Last Updated
April 2, 2020
Work. Shouldn't. Suck. LIVE: The Morning(ish) Show with special guest Jamie Bennett, executive director of ArtPlace America. [Live show recorded: March 30, 2020.]
Guest: Jamie Bennett
Co-Hosts: Tim Cynova & Lauren Ruffin
Guest
JAMIE BENNETT is the executive director of ArtPlace America, a ten-year fund that supports artists working as allies in equitable community development.
ArtPlace has invested over $100 million to support projects in rural, suburban, tribal, and urban communities of all sizes across the United States, as well as in sharing knowledge from that work in ways that are both useful and actually used by practitioners. ArtPlace convenes and connects people who are committed to this work in order to help build a strong and ongoing field of practice.
Previously, Jamie was Chief of Staff and Director of Public Affairs at the National Endowment for the Arts, where he worked on the national rollouts of the "Our Town" grant program and of partnerships with the US Departments of Agriculture, Defense, Health and Human Services, and Housing and Urban Development.
Before the NEA, Jamie was Chief of Staff at the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, where he worked on partnerships with the NYC Departments for the Aging, of Education, and of Youth and Community Development.
Jamie has also provided strategic counsel at the Agnes Gund Foundation, served as chief of staff to the President of Columbia University, and worked in fundraising at The Museum of Modern Art, the New York Philharmonic, and Columbia College.
He currently lives, works, worships, and plays in Brooklyn, NY, and has been sober since 2009.
Transcript
Tim Cynova:
Hi, I'm Tim Cynova and welcome to Work Shouldn't Suck Live, the morning-ish show. On today's episode, Lauren Ruffin and I are joined by Jamie Bennett, currently the executive director of ArtPlace America. You might also know Jamie from some of his previous roles including such hits as the Chief of Staff of the National Endowment for the Arts, the Chief of Staff of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, the Chief of Staff to the President of Columbia University and the Chief of Staff for the Agnes Gund Foundation. Without further ado, Jamie, welcome to the show.
Jamie Bennett:
Good morning, Tim. Good morning, Lauren. How are you both?
Lauren Ruffin:
Good.
Tim Cynova:
Yeah, we're doing well. So I have question for you to start out. How are you doing? Where are you? What's going on where you are?
Jamie Bennett:
Well, I'm okay actually. My partner lives in Toronto, Canada. And so about two and a half weeks ago he and I decided both that we wanted to be together for this and that it made a lot more sense to do that sort of north of the border. And so I've been up here in Toronto for about two and a half weeks, which means as of Friday I had self-quarantined for 14 days and blessedly many of the people that I'm closest with are surviving reasonably well. And so in this moment I'm just very grateful.
Tim Cynova:
So how has the team and organization doing at ArtPlace? How was it typically structured? Were people are able to work remote? Were you spread out already before this all started?
Jamie Bennett:
Yeah, so a couple of things that are worth noting sort of in this moment is that we were set up as a 10 year fund. So 2020, this year, is actually our last year for the mandate that we were given to do the work. So this has been a year of sort of culminating our work. And so it's an interesting moment for things to be sort of paused in this. We're 11 people and eight of us regularly show up to the same workplace. We're in a shared workspace, a WeWork workspace in downtown Brooklyn. And about two and a half weeks ago we went to sort of all remote. And so a little bit I've been describing it as Goldilocks and the Three Bears because each of our colleagues seems to either have too many people in their house or too few. Almost no one has just the right amount of people, but everyone is doing reasonably well.
Jamie Bennett:
And we made the decision last Tuesday to assume that we would be working remotely through Memorial Day. So asked everyone to sort of think about the headsets, additional screens, the kinds of hardware things that would make life more comfortable, assuming that everyone would be working from where they are for another eight weeks.
Lauren Ruffin:
Good deal. And so outside of your organization, what are you hearing from your grantees, your other partners? And if you're giving people sort of advice or nuggets of wisdom, not that any of us have anything especially illuminating say right now besides stay safe, what are you hearing and what are you saying to folks?
Jamie Bennett:
Yeah, so I'm trying to spend a lot more time listening than I am talking in this moment and that ArtPlace, our mission has been to sort of work around the country. And so we've worked with colleagues in Kivalina, Alaska, which is a 231 person [inaudible 00:03:20] community on sort of the Northwest coast of Alaska, all the way across to Miami and Puerto Rico and sort of all of the communities in between. And one of the things that I've been thinking a lot about, I'm in my 11th year of recovery, and I'm thinking a lot about this virus and that frame of addiction because addiction and the coronavirus both hit people indiscriminately, right? Both of them sort of touch on people regardless of our gender, race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status. But our ability to rebound, to be resilient and to resist the impacts of those vary widely by all the kinds of housing, transportation, public health concerns that we've been working on for the last nine years.
