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In this episode, the Boston Children's Chorus (BCC) shares its organizational mission, spotlighting the pivotal role of its new Director of Good Trouble. Guests Andrés Holder and Akiba Abaka offer listeners a deep dive into BCC's community engagement, its programming, performance metrics, and visionary educational initiatives. Andrés and Akiba also share their views on the broader concept of "just cause" within the arts sector and the importance of it to the sustainability of BCC.
For additional resources and to sign up for the podcast newsletter, we invite you to visit our website at leadingthewaypodcast.com.
Key Topics & Chapter Markers:
00:03 Boston Children's Chorus history.
00:05 Akiba's role.
00:07 Concept of "Good Trouble"
00:12 - Listening Tour.
00:17 BCC community and services.
00:20 BCC performance stats.
00:24 BCC's educational plans.
00:27 "Just cause" in arts.
00:35 Organizational sustainability.
00:42 Arts relevance and financial models.
00:48 Leadership in the arts.
00:52 Changing arts focus.
00:57 Optimism about change.
01:01 Insights on "Great resignation".
01:03 Entrepreneurial spirit post-pandemic.
Newsletter sign-up:
For additional resources and to sign up for the podcast newsletter, we invite you to visit our website at leadingthewaypodcast.com.
For additional resources and to sign up for the podcast newsletter, we invite you to visit our website at leadingthewaypodcast.com.
Creators & Guests
What is Leading the Way with Jill S. Robinson?
Leading the Way with Jill S. Robinson is a journey into the international arts and culture industry. Join Jill, a driving force in the sector who has counseled arts leaders for more than three decades, for conversations with some of the most insightful and daring minds leading the way to a resilient 21st century.
[00:00:02.850] - Jill S. Robinson
Today on Leading the Way, I'm joined by Andres Holder, executive director of the 20 year old Boston Children's Chorus and one of his newest team members, akiba Avaca, BCC's director of Good Trouble. You heard that right. Good Trouble. Our Leading the Way podcast highlights folks who are disrupting assumptions and business models all toward a 2030, sustainable and resilient future. And this team is definitely doing that. Andres and Akiba, talk with me about the social justice, activism, and artistry vision of Boston Children's Chorus. Also how to define, and crucially, integrate Good Trouble into everything they do, what defines their market, and so much more. It was such good fun talking about Good Trouble, and I'm so grateful you've chosen to join me today. Andres Holder and Akiba Abaka from Boston Children's Chorus. Thank you for joining me for TRG's Leading the Way podcast. I couldn't be more excited about this conversation. Welcome.
[00:01:15.080] - Andrés Holder
Thank you. We're so happy to be here.
[00:01:17.130] - Jill S. Robinson
Yeah, I am, too. And Leading the Way, as I described, is a podcast that's designed to ignite the imagination of our sector and ignite it toward a future that is beyond what we see in the next twelve or 18 months. It's 2030, 2040 even, what is the future of the communities that we serve and the relationship to and the power that creativity enables. So that conversation that I want to have with you is going to be, I know, really robust and interesting. And I wonder if we could start, Andres, maybe with you, to just give us a little snapshot. BCC Boston Children's Chorus is 20 years old. It's not 50 years old, and it started with very specific values in mind. Can you help my listener just get seated in this organization and its intention?
[00:02:22.910] - Andrés Holder
Of course. Our founding story is born out of a long historical context for the city of Boston. Akiba and I just had the privilege of joining a group of folks at WGBH and take in a documentary that talks about the bussing cris in Boston. Now, if you didn't live in Boston at the time, chances are you saw some very strong images about what the racial tension really looked like in the city of Boston in the 70s. So out of that movement and even before that movement, this gentleman, who is a social worker by the name of Hugh B. Jones, has been organizing families in the city and in the suburbs to come together to create better opportunities for young people, particularly people of color, who've been who are being systemically left out of the conversation. So when Boston Children's Chorus comes into the picture in 2003, hugh B. Jones, our founder, is really starting the organization after being active in this space for a very long time. And he sees a really powerful opportunity to leverage the power of music, to bring people together, to learn from each other, to create an understanding about each other's worlds and lives and internal joys and struggles that you simply don't get the exposure, whether it be in your school, in your neighborhood because of the nature of how the city of Boston is designed.
[00:03:56.560] - Andrés Holder
So that is the framing for BCC coming into life. I remember when I first encountered the organization and learned about Boston Children's Chorus, I was really confused. I'm like, Why are they this is just a bunch of seven year olds singing Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star. How is this complex? And lo and behold, I am madly in love with this organization that is doing work to really transform the people that we serve and everyone that surrounds those young people. So it's a really powerful framing for the organization. So it's just a joy to be able to carry on the legacy of what QB started and undersea.
[00:04:35.870] - Jill S. Robinson
You're the executive director. That's the role you play. I didn't say that at the beginning. You've been there how long?
[00:04:43.210] - Andrés Holder
It feels like it's been a day, but it's been three years now. It was just a blink.
[00:04:50.430] - Jill S. Robinson
We know each other from other places and spaces in arts and culture. Thank you for that introduction. It's a wonderful one. And Akiba, you are new to BCC and your title is wildly, wonderfully, provocative. Can you describe that and maybe just a bit of who you are and what the intention is with your Good Trouble work at BCC.
