Latest / Arts Unscripted with Monica Holt / CI to Eye | Tired of the Scraps

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CI to Eye | Tired of the Scraps · Arts Unscripted with Monica Holt

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1:13
Hi everyone, it's Christopher Williams. Well, it's that time of year.
1:18
Many of us are busy launching new seasons and strategizing for upcoming
1:22
programs.
1:23
It's always a period filled with so much excitement and possibility,
1:28
but for our friends in Florida arts organizations,
1:32
that excitement this year is dampened by the state's substantial
1:37
cuts to arts and culture funding. In case you missed it,
1:41
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis vetoed more than
1:44
$30 million in state grants that fund arts and culture organizations.
1:49
That decision left hundreds of institutions scrambling to find funding and
1:54
fill holes left in their budgets. The impact is significant.
1:59
For smaller organizations, state grants aren't just supplementary.
2:04
They're essential for keeping the doors open and the lights on.
2:07
And for larger organizations,
2:09
state funding allows for ambitious projects that would otherwise be
2:14
unattainable. By reducing financial support,
2:17
the state is undermining the social and economic contributions our industry
2:21
provides. Arts and culture are not luxuries.
2:25
They are vital components of a healthy society. In today's episode,
2:31
I talk with Chris Brown,
2:32
the executive director of Orlando Family Stage and a vocal advocate for
2:37
restoring state funding.
2:38
We'll discuss the impact of these budget cuts on the state's cultural landscape,
2:43
what you can do to make a difference,
2:45
and how we can all better communicate the social and economic benefits of the
2:50
arts to our constituents. Let's take a listen.
3:00
Chris Brown, welcome to CI to Eye.
3:04
Thank you so much for having me.
3:05
So for context for all of our listeners,
3:08
before we jump into the meat and potatoes of why we're having a conversation
3:13
today, tell us about Orlando Family Stage as a starting point.
3:18
Absolutely.
3:19
I feel incredibly blessed to be
3:24
leading Orlando Family Stage. I've been here for 15 years.
3:28
It's Florida's only professional theater for young audiences,
3:32
or T-Y-A.
3:34
And that means that everything under our umbrella,
3:38
one hundred percent of the time, all year long,
3:40
is geared towards kids and families.
3:43
And we organize our work into three lines of business.
3:47
We have our professional theater for young audiences where we're producing
3:51
shows.
3:52
We have our youth academy where the kids get to perform and take camps and
3:56
classes and produce shows. And then we have our arts-based learning,
4:00
which is all of our work in the community and in the schools.
4:03
So for everyone listening,
4:06
Orlando Family Stage is actually a client of ours.
4:09
And so the reason why we're talking about this today is because
4:14
the consultant who works on their account dropped this news item
4:19
into our Slack.
4:20
And I in particular just-I was outraged
4:26
when I read this news item, and my initial reaction was like,
4:30
we've got to have Chris on the podcast.
4:33
So can you take us back and tell us about what happened?
4:39
I don't want to relive that, but
4:44
yeah. So we submitted our kind of annual state funding
4:49
grants. [It's] a really rigorous grant process that
4:54
we apply for about this time every year.
4:58
Those applications are then scored on a rubric by a panel.
5:03
If you meet above the threshold,
5:06
you are recommended for full funding.
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In my category of our size
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organization, that's $150,000.
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And so the legislature then comes back into session
5:21
and the legislature is tasked with creating the budget
5:26
for the upcoming fiscal year for the state of Florida.
5:31
And so through this process each year,
5:34
it really ebbs and flows, right? In my time at this organization,
5:39
there are some years when we get full funded and we get $150,000.
5:44
There's other years that are a little tighter,
5:49
maybe a little different priorities in the state.
5:52
And the arts budgets get knocked down a little bit,
5:56
but this year the legislature cut the
6:00
$150 in half.
6:03
And so at the end of the budgeting process,
6:06
the budget that the legislature took to the governor's desk supported the arts
6:11
in, and I'm getting the numbers wrong, I'm sure,
6:14
but about $32 million in the state budget.
