Designing Our Destiny

00:00:08 - 00:33:09
Nolen Bivens
Hello, everyone. I'm Nolen Bivens, President and CEO here at Americans for the Arts. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who participated in our Strategic Realignment Process over the past year. This has been an incredible journey. So where are we now? I'm excited to launch the Shaping Our Destiny phase of our transformation. This takes all the feedback and knowledge we have gained from you and charts a course forward to better serve and engage the arts and cultural communities and all of you.

00:34:04 - 00:58:22
Nolen Bivens
Strengthening communities through the arts is our North Star. You will hear the term equitable advocacy, the lens through which all our decisions are now made, and that will guide this important and transformative work. We continue to welcome your feedback and thank you, as always, for your partnership and tremendous support in shaping our collective future at Americans for the Arts.

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Americans for the Arts has worked to ensure everyone has the opportunity to engage and participate in the arts, for more than six decades. However, as the world shifted, Americans for the Arts failed to keep up with the evolution of our nation. Events of 2020 forced us to address the organizational concerns about internal and external inequities.

00:36:00 - 01:11:19
Publicly and privately, we were called on to elevate racial equity, diversity, transparency, and accountability. We needed to eliminate gatekeeping, be collaborative, and be more inclusive of community-based and grassroots arts organizations. For staff well-being, we needed to be receptive to solid concerns about our work environment. We heard the call, embraced a path of transformation, and began a journey toward our evolution.

01:11:19 - 01:24:03
In early 2021, the staff of Americans for the Arts engaged in a process to assess the workplace culture through the lens of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

01:28:12 - 01:33:23
Nolen Bivens:
Art is a part of the human experience. It makes the world a better place.

01:33:23 - 01:58:01
With new executive leadership and a team of consultants to help guide our path forward, we launched a Strategic Realignment Process (SRP) in December 2021. Our purpose was to identify the specific and unique role of Americans for the Arts within the arts and culture community, and to align our mission with their needs.

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We heard overwhelmingly that how we do our work is as important as what we do. We must center equity and inclusion across all our work. We learned that stakeholders want Americans for the Arts to continue our advocacy and research efforts, but in support of the arts and culture ecosystem. Our work with local arts agencies was validated, but we needed to create reciprocal relationships, uplift the work of others, build coalitions and engage grassroots leadership.

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The SRP has laid the foundation for our transformation, including the necessary internal journey of healing and rebuilding trust. Strengthening communities through the arts is our North Star. Central to achieving this is adopting equitable advocacy as the lens through which all our decisions are made. This approach centers equity in all our organizational practices, interactions and programing. The natural progression of this journey is also evolving our organizational image to visually reflect our transformation.

03:15:12 - 03:22:01
Focused on the new spirit and path of a renewed Americans for the Arts.

03:25:07 - 03:37:08
Linda "Mama Linda" Goss:
There once was a caterpillar who was sad as she could be. She felt that she didn't belong, didn't fit in the community.

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We remain encouraged and inspired by the work that led to this transformation, and we are excited about the work ahead and for the more impactful and inclusive Americans for the Arts that we are building together!

Learn about our Strategic Realignment Process (SRP)

 

Read the full narrative >

          Meet our Staff!

Meet some of our Board Members!

Robert Newman

00:00:12 - 00:23:07
Robert Newman:
My name is Robert Newman:. I am a board of directors member for Americans for the Arts and have been a part of the board since 2021. My background in the arts has been one that I think is a little bit nontraditional versus some of our other board members or people who even get involved with Americans for the Arts, which I've always really loved and appreciated.

00:24:00 - 00:50:23
Robert Newman:
So I guess formally my background is in business management and the first eight years of my career were spent all in financial services, working with Morgan Stanley, Neuberger Berman and other institutions to really get an understanding of how businesses work with one another. And for me, arts is always a thing that I express myself through and engaged in outside of the professional realm.

