MUSIC CREDIT:

“NY” composed and performed by Kosta T from the cd Soul Sand, used courtesy of the Free Music Archive. 

Lora Bottinelli: We know that participating in community-based arts and traditions makes people healthier. It contributes to wellbeing and we know that when you’re able to bring together diverse voices and people to see and hear one another, it promotes not only visibility, but an understanding and with understanding, you can begin to meet your neighbors in a way that maybe previously they were unknown, but by knowing one another and becoming aware that their life experiences and cultural expressions are as interesting, complex, and beautiful as one’s own and that we get to enjoy them as a community together, that can prove to be a powerful force to positive change for the country.

Jo Reed: That was Lora Bottinelli the executive director of the National Council for the Traditional Arts and this is Art Works the weekly podcast from the National Endowment for the Arts, I’m Josephine Reed.

The National Council for the Traditional Arts (NCTA) is the nation’s oldest producing and presenting organization focused on folk and traditional arts. Annually, pre-pandemic--the NCTA provided performance opportunities for over 1000 traditional artists, and presented public programs that serve an estimated live audience of 720,000. Like many arts organizations—NCTA adjusted these programs and moved them on-line during the pandemic which actually gave greater access to these arts to a larger audience. The NCTA is a long-time partner of the National Endowment for the Arts—particularly in presenting our National Heritage Fellowship events. Now, I’m not going to say too much more about the NCTA, I’ll leave that to its executive director Lora Bottinneli—but I thought it made sense to begin with her definition of traditional arts

Lora Bottinelli: They’re the deeply rooted cultural expressions that keep communities together, from music, dance, crafts, rituals, stories that have passed through time in families, in tribal, ethnic, and regional occupational groups. They’re the heart of who we are as a people and we may see that in material culture through quilting and weaving and basketry. We may see it in community dance. We may see it in food ways and food production and just through the vast ways in which we’re humans together and express ourselves and they really have stewarded the human experience over time and are part of what make us richer as people.

Jo Reed: I briefly described the work of the NCTA—I’ll let you tell us the rest…

Lora Bottinelli: Right. Well, we have been around since 1933 and so, the work over those years has been varied, but in the most recent years, most people know the NCTA through our festivals, the National Folk Festival being our flagship event, which moves to a new city every three years and part of doing that has planted locally based folk festivals in communities across the country and so, what we try to do at those events are bring together the nation’s very finest traditional artists in order to share their experiences, their rich artistry, create dialogue and engagement with communities. You know a festival experience is a beautiful thing when you have that free cultural exchange going on. But the NCTA through its work also looks and researches for tradition bearers from communities across the country that can be included in these types of events and then also supporting other agencies that have an interest in stewarding traditional practices, rather that’s the NEA through supporting the National Heritage Fellowships, whether that’s the National Parks Service and our support of their interpretive programs and works that we do with other organizations throughout the country. So, it’s a very broad portfolio that NCTA tries to support and our most visible outcomes are at these large outdoor festivals, which have been so transformative for the communities, the people, and the artists who get to participate in them.

Jo Reed: You began NCTA Tours in 1978 and that program really shone a spotlight on the artistry of traditional artists.

Lora Bottinelli: Yes. There was an era where NCTA Tours, whether it was for the Steel Guitar Tour or the American Fiddle Masters Tour or the Masters of Mexican Music Tour, which through the 80s and 90s brought traditional artists to major venues across the United States, highlighting and giving prominence to these forms and visibility that had not yet really been achieved in other circles, including internationally and as cultural ambassadors, the artists who participate in these tours, they’re bringing and sharing what is the richness of their cultural experiences, but then also infusing where the tours and these programs go with an awareness and an interest in exploring them locally. So, there are many ripple effects to the work and the tours were quite a substantial piece of what we provided in years prior.

Jo Reed: And of course, we have give a shout-out to the National Heritage Fellowships, it’s one of our three major awards that we confer upon people. It’s a life-time achievement award that honors folk and traditional artists and NCTA has been our partner in this for a long time.

Lora Bottinelli: Several decades even.

Jo Reed: That’s right! So I’ll let you give the backstory.

Lora Bottinelli: Correct. So, yes, the National Heritage Fellowships are selected through a nominations process through the NEA and the public is welcome to nominate and support folks that they think would be worthy of the highest honor in our country for stewarding folk and traditional arts and then once selected, the NCTA then gets involved with your team in order to host the National Heritage Fellowships Concert and ceremony and we know that this year, that’s been different, unable to gather in-person. But in prior years, it would include a banquet, ceremony, and a beautiful awards concert. It’s been at different venues in DC, where the fellows can come together and share their story and their art with the nation, be recognized by government officials, members of Congress, and others, and the various Chairmen of the NEA have been well supportive of this program over its many years. But this year, we have to go virtual. It’s no surprise.

