Last Updated
April 16, 2020
Work. Shouldn't. Suck. LIVE: The Morning(ish) Show with special guest Kristina Newman-Scott, President, BRIC. [Live show recorded: April 15, 2020.]
Guest: Kristina Newman-Scott
Co-Hosts: Tim Cynova & Lauren Ruffin
Guest
KRISTINA NEWMAN-SCOTT serves as President of BRIC, a leading arts and media institution anchored in Downtown Brooklyn whose work spans a contemporary visual and performing arts, media, and civic action. She is the first immigrant and first woman of color to serve in this position and one of the very few women of color leading a major New York cultural institution.
Under her tenure, BRIC embarked on an ambitious human-centered process in pursuit of clarity of purpose in the form of a new four-year Strategic Plan. That process led to a rearticulated mission, informed by the institution's impact and legacy, and a newly articulated vision statement, guided by aspirational goals. In addition, she led a renewed commitment to equity, diversity, and inclusivity in every aspect of the organization.
Previously, Newman-Scott served as the Director of Culture and State Historic Preservation Officer for the State of Connecticut; Director of Marketing, Events and Cultural Affairs for the City of Hartford; Director of Programs at the Boston Center for the Arts; and Director of Visual Arts at Hartford's Real Art Ways.
Ms. Newman-Scott's awards and recognitions include being a National Arts Strategies Creative Community Fellow, A Hive Global Leadership Selectee, and a Next City Urban Vanguard. In June 2018, Americans for the Arts presented Kristina with the Selina Roberts Ottum Award, which recognizes an individual working in arts management who exemplifies extraordinary leadership qualities.
A TEDx speaker, guest lecturer, visiting curator, Kristina currently serves on the Boards of the New England Foundation for the Arts, National Arts Strategies, and Downtown Brooklyn Partnership. She resides in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, with her husband and two children.
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 Kristina Newman-Scott. Kristina currently serves as the president of BRIC, a leading arts and media institution anchored in downtown Brooklyn whose work spans contemporary visual and performing arts, media, and civic action. Prior to BRIC, Kristina served as the Director of Culture and State Historic Preservation Officer for the state of Connecticut, Director of Marketing, Events, and Cultural Affairs for the city of Hartford, Director of Programs at the Boston Center for the Arts, and Director of Visual Arts at Hartford's Real Art Ways. She has received a myriad of awards, honors, and recognition including in 2018 when she was presented with the Selina Roberts Ottum award, which recognizes an individual working in arts management who exemplifies extraordinary leadership qualities. Without further ado, Kristina, welcome to the show.
Kristina Newman-Scott:
Hey, good morning. How are you?
Lauren Ruffin:
We are doing well.
Tim Cynova:
Doing well.
Lauren Ruffin:
It's good to see you.
Kristina Newman-Scott:
It's good to see you. Thank you for having me on. I keep editing my bio, and I'm just going to keep working on that, make it shorter and tighter and shorter. I'm going to get it into a tweet version soon, I promise.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah, no I keep wondering, "How do we talk about ourselves in 20 seconds or less?" It's impossible.
Kristina Newman-Scott:
Yeah I know. We have to figure that out.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah.
Kristina Newman-Scott:
That's another show that you could focus on.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah, maybe just chopping people's bios.
Kristina Newman-Scott:
Yes. Let's do it. All of us-
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah, the Morning Chop.
Kristina Newman-Scott:
Morning Chop. I need it. I know people that need it. Okay.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah. I didn't realize you were a Hartford person the night we had the 91 connection.
Kristina Newman-Scott:
Yeah. The 91 connection, yes. Yes. Hartford was where, when I moved from Jamaica, that's where I moved to. Hartford, Connecticut.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah. Boom town.
Kristina Newman-Scott:
I love me some Hartford. I learned so much, honestly. Yeah, learned so much. I have a lot of love for Hartford.
Lauren Ruffin:
Cool, so how are you? How's your community doing? And I know that you're hold up with family right now, so how's everyone doing during the pandemic?