6:20
So that gets to the governor's desk,
6:22
and the governor vetoed the arts and culture lines right
6:27
out of the budget.
6:30
And he basically said the fringe
6:35
festivals are sexual festivals out there,
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and I can't understand spending taxpayer dollars on that sort of
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thing. So two weeks, three weeks before our fiscal year started,
6:50
that funding was wiped away.
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And I don't know if you've been paying attention in our sector lately,
6:55
but $70,000 going away...
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it really hurts.
7:01
Especially because of the statements about the fringe festivals and
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the gross misunderstanding there. By definition,
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there are fringe artists and acts and things that really
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push the boundaries, but not to be categorized like that.
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That is just not reality.
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And you got some specific attention paid to you because of a
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response that you made in I believe the Sentinel. Yes?
7:32
Yes, the Orlando Sentinel. I was feeling spicy.
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When things like that happen,
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it is really easy to sort of feel like you can't do anything.
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It's just out of your control.
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And I felt the need to at least
7:52
voice another perspective out into the world. And
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I did not expect the Orlando Sentinel to print the op-ed, but they did.
8:03
They pushed it out and it got really a bigger response than I could have
8:08
ever thought it would get.
8:11
It was a beautiful piece. It was very data-driven and incredibly compelling.
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I felt like it saw everything from every angle.
8:20
So talk to us a little bit about,
8:23
you made such good salient points about this in your letter.
8:26
Talk to us about the economic impact of the arts
8:31
generally, specifically in the state of Florida.
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Certainly a lot of people who listen to this particular podcast work in the
8:39
industry, but there are always shadow listeners.
8:42
There are spouses in the car or friends in the car who are also hearing it.
8:45
Not everyone actually understands the role that we play.
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And I thought you did such a great job of using data to make those points.
8:52
Yeah, thank you.
8:55
Many people just think what we do is just providing entertainment,
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but entertainment is unique.
9:03
We're not only generating economic activity by ourselves just with
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our own business functions of producing shows. I hire,
9:12
I have about almost 200 people on the payroll every year,
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like seasonal employees that come and go.
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We are providing a ton of jobs and
9:25
a ton of economic activity by ourselves.
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And when you couple that with the audience,
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them coming to the theater and paying for tickets,
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but also buying concessions, buying merchandise,
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going out to lunch afterwards.
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Maybe they're in town for a couple of days,
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they're going to stay at the hotel and come and see a show.
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They're going to stay here for a week while their kids are in camps.
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It's really pretty remarkable when you start
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really adding it up,
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if you pay attention long enough to add it up.
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So many people that I interact with,
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they just sort of think of what we do as something extra.
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It's a fun thing to do on the weekend and that's where it lives.
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But I think if you peel back the onion a little bit,
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the arts and culture community is like three and change percent
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of the total GDP of Florida. That's a massive number.
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And if you send that all around the nation, it's incredible.
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It's right up there with transportation or housing or
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any of these other sort of more familiar things in the business and
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finance world. Yes, it's a theater or yes, it's an art museum or yes,
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it's a fringe festival,
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but these are all small businesses.
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And if you take what we do and you put it more in the
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context of what the rest of the world considers a small business,
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then you find many more commonalities in the language and
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in other people's ability to understand what you're talking about.
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Yeah, because the type of businesses we are are arts and culture businesses.
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We are nonprofits, and that is simply a tax status.
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That's it.
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Interestingly enough,
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the state of Florida alone says that arts and culture organizations generate
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nearly 6 billion a year in economic activity.
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And almost 300,000 jobs.
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These are no longer small numbers when you put them all together.
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And if I'm generating hotel room nights and economic development out of my
11:47
organization and taxes back to the local government,
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we're doing everything we're supposed to be doing-and then some,
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because the state also says there's a nine to one return on that
11:58
investment.
11:59
So the economic activity that we're generating is moving the needle.
12:04
That sentiment is few and far between, right?
