Page 30 - APAP - Inside Arts - Conference 2020

TURNING THE TIDE
HOW DO WE LEAD IN A WORLD OF TRAUMATIC HEADLINES AND HIGH ANXIETIES?
ANSWERING THAT QUESTION IS THE WORK OF ARTS PROFESSIONALS, SAYS APAP|NYC LEADERSHIP.
BY LINDA L. NELSON
T ake nearly any headline from the daily news – children in cages,
deportations, crackdowns on
visas, racist rhetoric and violence, melting ice caps and other climate disasters, unstable economies, soaring medical costs, the rising opioid addiction – and it’s no wonder that anxieties are running high. These topics are no strangers to arts leaders as well. They are often central to artmaking, but they are also integral to the daily work of arts professionals. How do we lead when so many are on edge?
The immediate context of these times is just one of the challenges faced by leadership today. In planning APAP|NYC 2020 – the theme of which is “Risk and Resilience” – the four conference committee co-chairs Lynn Fisher, Shanta Thake, Beatrice Thomas
and Martin Wollesen, with APAP director
of programs and resources Krista Bradley,
have grappled with the tension and anxiety of these topics as they sought to create the space in which to convene a widely diverse industry of performing arts professionals.
The resounding question is: What is leadership now – and how will we as a field continue to embrace risk and resilience as foundational?
THE TIMES KEEP CHANGING, THE TRAUMA CONTINUES
“I live in the state of Texas,” said Fisher, founding director of Frontera Arts Performing Arts Management and Consulting, just days after a gunman murdered 22 people in a hate crime targeting Latino peoples at an El Paso WalMart. “It’s challenging and traumatizing. I live in a place where there is a lot of affluence, affluence right next to poverty. Multimillion dollar houses and five minutes away there are trailer parks with undocumented workers who are probably the ones who have built their
28 INSIDE ARTS CONFERENCE 2020