Kristina Newman-Scott:
I mean I think we're blessed. I feel really fortunate to have my family with me. My mother-in-law, I work with her in her home in Connecticut. My 10 year old is doing the online school thing, as most people's children are. I think that my two year old, it's a little bit trickier because God bless daycares because me working full-time virtually and my husband working full-time virtually and then our two year old is being ... Nickelodeon Jr is her babysitter, and so I, every day, am struggling with the guilt when I have to plug on for work, and we're working more than full hours. I'm sure you've heard this. You're doing it yourself. I'm working more now than I was when I was at the office, and I was working a lot then, but I literally take the remotes, and I'm like, "Mommy's going to work now," and I go, "Abby Hatcher," and it brings it up, and I press play, and then I go to work, and then I'm like, "Don't call the police." You know what I mean? I feel how a mom might feel if I was leaving the house and closing the door. "I'll be right back. Don't move," and so even though I could laugh about it, it's really stressful because I'm like, "I'm not paying attention to my toddler. What is going to happen?"
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah. I've been thinking a lot. I can't imagine, and our kids are 9 and 12 now, but I just think back to the occasional day where I had to work from home seven years ago, and it was just so hard with little little kids.
Kristina Newman-Scott:
It is.
Lauren Ruffin:
But everyone who's doing it now, this is not the way that we are supposed to work virtually. This is just not fidelity to the model. It's bad all around.
Kristina Newman-Scott:
Yes and if we keep this up, work will suck.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah, exactly.
Kristina Newman-Scott:
We need to figure out this situation and come together, and so at BRIC, what we've been doing is we've been learning. We have what we call our virtual stoop meetings at BRIC House. Every week, the entire staff gathers together for a stoop meeting because we have this fantastic stoop in our building, so about 100 of us, a little more than 100 of my staff members, that's my staff team size, get together, and we talk; and it's fairly quick. It's a weekly check-in, and then we have a more robust one that's an hour long, but we've been doing these virtual stoops with the staff, and we've been kind of hearing about what works; and so I've been trying to build kind of quiet work time because what I found that was happening was just a constant stream of online meetings, so you were Zooming from 9am to 7pm, and then you're not working. You're just Zooming.
Kristina Newman-Scott:
And then you're like, "Oh right. I live with people. I have a family. What are you people doing?" And so we've now created work quiet time. Lunch is sacred. Let people eat with their families and afternoons, so we're figuring it out, and we keep learning, and my team, Kyle and Scott, they have no fair in telling me what is working and what is not working.
Lauren Ruffin:
That's awesome.
Kristina Newman-Scott:
Yeah.
Lauren Ruffin:
That's awesome. You're really rooted in the Brooklyn arts community as well. What are you hearing from that community of artists?
Kristina Newman-Scott:
It's hard. I mean artists have lost their gigs. I mean they depend ... They're part of the gig economy, and a lot of the performing artists, visual artists who had either exhibition shows, just the artists that we were lined up to present, everything's shifting, and I really feel for the artists in our community; and so what we've been doing is transferring as much as possible, everything that we were going to be presenting at BRIC House, to virtual programming so that we can keep artists paid.
Kristina Newman-Scott:
So, for instance, we're doing the poetry slam that we do with Mahogany Browne and Jai Poetic. The Brooklyn Poetry Slam started at BRIC, and so we want to make sure that those folks continue to engage with us and that we're paying them for their work, and so we're just really trying to transition as much as possible and as it makes sense into virtual programming, but a lot of our pairs, it's not good. It's just not good. The news is ... It's really rough, especially those that are dependent on tickets and do massive productions and presentations. It's really not good, but we've all applied for every grant, every loan.
Kristina Newman-Scott:
Rick has a research page on our website for artists that ... I know that there are so many resources being shared out there, but we have been keeping a list of resources for the field with a focus on artists, and we also have a resource list for our immediate community in downtown Brooklyn, Fort Greene area, so that people can see where they can go above and beyond arts and culture resources but food services, home services. We've been trying to get all of that information and keep it one place for folks to easily access, so ... Yeah.
