Joe’s Movement Emporium

In this episode, UNLV Urban Leadership Graduate Student, Stephanie Milliner interviews Brooke Kidd, Founder of Joe’s Movement Emporium. Joe’s Movement Emporium founded in 1995 is a cultural arts hub for creativity and economic opportunity for youth and young adults.

What is COVID Conversations?

COVID-19 presented a unique set of challenges for the nonprofit industry -- funding interruptions, increased demand for services, pivot to virtual platforms, safety concerns and more have impacted some nonprofits' ability to push their missions forward. Through our podcast, COVID Conversations: An Introspective of the Impact on Nonprofits, we present interviews of individuals representing an array of nonprofit organizations. We believe the information from these organizations further provides an illuminating picture of the depth and scale of the impact of the pandemic on the nonprofit sector.

0:00:00
Hello, I'm Stephanie Milner. Welcome to COVID Conversations, an introspective of the impact on nonprofits. In today's episode, we'll learn more about Joe's Movement Emporium, founded by Brooke Kidd in 1995. This nonprofit organization's mission is to offer a wide variety of high-quality programming in the arts to celebrate the creativity of our young people, particularly those from under-deserved communities. This organization serves the Mount Rainier, Maryland area and Prince George's County's Gateway Arts District. Let's learn more about how COVID-19 has impacted this organization.

0:00:44
All right, so I am with Brooke Kidd. She is the founder of Joe's Movement Emporium.

0:00:54
Mm-hmm.

0:00:55
Okay.

0:00:56
We are wearing our masks, so I believe that this sound will come through and be okay,

0:01:00
because we have to do COVID safety. So thank you, Brooke, for meeting me. You're so welcome, Stephanie. I really appreciate you taking your time out of your schedule. We talked last month, and now we're here in person, which I'm excited about.

0:01:14
So if you could just tell me how you got started with Joe's movement. Sure. There were several choreographers that we all needed rehearsal space and we were struggling to find quality dance studios where they had time available or that were welcoming to independent dance artists. And so we worked together and found a space and just leased one storefront here in Mount Rainier for $1,000 a month and formed a collective to manage the space. And that started us on the journey of combining rehearsal space and support to artists and having those artists be involved in arts education programs and doing community events, especially site-specific performances to really engage community and celebrate the arts. How long have you been here? We're in our 26th year of programming. Wow, that's amazing! Yeah. Oh wow, okay.

0:02:25
Oh, OK.

0:02:27
And so you do, I noticed you do after school events, you do theater. What other arts do you do? Yeah, so our programs cover arts education, job training, and support to professional artists. And that includes our artist partnership program, where we allow very affordable rehearsals in studio space and have an active theater. And our job training program helps to feed into all of those operations and that we expose young adults ages 17 to 24 to creative industry jobs and nurture them through all of our work here at Joe's and with some of our partners.

0:03:15
OK.

0:03:16
Oh, that's fantastic. So I have some questions in regards to, because I know we're in a year now into this pandemic,

0:03:24
but to what extent has COVID-19 pandemic and related shutdown impacted your business here? Oh, greatly. are based on gathering and coming together, and often in closed spaces. So we've had to pivot quickly to provide virtual programs and restructure our use of space. Luckily, our Performing Arts Center is 20,000 square feet, so we had room to welcome in small groups safely fairly early on, including our after-school program called Club Joes and artist rehearsals and some classes. But we had to stop producing shows and we canceled dozens of events last year. Then we experimented with putting a stage in the back of our parking lot, and that led to fundraising to create a more permanent stage which we'll be installing, hopefully, in May. And it'll be a beautiful deck with a canopy, and it will allow us to run a variety of programs, including shows, right outside. Oh, that's awesome. Okay, has your organization experienced any of the following as a result of the pandemic? Budget cuts, permanent layoffs, furloughs? Yes, all of the above. Okay, wow, okay. Because there were some programs that stopped completely, such as some of our school-based arts integration activities where students would come here to receive arts programs during the school day. So that cut abruptly, and that was so sad. So then we had to furlough all of those teaching artists. With less people in the building, we had to lay off all of our front of house staff and other studio managers, a marketing coordinator resigned because of family needs at the beginning of the pandemic, and we didn't fulfill that position because we had less programs. And then our earned revenue really just evaporated in a month, in two weeks.

0:06:01
Right.

0:06:02
Oh, wow. Oh, wow. weeks. It was, you know, February 2020 was a mostly normal and prosperous earned revenue scenario and then March it just bottomed out. We had some people continue to support us by paying fees like our after-school program families We continued making payments through April. And then we were able to begin to get loans, like the PPP, and some other emergency grants geared towards nonprofits

0:06:41
and arts organizations.