12:07
Most of the time our organizations sort of get painted as
12:13
a boy who cried wolf or the whiny arts organization always looking for a
12:18
handout. And it's like, no, no, no.
12:21
Any small business that got $75,000 removed out of their
12:25
budget weeks before they needed it, they're going to be in the same place.
12:30
So stop trying to paint it like we don't know what we're doing,
12:34
and start acknowledging the insane headwinds that we
12:38
continue to face as a sector. And you see it all over the country.
12:43
A hundred percent.
12:44
Yeah.
12:44
And you play an important role for other arts
12:49
organizations in your market. For example,
12:52
you are essentially introducing the arts
12:56
to children and giving them that first opportunity maybe to
13:01
decide that this is something that they will participate in in life so that then
13:06
your neighbor down the street, the Dr. Phillips Center,
13:09
can benefit from their attendance as adults.
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And so this is about a lifelong journey for a large constituency of
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people.
13:17
A hundred thousand percent.
13:19
And you've talked about the role this plays on the mental health of
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children,
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which I thought was a really strong and compelling point of view as well.
13:30
Our young people are really in a crisis and
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the rates of loneliness, anxiety,
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and depression are all exploding.
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And we know from other research that the theater
13:45
creates belonging and connection.
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And so we work really hard to make sure that everybody that walks through our
13:53
doors feels like they belong there.
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We want a warm and welcoming environment so that you feel comfortable,
14:00
so that you can open up your mind and learn new things, be inspired,
14:05
learn creativity, and ultimately at the end of the day,
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build stronger connections with those around you.
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Children learning about courage and empathy is so important.
14:21
I think back on how the arts shaped me as a young person,
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and I feel like so many kids can tell the story that I'm about to tell,
14:29
which is I was lucky enough to have a really amazing band director.
14:34
I had this band director from sixth grade until I graduated from high school,
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and he was an incredibly compelling man, and I was a band geek,
14:42
so that was my particular way into the arts initially.
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And the thing that's so interesting to me now, as a 50-something-year-old man,
14:50
to look back on is:
14:53
I actually learned the fundamentals of leadership that I employ
14:57
today from him then through art.
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And I just know so many people who can tell stories like that.
15:07
Someone just told me a story the other day that they really learned to be a
15:10
resilient person through learning how to be in their high school theater
15:15
program. It's just like these are amazing opportunities for children.
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But think about what that process is to create a
15:25
show. You have to collaborate together.
15:28
You have to communicate to designers and creatives and technicians and people
15:33
building it.
15:34
And all of this stuff has to come together and then work at the
15:39
same time.
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Listen, stage managers could run the world.
15:42
They could run the world.
15:44
They could run the world. Shout out to all the SMs out there.
15:47
It's real. It's real.
15:48
It really is. It really is. If I may,
15:53
I'd love to see if I can get you to sort of represent
15:58
the feelings and interests of the larger community in
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Florida.
16:05
I'm sure people were affected by this funding cut in a lot of
16:09
different ways. I'm just sort of curious,
16:13
how is the community across the state generally feeling on the other
16:18
side of a harsh decision like this,
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and what is the community doing to try to overcome it?
16:27
I think the community as a whole is just disappointed.
16:33
The smaller groups around town
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might fall closer to just devastated,
16:43
I think. Man, we're just tired.
16:46
We're just exhausted.
16:49
It's very jarring to see every other week
16:54
an article in the Times or in the Wall Street Journal or something where a
16:58
theater's closing or a theater's pushing out
17:02
a fundraising campaign to save us because we have a million dollar deficit and
17:07
all of this. And man,
17:10
that is so frustrating because at the end
17:15
of the day,
17:17
I just think it's a misunderstanding of how important
17:22
the work is.
17:24
We scratch and claw for every single
17:28
dollar that we have to beg for,
17:31
and that's disappointing.
17:35
Listen,
17:35
I am coming to you from a very blue bubble kind of state that would
17:40
never make this kind of choice.