Tim Cynova:
What does the transition look like for you in the organization? Because part of BRIC, you have a television studio. You have studios to stream podcasts, produce and stream podcasts, so you have some of that infrastructure that allows for this transition, but it is still a physical space where I imagine most people work there physically during the week, so what has this transition looked like over the past couple of weeks to be an almost or entirely virtual organization?
Kristina Newman-Scott:
In the midst of this craziness, it really is, in some ways, an exciting moment for BRIC because our board just approved our new strategic plan that guides the next four years of our work, and within that plan, there is a key focus on technology and the work that we're doing in the digital realm, and this has just fast tracked ... And I'm hearing that from some of my peers too. They're like, "We were going to do this, but we're doing it now. We had this slated for 2021, but ..." so in many ways with BRIC, we've been in the media business for 40 years, but there has been an exciting moment for us as we've been rapid-prototyping some of these online experiences that we're able to think about, and we're already learning about what's going to have longevity, and so we're really looking at our capacity, what we're capable of doing, and how we're going to continue doing all the things that we're learning about, that we're excited about.
Kristina Newman-Scott:
Something that happened right when we started to go to remote work at BRIC that we really got excited about is the fact that because we're a broadcast center and a public access center, we're able to connect with television stations anywhere in the world, so of course you can do online YouTube. You can do Instagram Live and all of that, but we could actually patch you in to MSNBC. We can do this live talk on television stations in countries, so an example of that is something that we piloted a few months ago with VP Records where we did the celebration of their Reggae Gold. It was an anniversary moment for them, and at BRIC, we were able to be live in over one million homes on the island of Jamaica.
Kristina Newman-Scott:
Now that's a game-changer because people that have our ... We're in, what, we're in about a million homes right now. A lot of those folks that we reach don't have access to high-speed internet. They're getting left behind. There's a digital divide, right? There's a gap there, and so we really treasure the folks that are still accessing content in this way through cable, and so we're thinking a lot about that digital divide. We're thinking a lot about how to make sure they don't get left out. We're ensuring that what we do live on Instagram or Facebook can be patched into the channels. We're looking at how we can continue to be of service with the Department of Education. Could we bring educational tools to channels, to kids who don't have high-speed internet and can't log on for school? So we're thinking about a lot of those things and having those conversations now.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah, and you can prototype that right at home with your two year old, right?
Kristina Newman-Scott:
Well if it was Abby Hatcher teaching the class, yes. If it was an actual class, it would not happen. She's already given up on circle time. We did circle time every morning at 9 o'clock for two weeks.
Lauren Ruffin:
Oh wow.
Kristina Newman-Scott:
And it was great, and then one day, she was like, "And I'm done. Go."
Lauren Ruffin:
"Enough of the circle time."
Kristina Newman-Scott:
No more circle time so ... Yep. Yep. That's how it goes. What are you guys seeing and learn- What are you guys excited about? I love that Work. Shouldn't. Suck. is now this wonderful experience, right? And so what's happening on your end?
Lauren Ruffin:
You want to go first, Tim? You want me to go?
Kristina Newman-Scott:
C'mon, people.
Tim Cynova:
Go ahead, yeah.
Lauren Ruffin:
No so one, I mean this has been ... Hearing how everyone is sort of rapidly adjusting, rapid prototyping new things is ... I just think it's such an opportunity. I know it's daunting and really really hard, but hearing how adaptive and nimble humans are and organizations can be, I think, is fantastic. There are so many things that I hope organizations hold onto over the long haul, so that's really cool, and then I'm also thinking a lot about how our sector, the culture sector, in so many ways [inaudible 00:12:22], and I'm really thinking through, "How do we translate, for organizations that might not be as tech-savvy as BRIC or as a Fractured Atlas, how do we do the knowledge transfer, over the next probably 18 to 24 months, to help organizations continue to sort of meet their mission in the work they do convening?" So my brain is actually really excited right now. I felt like I had hit kind of a boring patch at the beginning of this year. I was kind of like, "Oh ho hum," but, yeah, for me this has been a really energizing time.
