Starting with Why

Dear Friends,

While I look to January as the start of a new year and a time for intention-setting, I am reminded that the start of the year is also a great chance to tell again the stories of why we choose the work we do.

Recently, over coffee with Ken May, the former Executive Director of the SC Arts Commission, I had the opportunity to say it plain: My personal mission, at its core across projects, is first in service to the preservation and sustainability of Black arts and culture, both artists and orgs. I gestured with my hands a core, as though cradling my mission like a cup. Pulling my hands wider apart I said, then: small arts organizations of color. Pulling my hands wider still, I concluded, and finally: small arts & culture at large.

I had embodied the idea of the Golden Circle, Simon Sinek’s framework for his approach to leadership. Here’s an image: 

The WHY: our raison d’etre

The HOW: value proposition; differentiation of services from others

The WHAT: products/larger industry

Many leaders often start outside with WHAT, the visible aspects of running a business or an organization, then go in towards the core, the gravitational pull of the center.

Simon argues/advocates that we go from center out. Start with why. Then, he says, “The WHY [can be] offered as the reason to [invest/get involved] and the WHAT serves as the tangible proof of that belief.”

When I think about the initiatives I’ve launched, they are largely vehicles to move resources (human, financial, intellectual, volunteer) to Black arts organizations and their artists. This year, I’m exploring what other resources—

Land & Housing?             Employment?             Technology?

can I move towards the WHY of it all?

Just last month we went to bed on 2019 hopeful for what a new year would bring us and woke up on the precipice of another unending conflict in the Middle East, a tough and long election year, and fires burning in the distance, creating an impact that will reverberate for generations.

I don’t have an answer for any of that, except an even larger internal imperative to urge us all to continue to hold and believe that art (and here I am specifically arguing for Black art) remain a part of the future we all fight for.

What would it mean to journey through all of this and leave the beauty—the stories and storytellers—behind us?

In solidarity,


2019: Deep Listening, Intentional Building

Dear Friends,

In June, I decided to take my own advice. For years, I’d hear Red Olive Clients and Black Art Futures Fund (BAFF) grantees speak about capacity and their organizational limitations. I’d say something to the effect of, “You don’t have to do it alone,” and we’d explore ways to invite support to help them achieve their mission-based programs and fundraising goals.

But what would that look like in my own everyday practice?

I tested what it would mean to invest in team DéLana R.A. Dameron (Red Olive & BAFF) in order to grow & work with more organizations who need support most.

Here was my hypothesis: adding team members could change the way I (now we) work for the better. It turns out—the changes would be exponential.

Part of my work as a consultant, and even with BAFF grantee learning calls, is deep listening for the “real problem.” Often there is a stated need (“we need to raise more money!”) but, with a little digging, we uncover the deeper need (“we need more people who think like fundraisers on our team”). For myself, that inquiry was similar: I needed to streamline the processes for BAFF in order to raise more funds to grant to small Black arts organizations, and I needed to figure out a way that I could better address or support the real needs of my clients. That meant that I needed more folks who thought like fundraisers and exceptional arts administrators on my team. This year we welcomed seven Advisory Board members to the Black Art Futures Fund team, and already their contribution and energy has allowed us to skyrocket more than halfway towards our ambitious $50,000 Cycle III goal.

As someone whose work experience started in the educational space, I lean towards mentorship. I brought on several team members for project-based and long-term support. In total, six women worked with me to support small arts in the second half of 2019! What was most exciting is that half of them had not thought about arts administration or fundraising as a work thing they could do, let alone something that, if done with the organizations we so love, could be work that could bring them so much joy.

Being a team that is distributed across projects (Red Olive & BAFF) and states (New York City, South Carolina, Virginia) meant thinking differently about work. It also meant thinking differently about the ways we can support our organizations.

We listened more deeply and heard the “capacity” need rise up, and began to test the idea of what it might mean to lend capacity to an arts organization in the areas of fundraising and development, especially when an organization is going through a deep transition. We began working with two clients as their Interim Development Agency, managing their grant proposal and reporting portfolio, executing cultivation events, and supporting their end of year fundraising efforts.

I continue to look for more ways to leverage our growing knowledge base for arts administration, especially in developing and employing arts fundraisers of color in 2020 and beyond. Thanks for journeying with us, and I hope we can continue to build together for the artistic future we all need, especially now.

In solidarity,


Small Ship, Big Sails: Asset-based Storytelling

Dear Friends,

We’re here. The end of 2019 is upon us. While we at Red Olive are working with almost 15 groups across the country to tell their organization’s story in order to garner financial support for the arts & culture we so love, I want to take this moment to hold space for the administrators who make it all possible. Make the work seen. 