Jo Reed: Obviously, all of these programs have been impacted by the pandemic and I do want to talk about that, but before we do, I really want to turn to another important part of what NCTA does and that is you also document these arts and I really would like you to talk about the NCTA Archives.

Lora Bottinelli: Okay. Sure. So, since 1933, the organization in various capacities has been collecting the products of its work and that is including encounters in the field with music forms, whether it was from Appalachia or deep blues communities or other types of things in order to bring forth the types of artists that we’ve cultivated relationships with. But the major piece of our archive that I think has the most substance is that we’ve been recording our stages since the early years of the festival and so, that means that a number of artists whom an NCTA performance or festival was one of the first times that they maybe were recorded and the types of artists who you’re seeing as ambassadors of cultures from the 50s who then became major players in the-- whether it’s breaking through into the popular music circles or just continuing to be ambassadors of the forms from those communities. So, this collection is the NCTA Collection. It’s actually at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. There’s a new finding aid that’s available to help researchers. But it is a treasure of material, including everything from Piedmont and Delta Blues, gospel, klezmer, bluegrass, jazz, rockabilly, Native American, Alaskan.

Jo Reed: That’s amazing.

Lora Bottinelli: It goes on and on. So, I mean, as you think of the American experience, we think we’ve captured it musically in some form through that collection over these many years.

Jo Reed: How is the field, the highways and byways of folk and traditional art, holding up in the middle of a pandemic and this economic upset?

Lora Bottinelli: So, when we talk about the field of folk arts, that’s even a broader topic. So, we think about tradition bearers and cultural practitioners first and what’s happened with the artist communities who are stewarding these traditions and how has the pandemic affected them. Well, we know that the pandemic has very disproportionately affected marginalized communities-- indigenous populations, African American communities, Hispanic communities-- and that has been particularly hard as the community structures in which cultural exchange goes on and traditions are passed through community gatherings, through festivals, through any type of in-person engagement, that is yet one more loss and hardship that is having to be held by many of the communities that we work with. As you move up the chain and you think about the organizations that are working with those artists or artist-led organizations and state governments that support this type of work, it’s across the board. It’s been a difficult year. You think of the mass gatherings where we just talk about the NCTA’s festivals, I mean, we participate in four festivals annually that would bring together over 150,000 people each. So, those did not take place, which means the communities we partner with and the economic return that was coming into those communities, not just through the local governments but through the business and the arts communities that were involved had that loss. When you think about the various food traditions that are in these circles and knowing that any type of exchange and in-person exchange, I mean, that’s the root of folk and traditional arts is exchanging in small groups.

Jo Reed: Exactly.

Lora Bottinelli: The impact on the arts sector has been quite significant, millions of jobs lost. That same trajectory is occurring in folk and traditional arts, but there’s a rallying cry right now about the recovery of the United States, not just from the pandemic, but culturally as a way to embrace and overcome some of the divisive aspects of what’s emerged in American culture. I mean, our work is very well-suited to being able to help illustrate how of the many cultures that find themselves in the United States that we have room and awareness and a way for that to enrich one another instead of the opposite, which has been that it has in many ways turned us away from one another during the pandemic.

Jo Reed: The thing that I always find so important about folk and traditional arts is, I think, in this country, there’s been a tension since its inception between the individual and the collective and I think...

Lora Bottinelli: …the community.

Jo Reed: Yes and folk and traditional arts is one place where that is reconciled because it is individual art, but it is always embedded in community and representative of it.

Lora Bottinelli: That’s right. That’s right. We know that participating in community-based arts and traditions makes people healthier. It contributes to wellbeing and we know that when you’re able to bring together diverse voices and people to see and hear one another, it promotes not only visibility, but an understanding and with understanding, you can begin to meet your neighbors in a way that maybe previously they were unknown, but by knowing one another and becoming aware that their life experiences and cultural expressions are as interesting, complex, and beautiful as one’s own and that we get to enjoy them as a community together, that can prove to be a powerful force to positive change for the country.

Jo Reed: Yes. And it’s also a way of being able to talk to one another. If you’re both listening to a piece of music or looking at a quilt, for example, it opens up different kinds of conversations.

