2016 Unsung Heroes of Arts Administration On September 4, 2016, I placed a call for the Unsung Heroes of Arts Administration, a sort of Bat signal in blog post form. In placing that call, I hoped it would be a simple and fun way to recognize some of those culture warriors in our field who seldom receive public recognition for their efforts, and without whom “the show” would decidedly not go on.

a mosaic of the Fractured Atlas staff “I’m not interested in anybody’s guilt. Guilt is a luxury that we can no longer afford. I know you didn’t do it, and I didn’t do it either, but I am responsible for it because I am a man and a citizen of this country and you are responsible for it, too, for the very same reason… Anyone who is trying to be conscious must begin to dismiss the vocabulary which we’ve used so long to cover it up, to lie about the way things are.” ~ James Baldwin A few weeks ago, Adam Huttler, Fractured Atlas’s CEO, wrote a blog post in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. In that short post, he clearly stated our commitment to fighting systemic racism and other forms of oppression. However, while the post hinted that we felt our statement was long overdue, it stopped short of sharing how Fractured Atlas has navigated deep discussions about our place in the social justice movement for almost two years. Our guilt, and a desire to not seem “trite” or late to the protest had paralyzed us.

by Courtney Duffy, Robert W. Deutsch Arts & Technology Policy Fellow at Fractured Atlas Courtney Duffy, our Robert W. Deutsch Arts & Technology Policy Fellow, shares the lowdown on the annual October celebration of the arts and humanities. You can find her on Twitter @cduffy90.

by Courtney Duffy, Robert W. Deutsch Arts & Technology Policy Fellow at Fractured Atlas Late last month, I was lucky enough to attend a celebration of Baltimore’s newest makerspace, Open Works (photos below). The facility is near and dear to me, not only because I’ve come to know and admire makers through collaboration with the Congressional Maker Caucus on events like 3D/DC, but also because it was created with support from the organization that funds my fellowship, the Robert W. Deutsch Foundation.

Over the past ten years or so I’ve heard countless times, and in countless venues, about an impending leadership gap crisis facing the cultural sector. The theory goes, scores of Baby Boomers are getting ready to retire from leadership roles in arts organizations, and we’ve done a poor job building the pipeline to replace them. If we don’t address this crisis, countless organizations will be left adrift without a capable captain, or worse, they’ll disappear entirely. If only we were a for-profit company with the means to create a formal training system we would be in better shape to withstand this sea change. If only we could pay young people better they wouldn’t leave us for those higher paying for-profit jobs.

