, and all our new productions have a double dimension: a performance clearly designed for spectators physically in the room, and a film version of the same show that is streamed online with English subtitles.

How has the pandemic influenced the Festival's programming?

Of course, the “normal” everybody dreams to return to will have to be redesigned. It will be a “new normal,” in which, most likely for a good while, masks will play an important role, as will the distance between spectators and actors. It is important that we learn from this experience, which is why we have envisioned this year's Festival as a hybrid, themed Building Hope Together, along with the Sibiu Performing Arts Market, the Doctoral Platform, and Therme Forum.

At this point, the National Theatre performs at one-third of its capacity, and all available tickets are sold-out. We stream performances through the programme developed for the Digital Stage platform. In addition, we are trying to organize the Festival with companies that cannot come to Sibiu physically, but will perform especially for FITS live from their own venues. Moreover, we will receive high quality recordings of performances, which we will stream in a pay-per-view system. Furthermore, we will develop a free heritage section which includes the most important productions from top theatres around the world. All of the events, including the ones within the Performing Arts Market, Therme Forum, and the Doctoral Platform will be organized as hybrid events, meaning they will include opportunities to attend in-person and virtually.

How has the pandemic influenced your plans for building a new facility?

The building of the new facility is currently in progress. Based on our experience, we wish to develop a visionary facility connected to our audience in Sibiu, in the region, in Romania, and in the world. To this end, the Festival will be accessible to those spectators who will attend performances in our venues, outdoors, and in churches which we will fill with music, fado, choirs, concerts, etc.

From all these places, we will also try to stream live performances for regional, national, and international audiences, as well as in the venues that wish to become FITS partners. We will try to do the same with the regular season of the Radu Stanca National Theatre (TNRS), at least on Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays. On Thursdays, the German Department prepares performances in German, while on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, we stream English-subtitled performances by the Romanian Department. What’s more, we will try to partner with smaller cities that have no theatres, but do have performance venues, or at least a cinema, with a view to developing an educational programme including all the activities developed by the National Theatre in Sibiu – the theatre gifts, play-readings, etc. We also want to get involved in everything related to pupils’ culture and education, as we are trying to enrich the educational curriculum for Romanian and universal literature with excerpts recorded by our actors related to the topics studied at school.

What future changes to the festival industry do you envision materializing as a result of the pandemic?

Big changes will certainly take place. First of all, congresses, conferences, meetings, including the educational dimensions, will likely change. We will launch an MA programme in Directing in English, at the “Lucian Blaga” University of Sibiu, which is our partner in all TNRS and FITS activities. We will also launch another MA in Theatre Studies, also in English, which will be fully taught online, by professors from all over the world. At the same time, we will launch an MA in Stage Production, focused on training technical experts, i.e., light and sound designers, technical directors, stagehands, prop handlers, all those people who serve the stage and ensure the smooth unfolding of the artistic act.

Unfortunately, such studies are not available in Romania, nor in Central and Eastern Europe, and through these new master programmes, we aim to fill this specialized staff gap. I am sure that the digital environment will greatly influence artistic activity over the coming years, but direct contact to creation and beauty, will be the supreme argument in everything related to theatre, dance, music, and the performing arts, so we will go on with our partnerships with artists on all continents, with festivals, performing arts institutions, schools, and the educational environment, to ensure that direct contact with and dialogue between creators is stimulated and supported.

Tell us about yourself.

I’ve been in the business of the arts since 2002, after I did my master’s in literature. I was already a dancer with a dance company, but in India, you need to have a main job and dance on the side. For artists, it’s more about finding a side hustle to your art. I was an artist, a dancer and a performer, but I was always an organizer, an administrator, a thinker, and a creator. I started working at this event management company which threw me right into how to create and produce performances from scratch. When you’re on stage, you don’t have control over a larger number of things. You just go, do your bit, and you’re done. When you are behind the scenes, you see that there are lots of things under your control and if you do them, everything gets better. I learned how to create, ideate, and grow things. It all started there.

At one point, I had a full-blown corporate job and traveled across India until 2009 when I got bored of everything because I felt as though it was taking away from my dance. Now I had the best of both worlds – I was in business and I was in the corporate space. I was on the other side of the table so to speak, but throughout it all, I was an artist. We were looking for funds, figuring out how to produce shows, and at the same time, I was also offering work to artists, as part of the corporate machine. In 2010, I thought I was in a very unique place because I knew the struggles of both sides, and what both sides needed, so I thought I could be a good facilitator, communicator, and middleman. I was in a unique position and felt as though I should use it for the artists because they need all the help that we can get. That’s where the Artsforward Ideas and Events journey began. We offered art as a service, and we were able to employ lots of artists.

In 2013, I was invited by Microsoft to design a project that spoke to the problem of electronic waste and a lot of young people were buying new phones and throwing away their old ones. It was a growing problem and more so in India because we have the largest youth population in the world. We have more phones than people. We used art to inspire and impact others. That project really changed my life and we worked with more than 8,000 youth directly on a daily basis. We created 70 changemakers from ages 18-25, ran extensive workshops, and made a bunch of artistic products from theatre, music, dance, visual art, and installation.

If you look at our website, we have a Venn diagram of artists, the community, and the businesses of the brand. These are all interconnected, and we are in-between. All my work after that has been related to advocacy. We worked on so many social issues, but it was always about how art can impact and create social change. The living proof of that is the young people that I’ve worked with during all these projects.

Tell us about the ArtAloneTogether project that you've undertaken during the pandemic. 

On March 15, 2020, I was out with my dance company shooting on the streets of the city. We were stopping buses and cars, and taking pictures. The next morning, things were getting closed down. One of our foreign dancers from the US couldn’t travel. All of March 16th, I was struggling from this claustrophobia and felt as if everything was closing in on me.

In the evening, the only way I thought we could deal with this situation was through art. By nighttime, I started an Instagram page called ArtAloneTogether - we can all be alone, but we can stay together through art. That was the very basic message that I sent out through Facebook and Instagram. I told my friends to start sending me their art, and I’ll put it on the page. On the 22nd, there was a curfew in India and we were told to stay in between 8am-8pm.
I thought, why not mark all of these hours?

I announced that we’d have an art curfew and feature one artwork every hour. That got picked up by a newspaper, and we were flooded with entries and able to present almost 4-5 pieces every hour. I was designing, curating, adapting, etc. It was such a high that by the end of the day, there were already 40 pieces online. Once the lockdown began, I decided it couldn’t stop, so I came up with creative prompts for five lockdown weekends. Every weekend, we had a new theme and I found a new collaborator or curator who was from that field, which allowed me to cast a wider net. I was blown away by the kind of work that we received.

I collaborated with another long-time friend and turned ArtAloneTogether into India’s first online festival. It had the same format of marking every hour, but now this was a festival. It was totally curated. All these artists were big artists. We were the first ticketed online event in India post lockdown. We sold about 300 tickets and split the profits 50/50 with the artists. It was a great success. It was fun to work with the artists and curate the work for an online space. Once I started looking at the festival submissions, I noticed they wouldn’t work. One can’t have 2D work and simply transfer work from the stage to the screen since the eye of the camera is really different. We started co-creating the work with the artist. The artists themselves felt it really changed the way they were looking at the work.