Kristina Newman-Scott:
Yeah, I would agree with that. It forces us, right? It forces us to show up in the world in a new way, and that is exciting. What about you, Tim?
Tim Cynova:
Yeah I've really enjoyed the daily conversations that we're having. I mean we started this as sort just a way to connect with people outside of our homes and, at the same time, sort of a time capsule if you will for the time that we're living in; and I think back to three weeks ago when Jamie Bennett was our first guest, and all of us took that as-
Lauren Ruffin:
Aw, Jamie Bennett.
Tim Cynova:
Yeah it was terrific-
Kristina Newman-Scott:
I heart Jamie Bennett.
Tim Cynova:
... But I thought, "We should check in with Jamie," because so much stuff has happened since we had that first conversation, and to talk through, in real time, with people who are leading organizations, people who are experiencing this in different ways around North America and to engage with people who are around the world, and the chat has been really meaningful ...
Kristina Newman-Scott:
Good.
Tim Cynova:
... Experience and to think, "What is next? How can we use this opportunity to hold onto the things that are really important to build that thing?" And now that we've proven that you can get work done without someone watching you, and you can do things in a remote setting, how can we, as organizations, as a sector, as a country, as humanity keep these things; and what do we need to do to make sure that we don't lose that once things start to open up again? And so that's been really exciting to sort of live in that space and talk to people about, "How do we co-create a future where everyone can thrive?"
Kristina Newman-Scott:
Yes, I love that. I'm here for that. BRIC is very much ... Our work is rooted in thinking and behaving in that way, and it's a simple thing, but it's exciting for us is when this happened, so many of our pairs, because they weren't accessing technology in this way ... We were able to work really quickly with my outstanding education team to create free classes online for other culturals and small business owners to learn how to use technology whether it's, "Do as mini doc on your iPhone," or it's, "Edit this piece," and we made it free to folks. All of the Downtown Brooklyn Arts Alliance were part of it. It's been really interesting, another way for us to understand what people actually need. What are the tools that people need? What are they interested in? And, to your point, how can we continue to just be of service and hold some of these things far beyond this crisis?
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah. Kristina, are those resources still available on your website?
Kristina Newman-Scott:
They are.
Lauren Ruffin:
Oh awesome.
Kristina Newman-Scott:
They are on our website, so if you go to www.bricartsmedia.org - Thanks. Hey now, you guys are profession-
Lauren Ruffin:
Add production value on this.
Kristina Newman-Scott:
Hey. I appreciate it. bricartsmedia.org. You can see our calendar, and so on our calendar and if you click on education, you'll be able to navigate and find a lot of the information there. Another thing that we did pretty quickly around mid-March was to launch a Creative Future Relief fund which was to raise money to support our transition to online programming, thereby helping us to continue to support artists and to keep our staff whole as much as possible as we do that transition, so our Creative Future Relief fund is on our ... You can learn more about that as well on our website that you so wonderfully popped up a second ago.
Tim Cynova:
Kristina, you talked earlier about your strategic plan that you had just wrapped up, and then how many pieces have just been tossed into the air that you thought were all sort of set, or how are you processing this now that you've concluded that and things have started to change? Or maybe they haven't.
Kristina Newman-Scott:
It's interesting. I don't think there are so many pieces up in the air. I think that what this has done outside of the fast tracking our exploration of what we can do digitally and how we present visual performing and media using new technology ... We'll always present in our space. We have a beautiful space, a 40,000-square-foot space. That's not going away. You know what I mean? But I don't think there will ever be a moment again that we aren't simultaneously engaging people virtually while doing that, and I think that's true for many organizations, but what's exciting about this moment is that in many ways, it reinforces all the things that we've said in our strategic plan in terms of our mission, vision, and values; and so just having that center us every single day ...