Because Red Olive’s mission is to be a critical fundraising expert firm to small arts & culture organizations, it never ceases to fascinate me the lengths to which the administrators—interim & permanent executive directors, the editors-in-chief, the all-volunteer staff with no official title or compensations, the board members who step in during times of critical transition, etc—put the needs of artists before their own. 

But shouldn’t art be the focus & get the bulk of the resources? Yes, and—. I think this question & positioning is a by-product of a dated philanthropic investment philosophy whose mathematical evaluation for a “successful” (read: “worth funding”) organization was one that did not spend more than 20% on administrative or “overhead” costs. So we’re trained into this mode of thinking that one must deny the self (or the armature on which good art is made!) in order that the art shines through. Imagine that. 

Last week I had the chance to view the HBO documentary The Apollo at a friend’s house. Present in the screening room were three generations of diverse folk. & maybe all of us were arts administrators in our own way: theater, visual arts, literature, communications specialists and editors, executive directors, producers, & then me. We bopped to the archival music. We cried. We smiled. We shared in critical community & space-holding after, well into the night. 

Of the Apollo Theater’s importance, Patti LaBelle said, it was a place that made artists feel like they were worth it, “not because we weren’t worth it, but because we weren’t allowed to be worth it [before the Apollo].” (emphasis mine) That stayed with me. From multiple entry points, it’s how I come to the work of Red Olive, of Black Art Futures Fund.

Also last week, with that statement echoing in my ear, I asked an unpaid arts administrator in our 1:1 coaching call what it would look like if they had adjusted the budget to include both the stated raises for artistic contributors, and maybe a stipend, at least, for the other folks like herself who make all of this possible: the creation of a space that made writers feel like they were allowed to be worth it. The call went silent for some time as she sat with it. While it was considered what it meant—to be allowed to feel like the unseen efforts of the administrators are worth investment, a budget line, a fundraising effort. 

One of the other pieces from The Apollo that stuck with us—all 3 generations—was that we had no idea that there was a time for which The Apollo went dark. Closed its doors. After a few false starts and short ownership, it went from a for-profit entertainment venue, to the space that is closer to being what we know today. But the message: our spaces we love and need so much could close. & what would it look like if we took care of them? 

What a world we could live in then! If the orgs we love remain sufficiently resourced, then the art we so care about can, too, be sufficiently resourced & nurtured & brought forth for generations to come. 

Our artistic futures are worth that investment & dreaming. 

In solidarity,


When Going Gets Tough: Managing Barriers to Local Arts Patronage

I’ve been thinking about DéLana’s most recent monthly letter, in which she describes using a local arts calendar to find distraction and comfort in the weeks following her father’s death.  

Last month, I missed an event I had been looking forward to, a local Black history and culture festival at which I had been planning to take some photos and pull some highlights for the Red Olive blog.

The morning of the festival, my mother had a seizure and in a blink the weekend became consumed by intervals of rush, worry, and wait: a trip in an ambulance, a series of tests, a period of observation, plastic chairs in ER hallways, running errands and making the bed for her return home.  With a new medicine for her daily routine, a check-up scheduled, and the reassurance that, no, this didn’t appear to be the worsening of any of her chronic conditions, we entered the next week frazzled but truly grateful for good news. 

For the next few weeks, I focused on work, family, and the occasional escape through television. I didn’t attend any readings, visit any exhibits, or see any shows. When stressed, I often find myself driven by the mantra “maybe when things calm down.” I find myself passing on activities that might help me decompress or re-center, telling myself there just isn’t time. Studies show that I am not alone: a lack of time is the number one reason reported for not visiting historical, cultural, and artistic spaces. 

Studies show that I am not alone: a lack of time is the number one reason reported

for not visiting historical, cultural, and artistic spaces. 

However, research also shows that skipping out on arts and culture events is detrimental to our physical and emotional health as individuals and communities. Visiting cultural spaces increases dopamine, improves our capacity for memory and empathy, and correlates with greater life satisfaction and lower rates of anxiety and depression. Public art spaces also have broader social impact benefits, ranging from interrupting the school to prison pipeline to building local economies. 

Inspired by DéLana’s letter and keeping these research-backed benefits in mind, I’m thinking this month about how to view my time-strapped schedule and sources of stress as a driver for my arts attendance, rather than solely a barrier. I’d like to invite you to do the same.

For me, this means asking myself questions including: In what ways can I honor my need for self-care with new habits that incorporate public arts patronage into relaxation or escape? How can arts spaces be incorporated, along with doctors’ offices, into managing my mother’s chronic illnesses? How can I increase my exposure to local arts events—what papers should I read, what accounts should I follow—so that cool events fall into my awareness with the ease that Netflix appears on my screen? 