[00:05:21.350] - Akiba Abaka
Good Trouble. Thank you again, Jill, for having us on this afternoon. The position of Good Trouble stood out to me because I said, wow. Here's an organization who understands what 21st century leadership is all about. How do we design inside of our operational and governing structures a department that deals with the humanistic, social justice and civil rights practices that helps to advance societies. And I was attracted to the opportunity, and I've been here now for two months in working with Andres and the team and the board and the singers and the parents and the community partners, really realizing this clarion call. When we look at organizations and we talk about the systems that have created our organizations writ large, nonprofit, corporations, governments, they're really based on practices that are from the old ways and those old ways representing colonialism, racism, misogyny, homophobia, and aspects that really was about shrinking our societies and advancing one specific group of people. Good Trouble looks at principles that were coming out of the civil rights movement. Hence the name having been the position being named for a statement made by John Lewis where he says, make good trouble. If you see something, say something.
[00:07:19.060] - Akiba Abaka
We should make trouble. We should make good trouble. And this idea of how do you organize within a system the qualities and the controls, just to be very frank, the qualities and the controls around equity, not just so equity, diversity and inclusion, but also around humanistic values that is going to uplift all of our civil rights and all of the justice that's necessary for all groups of people. So good trouble. I like to say that the role is a composite of EDI, equity, diversity, inclusion, and justice work. Additionally, it's also looking at how do these measures align in our budget, how do these measures align in our artistic programming, where is the alignment in our human resources, where is the alignment in our communication systems? How are we showing up and how are we representing, and how are we being responsible for the people who are following our organization? And that's what good trouble is about.
[00:08:44.570] - Jill S. Robinson
Yeah, I'm super curious, Andres. Where the idea? I mean, I know where the idea originated in terms of the word choices, but in terms of the intention, was it a board? Was it you? How did this percolate? And was it universally and easily accepted within BCC? Like, yes, let's do this thing.
[00:09:08.830] - Andrés Holder
It was definitely a journey, Jill. I remember starting at BCC in the darker days of the Pandemic, which I still don't think we've emerged from, and having to wrestle with an organization that had been lauded and praised by our peers in the field, both locally and nationally, but that was dealing with this kind of awkward growth spurt in our late teens. And then we're about to turn 21, so our limbs are growing, but we're not really sure that we have the right size shoe. And everything is kind of you're trying to make it all fit. And one of the reasons why I came to Boston Children's Chorus was this not siloed but integrated mission where we are moving forward the highest caliber musical education possible for our young singers. And at the same time, we're driving an aggressive agenda and getting them steeped in social justice principles, in understanding each other right. The cultivating empathy and social inquiry part of our mission, those things are core and baked into the work. So I thought, Well, I personally believe that organization X or Y has done good work in the space and organization A and B have not.
[00:10:29.310] - Andrés Holder
And when I think of those places, what it boils down to is, do they have something on their PNL that actually says, we are working on this? You might not get as far as you want, and as you declared when all of us issued all the statements that the world required us to issue, but if you're creating incremental progress over time, that felt like there was a commitment. And I thought with our budget being a statement of values, it felt really important that we create space and time and a place for that thinking to exist. So, in collaboration with a lot of people, I went to folks and told them, this is not an EDI job, it is not a COO job, it is not a director development job, but it does touch all of those things. And, oh, by the way, it's curricular educational frameworks for the young kids and it's advising the artistic team on what goes on stage. And it's, how do we cultivate a community for our parents that's really intentional. It goes everywhere. So where do I put this thing? And that's how we got to this topic. I remember a friend, Greg Ball, when I described all these things that this job was and wasn't at the same time.
[00:11:42.740] - Andrés Holder
And when I say wasn't, it's not just this thing that we can all clearly understand. Greg Ball just said, you're trying to get into Good Trouble? And I said yes. Greg, I am trying. And the name just stuck ever since Greg said that maybe two years ago. I'm like, the name of this role is Director of Good Trouble. Here we go.
[00:12:00.660] - Jill S. Robinson
Yeah.
[00:12:01.400] - Andrés Holder
And so happy to have Akiba here.
[00:12:03.430] - Jill S. Robinson
Yeah. So, okay, great. And so, Akiba, you come in, and this role touches mean I intuited it, and he just described it. And so because it touches whoever whichever one of you wants to describe it to me. I want our listeners to understand the composition, ages of the students and the kind of programs that are the focus of BCC. So somewhere in there, I want to surface that. But Akiba, with all of those places that you could go, where are you starting? Like, where do you.
[00:12:45.970] - Akiba Abaka
Know? It's interesting. I think about I've started by listening. We started with the Listening Tour, which I'm still in the process of.
[00:12:57.420] - Jill S. Robinson
Yeah, okay.
[00:12:58.180] - Akiba Abaka
And I like the movement that you utilized a while ago. I think I have to start by being nimble like that. I don't know if you have a dance background, but I really like that. It's a 360 start. Jill, you hit it on the nail. I'm like an owl. My head is literally moving around 300, appearing to move around 360, but it's 180. The first place. Even while I was I think on day one, I said to the great boss, Andres, I always embarrass him. I'll learn how to stop embarrassing him. But I said, can I see the budget? The budget wasn't ready yet. And I said, Can I see the budget? What can I see the last two years? Because the budget is a moral document, for sure. And I really like the way that Andres phrased it earlier when he said there should be something on the PNL of an organization that shows that they are walking in this direction, even if it's in increments. Yeah. And when I think about Good Trouble, as far as starting, I ask the same question, well, where do I start? Well, what is this work? And it really is about so I started by looking through the lens and saying to myself, this is a quality control for the humanity of this organization.
[00:14:31.510] - Akiba Abaka
So where is the humanity of this organization? And I started with the staff. I started with the people who work closest with our singers. I started with our coordinator, the person who sends out the emails to the singers and their parents and just started having coffees and conversations with folks. When you talk about earlier and I know we'll advance to this in the conversation where you said really, what's our market? Right? Where is the sales? What's our market? And it really is our singers.