Kristina Newman-Scott:
Because at the beginning of this, I think people were all like, "Wait, you want me to talk to artists online? You want to do ..." It felt like a lot to process. My staff are like, "What do you mean? You want me to go virtual how?" And then it was almost like they were thinking of themselves as a new organization of, "Wait, we don't do this this way," so it was hard. Outside of my media team, it was hard for my visual and performing folks to process that, but the more that we just leaned into what we said we're about and our strategic plan as a guide is the more it became really clear. Everything's centered in the mission, so we're not changing that. We're just shifting how someone receives this, receives the information, accesses the resources, shares in the experience; so it really has rooted us, and I'm very thankful that we have that at this moment as an organization because it's our landing pad.
Lauren Ruffin:
I think that piece about, and I have been thinking a whole lot about this, the accessibility upside to forcing people to offer everything with a ... Of course we're all online right now, but moving forward for the rest of our lives, everything that you do in real life ... And not that this isn't real life. We're obviously here, but everything you're doing face-to-face, you should also have some sort of online component, and I just think the quality of thinking about live captioning, all of that, transcribing things, the various modalities of learning and especially adult learning and adult cognition, we're going to get so much more sophisticated on that right now, and that really excites me. I met Tom Chi. Did you meet Tom Chi, Tim? Tim, did you meet Tom? No? Okay.
Kristina Newman-Scott:
Tim, did you meet Tom? Tim, Tom. Tom, Tim. Years ago, I was part of this Hive global leadership. It's a massive gathering together of folks from all over the world for an intensive three-day experience, and Tom Chi, he was the head of Google X, and he talked a lot about rapid prototyping for community development, and this is maybe now seven years ago at this point or six maybe, and he talked about doing being the best way of thinking and learning, and I just have loved that line. I know he's not the only one that says that, and we all know that because of our experiences to be true. I mean how do you learn how to ride a bicycle? No one's going to YouTube, okay? "Let me YouTube how to ride a bicycle."
Kristina Newman-Scott:
So I love that. I live in that, and I recall that in this moment because even though there's all kinds of things that we could be doing ... We need to do a lot of things to learn, but I love that we are also kind of just grass-roots, feeling our way through some of it and just having that immediate gut response and being able to share that with each other as we navigate the future, and we are blessed because we do have this extraordinary media team that they have so much knowledge, and we can lean on them, but that idea of doing is the best way of thinking and learning is so true, and I'm actually really appreciating that right now.
Tim Cynova:
Yeah. You do have some of the fanciest studios.
Kristina Newman-Scott:
Yeah. I love [crosstalk 00:21:22]. I know. I have some fancy studios.
Tim Cynova:
I mean I'm envious of BRIC studios.
Kristina Newman-Scott:
Listen. You can do Work. Shouldn't. Suck. When we're all back together again, if you ever want to do it in the studio, you can come down to Fulton Street in Brooklyn and come and do it. You can get your Visa. Come to Brooklyn.
Tim Cynova:
They are some fancy studios, Lauren.
Lauren Ruffin:
I have never been, so I'm-
Kristina Newman-Scott:
You've never been?
Lauren Ruffin:
No.
Kristina Newman-Scott:
We've got to get you from Albuquerque to Brooklyn.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah I feel like I've done my time in New York.
Kristina Newman-Scott:
What?
Lauren Ruffin:
Although I watched Ghostbusters last night, and I had a couple moments where I was like, "Oh I kind of miss New York," and then I was like, "What's happening?"
Kristina Newman-Scott:
You know you miss New York. You know you miss New York.
Lauren Ruffin:
"What's happening?"
Kristina Newman-Scott:
No one's ever done their time in ... [crosstalk 00:22:08]-
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah, I don't know. I know people think it's really energizing as a city, but I think I need a slower pace.
Kristina Newman-Scott:
You've been energized?
Lauren Ruffin:
I think I need a slower pace. I need quiet.