The questions you ask yourself may be wildly different from mine. They may be questions that you, like me, don’t have immediate or static answers to. Continually returning to these questions, though, is a commitment to feel good about. Carving a little more space in our lives for local arts opportunities, including and especially in times of stress, means opening ourselves up to their many benefits in the moments we may need them most.

*This blog borrows its title from the 2015 NEA study from which some of its data is drawn. 

Source: National Endowment for the Arts

Finding Solice in Local

Dear Friends, 

Last September, when my father died, I had been in South Carolina for two months and stayed for a third month to be with my mother and continue to tend to his affairs. He had died two weeks before my 5th wedding anniversary, and by the time we got around to that my husband and I were too exhausted and paralyzed by decision fatigue to know how to mark the occasion. 

Once a ritual when I lived in Columbia, I grabbed a Free Times circular—Columbia, SC’s local newspaper of arts + culture happenings—and almost instantly we had an itinerary: Rosewood Arts + Music Festival, Palmetto Peanut Boil, Soda City Market, and, later that night, the season opener of the SC Philharmonic, a presentation of Dazzling Debussy, which as a flautist I especially enjoyed. 

From my 11 years in NYC, I admit, it was the first time that I had seen my city differently, taken seriously the potential of my hometown local arts scene, its possibilities. I still sometimes marvel about the ease with which I cracked open a briny, earthy peanut shell to reveal to my husband its rich delicacy, and then hummed along to Debussy’s masterworks in the acoustic halls of the Koger Center. 

When I returned to South Carolina this past September (as I do now, monthly) to mark the occasion of a year without my father, I turned again to the Free Times for solace, maybe distraction, community. I discovered this time a whole new world: The Color of Music festival, a Black classical music festival at Allen University, a historically Black university in town. In addition to hearing the ‘traditional’ Western operatic standards, we were invited to tune in a little deeper to Black traditions in the operatic mode, our heads nodding in unison as the soloist, Laquita Mitchell, tapped her feet and lifted her eyes to the heavens for the Negro Spirituals that closed out the one-hour set, testifying: “My soul is anchored in the Lord!” 

This year, again on our anniversary but back in NYC, the artist Chloe Bass celebrated her first solo exhibition, “Wayfinding” with the Studio Museum’s inHarlem series. We ventured to St. Nicholas Park, my old stomping grounds where I loved, and lived, and lost and found myself years ago.

What is all this other than an account of my arts + culture calendar in NYC and SC? I keep thinking of one of Chloe’s statements from the exhibition: 

The part of you that says, “I can share myself with another.”

-Chloe Bass

And I think this might be a long way to describe the weaving in and out of our lives, the work of culture. How, even in sorrow, it can offer solace, comfort. As we begin to turn more inward for the coming seasons, as the days get shorter (and, if you’re like me you might want to stay inside more) let’s find bright moments for art⁠—and here I argue of course and always for Black art⁠—to warm us through the cold, sometimes heartsick, nights. 

In solidarity,  

A New Model for Supporting Black, Artist-Led Organizations

In late-August, Red Olive began a pilot program with the South Carolina Arts Commission and three South Carolina-based Black art organizations: Gullah Traveling Theater, Speaking Down Barriers, and The Watering Hole. In addition to receiving a one-time general operating support grant, these Black artist-led arts organizations will work with Red Olive to develop fundraising best-practices and to increase their organizational capacity and stability. We’re thrilled about this innovative partnership and the opportunity to test ways to better support small, Black artist-led organizations in the compounding challenges they face.

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Support the Generational Power of Black Cultural Spaces

DEAR FRIENDS,

I finally made it to witness the Toni Morrison documentary The Pieces I Am this month while visiting Pittsburgh, PA. By the time I saw it, she was gone from us, so seeing her living & breathing on screen was bittersweet.

As I left the screening, I couldn’t help but think about one of the emergent stories in the film, that of the public library and its role in gifting to the world the Toni Morrison we so loved. Truly, the power of the cultural & artistic space of public libraries & of course the books that filled them created a space where words gave her purpose and journey.

After growing up visiting & working in the library, Ms. Morrison used her position as an editor to begin to pepper the “mainstream” archive with the voices and lives of our heroes of the Civil Rights & Black Arts Movements. She created a library of Black voices that was to be everlasting. She gave us Muhammad Ali & Angela Davis biographies. She gave us Lucille Clifton. Collections of work by Huey P. Newton & James Baldwin. She was a friend of our minds.