I crowdfund every year for At the Still Point, the title comes from a T.S. Eliot poem and indicates that all movement begins from stillness and all community efforts start from zero. As an artist, I always feel like the audience gets it really easy. Artists work too hard. We give our lives, our blood, our sweat, our money, and we work so hard to get an audience, and the audience buys a ticket, watches the show, and says it didn’t work for me. As artists, it is our responsibility to remind audiences of their stake in this performance – we’re making art for them – artists are going to be born from them, so they have to have a larger stake.

We started running the crowdfund as: here is the work, this is what it will cost, and now you (the audience) will fund it. We live streamed it and raised the highest amount of money ever which allowed us to pay all of the artists and venues their full amounts, and we even saved money for next year. We were working online and on the ground at the same time.

Given that you are deeply engaged in environmental work and e-waste management, what are three ways in which we can use the pandemic as a catalyst for change and work in a more sustainable manner moving forward? 

This pandemic taught us that you can do lots with very little. You can do with being inconvenienced, with being in a tight space. Artists in India were already used to that because we’re always in a tight space. We don’t really have a grant system and our national arts policy is in shambles. Considering the many thousand-year-old civilization that we have and the long and very deep engagement with the arts that runs in our blood, our present system is in shambles. We have to believe that this pandemic has not caused what we see, but it has just been a mirror to show us that these problems were already there. We have to be arts managers and artists at the same time. We have to collaborate and learn to trust, something that artists don’t do. Artists don’t delegate. They cannot trust. They flinch from collaborating. We’ve seen the collaborations from these times happening across the world, and the kind of work being made by two people talking to each other across the world and time zones, and creating work together. This pandemic takes us away from buying those expensive flight tickets and teaches us to work in the local community. It has taught us how to exist together in a small space and believe that when you send your work out to that tiny zoom box, someone will watch you. This has been a fantastic catalyst for working with what we have. That is itself so sustainable because if you have one mug of water, you will make every drop count. We are used to wasting so much water. If you could only go out once a week, how will you make the best of it?

I stopped buying things three years back because I already have too much and I wouldn’t go out every day because I live far from the city, and it makes no sense to travel every day and burn so much fuel. The pandemic reinforced my beliefs and my heart, and I feel I can communicate what I want to say in a far more legible manner because people now see the value of one cup of coffee with friends. There is more value added to every moment.

In our very fast paced culture, we have lost this. When you are running, nothing slow is convenient. The environment doesn’t advocate speed. It advocates depth and real slowness, and real engagement, and really working on the circle of how nature works, which humans have forgotten. Humans work linearly while nature works circularly. It’s been a great moment to find that and deep dive into it. That’s the future and there’s no other way. We’re already passed tipping points. I think artists now more than ever have a role to play in that change. The art we make is not about us. It’s about resistance. It’s about standing there and just existing. Things aren’t going to get any better. Art can be everywhere. We can use it as a medium for everything we want to say.

You are presenting a Regional Update and hosting a Coffee Klatch topic at the upcoming Virtual Edition: 2021 ISPA Congress. Tell us what you are hoping to learn or gain from a virtual congress, as opposed to an in-person setting.

I do have screen fatigue. Already this month, I’m starting physical shows, and just initiated a weekend of physical performances. We’re calling it Reclaim because we’re sending artists out to reclaim the outdoor spaces. We don’t want to be in these boxes anymore.

Having said that, ISPA is much more than just being about artists. ISPA is also about conversations and that doesn’t really matter if you’re meeting in person or on the screen. I’ve somehow felt that online conversations are more intimate and people are more present, more engaged. When I’m sitting in a hall, I could be looking at my phone and drifting off. It’s a huge privilege to be able to sit in a nice room, drink my coffee, access the arts and people from across the world, and have a heart to heart conversation. If I have it, I’m going to make the best of it.

This year has been such a discovery. I trained in Butoh from a teacher in Mexico. I’m able to log into any museum's website and look at their art, and learn from any master at any dance studio. For those who have the privilege, I think it’s been the best year in many ways. If you can’t go out, you can only go in, so you might as well use that opportunity and deep dive.

Tell us a little bit about UCLA's Center for the Art of Performance and your role there. 

UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance is a performing arts organization in Los Angeles that has an expansive history in commissioning, producing and presenting live performances and unique frameworks for the work of artists. We work with dance and contemporary choreographers, theatre makers, musicians and composers across contemporary music genres, authors, poets, and creative collaborations across art forms.  Our work is in direct dialogue with artists and creative producers throughout the world, the US and those based in our local community.

I am the Artistic Director and the Executive Director and I’ve been here for about ten years when it shifted from UCLA Live which it was called in the past to UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance. We are located in Royce Hall on the UCLA campus.

How has the Center adapted its programming to the online environment?

The adaptation has been huge, and it still is. I have to go back to the initial onset of COVID in order to illuminate how we made shifts because they’re quite substantial. Because I’m at UCLA where there is a massive medical research center, I had access to how this campus was preparing itself for multiple Covid-19 scenarios. I was like, if they’re moving at this speed of urgency this is not going to be a small blip and I recognized that the arts would be profoundly impacted. So I started conjuring the ideas for how we could shift.

I knew the impact to performers would be immediate and severe because of the way their economy is derived. Health and public safety requirements halted an extensive number of shows and tours, and therefore their livelihoods. We tried to never use the word cancel but instead, “postpone” – just for the more imbued optimism of it. We worked to reschedule their performance dates, and we also put deposits down on their fee, so that they had at least some resource to draw from. My biggest concern was if planned engagements stood still in contractual force majeure and were pushed out further and further into the future, these artists would have no income. So directing financial support wherever possible was a top priority and a value for how we approached our decision making.

For many artists, we shifted the fees for performance engagements into commissions. The hope being that they could stabilize a bit…and undertake a new work or approach, as they needed. Our scheduled international artists were ready to tour regardless, but with embassies shutting and with my anticipation that the Trump administration would shut down the issuing of all visas (which they did), there was a dawning recognition that to proceed put everyone at the mercy of multiple and changing governmental policies, no clarity, and multi-week quarantine periods. We shifted those touring projects into support for filmed performances in their place of origin. We filmed them in the various theaters or community centers that they could gain access to, while here at CAP UCLA we started our work on creating a digital channel where all of the projects were reconceived for on-line access. We didn’t just put our archives up; we kept making in direct dialogue with artists, managers and producers.

Another effort was to go non-digital. In dance we commissioned 26 U.S. based choreographers to create hand-made dance scores however written or drawn, that illuminates their approach for planning an idea. These were a bit like creating a metaphoric love letter to the future of dance, when all of their touring or rehearsing simply stopped. We are turning these scores into fine art print editions, and each choreographer will soon have a number of prints they can sell to economize themselves through a different medium and strategy. I set another variation on the idea into motion with 100 highly diverse composers worldwide (Notes on Napkins). With the resources we had remaining, the priority was to keep some kind of liquidity and working relationship active, in a manageable way for the artists as everyone’s livelihoods became further imperiled.

I like how your focus has been on keeping the artist employed and sustained financially from the get-go which has been the most devastating for them.

There’s something about being in a cultural leadership role and working with people around the world in which for me and for many of us, it’s not just about booking a gig, it’s about fulfilling a promise and generating cultural exchange, recognizing our mutual interdependence, and sharing what we can with one another. When you have a government or a set of agencies that block you from fulfilling your promise, it makes things seem impossible. I think a lot of these artists were stunned when CAP UCLA said, Okay so what’s our work around? What’s our plan? Let’s find a way around this rock because there’s got be another strategy -- as opposed to saying, let’s keep rescheduling dates out into the instability of an uncertain future.