Jamie Bennett:
And so one of the things I found myself saying to sort of friends and colleagues is as urgently as we worked for the past nine years to try and make communities more equitable, more healthy, more sustainable, all of those same problems that existed a month ago now exist 10 times, a hundred times, a thousand times more so. And I'm just sort of really thinking about however urgently we were working was just not urgently enough. And so thinking that there aren't a lot of new problems in this moment other than the economy, ha, ha, big other, but that many of those same things that folks had been working on for 40, 50, 60 years are still the things we're going to need to work on in this moment and beyond.
Jamie Bennett:
And there are a couple, bright spots is an odd phrase the use in this moment, but listening to colleagues from San Francisco where there's a chance that San Francisco might end homelessness in two weeks. Right. The problem that we had thought was uncrackable, all of a sudden they've been doing sort of modular housing and things like that and things that we thought were problems without solutions, not being able to provide homes for people who need them, is something we've been solving. So yeah, I think I'm just having all the emotions, all the feels and all the thoughts like all the people.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah. So you've, and I actually didn't know this about you until I heard Tim's intro. You've had a whole bunch of chief of staff positions for really high profile leaders. What did you learn in these positions working with these individuals? Is that having an influence on how you're currently working and leading your organization and others, the field?
Jamie Bennett:
Yeah, I think so. I mean, what's been interesting is that chief of staff is one of those, not a made up title, but I think people use it very differently and mean different things when they use it. And so I've used that title to describe the work I did with Agnes Gund, who's an extraordinary individual philanthropist, when I was working for the commissioner of cultural affairs in New York City, when I was working for the chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. And what was interesting in each of those cases is that I was sort of solidly a number two. I could give advice, I could sort of say on the one hand on the other hand, but I would sort of look to the CEO, to the leader, to the principle person to sort of make the decisions.
Jamie Bennett:
And I still remember the first week, two weeks when I was on the job at ArtPlace and I had sort of moved from that number two role into sort of being an executive director. I sort of laid out all of the pros and cons and then looked around for someone to sort of make the ultimate decision and realized all of a sudden that the [crosstalk 00:06:48] and I mean I had extraordinary colleagues at that point. Our colleague, Liz Crane, and I were sort of the two full time ArtPlace employees and we built out the team and do that. But that notion of sort of the first time you realize that you're where the buck is going to stop is a moment of sort of the record player scratching and sort of saying, "Uh-oh."
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah, that's, I just, that would be so terrifying for me. Especially after with Fractured Atlas this year, leadership team, I've had the realization I don't want to run anything alone ever again.
Jamie Bennett:
Well you all have, what? You have four CEOs, right?
Tim Cynova:
Yeah. Four of us.
Jamie Bennett:
I can't sort of sort out if that would be more comforting or less comforting.
Lauren Ruffin:
Oh, it's so comforting.
Jamie Bennett:
More comforting. Yeah, totally.
Tim Cynova:
That's awesome.
Lauren Ruffin:
100%.
Tim Cynova:
Having been in that role of single CEO, the four is far more comforting and challenging, but also, especially at times like these. Being on calls with our colleagues at other organizations who, are at the best of times in leadership roles, often isolated and then staff members, those they serve are looking to them for answers and we're human beings and it's like I've never been in a global pandemic before. And with things changing constantly and to have three other people in the organization that you can go to, is really comforting.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah. And they've managed to do what everyone thought was impossible, which was teach me to collaborate off of a basketball court. So the world thanks my colleagues at Fractured Atlas. So how are you approaching sort of self-care resilience right now, Jamie?
Jamie Bennett:
Yeah, so it's, what's been helpful is there are enough people in sort of my close circle, both professionally and personally, that some of us, about a third of us, are doing okay in any moment. About a third of us are so-so in any moment. About a third of us are really down in any moment. And so having that sort of circle of folks that are in different places on sort of the emotional roller coaster has been really helpful.
Jamie Bennett:
At work, we instituted a daily sort of 10:00 a.m. Zoom call that we're calling the virtual water cooler. And the idea was, particularly for those of us who sort of feel like we have too few people in our homes, this is a chance to just sort of get together and kibitz and gossip with colleagues and we try and not do any work during that sort of 30 minutes from 10 to 10:30 but just sort of share goofy videos or talk about the disaster that we tried to make in the kitchen or do things like that. And I think that's been really helpful to just sort of have a moment of that sort of virtual water cooler of coming together. And otherwise I'm of that school of thought where I sort of wake up in the morning, try and go out for a run, put on grownup clothes for the day and then at six o'clock try and shut down my work computer and sort of go all in on Netflix. Although we've not gotten to the Tiger King yet, so I don't want to... no spoilers.
