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The Equitable Arts Infrastructure Research Group and The University of Texas at Austin College of Fine Arts hosted a national symposium focused on the enduring challenge of cultural, economic, and racial equity in the nation’s performing arts sector. Over two days, through conversations with cultural professionals and humanities scholars, this convening addressed gaps in understanding about how performing artists in the United States work and how their work is supported systemically. By defining, theorizing, and historicizing new methods and approaches to an equitable arts infrastructure, this symposium creates a foundation for new understandings of how educational institutions and cultural professionals can support each other.
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Friday 28 February
Welcome from the Equitable Arts Infrastructure Research Group
7:30 a.m. PST (San Francisco, UTC -8) / 9:30 a.m. CST (Austin, UTC -6) / 10:30 a.m. EST (New York, UTC -5)
Speakers: Paul Bonin-Rodriguez, Charlotte Canning, Sarah Wilbur
Morning Session - Value/Mission
8 a.m. PST (San Francisco, UTC -8) / 10 a.m. CST (Austin, UTC -6) / 11 a.m. EST (New York, UTC -5)
Nonprofit performing arts organizations are pressured by industry standards and funding demands to prominently include their mission and values statements as part of their stories. To this end, it could be argued that an organization’s mission and values are its story. If telling a story is a way of assigning worth to what the story narrates, then the respondents in this session stand uniquely positioned to address:
- How artists, arts researchers, and/or arts intermediaries are defining value in the performing arts today and to what purposes.
- How statements of value between arts stakeholders with differential power stand in tension or alignment with artists’ creative aspirations.
- In what contexts are alternative value propositions necessary to manifest change toward greater economic and cultural justice in the performing arts ecology?
Led by:
- Paul Bonin-Rodriguez, professor of Theatre and Dance, University of Michigan
- Colleen Hooper, associate professor and coordinator of Dance Education, Point Park University
- Todd London, author, founding director of The Third Bohemia
- Koritha Mitchell, professor of English, Boston University
- Adam Fong, program officer, Performing Arts, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
Afternoon Session - Data/Story
11 a.m. PST (San Francisco, UTC -8) / 1 p.m. CST (Austin, UTC -6) / 2 p.m. EST (New York, UTC -5)
Since the quote-unquote digital turn, the transformation of aspects of arts creation, labor, and production into digital data has created new forms of valuation and understanding. The automation of aspects of artmaking due to technological advances—from the increased adoption of moving lights to the advent of Artificial Intelligence (AI)-generated content—have fueled vital changes in artistic cooperation that will continue to impact opportunities for future generations of artists working in live performance. From the data being used to account for the value of performance practice (to grantmakers) to the data generated from engagement with technologies that spark the emergence of new performance forms, this last session asks for expert insights on the following questions:
- What historical developments in the realm of data and technology have meaningfully contributed to resource (dis)parity in the performing arts?
- How do existing technologies—however well-intended in their design—contribute to infrastructural inequities in live performance?
- What kinds of narratives are emerging today, through data collection and technological advancements, to advance parity of opportunity, resource redistribution, or reparative investments in performing artists?
Led by:
- Derek Miller, professor of English and Director of Graduate Studies, Harvard University
- Esther Kim Lee, Frances Hill Fox professor of Theater Studies, International Comparatives Studies and History, and the director of Asian American and Diaspora Studies, Duke University
- Martine Kei Green-Rogers, dean of the Theatre School, DePaul University
- Brian Herrera, associate professor of Theater, Princeton University
- Wenhua Di, research director, SMU DataArts;
Late Afternoon Session - Capital/Resources
1 p.m. PST (San Francisco, UTC -8) / 3 p.m. CST (Austin, UTC -6) / 4 p.m. EST (New York, UTC -5)
Capital in the performing arts is often framed as financial, but the values that the performing arts generate are not only economic. Advocates have frequently argued for the cultural, psychological, spiritual, social, and political meanings of the arts, meanings that cannot be easily accounted for on a year-end spreadsheet. If, then, capital is generated in arts organizing through the exchange of commodities for money and through felt impressions that are fundamentally non-monetizable, non-reproducible, and unavailable outside of those in immediate attendance. In the spirit of nuancing conversation about resources beyond binary debates about scarcity and abundance, this session asks:
- How do you see artists and arts advocates negotiating multiple forms of capital in their daily work in live performance?
- Through what kinds of strategies are artists and arts advocates struggling—or striking a balance between—generating revenue and generating other forms of meaning (social capital, environmental stewardship, trust)?
- What steps might economic investors in the performing arts take to support noncommodifiable, indeterminate, or otherwise “iterative” approaches to performance creation and facilitation in local communities?
- What kinds of programmatic, curatorial, or artistic approaches do you see taking shape in response to COVID-era threats to capitalization?
- What new or alternative forms of capital would you like to acknowledge as emergent or operative in the post-COVID cultural ecology?