Prior to the election, the performing arts sector was devastated financially, and international touring and collaborations may be forever impacted. In what ways will the results of the U.S. election influence the future of the performing arts sector?

First and foremost, this election recharges the cultural sector because we are no longer trying to hold forth under the constant degradation of our democracy and principles. The burden that was created by the unreliable, profoundly cruel positions of the previous administration and its threat to our democracy, well, the election was like yanking the emergency break before we went over a cliff. Our democracy as an evolving pursuit can be resumed, however shockingly thin the election margin was and how much reckoning work there is ahead. In the arts professions, we can start to get back to the work we do that is value-based, that is fair-minded, and that carries a level of compassion through cultural exchange that our global collaborators can again be able to trust without being thwarted by some insanity from the White House.

Economically however, it’s going to take us a long time. The Covid-19 impacts are one thing. Not only the performing arts sector, but all art and cultural sectors have been hard hit. Because so much of our economy in performing arts is driven through ticket revenue – months or years of no ticket revenue that slows to a trickling that is akin to a ‘tip jar’, means that you have tip jar money to build up from. I believe the Biden/Harris administration will have to decide on their commitment to cultural policy due to the scale of what has happened.

So yes, our arts infrastructure in this country has been severely damaged and if one thinks of ways to repair it – I can see some use in the notion of aligning us with the things the new administration is talking about in terms of investment into green technologies and other infrastructure frameworks – which have also been neglected for decades. The arts and cultural infrastructure (people and places) have long been left to the winds of either a marketplace competition or a constant adjustment within philanthropic efforts. I do think there is a role for the arts to play within the new administration that looks at social cohesion and the diversity of equitable belonging, as an infrastructural framework proposition nationally. Our global standing has also been damaged, and the arts can play an important role there as well. We know that artists and cultural heritage spaces the world over have been deeply impacted even if they have a different funding model. Meaning that this will be a worldwide cultural restoration effort requiring cooperation and acknowledgement around our interdependence, if we are to strengthen our trade-routes and the pipelines needed for another generation of artists to ensure the mobility of ideas and cultural expression can sustain and thrive.

In terms of international touring and collaborations, how do you foresee those changing given the results of the election? 

The election results are restorative and promising, but my speculative insight has more to do with the continuously expanding timeline of the pandemic. What is encouraging is that many of us as colleagues have been on zoom meetings together and actively sharing ideas, plans and strategies. There’s also a network of highly diverse curators, artistic directors, and producers in this field who have worked together for decades, and we all of a sudden spent a great deal of time ‘open-sourcing’ our approaches in service to the whole ecosystem. You don’t pull together in a crisis to share ideas and then jump back to being competitors over closed resources. With my colleagues - festival directors and performing arts curators as well as independent artist spaces and cultural centers, we have invented a way to support continuity through digital stages which is a major change. In some places like the UK, they have a well-practiced apparatus for live streaming and monetizing it, but for many of us, we’ve had to rapidly learn an entirely new grammar and are applying new tools as fast as we can, which are also exciting and full of potential. These will remain important even when audiences are able to return to live performances because after all, we do have climate change as an urgent fact that is having its own surge.

Many of us in the arts are talking about how our modes of distribution can calm in place a bit while still sustaining our work economically. How we can reduce our footprint on the land and our consumption of natural resources, is an active consideration. The more we are able to build an acceptable aesthetic with the tech industry for what artists and organizations are putting out there, the more mobility and exchange we can preserve or even enhance. I’m working with a number of international festivals and organizations to explore commissioning projects together that can be exhibited/presented live in one location while streamed and shared on-line in another and vice versa, as one of many such ideas.

One thing that the pandemic brought up was the fragility of the sector. How might we strengthen the sector in the coming years and increase its sustainability so that it can thrive rather than decline in the future?

This is likely an alternative vantage point for responding to your question, but I passionately believe that it’s important to look at how strong our sector is – the strength of our artists, the strength of what we offer within societies, the strength of our cultural continuity with one another, the strength of our willingness to engage in our humanity beyond the dollar, the strength of how we inspire and motivate and create a sense of interdependence – these are strong, powerful, monumentally valued ways of being that are durable and profoundly important. Our fragility as it were, arises when we are mistakenly relegated to a perception of being separate from useful investment, rather than an integral part of economic cohesion. What we generate accrues financial benefit adjacently to other businesses and industries - it accrues to an airline when we buy a ticket, it accrues to restaurants when our audience is nearby, it accrues to material and retail providers, and the list goes on and on. We generate value to society that is both economically accruing and culturally accruing. To me, our sector is extremely powerful. What keeps it vulnerable is the willing restraint of entities with resources to minimally invest within what we provide, which reduces our capacity for spurring this outwardly accruing benefit – when we need it to be reliably ongoing.

The perception that we are forever in a state of dysfunction and need, or that we are destined to be under-economized as an enduring national fact is worth upending.

Tell us a little bit about yourself, how your work has been impacted by the pandemic, and whether there is a rescheduled date for the D-CAF festival with Arab Arts Focus.

I come from the Northeast corner of Africa, in motherland Egypt. My current role is Executive Manager and Artistic Programmer of the Downtown Contemporary Arts Festival (D-CAF), Egypt’s largest international multi-disciplinary arts festival that takes place in downtown Cairo. I got my master’s degree in Arts, Festivals, and Cultural Management from Queen Margaret University in Edinburgh, and have since worked on several international festivals locally and abroad, including London's Shubbak Festival and Arab Arts Focus (AAF) showcase - Edinburgh Fringe Festival. I’ve also served as a juror on international jury boards for festivals such as Switzerland’s Zürcher Theater Spektakel and Poland's Boska Komedia Festival, attended as an accredited delegate/producer acclaimed film festivals such as the Festival de Cannes, and I’m currently teaching cultural management courses/training in Cairo.

As a team, we also host a biennial AAF showcase during the D-CAF festival, where international delegates fly into Cairo to attend a packed program of the latest in contemporary performances by Arab artists. Due to the pandemic and precautionary measures in force, we have had to postpone our festival and AAF showcase that was due to take place in April 2020.

The safety of audiences, artists and everyone involved was of course our top priority, yet postponing the festival was still a tough decision with logistical and financial loss implications for us and all those involved, bearing in mind that funds for the independent arts sector in our country are already very limited. The problem is that in a country like Egypt, deciding to be a contemporary dancer, for example, is in itself still considered somewhat taboo or unfavored by society, and therefore difficult to sustain, so losing a source of income/fee from a festival like D-CAF was harsh on many local artists. In general, funding for local artists is limited and only available on a regional basis, so competition is high as local artists are competing with artists from the whole Arab world. D-CAF is not just among the few opportunities in the arts sector available to them, but also a platform offering them exposure internationally, in times where they are denied visa and travel to market their work abroad like other fellow artists from other parts of the world.

However, despite all this, we decided as a team to have an optimistic outlook on the situation, taking the time to reflect internally and focus on other projects we had lined up that didn’t require a live audience. For example, we worked on renovating the Rawabet Theater, in downtown Cairo, which is considered the only affordable theater space in Cairo that young theater and dance performers rely on to rent for their performances, as all other spaces are either expensive or government owned, used exclusively for Ministry of Culture activities. As a result, our reopening of Rawabet next month and after a year of closure due to legal/financial problems faced by its previous owner, will lift sprits up and bring great hope to our sector. As a country, we were never under severe lockdown. We had a curfew for a period of time and large gatherings were forbidden, but the theater will be able to reopen at 50% capacity for the event. At the end of this month, we will be featuring a couple of live performing arts events at venues throughout the city, including an acting workshop, a piece by two French artists, and a film screening of Honeyland in an actual beehive honey farm in Egypt.