Image: “Gogbot,” Installation at the Gogbot Media Art Festival in Enschede. By Flickr user Ineke Happy Fall television premiere week! The Fractured Atlas and Createquity teams are back with a third installment of the Createquity podcast on television and our well-being! Public conversations about television and the arts have tended to pit one against the other. If television wasn’t saving the arts by connecting them to a wide and public audience, it was killing them by advancing popular culture over ‘serious’ fare. While some celebrated the arts on television as encouraging live attendance, others worried it discouraged such attendance by serving as a substitute. From a public health standpoint, we can also be concerned by research associating heavy television-watching with conditions like obesity and early death — would we be both healthier and happier attending and participating in “traditional” art forms rather than staying home in front of the television? Even in the age of digital communications — of broadcast and cable and wifi, oh my — we often miss the larger conversation about the box: television is culture. It conveys visual and narrative human expression, it employs and animates artists, reaches a massive audience every day, and it can even be a tool for social change. And — spoiler alert— people really enjoy watching television…a lot of television. So what are the implications of “television as culture?” And how do they frame and inform the trajectory of artists, arts organizations, audiences, and all the others supporting and advancing artistic work? These episodes will explore the scope, scale, sources, and substance of contemporary television; consider its social, civic, and health effects; and discover it as a medium where artists and audiences find each other and even as a vehicle for artist and youth empowerment. Episode 1: Guest Louise Geraghty (bio below) provides a quick rundown of the research Createquity has done on this topic. Hear about the impact television may have on our personal health and happiness. Is heavy TV watching in the same category as soda/junk food when it comes to possibly needing some regulation? Episode 2: Guest Qui Nguyen (bio below) talks to us about his experience in both the theatre and television worlds. Hear about how he feels the two industries interact and impact the health of the overall arts industry. Can television be a stable and even desirable form of employment for creative artists? Episode 3: Guest Rebecca Yenawine (bio below) explains how she uses television media to engage low-socioeconomic-status youth in the Baltimore area. Hear about the impact she feels media has on the health of our communities. The Host Andrew Taylor | Host Andrew Taylor thinks (a bit too much) about organizational structure, strategy, and management practice in the nonprofit arts. An Associate Professor of Arts Management at American University in Washington, DC, he shares what he learns at “The Artful Manager.” The Guests Louise Geraghty | Editorial Team (Former), Createquity Louise Geraghty is a Project Manager at the University of Chicago Crime Lab, where she works closely with Chicago’s Department of Family and Support Services to manage and evaluate a randomized control trial of the city’s One Summer Chicago Plus summer jobs program. She is a recent graduate of the University’s Harris School of Public Policy, where she held research related internships at the University’s Arts and Public Life Initiative and the Urban Education Institute. Louise has previously worked in fundraising at Steppenwolf Theatre Company and in program management at Artist Corps New Orleans. Rebecca Yenawine Rebecca Yenawine has been founder and director a community arts organizations since 1997. In her current work as Director at New Lens she advises young people in running their own organization and supports their creative endeavors. As a part of New Lens she advises teens and young adults in media production and takes part in over ten productions per year. Films include work about criminal justice, education and health related issues. Her pieces have been accepted into the Maryland Film Festival, the Media that Matters Film Festival and many other smaller festivals. She has experience in making videos for numerous nonprofit entities from Johns Hopkins University to the Baltimore City Health Department. Rebecca also works as consultant with Teachers’ Democracy Project where she helps teachers use media as a tool for change. She is adjunct faculty member at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in the Masters of Community Art Program where she teaches community art research. She has worked in partnership with MICA on community arts research and evaluation since 2009. Rebecca has a BA in English from Goucher College and a master’s degree from the Johns Hopkins School of Education. In 1999, Ms. Yenawine was the recipient of a Community Fellowship Award from the Open Society Institute. She has published articles through the CAN Network and the Nathan Cummings Convening. She has presented and been part of panel discussions on numerous occasions at Baltimore City Colleges and other civic institutions. Qui Nguyen | Theatre and Television Writer Qui Nguyen is a playwright, TV/Film writer, and Co-Founder (along with Robert Ross Parker) of the OBIE Award-winning Vampire Cowboys of NYC. His work, known for its innovative use of pop-culture, stage violence, puppetry, and multimedia, has been called “Culturally Savvy