Kristina Newman-Scott:
Look. I appreciate that. I will say it's a big shift being in Connecticut right now, and even though I was living so long in Connecticut, it's definitely such a shift. There is such a wonderful energy and pace to Brooklyn, and I miss that, and I love that, and it's funny because I have these two kids. One's total suburbanite, my 10 year old, and Charlie, the two almost three year old is total New York because she doesn't know, right? And even though she's three, we were taking a walk the other day, and I'm like, "We're walking." And she's like, "Where we walking?" I'm saying, "We're just going to walk around the block back to our house." She goes, "We're going to Brooklyn? We're walking back to Brooklyn?" And I'm like, "No, Baby. We're not walking back to Brooklyn. Can't walk there. Mommy's not that fit," but she doesn't know that, and Kendall's like, "Oh, I remember all these trees," but Charlie's like, "Get me back to Brooklyn. Yes."
Tim Cynova:
Well Kristina, you've worked in a lot of different environments. You've worked in government. You worked in art centers, and we talked about shorter bios. Probably your government titles are not helping out for shorter bios. It seems like you're just like, "Here's 18 words in the same title."
Kristina Newman-Scott:
Yes, yes.
Tim Cynova:
But what has the experience been like? Because you came from your role at the state of Connecticut to Brooklyn, and what's similar? What's different? Have you been talking to people at your former gigs and how they're adjusting or adapting to this new environment?
Kristina Newman-Scott:
What's similar? What's different? Well there's so much that is different. I mean coming from being the head of a state arts agency, and you're living and functioning within a very rigid government structure, and then I was also embedded in the Department of Economic and Community Development; I think that while there's so much different about how a state or a municipality even before that when I was working for the city of Hartford ... They're so much different there compared to a non-profit. There's a lot of similarities in terms of structure of thought, so to speak so, "How are we adding value to our community? How are we dismantling barriers? Thinking about barriers to access, how are we investing in the people that we are here to serve?"
Kristina Newman-Scott:
All of those things that I was thinking about at the Connecticut Office of the Arts are the exact same things that we think about every day at BRIC, right, as an institution, and I think that's really great; and I think it's helped me too because dealing with this crisis for me, I find that I'm a pretty high-energy person at work. I know that's shocking, but I'm pretty high-energy, but I've learned that, when it comes to crisis, I actually slow down; and so that comes from my experience in government and watching mayors and governors and commissioners and other city political leaders and leaders having to respond to crisis, right, time and time again; and so that has been some learning that has been helpful for me in this moment to ensure that I'm not moving too fast because you can move too fast.
Kristina Newman-Scott:
With all good intention, you could just move so fast you trip over yourself for no good reason, right? And so right now, I'm lucky to have the team that I have because we're being very paced and strategic, and while we're rapid prototyping a lot, we're still taking that time to be like, "We don't need to rush for rush's sake, but we're going to do this because it's right, and it feels right, and we're going to test it. We might fail or not," but so I think that learning for me has been great. At the end of the day, I love that I work at an organization that cares more about ourselves as an institution and really cares about community, and that's one of the core reasons why I packed up everybody and moved to Brooklyn because BRIC truly is a part of the community that we're in, and you hear that from the people that come to us; so I still very much feel like I work within community development. Does that make sense?
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah.
Kristina Newman-Scott:
I feel like I work within community development. I think BRIC is ... Not only did it start off as an early creative place-making strategy. I know we didn't talk about ourselves that way, but BRIC literally started as a creative place-making experiment in 1975 with BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn Festival. You think about it coming out of a mayor's office and looking at a place geographically, Prospect Park, a at time where Brooklyn was thought of as unsafe, and then they were like, "Okay we want to use music as a catalyst for change and arts as a way to remind people of the beauty of their community," and with that, BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn was born. That's creative place-making right there, and so our institution just grew out of that. That's our genesis story, and so in many ways, community, being of service, and civic action is a part of who we are, and I just love that.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah. Tim, was it Deborah Cullinan who gave us the suitcase metaphor?
Kristina Newman-Scott:
I love her too.