[00:15:12.620] - Jill S. Robinson
Yeah.
[00:15:13.140] - Akiba Abaka
And many would say it's our audience and the reason why it's our singers. It's our singers because of what we are, the skill sets that we're teaching them in the way of singing, but it's also our singers in the way of our mission because who are the people that they will become not only while they are in BCC, but when they leave BCC? Who are we putting out in the world? And we can't assess fully the impact of our process and our vision until we look at who our singers are four years, five years, ten years after they've left us. And so going back to where do we start it's first, trying to find that humanity in the organization and the pulse. And so again, I've been talking with staff, talking with parents and showing up in rehearsals. And let me tell you, I am very talented. I can do all the things, but God said you are not going to be a singer. Akiba so I've been going to rehearsals and I've been humming in the back. But I sit with the kids and I hum the songs. I don't sing because I don't want to throw them off, but I sit and try to go through the process that they're going through.
[00:16:36.100] - Akiba Abaka
I read the sheet music, I do all the facial exercises. I participate as if I am a singer, just the one with the worst voice because I want to know what it is that they are experiencing and trying to find the humanity in every single moment of their experience. So that's where I start.
[00:17:00.310] - Jill S. Robinson
Man, I love that so much. And I do want to go to who is the community that you serve? And I'm not at all surprised to hear you describe the singers as the people that BCC is serving. Talk about those singers, talk about who they are and what they do in any given year.
[00:17:25.550] - Andrés Holder
So Boston Children's Chorus serves young people ages seven to 18 for most of our history. And that'll be this is our 21st year. That has been mostly in the after school time. Recently. We have just started in school programming in the last two years whereby we've been serving about 300, give or take children in the after school space. And last year we served about 1500 kids in the in school time with about a third of those being ongoing engagements that lasted the entire academic year. And the other two thirds were interventions that could have been a one time workshop all the way to a four, six or eight week program that we created along with the administrators of their school. So we're showing up in a lot of different places. Boston Children's Chorus's serve population as majority people of color, with the white contingent of young people being the largest single ethnic or racial group. But the combination of people of color that are present in the choir are the majority when combined, I would say maybe 40, 45% of those in the chorus come from households with a median income below with a household income below the median for the city of Boston.
[00:18:50.320] - Andrés Holder
So we are working with, I wouldn't say people right at the poverty line, even though they are present in the organization, but we are in the lower size, the majority of folks that we're serving, and we are heavily female identifying. We have a lot of gender expansive and non binary and trans individuals in the chorus, especially in the older years. We're doing a lot of work to recruit lower voices. We don't use gendered names when describing voice parts. So we do need the balance of the SATB choir. We have treble choirs that are upper voices only, but those are a few of the characteristics. The number of people who are coming from the city of Boston is hovering around 45% as well. That's grown from 35% when I first came into BCC. So really trying to be of the geography of the city, looking at the demographics of our public school system, for example, and figuring out how do we mirror that or how do we align ourselves with that population, which we're not currently. Yeah, it's a really interesting mix of people and we're trying to create classrooms that are really dynamically, diverse, because that's the product.
[00:20:03.780] - Andrés Holder
Right. The fact that you are engaging with people that you can't engage with at your school or in your neighborhood, that's the differentiating factor for this organization. So we have to work really hard at making sure that the diversity is not just an edict, but it is something that you walk in and you're like, no one has to describe it to me.
[00:20:21.530] - Jill S. Robinson
I got right, right. Public performances. How many in a year?
[00:20:25.940] - Andrés Holder
So we self produced three concerts and we are presented twice a year, once by Rockport Music up in Rockport and once by the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. So we're performing in the public in a formal concert setting five times a year. And we are hired to bring joy to many different events. We were just at the Hispanic Heritage Breakfast produced by El Mundo a week ago when the royals came to Massachusetts for the Earthshot Prize. We got to sing for them. So we show up all over the place and try to bring those opportunities for young people to sing for important people in their communities that they admire and for them also to sing in the communities that they call home. Right. The tree lighting ceremonies and the holiday season, you get to actually do that in your neighborhood. And it's awesome because all your neighbors get to come watch you do this awesome thing you do. So we try to balance those things out. And we go abroad, too, by the way.
[00:21:26.750] - Akiba Abaka
But yeah, I want to just add to that that BCC has also sung at the White House. We've sung for the King of Jordan. We've traveled all over the world. This highlight is to elevate the value of social justice. BCC is a very prestigious choir. It's world renowned and nationally known. I think we've sung for probably two US. Presidents. I think we've been at the White House. We have a grammy. We do. For such a prestigious choir that has so much visibility that our clarion call is around social justice, we don't have to do that, but we have to do that. And so it's to position the prestige and the visibility to elevate and advance social justice for our singers and for our audiences and for young people to feel empowered in lifting their voice, not just in song, but lifting their voice for each other in their leadership. And so when we talk about the prestige and the wide visibility and the level of performances that we do, what we're bringing to the table, what people are calling us for the reason they call us over, there are about eight other choirs in the Metro Boston area is because they're calling not just great voices, but they want the mission that comes with the voices.
[00:23:05.430] - Jill S. Robinson
Yeah, I'm curious that resonates I see. I can imagine all of what you've just described, and I'm curious about the curriculum, that if I'm a student, obviously the curriculum is about vocal instruction and performance. But there's other things, too, and I'm curious about what those and akiba, you said something really very high impact, which is we want to send these people, these young people, out into the world changed so that they can change others and their maybe communities or workplaces or wherever they find themselves. And I'm curious if you have a mechanism or plan to have a mechanism to measure that five years after they go, what's the curriculum while I'm in? And do you have a plan, too, after they leave, to stay in touch and measure any of that?