During the months of the pandemic, we also worked on providing online content, mainly in the form of workshops and short informative videos, and we presented Egypt’s first international audio/radio drama festival, Mawgat online last June/July. We didn’t want to just hastily bring our live content online like everyone else, but we first analyzed what would fit the digital space and the quite different audience online. Then we presented original new content for them, and not the other way around. For example, we felt that radio drama would work much better and have a bigger reach in the form of online podcasts rather than in a limited physical space since it doesn’t rely on the visual element. We were also able to host audio drama work online by artists from countries like Syria, who are legally banned from entering Egypt, so it was a chance for our local audiences to experience art across borders despite any physical barriers.

Finally, we decided to reschedule the date of D-CAF with the AAF showcase to October/November 2021, and hopefully guarantee a diverse safe gathering of delegates by then. We hope to see you all here, once more visiting and experiencing different arts and cultures in our world today!

In addition to the pandemic, a lot has been happening in the broader region. Do you believe arts and culture can have a positive impact on the future?

I believe the pandemic has shown us how art is inherently needed in our societies. The first thing people did across the world in lockdown was search for films, stream live shows, and read books to keep them entertained and sane in those difficult times, while people started coming together from their balconies at home to make music, sing, and dance to uplift their morale.

This universality of the arts is not to be underestimated. That’s why I feel that the arts and culture will definitely have a role in helping us reimagine and work on a better future. If we look at other crises or huge social movements that have happened in the world in the past decade, from the Arab Spring to the Hong Kong protest movement, we will see that the arts, from music to visual arts, played a role in giving people a voice and a form of expressing their demands and wishes for a better future. This time around, while facing a global crisis, I am sure that the arts will inspire change, help us reflect on our actions towards our society and environment, and on how to rebuild a better future, a more grounded, tolerable, inclusive, and greener future.

You’re on the planning committee for the upcoming Virtual Edition: 2021 ISPA Congress next January 11-15, 2021. What kinds of opportunities does a virtual congress provide compared to an in-person congress?

The most valuable opportunity a virtual congress provides is a chance to interact and listen to people from all over the world, especially from countries that would normally have mobility barriers, due to denials of visas and travel restrictions or simply lack the financial resources to travel, preventing them from being present in New York physically if it was an in-person congress. We finally have a chance for those voices to be heard, whether during sessions and post-discussions, Provocations, Coffee Klatch, Pitch New Works, or Pro Ex, that will all still exist in this virtual format. There will also be on-demand, pre-recorded components, as well as a live component presented twice in two different time zones tailoring to people from all different continents.

Another advantage of having a virtual congress is that it will be the most accessible congress ISPA will have presented thus far, in terms of accessibility for the deaf and physically disabled participants and its affordability, which will hopefully bring in those who are new to ISPA experiencing their very first congress. It will also bring in more geographic diversity. For example, there will be 10 regional updates instead of the usual three, so it’s a real chance to come to grips with this global crisis and the resilient efforts of the different parts of the world, from the comfort of your seat.

For many, especially in Europe and North America, Covid-19 is the first big crisis they have encountered, but in some cases like in the Arab world, where the last decade has been full of revolutions, sudden government interventions, border closures, armed conflict or civil unrest, arts organizations are used to operating under conditions of great instability and vulnerability, which could make them more fragile yet in other ways more resilient and adaptable. Therefore, I believe that ISPA’s virtual congress can give us an opportunity to reflect and gain the perspective of those who have faced huge crises before and how they came out of them more prepared and resilient. Let’s see how we can learn from each other’s experiences and collectively imagine the future of the arts together.

Our members may be a bit screen-fatigued. Why is the congress a not-to-be-missed event?

Let’s not forget, that not all parts of the world have the same privilege of access to internet and the luxury of attending online congresses and shows. So actually, being screen-fatigued is a luxury! Especially when you look at regions or neighborhoods where there is poor internet access, and other financial difficulties affecting access to technology, so I believe we should make use of this privilege of being able to participate in ISPA’s virtual congress in 2021, and critically dive into discussing and reflecting on terms like accessibility and inclusion, social justice and equality, and what they mean to different people in different regions on this planet.

Yet if anyone still feels screen-fatigued on the congress days, we’re offering really interesting podcasts for the first time at ISPA, giving attendees a great opportunity to connect off-screen as well!

We really look forward to having you all with us for this virtual congress, reflecting and rebuilding our future together using the creativity and socially conscious values that lie at the heart of our sector!

Tell us about you and your organization’s experience since you’ve reopened the Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre (after being closed for two months) at half capacity.

The theatre reopened on June 8. However, many performances were canceled from March to August. These include both domestic and international contracts (they were supposed to mark the year of the Olympics) such as RSC’s The Taming of the Shrew, a Romanian company’s “Scarlet Princess,” originated by KABUKI, and the 20th ASSITEJ world congress.

Up until June 19th, indoor performances had to be limited to 100 people, so we held a pipe organ concert on June 18th in the 2,000-seat concert hall with an audience of 100 people. The hour-long performance was met with loud applause and I was moved to tears.

At the end of July, we started presenting performances which require over a month of rehearsal time. The Artistic Director of the Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre, Hideki Noda staged his own work entitled, "Akaoni = Red Demon" with local and young artists. It took place in Theater East, where we set the stage in the center and placed about 250 seats in a circle. We have been asked to keep a distance of 2 meters between the stage and auditorium. However, the number of audience members was halved, and a transparent curtain was placed between the acting area and the seats.

In September, we were only allowed to have 50% capacity, but performances are scheduled to be held almost every day. On Friday, September 11, the government announced that it would lift the 50% regulation on indoor events with less than 5,000 people who do not speak or shout in the auditorium. At the same time, indoor events where people may scream or shout in the audience must remain at 50% capacity and all events, both indoors and outdoors with audiences over 5,000 are allowed to sell up to half capacity.

As of September 19, all theaters and concert halls will be able to sell tickets at 100% occupancy, but even with the full capacity, it is necessary to have a distance of 2 meters between the stage and the audience seats, so 100% cannot be accommodated.
 

What kinds of precautions do you have in place to ensure your artists, staff and audience members feel safe?

First of all, on the website, we have asked audience members to refrain from attending the theatre if they have a fever. Thus far, we are offering refunds, but in the future, these will be only be offered up until a certain date in advance of a performance.

The opening time is one hour before show time and audience members must wear masks both inside the auditorium and in the lobby of the theatre. A monitor at the entrance of the theatre monitors the temperature of the faces of audience members, and people above 37.5 degrees will not be allowed to enter. The ticket will be visually checked by the person in charge, then people will be asked to put the stub in the box. Upon exiting the theatre, people will be asked to leave in order of seat row, starting with those nearest the exit. The cleaning staff are also frequently cleaning sections of the theatre that are regularly touched by audience members.

Has this new reality affected your programming choices?
 

So far, I haven't changed the program. We have had to either cancel a performance or perform it carefully. Starting next year, I would like to choose performances with a small number of artists and a shorter performance time. However, I think that will need to be in consultation with the artists.  