Lauren Ruffin:
She's great. She's awesome.
Kristina Newman-Scott:
Yeah, she's awesome.
Lauren Ruffin:
So I'm thinking about ... She gave us a suitcase, and it was, "Right now, you have a chance to sort of think about what you want in your suitcase in terms of workplace practices or life practices. What are you leaving, and what are you taking with you, or what do you [crosstalk 00:28:29] learn, and you're bringing with you? If you were packing the rest-of-your-life suitcase right now ..."
Kristina Newman-Scott:
Oh my God.
Lauren Ruffin:
"... What's one thing you're leaving behind, and what's one thing you're taking with you?"
Kristina Newman-Scott:
Oh my God. That is such a tough question. Well always take Spanx. Always pack Spanx, I'm just going to say, so that's coming.
Lauren Ruffin:
Okay Spanx are your freebie. that's just your one freebie.
Kristina Newman-Scott:
Thank you because got to get those. Oh my God. The rest-of-my-life suitcase?
Lauren Ruffin:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Kristina Newman-Scott:
And I have to pack that right now?
Lauren Ruffin:
What's the one thing? It's work stuff. This, in theory, is a work livestream.
Kristina Newman-Scott:
Can I call a friend? Let's see. The rest-of-my-life suitcase. It's my strategic plan.
Lauren Ruffin:
Okay. You're taking that with you.
Kristina Newman-Scott:
I am taking that plan. That is an amazing plan because it wasn't designed by me in my office over two weeks. You know what I mean? It was designed by our staff, our funders, our community, our audience. They designed that plan, and I'm excited about delivering with my team, excited to deliver on that plan; so if that plan ... Because it's called The Manifesto, people. It's a manifesto strategic plan.
Lauren Ruffin:
A manifesto.
Kristina Newman-Scott:
We're bringing the positive back into that word, and so I'm going to take that plan, and I'm going to put it on top of my bag-
Lauren Ruffin:
You're taking that plan away from white shooters and making it positive again.
Kristina Newman-Scott:
Absolutely and-
Lauren Ruffin:
I think it's fine.
Kristina Newman-Scott:
I just put it on top of my Spanx, and I'm closing the suitcase. That's my stuff right there. That's my plan. What did you take? What did you guys pack?
Lauren Ruffin:
We didn't answer that question.
Tim Cynova:
We didn't.
Kristina Newman-Scott:
Oh great.
Tim Cynova:
I'm still at the-
Kristina Newman-Scott:
Now is the time.
Tim Cynova:
I still think we should stipulate that it's a hard-covered suitcase, not a soft one because then you can really get a lot of stuff in there you probably shouldn't take with you.
Kristina Newman-Scott:
You guys are going to have to answer that, if not today, with me. I'm going to YouTube every day and be like, "Answer the question."
Tim Cynova:
Oh we are out of time, Kristina. Wow. The time flies. We are out of time. Do you have any parting thoughts for us besides that you're going to be making sure Lauren and I address this question before we close our livestream?
Kristina Newman-Scott:
I think, as my two year old roles her scooter beside me, I think that artists have always reminded us of our humanity through their work, and when we reflect on our past, culture is what we reflect on, and I know that we're going to get through this moment. I know it. I feel it, and I'm so excited to have artists as a core part of our practice at BRIC, and they are definitely helping us see that light at the end of the tunnel, so I'm just going to say that I'm grateful for artists and creative risk-takers across our country and our world right now because they help to center me, and I'm grateful for the both of you.
Tim Cynova:
Well Kristina, we are grateful for you-
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah, this was awesome.
Tim Cynova:
... And grateful that you took time to spend with us. Thanks so much for being on the show.
Kristina Newman-Scott:
Thank you for having me.
Tim Cynova:
Continue the Work. Shouldn't. Suck. Live adventure with us on our next episode when we're joined by Dave Archuletta, Chief Development Officer at New York Live Arts. 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 are just feeling generous today, please consider writing a review in iTunes so that others who might be interested in the topic can 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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