[00:24:07.630] - Akiba Abaka
Excellent. That's a really great question. As I've said, I've been with the organization for two months, and so a huge component of the curriculum that we will create will involve evaluation, research, and design. As a matter of fact, the plan is to actually oftentimes we do the work and then we bring the evaluator in. We actually want to design this work with an evaluator. And so that work is to come. But I'll say what I do see, and I think that Andres can speak to this is a little bit more than me, but I'll give you an example of without going too deep into the educators world, because then I'll start naming theorists and educators and that will get a little bit boring. But I was sitting through a rehearsal with the premier choir, which is the more older singers, and they have four presidents of that choir. I think there's two presidents and two VPs. And it was the first day of rehearsals and the presidents were basically laying down the expectations of the choir. And they had everything written out. They were extremely organized. And one person, one thing that one brain searing thing that was left with me was when one president say, and I want us to remember how we carry ourselves because the younger singers look up to us and we should always carry ourselves in ways that they would want to be, because they want to be where we are.
[00:25:54.920] - Akiba Abaka
And so we are responsible for what they see. And so we should carry ourselves in a way that would make them proud. And here's like a 1617 year old who has this level of personal and collective responsibility in designing a curriculum, I would literally pull that statement, this notion of personal and collective responsibility, and that would actually be a competency within the curriculum. And how do you measure that and how does that pan out? Over several years.
[00:26:35.070] - Jill S. Robinson
During the pandemic, we were doing something called TRG 30s, akiva weekly webcasts, trying to give the field as much information and share between organizations as best we could at a time when everything was unknown and different. And one of the things that I advanced to in those talks was Simon Sinek's work from a book he wrote, The Infinite Game. And in it, it describes an orientation that says organizations that take the long game and don't think about the short term battles but place their work in a much longer cycle of life succeed at different levels. And one of the first steps in doing that is creating a just cause. And I would ask organizations that we worked with, do you have a just? What is your just cause?
[00:27:40.640] - Akiba Abaka
Great question.
[00:27:42.550] - Jill S. Robinson
And it was remarkable to me how difficult that answer was. For many. It's not for you. It's not for you. And Akibi, your experiences are in theater and other places. And I'm curious where. I don't feel like I know of a place where this mission and the art, the creativity is so well joined up for a just cause impact. Have you seen it elsewhere? Do you bring experiences to this from theater or from some other practice area?
[00:28:22.930] - Akiba Abaka
Most certainly. I think one all art comes from a place of a just cause. And when I think about Cynic, cynic talks about always start with why, right? So that's where he emerges from. And I think one of the challenges that the arts, one of the paradoxes of the arts is that because it's the arts and it is expressive, that it is there for esthetics, meaning looks. But esthetics encompasses two things looks and feels. And the feel component. There is a researcher I always forget her name, but she had talked about if we think of the term esthetic is in the way of an anesthetic, right? An anesthetic is something that takes away our ability to feel. An esthetic is something that allows us to feel well, the feel is the just cause. And we may think, okay, well, people are singing and dancing. What is that about? What am I feeling in theater? I trained with incredible director named Kama Ginkas, and he used to say to us, did you feel something? Did it make you feel if you didn't feel something, just take it off the stage. Don't put it on the stage.
[00:30:01.830] - Akiba Abaka
Did you feel something? So following this thread here, if we start with how we want to make people feel, we have to ask questions as to, well, what are they feeling? Why are they feeling this way? Where are these feelings coming from? And from there, that Just cause. It's embedded in the work. However, moving forward, just from the theory, the philosophical response, when I look at the work of the arts culture that I'm from, particularly coming out of black and indigenous and black and immigrant cultures, there's always a just cause. Whether it was to save the lives of young people by exposing them to art so that they would not have when I was at the Strand Theater, so that they would instead in that out of school time, instead of being invited into activities that could get us in trouble, we were invited into the theater. Right? So the just cause was to have something for us to do between three and 08:00, which are the most dangerous hours for an inner city child. Okay. The moment after school or working, forming my first company up You Mighty Race, which was about telling the stories of African and African American people, those stories that were missing from the stages here in Boston or going to art Zemerson that was about elevating the stories of people from all, representing the diversity of the world and putting the diversity of the world on the stage and the diversity of the city and the audience.
[00:31:57.590] - Akiba Abaka
The just cause is always there. I always say that art is political because art is about people, right? And so I come from a practice and that might have been one of the reasons why Andres was interested in working with me. I actually come from a practice of what I call what I was trained. It's called liberation arts. So I come from a practice of Just Cause arts, and I don't know, the other world Just Cause arts.
[00:32:36.330] - Jill S. Robinson
So I'm so glad we went here because this thing, your experience is deeply here. And I'm sure Andres was interested in joining you up with BCC in hopes that it would do and enliven what the intention is of the mission and all the rest. But when I was talking with arts and cultural organizations, symphonies and opera and dance and even some theater organizations. Theater comes the closest. There's an emotive I can grab you as an audience member and I can make you feel and I can make you consider, or at least hope you will. But it was really remarkable to me how hard it was. And I stepped I had workshops where I stepped leaders through this question, let's develop a just cause. It was remarkable to me how hard it was to move from the what we do and how we do it. That's where I find if you look at the websites in Arts and Culture, there's a lot of here's what we do and we do it really excellently. That's what we do. And the why and the just cause, our communities will thrive if we're able to describe and enliven communities with these kinds of whys and just causes.