One concern many venues have is whether reopening at a limited capacity is economically viable. Can you address this concern? 

Currently, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry is subsidizing half the cost for producers whose performances have been canceled due to COVID-19. I don't know when this subsidy expires, but if it disappears, it will be a big problem.  

How have audiences been reacting to returning to the Theatre?

 
For now, it seems that regulars definitely want to return. In this situation, it is necessary to retain our regular audience members, rather than work on developing a whole new audience. To that end, we're working hard to keep people updated about the cleanliness and safety of the theatre, to let them know what is happening and what we are thinking about, so that they feel that we're working together to support the performing arts world.

In Tokyo, a temporary organization called the Emergency Performing Arts Network has been created, and it is a wide network from small theaters to commercial plays and 2.5-dimensional plays. This network has been working hard to lobby the government to support the whole performing arts sector.

Tell us about yourself and the work that you do.

My name is Rita Ezenwa-Okoro. I am married to Ezenwa Okoro who was also an ISPA fellow and I am the youngest of six children. I graduated from the University of Lagos with a B.A. in Creative Arts where I specialized in theater arts with a focus on directing. My master's degree was in media and communications from Pan-Atlantic University, also in Lagos, Nigeria. I am the Founder and Lead Visionary of Street Project Foundation, which is a youth based, non-profit organization that uses performing arts as a tool to facilitate youth development and cross-culture dialogue as well as social mobilization. Street Project Foundation is what I call “my baby” because it is a dream that I have had since I left university.

I am also the Principal Communications Consultant at Rita Omovbude Consult (R.O.C), a strategic communications company that serves non-profits and for-profit organizations. We provide world-class communication services that range from online marketing to above-the-line communications – TV, radio, print, production and the rest of it all. I’m also a digital marketing trainer and a business coach. I have worked with She Leads Africa where I’m helping quite a number of women-led businesses get started. I call myself a serial social entrepreneur.

Wow, a Rita of all trades! What inspired you to start an NGO that uses the performing arts as a tool to transform youths’ lives?

Studying creative arts at the university is what first inspired me. I was very active at the theater then, understudying a lot of directors. However, I was envisioning life focused as a performing artist after university in a country like Nigeria and it seemed very bleak. Hence, I began to explore what I could do with this degree. I had fun studying it, but what does the future hold? How can I make a sustainable living doing what I love?

The second thing is that as the youngest of six children, I was able to observe and explore what worked for my siblings and what didn’t. What didn’t work for them is that every single one of them studied courses they had no business studying. The first-born studied law and her passion was in fashion, the second studied economics and her passion was in culinary arts, the third studied microbiology and her passion was in the beauty industry, the fourth studied zoology, but he’s been a visual artist since he was a kid, and the fifth born studied public management and he should have been an actor. It seemed like a cycle and after graduating, they found it difficult to get a job, and even when they eventually got a job, they weren’t fulfilled, and I really didn’t want that to be my trajectory. To a large extent, it influenced the thought process that went into the creation of Street Project Foundation because I watched my siblings waste a lot of time studying subjects, they weren’t passionate about. They were all arts inclined and the reason they started venturing into the sciences or law was because in this part of the world, being a performing artist or being in the creative field wasn’t a prestigious thing to do. The truth is I probably would have followed their same pattern had it not been for some level of divine providence that led me to study my passion. Just as I began my studies, the University of Lagos created the Department of Creative Arts and starting the first year of my studies, opportunities opened up for me that were beyond my imagination.

My first year, I got the opportunity to be part of the cast of Alliance Francaise’s Robetto Zucco and I was chosen to be a lead actor, so the whole desire for me to change course disappeared. I felt so comfortable studying the creative arts, so I knew that this was what I needed to do. I was studying something I loved, and that satisfaction alone was the first step towards the journey of creating Street Project which wasn’t thought of at the time. I graduated from university at the top of my class and the next thing I thought of was what’s next? What’s going to happen? One conscious decision I made was I wasn’t going to come out of this university and start looking for a bank job, not that that’s a bad thing. I made a conscious decision that I was going to pursue a job or career doing something I loved. My first stint was at a recording studio and I started learning how to become a sound engineer (since I sing as well). It was while I was working there that I found out about advertising. No one had come into my school and told me that I could make a living writing plays or adverts, writing music or songs to sell products or services to people – I didn’t know that, but it was being in the studio and learning how to be a sound engineer that I found out that opportunity existed, so I got into advertising in the process.

While I was in advertising, I was able to connect a lot of my strengths to the training I received while studying the creative arts, so the discipline of improvisation teaches you critical thinking skills. With advertising, you’re thinking on your feet, you’re brainstorming, you’re creating, so all aspects of the brain keeps working. Drama teaches presentation skills and working with the theater crew teaches teambuilding. As a result, I really grew exponentially in my career in advertising and became a force to be reckoned with here in Nigeria. I could associate it with my life as a creative artist – I couldn’t separate it.

During that experience, I thought to myself, there are lots of young people here and the unemployment rate is on the rise. The population of Nigeria is over 200 million and 70% are under the age of 35 and a large number are unemployed. For me, it was how do I use performing arts as a tool to solve the developmental and unemployment problems we have in this country seeing that performing arts has to go beyond entertainment or arts for arts’ sake in a country like Nigeria where people are trying to survive, where people can barely pay the ticket fee to a professional theater performance. How do we use performing arts to develop the cognitive processes, the emotional thinking, and the physical development of young people such that they are prepared for the world of work, they are prepared for life, and they are prepared for leadership? That’s how it all started.

Will you tell us a little about the projects at Street Project Foundation?

One of the projects that we run is called the Creative Youth Bootcamp and what we do is look out for young, gifted youth who are between the ages of 16 to 25 years old. Gifted in music, dance, drama, visual arts, and even art forms that we haven’t seen or heard about. As long as you are creative, you are welcomed into that space. It is also very competitive because we can only accept 25 persons per cohort at a time. The beauty of the project is that the young people do not have to have a particular educational background. In short, if you’re from the streets, the better. That’s what we’re looking for - dropouts or young people from low income backgrounds. Quite a number of them studied courses that they knew from the start wasn’t what they should have studied. The essence of the camp isn’t to tell them that you have to start a career in the performing arts. We’d love that, but the essence is to use performing arts to prepare them for any venture they want to do in life. Quite a number of them still end up as professional performing artists who also have developed skills that enable them to work in the corporate world.

Our facilitators are seasoned performing artists in music, dance, drama, visual arts, and fashion. We also bring in business development, branding, and marketing – all of those things that would help them package themselves as artists and sell themselves as artists, so they can make a sustainable living doing what they love so that’s the essence. The truth is whatever your core art form, our students get to explore all of the other art forms. You can be a creative writer learning how to dance, or an actor learning brand management, so everyone explores everything. It is this process that develops their mind, and their team building, communication, and improvisation skills. There’s also one strategic class during the bootcamp called the reflection session, a therapeutic experience where we sit in a circle and talk about life in relation to what’s going on while they’re in the bootcamp: what are you becoming? What are you struggling with? As a result, they come up with solutions to the challenges they face such as extreme poverty and how they deal with that, and we’re getting them to think about how to transition from just having a mere talent to turning their talent into an enterprise. Those who graduate from the bootcamp become Street Project Ambassadors and they’re placed in internships and matched with mentors, so we do not just leave them after the six-week program.