Lora Bottinelli: And they’re shared. The whole rooting of folk and traditional arts is that they’re shared among people. So, whether you’re in traditional practice and sharing and learning from a master artist exchange or as an audience member that knowing part of this is that this has been carried through time and serves of value to the community, it’s intentfully shared and that’s, again, where the pandemic just becomes one of the hardest stops to have to overcome is we can’t really share that much right now because of the limitation of the in-person. But there have been some interesting and creative pivots that have been going on, for sure.

Jo Reed: That’s exactly where I was going to because what are some of the pivots that are happening? We can start with your backyard, the National Folk Festival that was supposed to be held in Salisbury in September and you had to pivot and move it online. Tell us about that pivot.

Lora Bottinelli: Well, we had to produce a virtual celebration in September and it was in late April, early May when this became known and what we imagined and what came out were probably not completely matched, but it was a wonderful outcome and one example of this is through the National Folk Festival, there’s a regional folklife area in which the home state brings together tradition bearers and expresses the cultures of its community and on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, Salisbury, Maryland is the host city for the National. That means it’s Chesapeake country and we worked with the Ward Museum of Wildfowl Art, Salisbury University to produce a digital series called Chesapeake Traditions Today and so, many of the tradition bearers who participated in the folk festival in its first year in Salisbury, we found them again during the pandemic and basically the Ward Museum met them and created a radio series for it. This included watermen. It included the Nause-Waiwash band of Indians. It included decoy carvers and gospel singers and many other of the tradition bearers of that region and so, that pivot was we needed to deliver some content but then we also wanted to make sure we understand what was happening to the tradition bearers that we had worked with. Now, sharing that online and through radio format, I think most of us have experienced these online events so far and the screen fatigue that’s happening, but we also got to see in there how artists-- because we did book artists to do performances virtually for us and seeing how they in their home spaces were overcoming on the limitations of the pandemic and so, for the Richmond Folk Festival, Jason Samuels Smith, who’s a tap dancer from New York City and seeing his performance on the right in front of his house on the corner of New York in Manhattan and just seeing that taking place and the cars going by. Jasmine Bell, who’s a Native American dancer and seeing her hoop dance out in the plains of Montana and just seeing the way in which holding on to location and place and space and the artists persevering and continuing to connect and share and be ambassadors for their cultural forms has been really enriching and that story is playing out nationally because we know there’s an important part of who we are as a people we need to hold on to and we need to find ways to carry this through the pandemic and when we can’t get together in person, the screen is a limited substitute but that has proven as one way and there are others. There are cultural practices that are taking place through a variety of formats. But you know, even just as we think about the season we’re in and the holidays and people having to endure Thanksgiving holiday without being able to gather and watching how ritual and traditions around these types of celebrations are transforming themselves and how the sharing of food and the making of food is still able to be a way in which we keep connected even if we’re not together and we will endure. Cultural practices have survived many upheavals within societies. It’s the economics of the organizations and having them be places where you can actually sustain livelihood. Life ways is one thing. It’s livelihood. It’s the economic income that would come from these events, it’s just been so thwarted and trying to find ways to cultivate new resources that can help sustain what we think is one of the most important parts of the American fabric.

Jo Reed: Let me jump in for one second I think it’s wonderful what you able to bring on line….but folk festivals are interactive—it’s what distinguishes them, there’s hardly any divide between the artists and the audience

Lora Bottinelli: Right.

Jo Reed: Were you able to replicate that at all on-line?

Lora Bottinelli: The comments on social media are fun, but they do not replace that in-person exchange. We know it. But there were a few Zoom sessions where we had-- we’ve been doing this thing with our festival crew because that’s an entire community of people who are out of work and have been part of the backbone of how these events move across the country, including the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, and so, we’ve been having social engagements and social gatherings in order to retain and steward the community that helps support these events and those were very-- I felt like that exchange that you were looking for, they took place in those types of settings. But there is something that until you are in space with one another together and experience it physically, that is really irreplaceable and part of the reasons why we now see why festival and have known that festival is one of the most compelling ways in order for people to join with one another.

Jo Reed: Does NCTA provide services to the artists themselves?

Lora Bottinelli: We share out information about grants and resource opportunities that are available. That was actually a whole campaign that emerged during the pandemic. So, these other agencies, whether they’re state arts agencies, other foundations that are granting agencies, trying to make those materials known more broadly to our artist network is definitely a service we provide and if anyone is listening, you can follow our NCTA Facebook page to see the RARA campaign. It’s the Relief, Recovery, and Resource Alerts.