[00:34:09.850] - Jill S. Robinson
They just will. And Arts and Culture has an ability to do that in ways that so many other things can't. So I just appreciate so much what you said and boy, I want others to hear. I want others to be challenged by and imagine, okay, so we can come back here, but we've already spoken about it a little bit. But you both know and I'll remind my listeners that our work, when we engage with arts and cultural organizations, we put in the context of a wheel. And there are four components to this wheel that we feel like help make organizations sustainable. They are customer relationships. Who is the customer financial sustainability, how do we do that? What are the organizational frameworks that help ensure the progress and accountability and results happen? And then what is the we know that data doesn't do, people do. It doesn't matter how pretty the report or how strong the data. People do everything. So having people centric teams feels really important to us and we focus and in fact, Kibi, you said the customer are the kids, right. Is there anything else you would expand on related to?
[00:35:36.650] - Akiba Abaka
And one things I had to learn within the first week at BCC is that we don't call them kids. We say would. And I would say our singers. And it's interesting because when I think about even though we are a children's chorus, that our singers are considered kids, but the choice of words singers over children or students is stepping into that place of the humanity of people, right? And it's stepping into that place to say what are our customers, our market, what are they entering the space with? And I understanding what TRG. When I worked at Art Summerson, I used TRG. And so I'm very familiar with your I'm going to talk about this in the frame of markets. So if we say that our singers are our so that's BCC, but let's look at a theater or a symphony or a ballet, a dance company. The question that we. Want to ask is what does our market enter our space with? What are they entering with? Whether it's our singers, we may say our audience, well, what are they entering our space with? And so we want to define our customers by that. Not just their transactional aspect that we call out to them.
[00:37:22.590] - Akiba Abaka
We're calling out to them because they're children. We're calling out to them because they're kids. And that's in the title of our company. But they're singers. They have a voice, they have interests. It's all the things, right, that comes with marketing all the profiling of a customer and identifying that essential value and centering that and speaking to that. And so for us, we talk about the humanity, identifying the humanity in our market and speaking up to that, not just at that, but speaking and engaging in dialog and having the market join us in the discourse not from a top down or even bottom up transactional dialog, but actual discourse. So for example, at Art Semerson, I started a program called the Play Reading Book Club. And it's a very dynamic program and I'm only bringing it up here as an example around how we develop work that puts our market in dialog and discourse with us. And today at Art Summerson, they say that the Play Reading Book Club is the best way to create theater superfans. They call it a vehicle for creating a theater fan. As I come to Boston Children's Scores, I look at that and I say, oh, okay.
[00:38:57.280] - Akiba Abaka
So the value of that was that this program created theater superfans. So what do we transfer from the creation of this space? What was it about this program and this interaction that made people come back program after performance after performance? The value of the Play Reading Book Club was that people would come in high frequency to the theater. They didn't just come once for the season, they were actually showing up more than subscribers. And so how do you transfer these skills or this lens into the work as you identify your customer or your market? And so how do you apply that to our singers? Again, trying to find those quintessential value points that makes the singers feel that their humanity is being considered. And again, going back to our president, I have to go back to our president, know, the younger ones are looking up to us. We have to be something.
[00:40:08.770] - Andrés Holder
And I will say Akiva will get to see things that even I haven't seen in her know, year at work here. My first year at Dawson Children's Chorus was masked and socially distant and digital. But this fall, for example, we'll be going on the first overnight retreat that our singers have had. And when we talk about what they feel, that is something. We got feedback this summer when we went abroad internationally to Canada for a music festival. And they came back and said, I feel so connected to my peers. That was a practice that BCC had that we lost back in 2018, that we're bringing back, that Akiba is going to be able to experience with them, evaluate and say, how do we take this even further? Because, again, the product is that richness of connection that the young people that we serve get to experience here, they just don't get to experience other places. So I'm really excited for her first few months to have so many experiences for her to just sink her teeth into and really get to see the work in action so that we can develop it and take it to a place that honestly, I don't know where it's going to take us.
[00:41:16.570] - Andrés Holder
And I'm terrified and excited. And we have the team here to support the exploration. Right. I often talk about good trouble at our R D lab when it comes to being at the I mean, Jill, you were talking about the just cause, and let's call them whether it be traditional art forms that have been centered for a long time.
[00:41:38.060] - Akiba Abaka
Right.
[00:41:38.610] - Andrés Holder
Not because I have traditional art forms from my country that are not traditional here, but in this country in the context of arts and culture here. I do think there's questions that arts and culture organizations have to ask themselves about what is relevance going to be not today and tomorrow, when we have donor A, B and Fee still paying for this wonderful, extraordinary, exquisite production. But what is that going to be when today one in four people under the age of 18 have Latino Hispanic background? What is that going to be in 20 years? Who is going to be the person you're going to be talking to? Are we doing the work today to make sure that by the time that person is the customer that we have to put at the center, that we're actually set up for it, that our practices have evolved? I mean, it goes everywhere once you open that can of worms, and you have to start making time for it now because I think our industry is at risk of missing the ball with a huge transformation both in the consumer base and in the business model. BCC experienced the same that many of us experience with philanthropic dollars really going to basic need during the pandemic and the transfer of wealth that is happening.
[00:42:56.490] - Andrés Holder
Additional to the demographic shift, I think arts and culture organizations are actually not doing their job if they're not having this conversation today. I agree, and I encourage every single leader of an arts organization, if you're not sitting down with your leadership team, if you're not sitting down with your customer base and hearing from them, if you're not sitting down and hearing from the people who are not yet your customers, you are not doing your job. And we're putting the precious jewels that we are entrusted with carrying forward and the precious jewels that we have yet to bring forward in artistic expressions in many other places. We're putting that at risk.