00:52:12 - 01:20:18
Robert Newman:
I've lived in New York, so I'm a Harlem based artist now, and I've lived in New York for about eight years. And through that experience I've had more and more opportunities to engage with arts at all levels, whether that's museums, nonprofits, small school organizations or grassroots efforts, and again, being able to join a board like Americans for the Arts and have that perspective so far has been a fantastic experience.

01:21:01 - 01:55:00
Robert Newman:
One of the things I think that made me maybe a candidate to be on the board was for the last two years of my career in financial services, I was helping to create our DEI department within the firm. I was very involved with the transformational work when it came to culture equity, inclusion. And knowing that AFTA was at a pivotal moment in being able to join at such a time, I think was, one, exciting for me and a new challenge, right?

01:55:11 - 02:36:02
Robert Newman:
Large organizations we know don't turn on a dime. And the first thing that was most surprising to me was my age. I believe I'm, if not the youngest board member, perhaps one of the youngest within the room. And even within the first couple of encounters, I started to see that dynamic and that balance and where the perspective really became much wider because for such a large and well-established organization, it becomes entrenched, it becomes comfortable doing the things that it knows has worked in the past.

02:36:05 - 03:01:20
Robert Newman:
But the problem with that is, again, we close ourselves off to where the world is going and how change needs to happen going forward. So joining the board, I mean, everyone is committed to, I want to say radical change, and sometimes that's a good word, a bad word depending on how people look at it. But in truth, it is radical change.

03:02:10 - 03:33:08
Robert Newman:
We're doing things that we've never done before. We’re thinking in ways that we've never thought, and we're going out and getting feedback from people who otherwise were left feeling kind of alone and disconnected from Americans for the Arts. So adding the new board members, me being able to join in that real reimagining of like what our purpose is and how we interact with folks again has been great for me, and I see the organization only progressing from here.

03:33:16 - 04:03:15
Robert Newman:
I think the biggest thing that I've learned is that equity isn't easy work. I think people hear the word and they understand it philosophically or almost intellectually, that, you know, we should be a partner for everyone, we should actually take feedback, we should use as wide of a perspective as we can. But the thing that has been single handedly, one of the most impressive things, but the biggest eye opener is equity is difficult work.

04:04:03 - 04:29:01
Robert Newman:
It means pulling in key stakeholders. It means taking a step back and being okay with really assessing yourself by where those gaps are. It really requires that you almost go to war with your old mindset and seeing those changes happen in real time, or even from the perspective that I have, I can only imagine at each level is exponentially more difficult.

04:29:08 - 05:01:06
Robert Newman:
Bringing people along, whether it's in the staff or within the field, or folks who haven't even gotten a chance to interact with Americans for the Arts just yet. And I'm happy to be a part of such a committed and honestly hard working team because it's work that has to be integris, true to us. And we have to put the real sweat equity behind it to make sure that is not just said, but is felt and that we get the benefit from actually being more equitable and reaching out to more people.

Ravi Rajan

00:00:07 - 00:20:06
Ravi Rajan:
Hi, how are you? Ravi Rajan: I'm the President of the California Institute of the Arts and I'm an AFTA board member. This is my first year, and so while I've known about the organization for quite some time and known about the work it's done in different fields and in different ways, this is the first time I've been directly involved with the organization.

00:20:06 - 00:40:18
Ravi Rajan:
AFTA is in a period of transition and a period of, I think, thinking about what its future should be, and this is always a very exciting time for organizations. So I feel that since I've been able to, I've done that with Cal Arts, we had a period of visioning and we really have our new strategic framework about what we want to do for the next 50 years moving forward.

00:40:18 - 01:04:05
Ravi Rajan:
So I love working with organizations in these moments, and so it was a real pleasure. The other thing is I have gotten to know Nolen through my service on the board in the last couple of months, and he's a really a tremendous leader. I feel like I learn about being a leader from Nolen with his great experience that he's had as a leader himself and just an empathetic leader that he is.