Led by:
- Michael Sy Uy, associate professor of Musicology and director of the American Music Research Center, University of Colorado Boulder
- Bob Bursey, executive and artistic director, Texas Performing Arts
- Lara Evans, vice president, First Peoples Fund;
- Sixto Wagan, project director, BIPOC Arts Network & Fund
Saturday, March 1, 2025
Welcome from the Equitable Arts Infrastructure Research Group (9:30-10:00 AM)
7:30 a.m. PST (San Francisco, UTC -8) / 9:30 a.m. CST (Austin, UTC -6) / 10:30 a.m. EST (New York, UTC -5)
Speakers: Stephen Enniss and Betty Brumbalow, Director of the Harry Ransom Center, introduced by Charlotte Canning and Paul Bonin-Rodriguez
Plenary Conversation - United States Representative Chellie Pingree (D-ME 1st District) and Dr. Charlotte Canning (10:00-11:30 AM)
8 a.m. PST (San Francisco, UTC -8) / 10 a.m. CST (Austin, UTC -6) / 11 a.m. EST (New York, UTC -5)
Chellie Pingree is a former farmer and small businesswoman, and she has served as the Congressional Representative for Maine’s 1st District since 2009.
Dr. Charlotte Canning is the Frank C. Erwin, Jr. Centennial Professor of Drama and a recipient of the University of Texas Systems Board of Regents’ Outstanding Teaching Award. She has won the 2016 Joe A. Callaway Prize for Best Book on Drama or Theater for On the Performance Front: US Theatre and Internationalism (Palgrave Macmillan) and the 2006 Barnard Hewitt Award for Outstanding Research in Theatre History for The Most American Thing in America: Circuit Chautauqua as Performance (University of Iowa Press). She has served as president of the American Society for Theatre Research and Director of the Oscar G. Brockett Center for Theatre History and Criticism. She is a past chair of the Faculty Council and the secretary of the General Faculty and Faculty Council.
Together Rep. Pingree and Dr. Canning discuss the possibilities and liabilities of federal cultural policy, particularly as it relates to the performing arts.
Afternoon Session - Labor/Work (1-2:30 PM)
11 a.m. PST (San Francisco, UTC -8) / 1 p.m. CST (Austin, UTC -6) / 2 p.m. EST (New York, UTC -5)
Artistic production is driven by many people dedicating efforts to create. This session focuses on the practical dimensions of the artistic process and the weather of arts work on the body, individual and collective, in local contexts. Arts and culture workers have long experienced the precarity of participating in a flexible workforce, and the casualized and adjunct character of artistic employment has had a tremendous impact on what the performing arts can and cannot do. Given the multitude of shaping forces impacting arts opportunities previously discussed at this gathering, this session’s contributors reflect on the following:
- How human labor practices have been affected by the inequitable conditions of creative work.
- How are artists making demands on the support systems and institutions that they variably inhabit, in light of the increased precarity and vulnerability of the pandemic ecology?
- How or in what contexts can arts labor organizing benefit from broader engagement with labor advocacy in non-arts areas (programs, political education, organizing)?
What are the current risks in configuring art as a vital and viable form of labor or “work”?
Led by:
- Led by Sarah Wilbur, associate professor of the Practice in Dance, Duke University
- Alex Beasley, University of Texas at Austin
- Alys Holden, partner, Keene Consulting
- Angie Kim, president and CEO, Center for Cultural Innovation
- Laura Penn, executive director, Stage Directors and Choreographers Society
- Laura Zabel, executive director, Springboard for the Arts
Afternoon Session 2 - Market/Audience
1 p.m. PST (San Francisco, UTC -8) / 3 p.m. CST (Austin, UTC -6) / 4 p.m. EST (New York, UTC -5)
Markets motivate the movement of arts organizers in hidden and explicit ways. Still, markets are often discussed as abstract, de-humanizing forces that shape and constrain the flow of resources and contribute to deep wealth disparity in United States culture. Audiences, in contrast, are generally defined humanistically, as the intended publics for artistic production. Since the arts champions that have been invited to contribute to this session each interface regularly with market forces, they were invited to address the following questions:
- What kinds of market forces de-humanize, exclude, or contribute to systemic inequities or in the performing arts?
- What kinds of markets have proven “hospitable" to specific ways of working in live performance?
- How might arts advocates and those with decision making power in the arts strategically channel resources toward the manifestation of economic and cultural justice through their engagement with market forces?
- How do you approach or perceive of “audiences” invested in live performance in light of these ever-changing market dynamics?
Led by:
- Jasmine Jamillah Mahmoud, assistant professor of Theatre History and Performance Studies, University of Washington
- Kevin Moriarty, executive artistic director, Dallas Theater Center
- Nataki Garrett, CEO/executive director, The Ladder Leadership Services
- Donna Walker-Kuhne, founder, Walker International Communications Group
- James Fuller, audience insight manager, Ballet Austin
Concluding Remarks and Continuing the Conversation
3 p.m. PST (San Francsico, UTC -8) / 5 p.m. CST (Austin, UTC -6) / 6 p.m. EST (New York, UTC -5)
After the symposium’s formal gatherings, we wanted to enter into a time of reflection, brainstorming, and planning for the future of arts infrastructures. What provocations do we want to create for the future of arts and cultural workers? Where should we direct energy and focus in the coming year?
Led by:
Paul Bonin-Rodriguez, professor of Theatre and Dance, University of Michigan
Charlotte Canning, professor of Performance as Public Practice, University of Texas at Austin
These events are co-sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities, Humanities Texas, The University of Texas at Austin College of Fine Arts and the Department of Theatre and Dance.
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