This is the generational work of small arts & cultural spaces I talk about when I argue for our deep & personal investment in small & Black arts organizations. This is the work I’m heralding when I ask for collective contributions to vehicles like the Black Art Futures Fund. 

Since May 2018, individual supporters of BAFF have read 89 applications from small and community-based Black arts organizations from 21 states across the US. Over two cycles, 20 volunteers have helped us get to 9 grantees and a total of $36,000 in grants.

All over the country there have been movements of everyday folks imagining a different future for Black arts & artistry & truly learning the value & impact of collective action by starting their own individual funds. We’ve seen regional models like ours from Baltimore to St. Louis to Chicago.  

Black Art Futures invites you to join us in shaping the Blackest artistic future possible with a gift to the Fund. Every dollar builds the grants.

With gratitude,

Shape the future of Black art with a gift to the Black Art Futures Fund. Since 2017, we have granted $36,000 to small Black arts organizations across the country. Help us give more.

DONATE

The Myth of the Artsy Side Of Town

My current home-place, Columbia, South Carolina, like many other cities, has a downtown where many of its arts institutions are concentrated. Off-hand, I can count five museums, a major university, four art studios, four theaters and three concert venues, all within a roughly 1-mile radius.

Since I moved to Columbia as a graduate student, my work and school life has been centered downtown, in the thick of Columbia’s largest arts spaces. As we look to move closer to where my boyfriend works, in northeast Columbia, I’m spending more and more time outside the city’s center—“center,” in this case, being an institutional ideology, not a geographic reality.  Downtown rests at the edge of the city, upwards of a half-hour drive from the opposite side of town, and more than an hour, if accessible at all, by bus.

Having grown up in north Austin, a city famous for music venues and festivals held in or south of downtown, I have a sense of what centralized arts districts can mean to residents of a sprawling and segregated city. The financial and temporal strain of crossing town, finding parking, paying covers, entrance fees, or memberships: all of these barriers meant I had less access to the music and arts scene that people readily laud when they find out where I’m from.

I’ve said before that I didn’t grow up on the “artsy” side of town. I would never say that now (praise growth!) because I did grow up surrounded by musicians, visual artists, dancers, writers, and other creatives. With less financial backing, less access to large, dedicated arts spaces, less media attention, and fewer archival tools, our arts scene looked different than the Austin that outsiders know best. Still, it was always present. We gathered for talent shows, church services, and house parties. We painted murals and filled notebooks. We made and celebrated art.

Last week, I happened upon Alexandra’s Café & Art, a newly opened coffee shop and art gallery about a 20-minute drive from downtown. A Columbia resident of 24 years, the artist and owner Alexandra Parks opened shop because she wanted to bring people together to enjoy art. Lined with local artists’ work—paintings, fiber arts, and jewelry—the coffee shop turns into a classroom every other Wednesday night with workshops in various artistic media.

I was happy to see this shop not because it brought art across town, but because it could become a nurturing space for the artistic work already happening there.

This is much more complicated than it sounds: investments in coffee shops and arts spaces can have a direct relationship with gentrification. This has been the case, historically, in both Columbia and Austin, where Black communities have been pushed out of neighborhoods proximal to downtown. I’m here for navigating that complexity though, envisioning and making demands of arts spaces such that they are situated in and serve historically-excluded communities without displacing them. Such that they offer opportunities to support and broadcast, not supplant or belittle, the artistic expression that predates institutionalized support or attention. 

While some neighborhoods receive more public acknowledgement and investment in their artistic identity and output, no neighborhood is devoid of artists, art-lovers, and art. It’s time we do the work to responsibly invest in decentralized arts opportunities. All communities––including the Black, POC, working class, and immigrant communities often priced out––deserve localized arts spaces in which their creatives can thrive.

Curating and Preserving Black History in Local Communities

We were thrilled when BAFF grantee and Red Olive client i, too arts collective received a grant from The National Trust for Historic Preservation’s African-American Cultural Heritage Action Fund earlier this month. Red Olive is a named consultant for this project, and we look forward to digging in and doing the work to save our Black places.

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What Freedom Looks Like: Black Artists Provide Needed Alternatives

As stars and stripes line the aisles of big box stores and buzz words like “freedom” and “independence” pepper mainstream media, we’re called to re-up on a narrative that equates early American government with ideals it stole and withheld from most of the era’s inhabitants. In the face of this dissonance, we’re spending time this month seeking out contemporary black artists that encourage us to think differently about freedom(s), its origin and location, its limitations and possibilities. By no means an exhaustive or representative list, here are three recent works by black creatives that currently have us (re)thinking…

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