Jo Reed: I didn’t know how to say it.

Lora Bottinelli: Yeah. (laugh)

Jo Reed: I like it.

Lora Bottinelli: So, we can not only feature things that are working as innovative pivots during the pandemic, but there has been a rallying call for people to find new resources for local governments from federal, state to know that there’s part of this that needs to be attended and the resources are lean, but making them available to the folk and traditional arts community is important. It’s been very much an underserved community within the funding spheres and making it even more difficult in a time like this.

Jo Reed: Lora, how did you come to folk and traditional arts?

Lora Bottinelli: When I was an undergrad, I took a class called Folk Song and Ballad from Angus Gillespie because it was noted to be the fun class in an undergraduate portfolio and this was when I was like a freshman in college. But I grew up in an Italian household, so, subsequent to learning about folk life, I then quickly recognized that I had grown up in a very rich environment in that way through our Italian traditions, but then moving from Rutgers-- that’s where I took that class with Angus, and I had a really strong passion for the way that place, people, and the environment come together and it wasn’t anywhere but folk and traditional arts that I actually found the centering of that idea and I eventually went out to the University of Wyoming, worked with another folklorist out there, John Dorst, and then became a folklorist at a museum, the Ward Museum of Wildfowl Art, when I was very early in my career. So, I was a working folklorist for a few years and it turned out I was good at administration and then started up a different line of work.

Jo Reed: Well, speaking of that place, people, and the environment one of the most interesting partnerships NCTA has I think is with the National Parks Services. On first thought, it seemed unlikely, but on second thought, it makes perfect sense. As you said—it’s the marriage of place, people, and the environment.

Lora Bottinelli: We’ve had a cooperative agreement with the National Parks Service for 50 years and in the present, that means that we had about a dozen parks that we partner with annually on interpretive programs. A few of our festivals are held on National Park properties, including the Lowell Folk Festival and the Richmond Folk Festival. But when you think about the parks as landscapes, as sort of natural treasure of America and you think about culture bearers and traditional culture as also a treasure of the American people, that together they really illustrate who we are as a people and who we are as a country and so, we’ve been working with the parks to present more tradition bearers to the interpretive programs that the parks offer. A couple weeks ago, we released a work that we did with the John Lafitte National Historic Site and Preserve and with the New Orleans Jazz National Park. It was on the foodways of Southwestern Louisiana.

Jo Reed: I watched it. It was great. What is it, “Bayous and Backroads?”

Lora Bottinelli: Correct.

Jo Reed: Yes.

Lora Bottinelli: “A Look Inside Louisiana’s Lifeways,” and so, we hope to be adding more to that series, but again, that’s a form of research, right? So, we’ve been working with Joel Savoy and Jo Vidrine to be out and to document the lifeways of the region and it’s been, for the Parks Service, for the John Lafitte Park, to know that within the proximity of the park and the preserve that these lifeways are rich and thriving and part of what they should be not only aware of but sustaining, we found it’s a really valuable service to an agency like the Parks Service.

Jo Reed: People not involved with folk and traditional arts sometimes think of them as static and unchanging. What do you say to them?

Lora Bottinelli: I don’t think of it like that, Jo. It’s as much about the people who are sharing and stewarding their traditions, but it’s the encountering of audience and I think that’s where the idea of it being static breaks down and the artists encountering one another and exchanging ideas and the traditions evolving over time in healthy ways and knowing that encounters naturally-- we are a communal society. So, something that was a traditional form and looked one way 100 years ago and now is exhibiting itself in new forms, like that’s fascinating to me and that’s where how the vitality of the field is able to endure and it’s, of course, for academic research, a really complex and rich vein that can be studied, but for people who are walking around the streets on an every day basis, just to know that what you know about the culture is continually evolving and that an individual, through their creative expression, is adding to that transformation. It’s extremely empowering to know that something that may be hundreds of years old, that you as a steward of it are adding your piece and your expression and your unique take and then that would be stewarded around you to future generations.

Jo Reed: Now, here’s a question because one thing about having so many events online because they had to be and have to be for a while. Moving forward, when we’re on the other side, do you see moving forward how you might be able to maintain that level of access that you get from virtual events without losing that community aspect that’s so central?