Comedy” by The New York Times, “Tour de Force Theatre” by Time Out New York, and “Infectious Fun” by Variety.He is a member of the WGA, The Dramatists Guild, The Playwrights Center, Ensemble Studio Theatre, The Ma-Yi Writers Lab and a proud alumnus of New Dramatists and Youngblood. Currently, Qui’s at work on new plays for South Coast Rep/Manhattan Theatre Club (The Vietgone Saga), The Atlantic (Untitled Qui Nguyen Project), and Oregon Shakespeare Festival (The Tale of Kieu). For television, he’s written for Peg+Cat (PBS) and the upcoming SYFY thriller, Incorporated. He’s currently a writer for Marvel Studios. The Team Ian David Moss | Executive Producer Ian David Moss is the founder and CEO of Createquity, a virtual think tank and online publication investigating the most important issues in the arts and what we can do about them. As Senior Director of Information Strategy for Fractured Atlas, Ian works with his own organization and the wider field to promote a culture of learning and assessment and support informed decision-making on behalf of the arts. Evidence-based strategic frameworks that he helped create have guided the distribution of nearly $100 million in grants to date by some of the nation’s most important arts funders. In addition to Createquity, Ian founded the Cultural Research Network, an open resource-sharing forum for self-identified researchers in the arts, and C4: The Composer/Conductor Collective. He holds BA and MBA degrees from Yale University and is based in Washington, DC. Malcolm Evans | Producer Malcolm Evans is a Program Associate at Fractured Atlas. He graduated from Trinity College (Hartford) in 2013 with a Bachelor of Arts in Theater & Dance. He also carries a minor in Studio Arts and has studied with the London Dramatic Academy Program. When he’s not hard at work at Fractured Atlas, he is hard at work at home, writing screenplays. Follow him on social media @malxavi. Michael Feldman | Assistant Producer Michael Feldman provides strategic and engagement advice to local and international arts organizations. Based in Washington, D.C., he also serves as a board member of theAlliance for a New Music Theatre, an arts partner of the Czech Embassy for theirMutual Inspirations Festival. Michael is a former cultural attaché and diplomat whose experience bridges the arts, development, and public policy worlds. Michael was a director at PEPFAR, the President’s Emergency Fund for AIDS Relief; a director for Europe and Central Asia at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative; and professional staff of theBudget Committee of the U.S. Senateas part of a fellowship with theAmerican Political Science Association. At the US State Department, Michael served in Europe and Central Africa; he oversaw assistance for the Balkans; and he negotiated policy with theOrganization for Economic Cooperation and Development(OECD), the G-7/8 process, and the European Union. Michael graduated from Wesleyan University with a B.A. in Economics and speaks German, Czech, French and Italian. Katherine Gressel | Assistant Producer Katherine Gressel is an NYC-based freelance artist, curator and writer focused on site‐specific and community art. She was a 2011 Createquity Writing Fellow and now helps spearhead new public programming for the organization. She has also published and presented with Americans for the Arts’ Public Art Network and Public Art Dialogue, among others. Katherine is currently the Contemporary Curator at Brooklyn’s Old Stone House, and has also curated for Brooklyn Historical Society, FIGMENT, No Longer Empty, and NARS Foundation. Katherine has painted community murals internationally and exhibited her own artwork throughout NYC, and currently runs an award-winning business, Event Painting by Katherine, creating live paintings of private events. Katherine has also held programming, grantwriting and teaching artist jobs and internships at such organizations as Smack Mellon, Arts to Grow, Creative Time and theBrooklyn Museum. Katherine earned her BA in art from Yale and MA in arts administration from Columbia. Jason Tseng | Engineer Jason Tseng has devoted his professional and personal life to empowering ordinary people to make extraordinary change. Splitting his time between serving the arts and queer communities of color, he has worked for organizations like Theatre Communications Group, Gay Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), and currently serves on the steering committee and chair emeritus of GAPIMNY, the second oldest queer Asian community organization in the nation. Jason currently serves as the Community Engagement Specialist at Fractured Atlas, a nonprofit technology company that serves artists. Before moving to New York, he grew up outside Washington, D.C., in Maryland and graduated from the University of Richmond studying Women, Gender, & Sexuality Studies and Theatre. In his spare time, Jason creates plays, stories, comics, and illustrations (usually about queer people and people of color). He now lives in Long Island City with his fiancé and their rabbit, Turnip Cake. Other Suggested Reading Why Don’t They Come?— Ian David Moss, Louise Geraghty, Clara Inés Schuhmacher, and Talia Gibas Are The Arts The Answer to Our TV Obsession— Clara Inés Schuhmacher, Louise Geraghty, Fari Nzinga, and Ian David Moss Createquity is a virtual think tank and online publication investigating the most important issues in the arts and what we, collectively and individually, can do about them.