Click here to view the graduation ceremony of the Creative Youth Bootcamp, including a talent showcase of every graduate (showcase begins at 49:12). 

We also run Project Uplift, a project for young people who are living on the spectrum, for youth living with autism and down syndrome. The young people we have developed in the Creative Bootcamp become facilitators for those living on the spectrum. They come into the space and they give back and teach them all of the art forms they have learned and all of the art forms they have developed and are making a living doing, so we’re able to aid their development.Another project is called the Talent Hub which is a group of actresses who write scripts and perform them for an audience. The women in the group have experienced discrimination, faced rape and/or gender-based violence, or even challenges in politics.

The last one, but not the least is Digital Amazons which is also a women-only project. A lot of women are excluded from the development that’s happening in the creative digital space here in Nigeria such as photography, digital marketing, graphic design, and video editing, so we expose them to content development in general. When I was in advertising, I was in the creative unit and I was often the only female in the department as a copywriter and I was discriminated against and as a result, unable to move up to the level I wanted to which was creative director. That experience inspired Digital Amazons as I felt there were lots of young women who didn’t have mentors or people to help them move up to the level they needed to in the marketing and creative industry, so we run that project in collaboration with the committee of Women in Advertising (WIA) of the Association of Advertising Agencies of Nigeria (AAAN).  We are passionate about how we can raise the next generation of female creatives who can go on to become creative directors and leaders in that industry.

What are three key points or lessons that the pandemic has brought to light in your region and how do you envision your organization and the performing arts sector as emerging more resilient?

I think that the underdeveloped countries are most experienced in dealing with these pandemics because we’ve had them before. One lesson that covid-19 has taught us is to always be proactive. For some reason, we’ve tried as much as possible not to run our organization like everyone else here, so we’ve embraced both systems – working from home and working from the space. We’ve embraced digital forms even more so than before. Before the pandemic, we were actually somewhat prepared for operations as an organization, but definitely weren’t prepared for how to run bootcamps virtually. The pandemic made us accelerate in reinventing ourselves, and now we can run our bootcamps both physically and virtually.

When we started our bootcamp in March, we only ran that bootcamp for 2 weeks and had to suspend the bootcamp because of covid-19. I was devastated because we had reached a certain level. We were working with lots of people with physical disabilities, so people on clutches, the hearing impaired, etc., so not being in the space, I freaked out and the team freaked out, but we had to make the decision to work remotely for the safety of everyone and suspend in-person activities, but still engage with them while waiting for the possibility of reopening the bootcamp. Between March and July, we continued to engage with our rightsholders and all of our young people virtually and asked them what do you want us to do at this time? How can we engage you at this time?

There are also digital limitations in Nigeria. People who are from poor communities don’t have easy access to data, so we couldn’t have zoom meetings on a regular basis. The youth said the best way was to use WhatsApp, so imagine, how do you teach drama using WhatsApp? How do you teach dance using WhatsApp? How do you teach music using WhatsApp? Being in that box also accelerated our creativity, and sitting down with our faculty members, we considered how to teach the performing arts using a limited digital platform, but we did it.

Is that how the most recent group of youth completed and graduated from the bootcamp?

Yes, that was how they graduated. The truth was that the period between March and July gave us enough time to engage with them, to determine the art forms, and how to use WhatsApp effectively, so we could then train our facilitators on how to use it effectively for drama, dance, music, and the visual arts. It meant a lot of them creating short videos that were easily downloadable. We also had the hearing impaired in our group so if we used audio, we had to interpret, so it was a very technical process, but we grew from the experience and they were able to graduate on zoom. We had our very first virtual graduation, so another lesson for us was that when there is a will, there is a way. That resilient spirit is with every staff member and even the graduates themselves have embraced. We grew astronomically.

The U.S. embassy shared a link to watch Hamilton during the July 4th weekend. I had a blast and it said a lot about how to transition from the stage to a digital platform.  I recently went to see a play now that the lockdown has eased a bit, but it was only for 20 people because of the social distancing safety guidelines. These are the kinds of innovations that are happening in theaters here and people are also thinking about recording stage plays and having platforms like Netflix where theatergoers can subscribe and watch their theater performances, so digitally we’re thinking that way - how do we make theater viable in the age that we’re in right now?

I acknowledge that it’s easier for this conversation to happen between us because I’m an Indigenous woman from Australia and therefore my engagement with ISPA doesn’t reveal the political and unresolved nature of colonization in the same way that it would for a Native American artist from the land where ISPA is based.

Tell us a little about you and the work of BlakDance?

I am a proud Aboriginal woman from New South Wales. My family comes from central western New South Wales, and I’m from the Wiradjuri Nation. I left my community when I was 14 to study classical ballet full-time at an elite ballet school in Sydney. I worked at the Australia Council for the Arts a decade ago and that was really my introduction to working in arts administration. I’ve always been part of the performing arts world that I now find myself in.

I’m about to graduate from the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) with a master’s in cultural leadership which is basically a degree on how to run an arts organization effectively in Australia. I am the Executive Producer of BlakDance. BlakDance is a national organization in Australia that supports the First Nations dance sector and industry development across the entire ecology with a focus on independent, First Nations dance makers and emerging, small to medium professional and contemporary First Nations dance companies. We train up and employ emerging First Nations producers, and we run a series of programs that respond to the needs of our sector.

We were founded in 2005 by Marilyn Miller. She was one of the founding members of Bangarra and she started BlakDance to create pathways for independent choreographers because as was the case in 2005 and still is the case now, there are no First Nations dance companies other than our big major dance company, Bangarra (who are amazing)! It’s probably reflective of deeper inequity that there’s only one major Indigenous dance company in Australia. We are a huge sector. There’s 100,000 cultural dance practitioners, there’s around 150 independent choreographers, there’s over 200 community cultural dance groups, and there’s generations upon generations of Indigenous dancers who have graduated from the two Indigenous dance training institutes in Australia, NAISDA and ACPA. There are over 50 non-Indigenous dance companies, so it doesn’t make sense that there is only one funded Indigenous dance company. This is why BlakDance exists – we use a combination of action advocacy and lobbying to try to increase the amount of funding to go towards Indigenous dancers and develop the capacity of artists to make and tour work.

How have you gone about addressing issues of connectivity during the pandemic?

Early on we recognized that social isolation would impact our communities, so we programmed a number of online Gatherings via zoom. We do a local one in Brisbane (Meanjin), which elders open and close and that enables the intergenerational transference of knowledge. We also do a national independent dance maker gathering, and we catch up with Ilbijerri, Moogahlin and Yirra Yaakin every fortnight, and as a result of that, we’ve been able to do some really great advocacy as a collective. We wrote a submission for the Covid-19 senate inquiry and we emphasized the need for a self-determined First Nations approach to recovery and we put in a lot of great recommendations. We collectively created a First Nations independent artists survey to understand the impact of Covid-19 on our communities.  

We advocate collectively for our key priorities as a sector. We’re really concerned about our elders’ safety during the pandemic. They are high risk. Our elders often have multiple comorbidities and in Australia, Indigenous elders die 17 years younger than non-Indigenous elderly people because of those comorbidity rates, so we recognized really quickly that if we lost our elders, we lose the source of our cultural knowledge. Our elders are like living libraries and they’re the source of our culture, so without them we don’t have a performing arts sector. We’re also advocating for ways to remain spirituality strong because we’re such a connected culture. We’re advocating for our independent artists because the majority of First Nation artists are independent, and we knew that they were having trouble applying for the Australian government social benefit payments of job seeker and job keeper during Covid-19.