Lora Bottinelli: I am so curious what our events are going to look like in like ’23 and ’24 because everything that we’ve done this year for the virtual experience and knowing that next year will probably end up in some hybrid state that we have actually reached in-- people have been able to attend the National Folk Festival and our other festivals that have never had access before. What they got access to wasn’t the same as the in-person experience, but to think that those elements were limited by one’s personal circumstances of access, whether it was by needs because you have to be able to drive there by physicality because festivals are a physical experience even with ADA access, they’re trying. But there are so many things that would prohibit someone to be able to come to a festival site and experience and now that we have this other arm of the virtual work-- because we had not developed that at NCTA before the pandemic. We were very much an in-person experience. We would do recordings and publications but not like virtual broadcasts like we’re undertaking now. So, the idea that those could be in hand together, where you would have as robust an in-person festival and the virtual offering to create additional access, it’s thrilling to think about. We got a long way to get to before both of those things are able to both be thriving, but no, I mean, it breaks down-- it creates access. It breaks down barriers. It creates awareness and understanding. As the economy recovers, it creates pathways for employment and future work for the artists who need it and desire it and a discovery for people who have been longing for how to learn more about their own customs and practices that you may not have someone who’s stewarding your families, traditions or ethnic traditions within reach, for whatever reason and to know that could be rediscovered or connected with through the virtual offerings or the in-person is an important piece for us to steward.

Jo Reed: Yeah. It’s interesting, but in spite of the awfulness of this time, it also, I think, gives all of us a chance to recalibrate. There’s a space for a real creative reckoning, I think.

Lora Bottinelli: And we have even been, I will say-- excited is the...It’s not quite the word-- that this year demanded that we start pulling more from our archives, from the works that had been held for many years in the archives and using them for radio broadcasts and using them as part of the festival weekends and that this treasure is there. Those are-- however many people got to hear that event when it was recorded in 1985, that tens more thousands are hearing it in 2012 as part of-- what year is it, 2020?

Jo Reed: 2020. We’re all trying to forget this year.

Lora Bottinelli: Yeah. That that is something that for our organization, it made us create new ways to access and get that material circulated and we rebroadcast the Fourth of July Celebration with American Routes, Nick Spitzer’s program and that was just-- it was Fourth of July 1992, I think, that we listened to this summer and it was tremendous and everything can have a second life, in a way, in this virtual space.

Jo Reed: So, let’s end by saying-- what do you have planned for our online National Heritage Awards in March?

Lora Bottinelli: Right. So, March 4th at 8:00 P.M. Eastern Time, we will be broadcasting the National Heritage Fellowship Celebration. It will be through arts.gov and we’ve had filmmakers going out to the fellows in their homes and meeting them and documenting their life. So, you’ll get an entry point into each of the fellows and it will be a wonderful evening broadcast celebrating their achievements and just follow arts.gov. I know as it approaches, hopefully you won’t even have to look for it. It will just turn up in your inbox if you’re listening to a program like this one we have going on today.

Jo Reed: Lora, thank you so much. I really appreciate it and thank you for keeping on keeping on.

Lora Bottinelli: Well, you too. It’s been a year and we look very much forward to 2021 and all of our great partnerships with the National Endowment for the Arts.

Jo Reed: As do we. Thank you. That was Lora Bottinelli—executive director of NCTA--the National Council for Traditional Arts. You can keep up them at NCTA-usa.org

You’ve been listening to Art Works produced by the National Endowment for the Arts—you can keep up with the arts endowment by checking out our website at arts.gov or by following us on twitter @neaarts.

For the National Endowment for the Arts, I’m Josephine Reed—stay safe and thanks for listening

Jo Reed: I'm Josephine Reed from the National Endowment for the Arts with The Chairman's Corner, a weekly podcast with Mary Anne Carter, Chairman of the Arts Endowment. This is where we'll discuss issues of importance to the arts community and a whole lot more.  Back in June of this year, the National Endowment for the Arts produced two reports about how artists and arts organizations were meeting the challenges of COVID-19, both prepared by our wonderful Office of Research and Analysis. The first one centered on the results of surveys completed by 16 of the nation's national service organization about how their members were preparing to re-engage with audiences, but today, Mary Anne, you want to talk about the second report and give a sneak peek to its update.

Mary Anne Carter: That's right, Jo. From the original survey and other resources, our research office created "The Road Forward - Best Practices Tip Sheet for Arts Organizations Re-engaging with Audiences or Visitors," which goes into greater depth, looking at how organizations are working with social distancing, sanitizing, going virtual, and just overall communicating. Coming soon, there will be an update to the tip sheet called, "The Art of Reopening - A Guide to Current Practices among Arts Organizations during COVID-19."

Jo Reed: What's in the update?