Lauren Ruffin:
Congratulations on putting on actual clothes. I've started referring to jeans as hard pants and [crosstalk 00:09:55] never again. I tried to put on a pair of jeans, never again.
Jamie Bennett:
Well as someone said, nevermind the freshman 15 from college, this is going to be the COVID-19 that we're all going to put on. And in this moment, sweat pants are not your friends because they sort of make you believe that everything's okay. Then you put on those jeans.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah, yeah. Someone on Twitter was talking about do you have to audition for My 600 Pound Life? Or do they just sort of put you on? We're all wondering what happens after this is done.
Jamie Bennett:
I think they'll just work through the phone book.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah.
Tim Cynova:
Yeah. Well it's, Lauren, speaking about what happens after this. So Lauren is both podcasting and live streaming's favorite cohost, but also has her own live stream. And yesterday was speaking with Thomas Cumberbatch, the CEO of Godspeed Communications. And during their conversation, one of the things that really resonated for me that I had not thought about yet, and in sort of a deep way, was what happens when all of this is over? We work in the cultural sector that's built on bringing people together and trying to figure out how we do that when we can't physically be together. But what happens when we can go outside and gather again in public spaces and go to performances and whatnot? I'm curious to get your thoughts on this one, Jamie.
Jamie Bennett:
Well, one of the things that I've spent a lot of time sort of worrying about is I think one of the challenges in getting large groups of people to sort of do the things that we need to do collectively in this moment is that this virus is invisible. You can't sort of see it, you don't know that it's there. You can only sort of see the effects of it. So one of the things that I've been thinking a lot about is I haven't seen a lot of folks sort of offer up clear frameworks of when it's going to be okay to get back to normal life. So I sort of worry that even once we sort of turn things back on and government officials say, "Yeah, yeah, go out and go to the coffee shops." In many ways that's going to look and feel like it did sort of during the pandemic. And so I don't know that folks will trust that.
Jamie Bennett:
So I wonder about a sort of, is there a way to sort of do a slower ramp up and sort of, this wouldn't literally make sense, but sort of think about the idea of opening up the 99 seat black box theaters first, then going to the 499s, then going to the 1200s and sort of working up. And I also think it's been really interesting to see some of the ways that artists have been using Instagram and other online platforms to be able to connect with audiences, not just in live venues. So yeah, I don't know. Four years ago I sort of gave up making predictions about the future, so I don't know that I'm going to make up, I'm going to give one now, but I think there's a very good chance that 2021 is not going to look like 2019.
Lauren Ruffin:
Oh yeah.
Tim Cynova:
Yeah. So we have some of our good friends who are having a good time on the chat with, mainly with each other. They're just mainly saying hi and shouting out. Some have submitted questions. From the amazing Diane Ragsdale has a question for Jamie. Has this pandemic made you think differently about "place" vis a vis creative placemaking? Thanks, Diane for the question.
Jamie Bennett:
Thanks, Diane. And good morning, I hope you are well in New Jersey or wherever you are today. And it's interesting, our colleague, Sarah Calderon, who's our managing director is on the board of a group called DreamYard in the Bronx, which is a place-based education and sort of youth development organization and they've been having daily calls with their board. And one of the things that Sarah said is that frame of place has become much more legible and much more urgent to all of the board members as folks understand what it means to be a group of people who are related by geography. All of us live in many different kinds of communities, communities of identity, communities of affiliation, communities of aspiration. All of us also live in communities where we shared geography with folks.
Jamie Bennett:
So one of the things that DreamYard did in pivoting its work was reinvent itself in this moment as a food distribution hub. So how are we making sure that the young people and their families are still getting at least the nourishment they need? In addition to the online work that they're doing and resources that they're offering. So that notion of place, that those of us who are in a place together are really dependent on the same systems for food delivery, for transportation, for health access, I think has become really, really urgent.
Tim Cynova:
Our friend, Andrew Taylor, great headshot, Andrew, asks us also, thanks for the shout out about my tech set up. You can have whatever you want. I've got way more [inaudible 00:14:46] kits now that I have to stay in my apartment rather than the Fractured Atlas office. But Andrew Taylor is asking us, how is ArtPlace adapting its grants/support requirements in this moment? Are you relaxing constraints, adding more money? Both? Morning, Andrew.