0:06:43
OK, that's awesome there, too.

0:06:45
Do you see now that things are trickling, opening back up in small instances, did you see bringing back more, or you just want to see how it goes? We call it a thoughtful reopening strategy. We are slowly adding more activities to the schedule. That really won't kick in until mid-April. that we, you know, we're just going to go slowly and see how it goes. We will still require everybody inside to be masked at all times and, you know, keep a pulse on things and pray that we continue to eradicate the virus. Right. Does your organization operate on a fiscal year or calendar year? Fiscal year.

0:07:38
Fiscal year, OK. And so with fundraising, because I do know that some of it is fundraising here, and that's how most of the income revenue is generated. How has that, percentage-wise, impacted your programs here? Because you fundraise throughout the year, part of the year, every month. How does that?

0:08:08
Every day, Stephanie. OK, every day. I mean, our fundraising is such a mix that we've got some larger grants. We've got small grants. We have individual and corporate giving is the hardest for us because when you're a smaller organization it's hard to get big multi-year chunks from corporate America. Also Prince George's County has so, it has such weird giving trends for corporate. The love is not spread far enough. And companies tend to have a popular organization in the five-year period and be like, oh, they're the ones. And they're like, you're giving, so we'll give. And that can be really good, but it needs to get spread in a strategic way.

0:09:17
In order to benefit.

0:09:19
Yeah, in order to benefit. The biggest change this year has been we've had to stop doing special events like our gala and fill that with grants and other individual giving because no one wants to go to a virtual gala again. We did that back in June. It was so much work and very difficult. And it wasn't early enough in the pandemic that we could continue, we could get support, but now it's splintered and people want to have something more unique their sponsorship work.

0:10:02
I would like to have anyone listen to our conversation here today.

0:10:11
Where can they go to learn more about Joes Movement? On our website is joesmovement.org. And then on social media, almost all of it is child's movement.

0:10:26
OK. So I'm definitely going to add that to our group here. And so I think I have a final question. So where do you see yourself and your organization, if you could just pick six months from now, a year is kind of long, but getting through, people will start, like I said, things are open, vaccines are available.

0:10:53
And where do you see Jones in six months?

0:10:58
Great question.

0:10:59
I see us being able to inhabit indoor spaces with a little more proximity, so that we have, you know, 20-25 people comfortably in this room again. That we have a return to indoor performances with some of the safety measures still in place, such as using our air purification machines, having a little more distance than we used to in the theater. I think the benefit could be to support artists to perform more shows to a smaller audience so that we can generate the revenue which in turn would support the field. Because our performing artists on perform infrequently and we need to really make sure that they have the resources to rehearse and perform or we're going to lose them. The pandemic has forced a large percentage of active artists into other job sectors. Yeah, I know it's very difficult for the artists. I do have a friend who is a singer and he's just, it's like, I don't know what to do, you know? And I know it's very difficult. And folks need a dependable income and a solid income for the surviving in the pandemic. I think that can also be a silver lining moment because the more artists that go into other industries, you're going to infuse creative people in other jobs, which is needed to. And if we're going to address major inequities, like in health care, we need to bring the artists. Because they're going to figure out things. They're the out-of-the-box thinkers. They're the creative problem solvers. They're the ones who can keep going when other people are saying no. And so I hope that happens. I like that out loud too. I like that you said that. That's awesome. I mean, I'm like, oh, I can go with that. I can do something that you said. I'm going to have to go back and rewind this and write that down. I'm coming here and bringing my son and my husband. And I look forward to even if it's an outdoor event or an indoor event, we just want to get out. And I look forward to it. And I want to keep in touch and keep tabs with what's going on here at Jo's. And I look forward to coming back and bringing my son.

0:13:52
He would love it here.

0:13:53
Oh my gosh.

0:13:53
He would love it here.

0:13:54
Good, good. To see what you're doing. And I look forward to a performance.

0:14:08
And so I really appreciate you taking the time.

0:14:13
You bet.

0:14:13
And now, we did talk off record, but I

0:14:17
am going to come back six months to a year.

0:14:20
OK.

0:14:20
And we're going to have another conversation and find out what just happened. OK.

0:14:25
How did it go?

0:14:25
How did it go?

0:14:26
What's new?

0:14:27
Because I know it's going to be some new and exciting things. Yeah.

0:14:29
I look forward to that.

0:14:30
Well, I should have been recording more all along. Well, I should have been recording more all along. So, I really appreciate that.