Mary Anne Carter: The new report includes more data and nine case studies from arts organizations of varying sizes, different disciplines, and locations on what they are doing to getting back to quote "normal," and I use normal in quotation marks because it will undoubtedly be a new normal. "The Art of Reopening" isn't quite ready for distribution yet, but I want to give listeners a sneak preview by looking at three of the nine case studies.

Jo Reed: Where are we beginning?

Mary Anne Carter: Our first stop is the Lied performing arts center, part of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln that hosts touring performing art productions in its two theaters. So last summer, the Lied worked with neighborhood associations and a media sponsor on MUSIC ON THE MOVE, and outdoor, mobile concert series that toured Lincoln neighborhoods. On Saturday evenings, the Lied encouraged residents to step outside onto their balconies or porches or in their front yards to enjoy local artists performing live. The Lied also moved quickly with virtual programming, launching Lied Learning Online, a weekly education event that ranged from musical theater master classes for young people to movement classes for preschoolers, and the executive director, Bill Stephan, acknowledged that there was not a lot of financial return in this programming, however, he believed it was the right thing to do. He says in our report, and I quote, "I think contributing, giving back without expecting necessarily immediate returns in money is a good move to make sure you're staying connected and fulfilling what the community needs."

Jo Reed: I couldn't agree more. It's being a good neighbor.

Mary Anne Carter: That's right, Jo, and another good neighbor is based in Saranac Lake, New York. The Adirondack Center for Writing serves a 6-million-acre region that includes a lot of people in very remote areas with large distances between one town and the next, and one of AWC's tools for success and one that was highlighted in "The Road Forward" is partnerships with other organizations. Executive Director Nathalie Thill notes in the report, quote, "So we have strong relationships with not only arts organizations, but we've done programming to ski centers and in hardware stores and in bars and restaurants. All our presenting space is in other spaces, so when COVID hit, because we're small, I feel like that factor served us really well," end quote. Bringing literature outdoors, ACW did a project involving spray-painting poems on sidewalks using a type of paint that is visible only when it is wet. So when it rained, the words emerged from the concrete, adding surprise and magic to the project.

Jo Reed: That is so cool.

Mary Anne Carter: It is so cool. One of the key takeaways for Thill in this extraordinary time, is that audiences need changed as the pandemic continued over the months and that ACW needed to adjust to accommodate those shifts. "For the first two weeks," she says, "they needed calm. After that, they needed distraction. You had to be really aware of the psyche of what people were going through."

Jo Reed: It shows how vital the arts are, especially in difficult times like these.

Mary Anne Carter: Absolutely, and organizations large and small are stepping up. Take the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston in Texas. It made national news when it became the first major art museum in the country to reopen to visitors, and that was back on May 23rd. The museum operated at 50 percent capacity with about 25 percent of its normal number of visitors coming through. It required face masks, temperature checks, and social distancing, and according to a New York Times story, the museum ordered vats of hand sanitizer, 250-pound drums, to be precise, along with 10,000 disposable face masks. This museum is fortunate to be in a spacious place where people can move around and keep their distance from one another without disrupting their viewing experience. The museum staff were fortunate to be able to study the experience of the Houston Museum of Natural Science that opened the week before they did. The staff was able to see what the science museum did and how it worked, and that's how this needs to work. We're all learning from each other. Amy Purvis, the museum's chief development officer, said, "I feel like we went into this with eyes wide open knowing all of the protocols that we needed to put in place to reopen in the first place. We studied it very carefully from other organizations." All arts organizations are going to be planning how they will reopen, keeping staff, artists, and audiences safe, and that's why I wanted to give this sneak peek at some of the practical innovation, arts organizations, again, large and small, rural and urban, are implementing. "The Art of Reopening" will be ready soon, and you'll be able to find it at art.gov. We are all going to learn from each other because we are all in this together.

Jo Reed: Mary Anne, that's a great place to leave it. Thank you.

Mary Anne Carter: Thank you, Jo.

Jo Reed: That was Mary Anne Carter Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts.  Keep up with the arts endowment by visiting the website arts.gov or follow us on twitter @neaarts.
For the National Endowment for the Arts, I’m Josephine Reed. Stay safe and thanks for listening.

Music Credit: “Renewal” composed and performed by Doug Smith from the cd The Collection.

Rick Dildine: I think we're at a place where an artistic director is a community organizer. But you're listening to the people that you serve where your mission is playing out. I'm here in Alabama. Our mission is to build community with transformative theatrical performances. Well, that's going to play out very differently here than if I was in New York or LA or Dallas, Texas. So I'm listening here. That's what I think the artistic director's job is.