17:42
And that to me actually is why it was important to do this episode,
17:46
because not everyone is operating an arts organization in a climate
17:51
that is a little bit more friendly to us. But I'm curious,
17:55
because this happened, how the media coverage has been.
18:00
Do you feel like they gave you attention? Was it fair? And by you,
18:03
I mean all of you. Was it fair and ultimately,
18:07
did you feel like the public understood the impact that this would
18:12
have on everyone?
18:15
That's so interesting because on one hand,
18:19
absolutely.
18:21
I think after I wrote that op-ed,
18:25
I think four out of the six news stations in town were in
18:30
my office and wanting to do interviews and talking about it.
18:33
But there's kind of a second layer where I want to
18:38
say it's not great response.
18:41
I'm certainly not inundated with checks from people that care and want to
18:46
help us.
18:50
It's almost like it's just this story
18:55
that fits the narrative that we all know:
18:58
the struggling arts organization, it needs more money.
19:05
It's helping that narrative.
19:07
And it's one of the drivers of my article, right,
19:11
to say, hold on, this is not a fricking narrative.
19:15
Pay attention and look at the things that we're having to deal with.
19:21
Do we need to lose all these arts institutions before we pay attention?
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Or are we going to acknowledge that these places are amazing and
19:31
doing a beautiful thing in our world and we should be making sure
19:36
they're thriving, not surviving?
19:40
The state's surplus this year is like
19:44
a $17 billion surplus or something.
19:48
There was no reason to cut
19:52
$30 million out because in the state's budget,
19:56
that is scraps.
19:58
We're not talking about the arts organizations all rolling in
20:03
gold. Nobody-that doesn't exist.
20:08
I'm tired of the scraps. That's so insulting.
20:12
I don't want to work hard for the scraps.
20:17
I want to flip the table over and
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get people to see it a different way.
20:23
Yes!
20:24
It's important.
20:24
Yeah.
20:25
That point in your letter where you talk about that $17 billion-billion with a
20:30
B-billion dollar surplus in the context of this cut is
20:35
particularly difficult to traverse.
20:38
So our arts organizations across the country,
20:42
I think that we largely are some the
20:47
loudest voices in promoting diversity and inclusion,
20:51
certainly amongst children.
20:53
And I think to then suffer a cut like this
20:58
across so many organizations in Florida specifically
21:03
is particularly alarming for me because you're the organizations that are
21:07
largely doing the Lord's work to support all of these
21:11
underrepresented artists and communities and children.
21:15
Well, so get this one.
21:18
So this morning I got an email from a
21:23
school. We've done a bunch of Junie B.
21:27
Jones plays at Orlando Family Stage. Junie B.
21:30
Jones is a huge children's book character.
21:33
There's probably 30 books of Junie B. Jones.
21:37
And we got a message this morning that says,
21:42
I was writing to let you know that our school will not be able to attend the
21:45
showing of Junie B. Jones on October 31st.
21:48
One of the books in the series is on the banned list,
21:51
and our admin has not okayed us to go. We're sorry to miss it.
21:56
So...
21:57
that shit's real. And I have
22:02
a letter, a handwritten letter,
22:04
that's framed over here on my desk that is from
22:09
apparently a donor.
22:12
I cannot confirm that this is a donor because it's anonymous,
22:17
but they were furious that we put a Black Lives Matter
22:21
banner up on our building outside,
22:24
and they wrote me hate mail and said,
22:27
we will never support your theater again. We will not send you any money.
22:32
Like, shame on you.
22:34
That's absurd that we live in a world like that.
22:38
And I see every day the kids showing up on
22:43
buses, the parents whose kids are impacted...
22:47
I know we do a good thing.
22:48
And we want to use our means,
22:52
whatever that might be, to try and make this better.
22:57
That is scary. I was actually not at all prepared to hear a story like that,
23:01
but I am so glad that you said it because I think
23:07
it is important for all of us to know that there are organizations like yours
23:11
with arts admins inside of it who have to do the work that we all
23:16
do in environments like that, and to fight against that,
23:20
to create the space that everyone needs. Yeah,
23:25
that's hard to hear, Chris. Your passion for what you do is quite contagious.