The global pandemic and international protests have reminded us of the systemic inequalities and racism that remains to be addressed. Do you see these issues as distinct to the U.S. or internationally pervasive?

No, they’re definitely internationally pervasive. Protests in Australia have been happening since colonization and the connection to the black civil rights movement and black power in Australia has been around for 100 years. There’s an activist named Gary Foley who made a show with Ilbijerri, about the history of protests in Australia and its connection to the black civil rights movement in the U.S. He talks about how sailors in the early 1900s were connecting with Aboriginal communities in Australia and talking about anti-racism movements and so the protest movement in Australia is very entrenched and has been happening for a very long time. One of the more notable protests in the last 50 years was the Tent Embassy protest in Canberra where Aboriginal people and activists fought for Aboriginal sovereignty, because in Australia there’s never been a negotiation of treaty so the whole country is unceded Aboriginal land. There were also a lot of protests in the 80s and 90’s about Aboriginal people being killed in police custody. There have been more than 432 Aboriginal deaths in custody since 1991.

The protests last weekend took place on a mass scale nationwide and were led by First Nation activists focused on Aboriginal lives matter, First Nation sovereignty and Aboriginal deaths in custody. It felt like a tipping point in Australia for awareness of the structural inequalities and structural racism that exists.

In your opinion, how do these major issues play out in the performing arts sector and do you have any suggestions on how we in the arts can create a more inclusive and equitable sector?

There’s been a lot of calling out of Australia’s arts and culture sector and its interconnectedness with colonialism. The arts that get financially supported are largely colonial arts, that in itself is structurally racist because colonial art was imported here through colonization. The fact that we don’t have any Black, Indigenous, or POC (BIPOC) dance companies is a reflection of the structural inequality that is a result of the ongoing nature of colonization. As Aboriginal people, we are the world’s longest living surviving culture, but we’re not funded to the same degree that the European culture is funded in Australia. I have often said I’m at war with the Australian arts and culture sector because of that reason.

In our country, the funding of the ecology and programming decisions of the industry do not prioritize First Nation arts and cultural stories collectively as a whole. Of course, there are individuals and certain festivals and organizations that are attempting to reposition First Nations as the heart of their programming, as it should be. But the downfall of individuals with a really strong philosophy of First People’s first is that once they leave their position, that philosophy often leaves that organization as well. It can be two steps forward and three steps back. Furthermore, the labor involved in transforming a colonial institution whether it be a major festival, performing arts center or a major company with significant funding, is often beholden of First Nations peoples who are driving that change from within and it creates a very unsustainable and temporary change. It burns out our Indigenous leaders.

It’s one thing to educate yourself on an individual level, but if you’re looking at your organization and you’ve got no Indigenous people on your board or in senior positions like curatorial or programming positions, no Indigenous people on staff or in marketing or front of house positions then your organization is really upholding white supremacy which is what founded colonization in Australia. That’s why I say I’m at war with the arts and culture sector because it’s perpetuating the colonial white supremacist narrative just through the act of being without having the structural change that reflects the society we live in and it’s not just a First Nation issue. We have a hugely diverse population in Australia and that is absolutely not reflected in the arts at all.

When we call for anti-racist structures, we’re also calling for organizations to have BIPOC board members and staff. How many conversations have you been part of where performing arts centers talk about how performing arts touring is broken? People want deeper and longer lasting engagement. That is how First Nations people work. Ironically, the application of our protocols would solve their broken touring programs. I think it’s interesting that this pandemic focuses on local programing because it will potentially hash out some of these issues. If Australian organizations can’t bring over an international superstar to create new work or program then maybe they will be forced to look at the place where they are located and recognize the unceded Aboriginal land, the Traditional owners of that Country, get to know the elders, get to know the community and do the work locally instead of sidestepping around it?

My challenge to companies and presenters alike is that BIPOC artists already exist wherever you’re based. We already have relationships with communities. Our kinship systems are significant. These artists are already there. Some senior Indigenous artists have been practicing their entire lives in a parallel universe that you haven’t engaged with. My challenge is for companies to look at what is already in the local community. Also, an important point to make is that the model of a white artistic director being at the top of the hierarchy and picking what they want in their venue is broken. Black Lives Matter calls for a flattening of those structures. We’re starting to see collective curatorial roles happening within organizations which I think is an important response and critical component of BIPOC self-determination in the arts. We’re the authors of our own stories, the philosophy of BIPOC being the programmer or curator is critical to that too, so I think what we’ll see a very significant shift in the next decade to decentralized curatorial models where the application of self-determination sits also in the curatorial and programming decision making. We don’t want to be programmed by white people who want to alter our context. We want to be the authors of our own context. We want to program our own communities so I think my challenge to organizations, festivals, presenters, companies, and artistic directors is to step aside and create a process where BIPOC can be the authors of our own context in the curatorial and programming decisions, not only in the making of their work, but also in the presenting of the work.

If an organization wanted to welcome a First Nation artist, how would you recommend that it go about doing that?

There are so many different ways that that could be achieved. There are heaps of organizations that are doing that really well in Australia. I think that shared leadership is a provocation for what 2020 and beyond looks like. If we are calling for self-determination across decision making, it does invoke shared leadership and stepping aside, and if we also think about this new normal of domestic or local focused programming, and anti-racism uprisings, all of this says to me that there will be much more of an emphasis on BIPOC programming and work. All of those environmental factors equal a shift in what we define as good art as well as what is being invested into it.

The challenge really is for people in positions of power to figure out ethically how they do that, and it has to be tailor made in every circumstance. You might have a situation where a collaboration requires a First Nations team from the director through to the producers and you might have another scenario where a co-artistic director or a co-curator is brought on, but what’s really important here is that companies don’t exploit this because if they just bring on (and this has happened in the past) an Indigenous consultant, they often play the role (unwillingly) of director, the dramaturg, the marketer, the writer, the choreographer, the copyrighter, etc. They’re not being paid for those roles and they’re not being recognized for their hard work. It’s way too much for one person. I do know that the answer is not to have an Indigenous themed production by one Indigenous consultant.

What we’re calling for in terms of advocacy for the recovery of the arts sector is not to recover, because we don’t want to recover to the status quo, we don’t even have a position to recover. There are no funded multi-year, small to medium BIPOC dance companies. The large majority of our performing arts sector does not get to make work of the scale and size with the investment required for it to be presented and toured nationally and internationally. It’s not an equal playing field. We don’t want to recover to that. We’re calling for a refuturing and in our refuturing, we’re asking the funding agencies to invest in building and embedding a sustainable First Nations sector and invest significantly into the development of infrastructure and independent artists who are hit the hardest at the moment. I know that a lot of independent artists are on struggle street, but the layers of Indigenous disadvantage and inequality often result in another level of disadvantage faced by Indigenous artists, and we have got independent artists who could become companies in a heartbeat, with the right investment. What we’re saying is invest in their work, invest in their productions, invest in the ones that want to become companies, invest in more Indigenous producers, invest in more Indigenous curators, and let’s tackle the next decade with a sense of equity and fairness.

There’s one thing that I need to say, but I don’t know if it is relevant to the article.