Jo Reed: That’s Rick Dildine, Artistic Director of Alabama Shakespeare Festival. And this is Art Works, the weekly podcast from the National Endowment for the Arts. I’m Josephine Reed.

2020 has been a horrendous year…and theaters along with all the performing arts are suffering. In the United States, theaters have been closed for live performance since March…and it’s difficult to know when people will be willing to gather indoors to watch a play together? What would that room even look like? How would theaters keep their actors, crew, and audiences safe? How can theaters survive until that moment we can all come together again? And how can theater speak to this moment? These are some of the thoughts keeping artistic directors up at night…and many of them—along with the theatrical community at large—have been answering these questions with wit and imagination…working to keep the power of theater in the spotlight. Take Alabama Shakespeare Festival located in Montgomery Alabama---it features robust on-line offerings including the Play-On Initiative, resources for teachers and students and a newly-adapted one-woman performance of A Christmas Carol. And it also moved theater outdoors and gave its audience to ability to put the words of a diverse set of playwrights in their own mouths—the project is called “Speak the Speech” and Rick Dildine artistic director of Alabama Shakes is here to tell us about it…

Dick Dildine: Speak the Speech comes from Shakespeare's directive in "Hamlet." And what we wanted to create for folks was something safe to do, something social, something fun but also to connect people with their voice. The thing I think we have seen time and time again over the past few months is that words matter, that language matters and that people in our country have been finding their voice through a variety of ways. And so we picked 14 famous speeches, 13 are from American play, one is Shakespeare, and we have put them throughout our park and they're on really beautiful panels and we invite people to come to the park and to they can film themselves or they can be alone, they can bring somebody with them, but it's a chance to put powerful language in your mouth and Speak the Speech.

Jo Reed: How did you choose the titles, the playwrights, the passages.

Rick Dildine: One of the things that was important to me was to put together a group of artists so I engaged with two other artists, Adrian Kaiser and a young man named Cameron Williams worked with me on curating the pieces. Upfront I said that at least 51 percent of the pieces needed to be by BiPOC playwrights and I also said that 51 percent of the plays needed to be by female playwrights. ASF has a long history of producing a lot of white male originated work, but the South is so much more diverse than that and it is so much more complex. We also said if we can ever find a Southern voice we wanted to include that. And if a piece could speak to nature, because all of the pieces are outside and we're in this beautiful setting we also wanted to look for things that allowed themselves to be spoken outside amongst the trees and the sky.

Jo Reed: That’s lovely. Give me an example of some of the playwrights you chose?

Rick Dildine: Sure. So, you know, anywhere from the heavy hitters of Lorraine Hansberry, August Wilson, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller to some newer playwrights that folks may not be as familiar with like Jireh Breon Holder, Lauren Gunderson, Mary Kathryn Nagle, who is an amazing Native American voice. So it spans some of the giants of American theater to those next generation giants.

Jo Reed: I don't want you to betray confidences, but I would love to have been a fly on the wall as you and Adrian were going through this and making decisions about not only the playwrights but the plays and then narrowing down even further to the passages. Those discussions must have been so interesting.

Rick Dildine: Yeah. You're in essence curating an experience for someone. So they start with Shakespeare's "Henry V," the opening chorus that asks you to use your imagination for what you are about to experience. And then we take them through different relationships. August Wilson's "Jitney" is the next stop. Dominique Morisseau's "Pipeline" to Lauren Gunderson's beautiful speech about what jazz is, "What Jazz Means to Me." So yeah, it asks us what is the emotional journey we're taking people on? What's the weight? What would speak to the moment? Mary Kathryn Nagle who wrote a beautiful play called "Manahatta" and is a great voice for Native American people in our country, that she imagined what is the journey and what is home, what is our home. So it was a great experience. I got to read some work that I haven't read. Adrian got to read some work she hadn't read. We went back and forth on that. But we got to learn a lot and it was fun putting it together.

Jo Reed: How long did it take you to put it together?

Rick Dildine: We spent about a month really going back and forth to narrow down who and what pieces. And with each panel a participant will not only see the speech but they're also going see a little bio on the playwright and a summary of the scene so that they can kind of if they wanted to perform it right there they can get kind of an emotional connection to what's going on in the play in that moment.

Jo Reed: Give me some background, a little history of the Alabama Shakespeare Festival.