Source: Flickr user Johnny Silvercloud On Friday, Terence Crutcher was gunned down by police in Tulsa. Then yesterday, police in Charlotte shot and killed Keith Lamont Scott. They are just the latest in a terrible and seemingly unending string of unarmed black Americans who have been killed by police in this country.

Nominate Your Culture Warrior Today! Image by Flickr This morning, I awoke to read about those deserving individuals short-listed for the Man Booker Prize and thought, for all the Bookers, MacArthurs, National Medals of the Arts, Pulitzers, Barry’s Blogs, Oscars, Emmys, and Dance/USA Ernies, you know what list I never wake up to read about in The New York Times? The Unsung Heroes of Arts Administration.

A Guide to Working at Fractured Atlas This week Fractured Atlas published How We Work: A Guide to Working at Fractured Atlas. It’s a document that’s been in the making ever since we opened our doors in 1998, and it’s the result of years of conversations, research, experimenting, and iterating. Within minutes of publishing, we were already tinkering with it, a nod to the ever-changing nature of life at Fractured Atlas. work.fracturedatlas.org Why publish this document publicly? Why not? What’s so special and sacred about workplace policies, values, and culture that we often keep them under lock and key? Every company has core values whether they articulate them or not. Every organization has a set of guard rails that guide its work. (Those guard rails might be close together or miles apart, but they still exist.) Our organizations, and the cultural sector, benefit from articulating these things and sharing the information so we can all borrow and iterate on the ideas like any talented artist (I’m looking at you Benjamin Britten and your Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra). Maybe you’re interested in a job at Fractured Atlas and curious about what it’s like to work here. Maybe you’ve heard whispers of Fractured Atlas’s unlimited day off policy. Maybe you’ve heard about our R&D pipeline for the exploration and development of new products and services. We thought the time had come to put pencil to paper, and then, uh, publish that content as a website. It seems we’re constantly talking about workplace culture at Fractured Atlas. What do people need to do their best work? How can we find meaning and purpose in our work? If this isn’t the job you love anymore, can you craft the one you want out of the one you have? If not, where do you want to go and how can your time at Fractured Atlas help you get there? How can teams operate with trust and respect while also embracing healthy conflict? We talk about shared purpose — change the world — and shared identity — Waffle Wednesdays (usually on Thursdays) — and about what it means to have a workplace environment where you’re more frequently than not building the plane while flying it. Our office library includes dog-eared copies of Good to Great, Nuts!, Maverick, The Hard Things About Hard Things, Delivering Happiness, Zingerman’s Staff Guide, How to Measure Anything, Multipliers, The Purpose Economy, The Advantage, Give & Take, Who: The A Guide to Hiring, Remote: Office Not Required, and countless others related titles. We talk about what it means for our company culture and the office environment when 75% of staff work remotely at least one day a week, with 25% of staff fully remote in ten different states. Is it possible to equalize the experience so rather than onsite versus offsite, people feel they all work for the same organization and are committed to the same purpose? How We Work isn’t a template, not even for Fractured Atlas. If we were to relaunch the company today it would be a mistake to take this document as gospel and adopt it without question. Just like trying to be Google doesn’t work for Fractured Atlas, trying to be Fractured Atlas circa 2002 doesn’t work for Fractured Atlas circa 2016. Would we borrow and iterate on some of the policies, probably. Some of them have withstood the test of time. Others? Still in the experimental phase and might not make the cut. Lastly, does each person at Fractured Atlas wholeheartedly agree that — from their personal perspective — How We Work accurately reflects their work experience? No. Like most things we do at Fractured Atlas, smart, opinionated, talented people disagree. People disagree about how to go about accomplishing something. People disagree about the speed at which things should be attempted. Show me 35 smart, talented, insightful people who all totally agree about everything. Does that mean we wait for perfect alignment and consensus? No. We head down a path that is directionally correct and make adjustments as we go. Please take a gander, and then, if they don’t already, encourage your organization to publish what it’s like to work there. Openness and transparency help us all. It helps fuel the conversation so we can become stronger organizations and a stronger sector. Ultimately, it helps us create better, more fulfilling and supportive places to work that make bigger dents in the universe. Share away!

Courtney Duffy’s work as Fractured Atlas Arts & Technology Policy Fellow has been made possible through the generosity of the Robert W. Deutsch Foundation. You can find her by emailing courtney.duffy@fracturedatlas.org or on Twitter @cduffy90. The Deutsch Foundation recently profiled Courtney’s fellowship on its blog, which you can find here.