01:04:19 - 01:35:08
Ravi Rajan:
I think a Americans for the Arts is very lucky to have him at the helm in this kind of transformational moment. I always like to think that we are a product of our experiences, right? And everything that we encounter in life helps us build who we are. So I grew up a brown boy in Oklahoma without too many other peers and for me, so many of the public institutions that were there when I was a kid really helped me find my path.

01:36:01 - 02:01:20
Ravi Rajan:
The public schools had wonderful music programs, art programs. We had a local firehouse that had turned into an art center. Having access to those things and it was really through the expression of other artists understanding and code of shaping issues in society that I started to really even see, okay, I understand my own relationship with society and how this would work.

02:01:20 - 02:25:05
Ravi Rajan:
So for me as a trumpeter, I really started playing probably because of jazz. So Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, I mean, there were so many initial trumpeters who really kind of set the bar where these are the things that they used the music to be able to transcend where they were in their and their context, you know, in society.

02:25:10 - 02:42:12
Ravi Rajan:
And to me, that was super encouraging. It really, really spoke to me, the music really spoke to me in that way. And then to be able to kind of Ralph Ellison, Richard Wright and that there was a there was an exhibition of Romare Bearden at the University Art Museum when I was a kid. And it was really a tremendous thing.

02:42:12 - 03:09:18
Ravi Rajan:
It was the first time there had been a retrospective of Bearden’s work, and there was this interesting confluence of the Black experience in the United States and how essentially the Black community was able to bind together through their creative expression so that they could express that solidarity. And I really felt that I seeing that and engaging that said, well, how important is this in terms of moving society forward?

03:09:18 - 03:36:07
Ravi Rajan:
And, I got hooked, right? At that time it became evident. I really enjoyed working with people and I loved kids. And so I was like, well, I'll be a pediatrician or something. It's always to help kids is what you want to do. And then at some point it just dawned on me that, you know, doctors help people, but artists give people a reason to live, it gives them the essence of what that is.

03:36:08 - 03:57:00
Ravi Rajan:
And I couldn't shake it. And so that was really I guess that's that was the beginning of my path. And I find myself today after having been a practicing artist and still doing projects, but being able to create the conditions for artists to be able to work with one another and continue making work and illuminate our future, to be able to do that.

03:57:00 - 04:13:01
Ravi Rajan:
I always say artists make models of how the world could be, and we kind of need that now more than maybe we have ever before. With so many things changing in the world and so many of the different demographic shifts, it's a really, really important thing. And so it sort of leads me to the work that AFTA is doing as well.

04:13:14 - 05:02:11
Ravi Rajan:
AFTA is a very interesting organization, its own genesis through a series of mergers of different organizations that provided surface to different components of the arts and the arts communities within the 50 states, etc., etc. has been kind of an interesting evolution. But without question, this country needs an advocate, a central advocate, when it when it comes to the policy formation and the work and lives of artists in the United States and importantly, the effect to be able to speak to the effect that artists and the work that they make has on our society in a multitude of ways, right?

05:02:11 - 05:22:21
Ravi Rajan:
And so I think that having that central source in Washington is very, very important. So in my mind, really helping AFTA be that central mouthpiece, that central sort of hub of advocacy at that policy level for our country is really, really important.

View our full Board of Directors >

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We are all Americans for the Arts.

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Asian Americans for the arts.

00:06:08 - 00:08:05
African Americans for the Arts.

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Latin Americans for the Arts.

00:10:05 - 00:12:05
Native Americans for the Arts.

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And more Americans for the Arts. Americans for the Arts. Equitable Advocacy for the Power of the Arts.

We are re-imagining ourselves to better serve the arts and culture community and become stronger partners, ensuring representation of all communities.

The natural progression of this journey is evolving our image to visually reflect our transformation, focused on the spirit and path of a renewed American for the Arts.