Jamie Bennett:
Good morning, Andrew. And if you're in DC or the DMV area, I hope you and your household are well. So one of the things that makes it a little bit odd to be at ArtPlace in this moment is that we're in the 10th year of 10 years of existence. And so we essentially committed all of our budget last year and the year before, and we're essentially going through paying those things out now. So anywhere that we can relax restrictions, requirements, we are. Certainly with contractors that we work with, we're giving folks the option of front loading payments and so we're happy to prepay for work if it helps with cash flow. But essentially our money is almost entirely already out in the field. There are a couple exceptions that we're working on and trying to work even more quickly.
Jamie Bennett:
But one of the things that I thought was really interesting is, I don't know if folks are tracking the Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation, which works across the Southern United States, but they've already made a commitment to, I believe, double their payout. They're paying out all grants, they're automatically extending all grantees by a year. They're reducing sort of the oversight requirements for site visits and for reporting and are really moving money out in a really exciting way. So if folks are looking for sort of A plus models in philanthropy, I point folks to the Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation.
Tim Cynova:
We've got a question from Jason. What can the arts do to build social cohesion while we are all at home? What lessons from ArtPlace do you have to share? Hi, Jason.
Jamie Bennett:
I was going to say, really good morning since it's whatever, 8:20 out in Phoenix. So one of the things I'll shout out is our colleague at ArtPlace, Jamie Hand, who leads our research strategies, one of the things that she's been doing is working really closely with the University of Florida's Center for Arts and Medicine, which is led by the extraordinary Jill Sonke. And this is one of the things that they are talking about very much and are sharing resources. And I think there are a couple of briefs that are going to go out today.
Jamie Bennett:
There's one around the way that artists can help with communications in this moment. How do we actually make things that are invisible feel real and tangible to folks? How do we sort of help achieve the empathy that allows us to sort of have the collective responsibility to each other, et cetera? And the other set of resources are exactly Jason's question, the difference between physical distancing and social distancing. And so this is a moment where many of us, most of us need to be physically distant. I've been working really hard to learn to say two meters apart now that I'm up in Canada rather than six feet. I feel that I'm officially bilingual now, but that notion that art is what connects us and allows us to still have community I think is really important.
Jamie Bennett:
And it makes me nervous that Andrew Taylor is listening in because I think I'm going to misquote his work, but I think he's been doing some work with Ken Wilber's integral theory, and I'm going to get some of this wrong. But sort of thinking about the external and the internal, the individual and the collective. And so the individual external is psychology. The collective external is management. The internal individual is spirituality. And the internal collective is culture. So culture is what we have in common. And so thinking about the DNI's dance party or thinking about Chrissy Tiegen and John Legend in their bathrooms from their grand piano or thinking about the way that the Billie Holiday theater in central Brooklyn is livestreaming some of its work to remind us of the stories of the tales of the culture that we have in common, to remind us that even when we're six feet apart, we're still connected as a community I think is vitally important.
Jamie Bennett:
So if folks want to know more, Jason and others, either go to the ArtPlace website, artplaceamerica.org and look for the University of Florida Center for Arts and Medicine work or go directly to there's. But they have a longer website that I don't have memorized. So I'm not trying to steal their clicks. I just honestly can't remember.
Lauren Ruffin:
Jamie, why didn't you memorize that website? Oh my goodness.
Jamie Bennett:
That's right.
Tim Cynova:
Andrew has weighed in that you indeed nailed it and that he will be moving on to something else now. If anyone does want to hear more about Andrew talk about that, he was on one of our podcast episodes a while back where we talked about the workplace and now this was recorded before everyone increasingly went virtual and remote. But his thoughts on what makes a workplace and what are those millions of things that we don't even give any thought to when we're in a physical space together and now how does that work when we're not? Yeah. Let's see what else we have here.
Lauren Ruffin:
I think it was, I can't scroll up on our chat but someone asked, Jamie, how are you bringing art into your life right now? And I'm really curious about that.
Jamie Bennett:
Yeah, so I think like a lot of folks it's largely music and sort of video performance. So we've got a lot of music at home. And both of us, my partner and I love all kinds of music, so have been listening to old stuff, new stuff, all kinds of stuff. Friends doing private performances. And then an awful lot of Netflix, Amazon Prime and all of that. And so I am non generative. I am not myself an artist. I don't have an artistic practice. I sometimes, well I sometimes sort of misquote the wonderful principle from the musical Grease when she says, "Even if you can't be an athlete, you can be an athletic supporter."