I’ve been attending ISPA for quite some time, since 2015, and my experience of ISPA when I first started attending was actually disempowering. When people would ask me what I do and I told them I worked in Indigenous dance supporting Indigenous dance companies and independent artists from Australia, I either got one of two reactions. Example one is someone who thought that Indigenous dance was an anthropological recreation of the past, obsessed with the exotic and the fetishization of the other. The second example is people just didn’t really care and they didn’t want to know about contemporary Indigenous dance.

For ISPA members, understanding and acknowledging our context of contemporary Indigenous performance is actually how to begin a conversation with us. If you are rendering Indigenous dance in Australia as either new or exotic, boring or not good enough then already there’s no space for conversation, exchange, dialogue or engagement. First Nation performance all around the world is contemporary, it's exciting, the narratives are powerful, and a timely reflection of the unresolved nature of colonization. The time is now, around the world, to have these conversations. My challenge to the ISPA membership is to do the research, learn, understand the context, and don’t be dismissive.

Have you noticed a change at all?

I definitely have and I think that David Baile and a few people on the ISPA board have really good will and intention to change, but the change isn’t fast enough. There’s a tendency for organizations to uphold or uplift Indigenous people from all around the world before they engage with their local community and that presents challenges to us because as part of our protocol, whosever land we’re on - those Indigenous people have the right to talk first, be prioritized and put forward before any other Indigenous person from another part of the world. If Australian Indigenous artists are being presented in New York, but Native Americans who live and come from New York are not being presented, that can be problematic. ISPA is based in New York and in over five years of attending, there have not been enough local Indigenous people present. This is a problem for me and maybe other Indigenous attendees because, as I understand it, the cultural authority to speak comes from the people of the land on which we are gathering. My challenge for ISPA is to create space to center and uplift their Native American community, to recruit, engage, and develop access strategies for Native American membership. Feature them in keynotes and performances, allow us to witness artists who are from the land on which ISPA is located.

Representation of Indigenous people in performing arts markets has been invested in and strategically approached for over a decade in Australia, so is it time for the U.S. to strategically invest in the redress of Native American engagement and prioritization? Not just at ISPA but across the whole arts sector? In Australia, Black lives matter means Indigenous lives matter,. The BIPOC organizations in the arts start from the position of First People’s first. They acknowledge they are guests on our land, then they advocate for their own communities. Now is the time to agitate, Black Lives Matter. 

Can you paint a picture of your experience in Wrocław since the announcement of the pandemic?

It’s been an emotional roller-coaster. At the very beginning, the lockdown came right away. They kept us away from work, away from everybody as soon as the pandemic came. Suddenly we’re all stuck at home and the timeline for our concert season was a big question mark. We didn’t know how we were going to handle concerts next month. Soon that period was prolonged – okay, we’re done at least until August. From one perspective, I was sad that some of the incredible projects that we programmed like two years ago, won’t happen. Some of them took even 5-6 years of planning. Right after that the realization that independent artists and smaller companies were left alone without any income – that was the second wave of emotions that came to me personally.

At the same time, I realized that I haven’t been home for so long, since 2008, so finally I have the time to rethink so many things about not only my professional life.

The Jazztopad Festival that I program here in Wrocław is in November which seems really far away from now. There are so many question marks at this stage. Usually we would announce the program around this time, but we have no idea what is going to happen. We’re probably going to push the announcement to September, but there are already a lot of international artists communicating the fact that they will not travel this year even if they open borders. People don’t want to fly. They want to take a year to make sure that it’s safe so that complicates things a lot but it’s understandable of course. There’s a satellite edition of the festival that takes place in New York in September, but we moved it to April 2021.

I’ve talked to a lot of my colleagues, and the timing of this pandemic and the fact that everything stopped in this particular moment is interesting, because a lot of people who are programmers had a feeling that everything is too hectic for some time now. The pace of the whole industry is really fast. There are concerts happening now and at the same time you’re already planning for 2022/23 and you’re just pushing and pushing. We don’t have enough time to rethink the way we approach our work. Then the pandemic came, and it was weird timing because I felt in a way that I needed this break. Well, now we are all forced to slow down and stay at home.

I also program just a small part of the season at the National Forum of Music in Wrocław, but there are over 1,000 events each year, so imagine having a question mark over 1,000 events! How do you deal with this in terms of approaching artists, the financial structure of the company? So, the overall feeling of uncertainty is strange and sometimes exhausting because you don’t know what will happen.

Are potential scenarios being considered for opening up again? If so, what do those look like?

We are painting different scenarios of going back to presenting live performances. The main hall seats 1800 people. If we have to keep 2 meters of space between audience members then we can fit maximum 350-400 people. That could be the first step to inviting our audience back to the venue. In smaller venues, we’re thinking about 50-70 people maximum. The maximum number in a couple of European countries where they started lifting restrictions is 50 people at concert venues. How will people react to that? Will they be afraid to come to venues even if you lift that restriction?

For example, one idea I’m considering for my festival is to organize an entire edition of house concerts for just 20-30 people maximum at once. We’ve been doing this the last several years during the last weekend of the festival. People invited us to their homes all over the city – it is usually the most beautiful part of the festival. It may be the only solution for this year and a really nice alternative. The bottom line is not to cancel Jazztopad this year. It’s more about how we can continue this event by just introducing a different approach to it. Whether it’s going to be live-streamed concerts without an audience or just putting everything in people’s homes for a very small audience - we’re considering different scenarios.

The most important thing is to keep it going and not say: let’s move everything to next year. It's really important primarily for artists and for our community. We want to support local artists and we’re going to focus on them for the next couple of months since our borders are closed. In a way, it’s going to be a positive thing because sometimes there’s so much emphasis on international programming and inviting big names. I think flying in an artist from New Zealand for example just for one concert in Poland is not going to happen anytime soon and maybe never again.  

How has this influenced your outlook in regard to future international programming?

At one of the ISPA convenings, we were discussing this very matter. Maybe capitalistic is the way to describe the approach – produce, produce, produce, and a few members were saying that we need to take this time to rethink our values and our structures, and to slow down, and a lot of what you’re saying reminds me of those conversations. I agree because it also allows artists to connect with the communities where they’re performing in a deeper way.

It’s not only about selling out a big venue and having a big name on a poster. It’s more about how you actually build the community within the festival and using the festival or venue to do it. It is much more important to have those moments and the time with artists and to help them develop something new and also to challenge them. That’s how I consider programming – challenging artists, challenging audiences and building trust between the audiences and the artists which is only possible when you have them here for a couple days, not just a few hours.

You sit on the Pitch New Works Committee and we will be streaming the virtual session on June 3^rd. What kind of opportunities do you think a virtual version of the session provides?

 
I’ve been on it for over six years now. This is one of my favorite ISPA involvements. To be on that committee is a privilege. We have in a way backstage access to the ideas and issues that artists are thinking about. So many projects we receive are in the very early stages of development. Having access to that is incredibly exciting.

What was the project selection process like this year? Were the selection criteria revised to adapt to the pandemic?

Did you notice anything different in terms of the content of the projects submitted this year compared to last year’s submissions during the international congress?

What are you most excited about for this year’s session?

Seeing projects from countries that never applied before. I hope this is a trend we will continue to see and that the overall awareness of Pitch New Works continues to grow as we’ve been working on promoting the program for several years now. It’s not that easy to come up with a very good application, especially in countries where culture and art is not as supported, so receiving applications from these parts of the world is encouraging.