23:31
Thank you.
23:32
And you're quite inspiring doing this in the environment that you're doing it
23:37
in. So I'll just say that very plainly.
23:40
If people are listening to this and they also feel inspired and they want to do
23:44
something to support you guys, where should we send them?
23:48
Oh, I mean,
23:50
I am so humbled by generosity in people.
23:54
I'm so grateful for anyone who wants to contribute
23:59
time, energy, talent. And so the easiest way, if you're local?
24:04
Come see a show. Come see one of our great shows.
24:07
We have an amazing season this year. And then if you're not local,
24:11
check us out online. Subscribe to our social media accounts,
24:17
get involved in that way and help spread our good message,
24:22
right? We're trying to make the world a better place. Check out our website,
24:27
find different things.
24:30
There's tons of different options for contributing financially,
24:34
philanthropically. You can do sponsorships,
24:37
you can bring field trips to a show. You can give and support in that way.
24:43
Absolutely every bit of it helps move the needle. It really does.
24:47
Whether it's $2 or $200, it all goes to a great place.
24:52
There was something in there that everyone could afford to do,
24:54
so that was a great answer. Okay,
24:57
we have reached the end of our time together.
24:59
It means we've also reached your CI to Eye moment, as we like to call it.
25:04
So my final question for you, Chris,
25:05
is if you could broadcast one message to executive directors,
25:10
leadership teams, staff, and boards of a thousand arts organizations,
25:15
what would it be?
25:19
Keep going.
25:22
Find peers to connect with because those connections
25:27
can give you perspective.
25:30
And don't back down. Let's fix this.
25:34
This is not a problem with Central Florida.
25:37
It's exacerbated in Central Florida,
25:40
but it is around the nation,
25:43
and I don't like seeing theaters close all over
25:48
the place. We need to really understand the value
25:54
and what these skills and these experiences can
25:58
truly do for our future.
26:02
More empathy is needed in the world. We teach kids... So the mission is:
26:07
we empower kids to be brave and empathetic.
26:11
We need empathy in the world right now. We need to be caring for our neighbor,
26:15
and we need to be brave enough and confident enough to speak up when we know we
26:19
need to. So keep chugging out there, executives.
26:25
I'm with you and I'm rooting for you.
26:26
And if you need to get away from your snow, just come on down to Orlando.
26:33
Well said. So Chris Brown, executive director of Orlando at Family Stage,
26:38
I thank you for your time.
26:39
Thank you so much, Christopher! It was a pleasure.
26:49
Hi everyone. Dan here. So before you skip to the next podcast in your queue,
26:53
stick with us for a quick round of CI-lebrity Sightings.
26:56
Here are some news stories about arts and culture that we found inspiring
27:00
recently.
27:01
Opera Philadelphia made a splash by announcing a pay-what-you-can model for
27:05
their 2024-2025 season-the first of its kind by a major opera company.
27:10
You can read all about their efforts to attract new audiences in the New York
27:14
Times article, "A Bargain At The Opera:
27:16
Philadelphia Offers All Seats For As Low As $11." And the
27:21
Apollo announced their first ever full-scale renovation,
27:24
which includes an expanded lobby, new seating, upgraded backstage areas,
27:28
and more.
27:29
You can geek out over the details and renderings in The Architect's Newspaper.
27:33
Snaps to these two organizations for continuing to innovate and serve more
27:37
community members than ever before. Got a story that deserves a shout out?
27:41
Tag us on social and let us know.
27:53
Thank you for listening to CI to Eye.
27:55
This episode was edited and produced by Karen McConarty and co-written by Karen
28:00
McConarty and myself, Dan Titmuss.
28:02
Stephanie Medina and Jess Berube are CI to Eye's designers and video editors,
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and all work together to create CI's digital content.
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Our music is by whoisuzo. If you enjoyed today's episode,
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please take a moment to rate us or leave a review.
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Until next time, stay nerdy.