[00:43:35.040] - Jill S. Robinson
Totally. That was so beautifully said. So humanity, like, that's a word. That's a word that I've heard. I feel seated in that word as a result of this conversation. The financial so the second quadrant financial of humanity. I was at a conference a few days ago, and I was around a bunch of people in tech, but man, oh man, oh man. You start talking about creativity and arts and music and people just open up. And so connecting humanity and arts, I know that there's a way to do this, and every organization might do it. Slightly different financial sustainability of BCC and humanity, how is that changing, Andre, because of these things that you're describing, these trends and realities you're describing, what do you see as required?
[00:44:31.910] - Andrés Holder
I mean, I see both our work having to show up in different places, and I see telling the story in different ways. I think our financial sustainability, if you looked at the kind of 20 years of history that I've been able to study, really looked at a model that was mostly contributed, 70% contributed, 30% earned, there's a tuition model in there that our singers pay tuition, and that's a ten step sliding scale. So presumably we are removing as many barriers as possible. I still have my own qualms with it. For example, the tuition scale doesn't account for a parent and child household at this level versus another household with two parents, one who's working maybe an older generation and younger generation at the same household income. But I digress. So there are these building blocks of how our revenue kind of took place. And I think when I talk about the work that we're doing in schools, for example, that's new, that started two years ago, and we did it for free the first year. It was an investment. We sunk in the dollars of time and energy to build this network of opportunities, and now we're at the place where that line of business alone has crossed the $100,000 threshold.
[00:45:42.650] - Andrés Holder
It's still a nascent business, but it's one where we know there's demand, and it's one that is actually aligned intrinsically with the work that we're doing. Going to a title one school actually is exposing and bringing in and elevating the stories of so many children that may not be in the chorus currently. So it allows us to listen. It allows us to learn and test. So to me, the work that we are doing in developing programmatic offerings, the work that we're doing in bringing the community together, actually touches the financial resilience of the organization because we are changing the revenue model. We are changing where the sources of income are going to come from in the future to sustain this work. And I also think it's going to shake out the things that are no longer important or relevant and I don't know what those things are. Is it going to be difficult when we get to a point and we have to reckon with the reality that this thing we've done for 21 years is no longer yielding the value we thought it did. That's going to be painful, but hopefully we will have an answer and a solution.
[00:46:42.700] - Andrés Holder
Being in community with all these folks, that actually shakes out our PNL, shakes out all of our budgeting processes and says this is the new thing, right? And we have to go into that because that's what we are all seeing and understanding from the facts that we're exploring. So I think our sustainability just overall, I do desire a healthier split in the contributed earned share of the burden. I am prepared for individual giving who's been a significant driver for BCC to decrease. I think people have understood us as an arts and culture institution and at the same time, as we show up in the education space, opportunities keep just showing up. Our Marianne Tefanara, who's our fantastic institutional giving wizard, just keeps saying now that Akiba is here, we really got to prioritize because we have 25 million opportunities that we could be in conversation with folks to fund the work in a really different way that we've never been funded in before. So we talked about Nimble earlier, but that's what we're doing. There's a lot of ear to the ground, small test. What's coming back is the community reacting to this and that's going to be how we're going to find the new path forward.
[00:48:01.200] - Andrés Holder
Because the one that is will carry us over for a number of years, but it won't carry us over for to.
[00:48:08.010] - Akiba Abaka
I want to jump in here. Jill and Elevate, go back to your question around where do you start when you look at good trouble and also hold in this Andres's description, what he's describing is a good trouble model for organizational, for leadership in the 21st century where the actual bottom line is not just the numbers. As far as okay, we're 70% contributed, 30% individual. When we think about, I think incorporation, we say, well, what's the bottom line or what's the return on the investment? How do you build a 21st century arts organization where the ROI is the advancement of people?
[00:49:11.570] - Jill S. Robinson
Yeah, right.
[00:49:12.420] - Akiba Abaka
How do you measure that? And what Andres is pointing out, he's just named across about four systems in the organization, starting with the finances, how you have to reshape the organization if that's what you want. Your bottom line is if we want businesses, usual arts organization to move forward, then there is no need for good trouble. There is no need to deconstruct, there is no need for a remodel. What we deal with is maintenance. The 21st century arts organization needs a remodeling. And inside of that remodeling is not just the need only for more money and more influence and more people, but what are we resourcing with more money when we have more money? What does the more money resource when we have more influential players on our staff and on our team, and we're producing these high visibility players on our stages? What is that resourcing in our community? What is the return? And so there was my good friends at Wolf Brown, they talk about intrinsic value, right? How do we measure that? So we may want to measure the intrinsic value, but truly, it's not just is your market showing up, but how are they showing up and what is your market demanding as they show up?
[00:50:43.440] - Akiba Abaka
So it's not just that we have our singers, but how are they showing up and what are they demanding of the arts organization and what are they demanding of themselves? Again, for this young man, 1617 year olds, to say to his peers, okay, scripted from his intelligence, the adults did not tell him, here's your script. Say this to your peers. I demand that we carry ourselves with respect because younger children, younger singers in this company is looking up to us. And we must model the self respect that we want them to have for themselves as well. That there I sat down and my mind was blown and I said, how do we resource that? How do we create give this young person, this singer, a return on his it took courage for him to address his peers like that, right? How does that show up in our budget? How does that show up in our staffing? What are the resources that would allow this young person's clarion call to his peers to be supported? And how do we advance that? So I really like the way that Andres points that out, but I just want to elevate that this is 21st Century Arts.
[00:51:57.100] - Akiba Abaka
This is where we're going, and it's not going back because the old model is not working.
