Small Organizations, Ensembles, Artist Collectives

Since so much decision-making in small groups is made by just a handful of individuals, members of small organizations are encouraged to also read the Individual Artists, Performers, Composers section. We invite you to try to use this how-to guide to help move hesitant good will into meaningful action.

Similarly, since every large organization was once a small organization, we invite small organizations to read the section on Large Organizations to think ahead to future possibilities as part of your 5 year cultural equity plan.

Values

Reflection

How do you articulate your values as an organization?

Perhaps your mission statement explicitly names racial or cultural equity as a value. If it doesn’t, why not? Either way, your vision and values can still affirm racial and cultural equity through your decision-making.

Do your bylaws or corporate charter name racial and cultural equity as a priority?

Instead of asking yourself: are there specific individuals I need to be including? Sometimes try asking yourself: Are there people I am excluding through my actions or choices? (paraphrasing Lecolion Washington)

Possible Actions

• Include antiracism and/or pro-cultural equity language in your mission statement.
• Include specific language about prioritizing racial and cultural equity in your bylaws.
• Include language about your commitment to racial and cultural equity in all public facing information and/or concert materials.
• Reflect on the following questions and begin adopting the following tactics and practices.

Solidarity

Reflection

While solidarity may be more noticeable with large organizations—which are comprised of more stakeholders and are financially robust—small organizations, ensembles, and artist collectives have fewer members, and are thus able to move more swiftly to reach a consensus. How can your ensemble capitalize on this advantage to express solidarity in time-sensitive situations?

Ask yourself: Does your solidarity...
Last longer than a news cycle?
Happen when no one is looking?
Take away time from other things you could be doing?
Change how you spend your money?
Cause you to speak out when no one wants to listen? Nii Addo Abrahams, M.A., M. Div. (on Twitter & Instagram @_nickyflash_)

Read more in Stamborski, Zimmermann, and Gregory's Scaffolded Anti-Racist Resources.

Possible Actions

• Stand by your marginalized colleagues. Support them and speak up for them when they face exclusion or retribution. Offer to relay messages or act as a spokesperson if desired. If you have stable employment or tenure, this can be especially useful. If your group is well-known or has cultural capital, consider how invoking solidarity from your group’s platform will encourage others to do so.
• Support and work with colleagues who have been targeted for retributive exclusion as a result of their engagement in advocacy or activism against inequality.
• However, respect autonomy. Just because one wants to be helpful does not mean they are helping. It is a common pitfall to appoint yourself someone’s savior. Ask them how you can be there for them and respect what they tell you.
• Do not participate with or benefit from organizations who have been publicly named as engaging in discriminatory practices—particularly if they have failed to address them adequately.
• Reject advice not to get involved in issues merely because they are too 'sensitive' or 'political'. Such hesitation greatly hinders solidarity.
• When serving on panels, juries, etc, be explicit about issues of bias and inequity.
• Expect ensemble members to attend shows by (and purchase tickets or make a donation to) BIPOC-led ensembles and artists.
• Expect ensemble members to volunteer for and donate to BIPOC-led community organizations.

Transparency

Reflections

How can organizations track data and use it to support cultural equity in their work? You cannot manage what you cannot measure so organizations must get in the habit of understanding how they are affected by bias and blind spots. All things being equal, arbitrary aspects of one’s identity wouldn’t have to matter; but due to years of oppressive policies that continue through today, identity matters very much when it comes to understanding inequality and oppression.

“Colorblindness” is not better. Data—like a recent study by the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs—show how talented staff & artists are pushed out of our field, and countless anecdotes speak to our colleagues facing hostility and oppression on the basis of their identity. To insist on colorblindness is to reject the very real experiences of our colleagues and refuse to acknowledge and engage with considerable data that shows the oppressive nature of our field.

Possible Actions

• Track demographic and financial data; use baseline metrics to set future goals.
• Share data about your organization publicly. Since small organizations account for a significant percentage of the “new music” field, compiling details about demographic data, financial information, and cultural equity in programming choices would be an extremely useful collective action (especially since many organizations fall below size thresholds to report such data in forms like the IRS 990 or SMU’s DataArts project).
• Share best practices that are working for you. Many existing guides and how-to’s on racial equity are designed for mid-size and large nonprofits. By pooling collective knowledge, we can enhance the knowledge base of the sector with respect to smaller organizations and help support systems change.
• Maintain clear internal policies about how you determine substitute lists and/or prospects for new commissions. Closed-door decision-making and last-minute choices spurred by grant deadlines tend to reproduce a status quo. Facing pressure to make decisions, we tend to reach first within our predominantly homogenous social networks. Transparent procedures tend to offer the time and space necessary to consider who you may be excluding from your thinking.
• Develop workplace policies. What happens if a colleague or ensemble-mate engages in abusive or harassing behavior? Do you have clarity how you would interrupt such behavior, or what steps would lead to disciplinary action or separation from your group?
• Calls for scores can be a particularly rich area of learning; at best, you can connect with talented artists and support their work. At worst, calls for scores can be predatory and perpetuate inequality.