Jamie Bennett:
So I am not an artist, I am an artistic supporter. So sort of Jamie Bennett [inaudible 00:20:44] audience member is how I identify myself. So I'm assuming art is how I'd been nurturing myself, not making it.
Tim Cynova:
Awesome.
Lauren Ruffin:
It's totally great. So while we're sort of shifting gears on, and I want to make sure that we ask this question of our guests, because it's going to bring up so many different answers. What are you finding really useful in your remote setup and routine? Is it working for you and how are you working remote right now?
Jamie Bennett:
Yeah, so at the moment I'm on a laptop and an iPhone. And so I know that a lot of folks are sort of talking about constantly being on small screens as being really difficult. What I'll maybe reframe in my life as a blessing is that I've worn bifocals since of fourth grade, so I'm quite good at working closely and on small screens.
Jamie Bennett:
So at the moment that's been satisfactory. So sort of email and phone. We use Slack as an organization and we've created a sort of slightly and sometimes goofy, sometimes serious Slack channel just for sort of this pandemic moment. So folks are sharing serious things like the World Health Organization's call for creatives in this moment and what they are asking for from the creative community to the amazing, I don't know if you saw on Trevor Noah reposted a woman and a staircase. And so if you haven't seen it, I don't want to say anything else, but go to Trevor Noah's Instagram page and look for the woman and the staircase and it will be the best 10 seconds of your entire life. So yeah, so so far that's been it. And it'll be interesting to see at the end of eight or 10 weeks if that's doable in terms of sort of work.
Tim Cynova:
A couple more questions here. As we start to bring this in for a landing, what would you say are the next two things arts organizations should think about doing right now? And what should they seed right now for the future?
Jamie Bennett:
Yeah, this is an amazing question. I know that Michael Kaiser and Brett Egan at the DeVos Institute have announced a whole bunch of free consulting services and other folks are sort of stepping up. My quick summary of what I've read and sort of been hearing is that for many arts organizations I've been talking with, their number one concern is payroll. How are they going to make sure that they can keep their commitment to the community of artists and administrators who's made their work possible? Their second concern is sort of rent. Does it mean that we're going to get evicted in this moment? And then their third priority, which are all sort of closely clustered together, is mission. How do we keep sort of sharing the stories? How do we keep making connections? How do we do that?
Jamie Bennett:
And I think one of the things that's going to be really hard in the coming months is there's going to be a lot of attention on the next two to three months in terms of recovery, but it's that six to 24 month period that I'm really worried about. And that entities that have a lot of their wealth in the stock market may not have wealth anymore. So foundations, endowments are going to shrink and because foundations have historically used three year averaging, I think their payouts are going to be a lot less and high net worth individuals are going to have a lot less money because they've been in the stock market.
Jamie Bennett:
So folks who have more of our holdings in cash, who have our sort of bank accounts are going to be the ones that are actually going to have more expendable income. So I think focusing on that lower price point activity, how do we get more folks in for $5 activities, not how do we get more $5 million naming gifts is what I think is going to be hugely important in terms of rebuilding the arts business models, but also in terms of rebuilding our communities and coming back together and remembering how to be physically proximate.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah, Jamie, that's a really interesting point that I hadn't really refined in my head yet, which is we're talking about smaller dollar gifts. It's really doing what so many lower income, sort of black and brown communities have done in terms of passing the hat to find support for their work and really finding that as an important audience engagement mechanism. So thank you for that. We're almost at time. Really excited that you were here, Jamie. Do you have any departing thoughts as we wrap this up?
Jamie Bennett:
I just think my only thought is that because I was your inaugural guest, in this moment, I am both the best and the worst guest you've ever had on this live stream. And that duality is really exciting to me.
Tim Cynova:
Yes. Jamie, thank you so much for launching this with us today. Thanks to those who have joined the live stream. Continue the Work Shouldn't Suck Live adventure with us on our next episode when we're joined by Christine Bader, co-founder of The Life I Want. Miss us in the meantime? You can download more Work Shouldn't Suck episodes from your favorite podcasting platform of choice and rewatch Work Shouldn't Suck Live episodes over on workshouldntsuck.co. If you've enjoyed the conversation or just feeling generous today, please consider writing a review on iTunes so that others who might be interested in the topic and join the fun, too. Give it a thumbs up or five stars or phone a friend, whatever your podcasting platform of choice offers. If you didn't enjoy this chat, please tell someone about it who you don't like as much. Until next time, thanks for listening.
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