[00:52:03.380] - Jill S. Robinson
Yeah, I think about this. I just love this conversation so much. And I think about the most traditional I came out of the classical music field talk about it's a tradition bound framework and very there are exceptions, of course, and gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous ones. But I think about what if, the what if, the what if those organizations turned themselves on musician, on the musicians, the adult musicians, and said a huge part of our objective is to enable your impact in a different way, enable you and grow you rather than this is not the right word, but it's the one that comes to mind. Use your talent to an end called revenue. I don't know what the answers are for individual businesses, as I've described, but yours is clear. And so if we go to frameworks going back to one of the questions I asked, I listened to you talk, akiba and, you know, one of the frameworks being that I'm a singer and my relationship does not end when I leave, there's some ongoing relationship that helps BCC understand the impact of what it's doing in the world. That excites me just listening to you.
[00:53:41.020] - Jill S. Robinson
But you referenced it, Andres. This competency framework, I don't know if that's the right framework, but organizational frameworks is one of the things that we know and see have an impact on people achieving results. And so is that the right framework to think about right now, or is there another one that you would mean?
[00:54:01.780] - Andrés Holder
I think that's the framework that we are continuing to work off of, that our evolution starts from right. So getting Akiba in her seat, our music director, Kenneth Griffith got to his seat maybe three, four months before Akiba.
[00:54:16.600] - Jill S. Robinson
Yes.
[00:54:16.960] - Andrés Holder
So their collaboration and their partnership to really fully explore what currently is our competency framework and creating what will be our blank framework, I don't know that it will be competency. It might be something else is what I'm excited and terrified at the same time of. Because it means, again, losing some things, adding some others, and it just means change. I do think there's a lot of other things that we are slowly but surely tinkering with. If we talk about financial sustainability, putting in the measurements for that, and what is the conversation that a finance committee of the board is having with a finance staff person, and how do we frame that for the staff at working? My colleague Irene, who is our managing director, and myself have been working on a salary and compensation framework that we've been using for the last two and a half years to address some inequities that I discovered when I got here that along the lines of gender really were challenging for me to accept and be responsible for. So there are a lot of other smaller, probably less visible things that are happening on the back end that are addressing equity in a way beyond just the framework that serves the singers.
[00:55:40.800] - Andrés Holder
And I think seeing the connectivity between each of those pieces of work as integral to the success of the organization and to the fulfillment of our mission is the part that I think sets this organization apart. I think trying to convince someone that a pay equity study is totally linked to the number of children who are in the organization might be a little tall of an order for traditional PWIs, but at Boston Children's Course, our board and our staff are pretty aligned. When you start talking about equity and pretty educated in the level of investment and commitment you need to have to actually yield that result. So I'm just so fortunate to be able to lead this organization and to keep asking the sometimes annoying but silly questions that you have to ask them. Why do we do it that way? And why are we still and do we want to keep doing that that way? Okay, just checking. Let's just come back to this every month or every three whatever it needs to be. Yeah. This organization has, I think, the magic potion for a lot of really potent change that I'm excited for Akiban, Kenneth to be the kind of megaphone by which all of this gets shared with the community at large.
[00:56:56.090] - Andrés Holder
And while we might not have all the answers for ourselves today, I know that the work that we are doing with Akiba and Kenneth and the rest of the team is going to start getting clearer and clearer and clearer the longer time goes on, because I've already seen it happen in the two months that Akiba has been like. Thank you for being here, for clarifying that for me. I've been asking this question for so, yeah, yeah.
[00:57:18.030] - Jill S. Robinson
I'm not at all surprised to hear you. As I listen to you talk, I think about another organization that I've had on this podcast that also drives positive change. They're a theater company in Phoenix, Arizona, and a framework that they use for planning is one that is agile framework, and they've been doing it for a decade, and I've been honored to be part of that. But the framework of Quarterly Review about, are we actually achieving what we said we wanted to achieve? Is that working? Why do we do that way? There's something about frameworks for action that is really catching my attention right now. At a time when the field requires, indeed must change. And to Akiva's point, you don't have to. You can be in maintenance mode, but the truth is that the next 1520 years will have an impact on your organization's ability to thrive, or I think in some cases survive, because so much is changing. Okay. And then the last piece of this wheel for me is people. Centric teams. People have been all over our conversation. Humanity is at the center of our conversation. I don't know if there's anything more that you would say about your specific organizational or leadership approach to the people that we haven't set, but I just want to give us a chance to talk specifically about that.
[00:58:58.320] - Andrés Holder
I would love to hear Akiva talk about this because we've been in the early stages of this new group of people that I call the leadership team, and I want to have a different name for it, but we haven't gone to the brainstorming yet. But there are six of us who are really tasked with transforming the work inside and out and getting to the place where we have resources for six people at that level was kind of the core of my work for the first two years. So our director of development, maria, who is our institutional advancement expert, irene, our managing director, kenneth, our music director, akiba and myself formed this brain trust of collaborative thought. And if you ran the personality test and all the background and where we come from, we are all over the place. 50 50 split on gender, LGBTQ members, races, all over the place, national origin, all of the perspectives, a lot of perspectives are present. I will say every perspective is present. But what it is creating in this kind of group of people is the opportunity for us to just put people at the center every time.
[01:00:11.320] - Andrés Holder
And one of the things that I'm hoping is going to happen by the end of a year of us really working together closely is developing a way that the BCC way of managing, the BCC way of planning, the BCC way of programming all those things have existed for the organization for a long time and have been successful. But as we enter this new time with this very new structure, we ought to actually revisit what those things are and create a path forward that we in the room are agreeing to. I think it's going to be interesting for me, as the person who holds the power in the room, to see that power, for other people to step up and create that kind of turbocharged, people driven way of thinking. That I see being a differentiator for us and being able to attract the talent we need to do. The work that we need to do. And that's just on the staff people side. That doesn't touch the donor conversations we're having that doesn't touch the conversation we need to have with parents and with singers. But it's hopefully an incubator space that then has to focusing on staff in my eyes, has the ability to replicate across the board.