Resources

Reflections

How you spend resources can be one of the most important articulations of your values: how much of your budget goes toward artist fees for artists of color? How many BIPOC/ALAANA artists do you commission?

If you analyze how resources are allocated, what trends do you notice? Do your bigger-budget, grant-funded projects tend to feature White men, while your low-budget “community engagement” concerts feature more women of color? Where is bias creeping in to your decision-making?

How do wages like commission fees compare when tracked by identity (gender, race, etc)? Is there any bias?

Possible Actions

• Hire, promote, and direct capital toward artists such as: artists of color; women, trans, and non-binary artists; disabled artists; undocumented artists; and all other artists who have faced exclusion because of their identities, and/or whose identities are historically underrepresented in our field.
• Hire BIPOC photographers, sound engineers, designers, consultants, accountants, editors, and other service providers. Purchase goods (catering, office supplies, office furniture, equipment, gear) from BIPOC-owned businesses. Ensure you pay BIPOC vendors at or above going rates.
• Expect ensemble members to attend shows by (and purchase tickets or make a donation to) BIPOC-led ensembles and artists.
• Invest in and initiate collaborations with BIPOC-led ensembles. Considering splitting double bills with BIPOC-led ensembles (share the ticket revenue). Rent venues owned by people of color collaborate with BIPOC curators and festival directors.
• Purchase scores, recordings, and books created by BIPOC artists. Purchase them from the artist directly or from the publisher or label.
• Consider switching your institution’s accounts to a Black-owned bank. Read How to Support Black-Owned Financial Institutions in 2020 at The Simple Dollar to learn more.
• If you have a space, share it with BIPOC community members when you are not using it. If you have specialized equipment, share it with BIPOC community members when you are not using it. Create partnerships with organizations in your community to understand what resources you have that others need.
• Consider what percentage of your annual income you can donate to BIPOC-led activist organizations. Make recurring monthly donations to the organizations doing anti-racist work in your community. Make your pledge public and hold yourself accountable.
• Utilize your own donations to spur donations among your peers and supporters. Challenge peer organizations to match your donations. Offer a raffle, prize, or other perk as an incentive.
• Spend money on books or resources to raise your level of sophistication in talking about cultural equity; for example, purchase a copy of books like Ijeoma Oluo’s So you want to talk about race or Ibram Kendi’s How to be an Antiracist. Read them as a group.

Learning

Reflections

Investing time to learn is critical to a pursuit of social justice, cultural equity, and anti-racism, especially if your organization is relatively homogenous—and particularly so if most members are White, male, cis, straight, and/or able-bodied and able-minded. This step is especially important if you want to help but are unsure how.

Possible Actions

• If you are new to thinking about cultural equity, as recommended in the Individual Artists section, consider the Scaffolded Anti-Racist Resource a terrific and wide-ranging resource to start, written by Anna Stamborski, M. Div Candidate, Nikki Zimmermann, M. Div, Bailie Gregory, M. Div, M.S. Ed. It contains activities, books, podcasts, resources, film, media, etc.
• Research and learn about new repertoire. Combatting the “myth of absence” of talented artists of color is one of the most impactful strategies that small organizations and artist collectives can often have. Develop lists of ALAANA artists and repertoire by people of color that your organization would seek to present.
• Commit to deadlines and effective project management. Learning new things takes time and tenacity. Without clear expectations and goals, goodwill often fails to materialize into action. Set dates by which you expect to have certain results, with clarity about who will produce what.
• Learn about workplace best practices and labor laws. Many small organizations cannot afford to have professional HR or operations staff so questions of labor standards, benefits administration, or workplace equity are accidentally ignored. Failure in proper labor practices tends to perpetuate inequality and disproportionately impact already-marginalized people.
• Invest time in learning about fair hiring practices as it regards gender, disability, or race/ethnicity, as well as programs in your state like paid family leave, unemployment, workers comp, and disability, and independent contractor vs employment status. These are regulated state by state so best to consult your local state agency, chamber of commerce, better business bureau, or similar.

Resources

• ArtsPool is an innovative new program providing support for labor law, benefits administration, regulatory compliance, hiring, separation, and more.
• Fractured Atlas has an HR Bootcamp designed to equip leaders with a toolkit of best practices in cultivating equitable workplaces through fair staffing & labor standards.

Continuing Practice

Reflections

What might your organization look like in 5 years if your cultural equity plan is successful?

Possible Actions

• Re-visit repertoire and artist lists regularly. New artists come to prominence and new works come into being. Set goals to re-commit to research on a quarterly or yearly basis.
• Assess your role in the gentrification of your community. If you have a space, learn about the history of the site and about any efforts to slow or reverse gentrification in the area. Donate or volunteer to help those efforts.
• Continue learning as language continues to change and evolve. More nuanced and sophisticated language supports more nuanced and sophisticated conversations. This is a perpetual and largely inevitable cycle.

Sooner or later, whatever language we use to describe [a] group is going to become irradiated by [our] negative attitudes toward that group, and so the word is going to become negative, maybe even an insult, so we need a new word. Gene Demby in Code Switch: What it means to be a person of color