[01:01:23.890] - Andrés Holder
Because if the six of us are creating a new mechanism by which we manage our work and elevate our teams, that's going to actually propel forward to all the rest of the teams at the organization. So it's again terrifying and exciting at the same time because you never know what the outcome is going to be. But you're just happy to be in the work and happy to be developing it alongside colleagues who are brilliant.
[01:01:46.330] - Jill S. Robinson
Yeah.
[01:01:50.660] - Akiba Abaka
Going back to this people centric, that's a popular term during the pandemic, as we started to emerge from under the mask, something happened. They called it the great resignation. And I think in a lot of ways organizations or leaders in organizations use that as a way, as a scapegoat. Actually, I thought the term the great resignation was actually a scapegoat that let leadership off the hook. And what it really was, was people were saying we've just survived a pandemic and my survival as a human being is that I be seen, heard and valued. But I also have space to express myself. So no, I will not be oppressed in the workplace. And even though I consider myself a high millennial, I have to give my millennial generation the praise and my gen zers. The younger generation saying, this is how I'm going to show up in the workplace. And I won't be oppressed. Because if I could survive this thing, if I could wear a mask 24 hours a day, then I need to be seen, heard, and respected in a particular way. So we talked about the great resignation, but it completely changed the workforce because we saw one thing that emerged and the one thing that I didn't hear.
[01:03:35.640] - Akiba Abaka
The entrepreneurial spirit emerged en masse. They called it the great resignation, but people left the side. Hustles took the lead. Hustle right. We saw the instagram, the instagram chores, the entrepreneurs that were making their money and making their fortunes through social media or through the gig economy. The Uber drivers, the delivery people went back to being butchered, bakers and candlestick makers for themselves. And so when I think about so I'm going to go back and age myself as a high millennial, but I'm a Gen Xer. And when I was coming out of high school and entering college, the one thing they used to beat into our heads or promote let me not use that term beat in our heads, but promote is this notion of what is the entrepreneurial spirit? How do we build the entrepreneurial spirit in young people in our workforce so that as they enter the workforce, people are feeling fully responsible for the work they're doing and they're not just entering as route and remote work, as just routine workers. And so part of when we talk about good trouble and centering the humanity is that we center. What is the problem as a staff member sees it and how they see it to solve it?
[01:05:11.830] - Akiba Abaka
What is that entrepreneurial spirit? And I know that there was some controversy around the entrepreneurial spirit, but we do have to look at the fact that when people left the workforce during the quote unquote great resignation, they went and found they picked up sticks. They found ways to do for themselves and be the leaders of their own destiny. And how can people create destiny for themselves inside of the workforce?
[01:05:39.340] - Jill S. Robinson
This thing is another thing that has captured my imagination a whole lot. There's another book that Seth Godin, his latest one that he's just published called The Song of Significance. It's a book of Seth's in the ways that he writes these small, as he calls, mini rants that are compiled into a book. But the changes that we're driving at TRG, we're doing some experimentation that I've talked to you, Andres, about, but not you, Akiba. And it's designed to put people into self managing groups, decentralized self managing groups. The people who are closest to the work have an ability to be heard, to lead and to define what's the most important thing to be doing in the context of very clearly articulated goals for a year. But how those goals are achieved, that's yours to imagine and enliven and make happen with the idea of this reigniting, entrepreneurialism reigniting, a sense of passion and excitement about the work and really, hopefully creating a group of people whose impact they feel really connected to having driven on behalf of our field and our clients. So everything that you're describing, I think you're right. I think you're right.
[01:07:14.170] - Jill S. Robinson
Nobody said it that way. The great resignation enabled leaders to go, oh, well, and took them off the hook. And instead, the question is, how am I creating a culture in an environment where people feel like, oh, man, this is where I can do my best life work?
[01:07:32.820] - Akiba Abaka
Yes.
[01:07:34.660] - Jill S. Robinson
That will translate to the things that you're trying to achieve. It will. It will. Well, listen, you too, what a real delight to talk to you both about what you're trying to do there and what you're currently already transforming transformation of these organizations, these amoebas that are made up of people and spirits and humans and humanity so that we occupy this rarefied air, right? Like arts and culture has an ability to connect with and make communities better. I mean, that's rarefied air and space and leading the way is about the people and ways in which change is happening, and you two represent it along with Kenneth and everybody else that, you know, working with to drive change for singers in Boston and for the community of Boston and the world, clearly. Because when you're out there, you're touching people. I'm grateful that you spent time on this Leading the Way episode with me. Akiba, thank you. Thank you for being here. Andreas, thank you for being my friend and for joining me on this podcast and helping our listeners see what you're up to.
[01:09:09.330] - Andrés Holder
Thank you for having us. It's been an absolute pleasure.
[01:09:11.830] - Jill S. Robinson
Yes.
[01:09:12.500] - Akiba Abaka
Thank you so much, Jill. This is incredible inquiry and very necessary for our field. Thank you.
[01:09:20.340] - TRG Arts
That's all for this episode of Leading the Way with Gilles Robinson, brought to you by TRG Arts. Thanks for listening and believing that insightful, daring, and innovative leadership is the way to a more resilient future for the arts and cultural industry. Make sure to subscribe to Leading the Way on Apple podcasts and Spotify. And if you found this episode helpful, please rate and review the show. For additional resources. And to sign up for the podcast newsletter, we invite you to visit our website at leadingthewepodcast.com.