Rick Dildine: Sure. Alabama Shakes was founded in 1972 as a summer stock theater performing classic work. In 1977 it was named the State Theater of Alabama and then in 1985, with the generosity or Red and Caroline Blunt, a world class facility was built in Montgomery, Alabama to house the Alabama Shakespeare Festival and we're currently in a 100,000 square foot facility with two performance spaces in the midst of a 200 acre park with a Shakespeare Garden and ponds and too many geese to count. We're also on the campus with the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts. And annually we product anywhere from 10 to 14 shows a year that span a wide spectrum of productions form Shakespeare to new works. We have about a 20-plus year commitment to developing new works by Southern writers. There’s our Southern Writers' Festival. And each year we perform for about 40,000 young people from across the State of Alabama.

Jo Reed: When did you have to shut down for the pandemic?

Rick Dildine: March 15th, the Ides of March, <laughs> and the irony of that is not lost on me. We had two shows performing at that time and another two within 48 hours of going into rehearsal but the pandemic has, it affected 9 shows total that we had, 9 projects total that we had announced and were going to be doing within the next 6 months.

Jo Reed: I'm curious about who you see coming to Speak the Speech.

Rick Dildine: You know, we're in the middle of a city park so there are constantly people walking through our park and within minutes of them going up, people started walking out to them. And you know, it's all different types of folks. I mean, Montgomery is an incredibly diverse community, but it's all different types of people. It's single folks. It's families. It's couples. You know, theater and the arts are a social activity. They're fun to do together and that's what we're seeing people do.

Jo Reed: And you have an online component for people who can't come to Alabama Shakes for whatever reasons and it is very robust. Tell us about it.

Rick Dildine: Sure. You know, one of the things that we have I think that's come out of this pandemic is how do we continue to make our work accessible and the internet has become an incredible tool for that and we wanted students to have access to this as well. So we put the project online so that people can have access to those resources. Again, they get to see the speech. They get to see a little breakdown of what's going on in the scene. And they get a background on the playwright. These may be new voices to people so we wanted them to have some background on them.

Jo Reed: And you also have a component called the Play On initiative. And even though it might not be directly connected to Speak the Speech, boy does it mesh beautifully.

Rick Dildine: Yeah. You know, I think the South is, it is a complex place and it takes a lot of different voices to make it up. It's like a quilt. <laughs> And Play On, we commission 22 Southern playwrights to write original monologues about home. And of course we've continued our education components online as well.

Jo Reed: Well, you have a deep and long commitment to education and I spent a happy couple of hours just going through with the education resources you have on your website.

Rick Dildine: Yeah. And they're even going to get more robust very soon. You know, we have great relationships with the teachers in the state and we're about to launch a DIY video series. It's really like HGTV meets theater, so DIY for theater teachers and high school theater students who are making theater in their schools but may need some help. Okay, how do I troubleshoot sound? How do I build this type of set piece? So we're about to launch another set of videos that are going to go online in January.

Jo Reed: How did you first come into theater, Rick?

Rick Dildine: You know, believe it-- oddly enough, <laughs> "A Christmas Carol," I was maybe 8 or 9-years-old and my aunt took me to my first professional play which was a production of "A Christmas Carol" and I was absolutely completely mesmerized.

Jo Reed: Did your parents encourage your love of theater?

Rick Dildine: Oh, absolutely. Yes. I was really fortunate that my mother early on saw that I was interested in theater. And, <laughs> you know, we grew up in rural Arkansas where there wasn't any touring shows coming through. <laughs> There was very little performing arts. And my mother saved up money and took us to see touring shows about two hours away in a larger city. So I was really fortunate to have a mother who encouraged adventure and curiosity and my own creativity.

Jo Reed: What was your first experience with Shakespeare?

Rick Dildine: Ooh. First, well, first experience <laughs> with Shakespeare was actually my eighth grade English teacher because I had, she said, you know, you could get bonus points if you read some, read literature over Christmas break and I went off and read eight Danielle Steele novels and came back and reported on that. And she said, "Not quite the literature I was hoping you would read."

<laughter>

Rick Dildine: And so she gave me "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and said, "Why don't we start here?" And that's where I fell in love with not only the poetry but also the grandness of his writing, his characters and a place where I felt that everyone had a voice in a story. You had wealthy people. You had poor people. You had the noble class, the working class, men, women, mortals, faeries. That's what I loved about it. And from then, you know, trained as an actor. Got my MFA in Acting and started getting pulled into doing large scale outdoor work which a lot of times is Shakespeare. I ran Shakespeare Festival St. Louis and now running Alabama Shakespeare Festival.

Jo Reed: How did you go from onstage to behind the scenes?

Rick Dildine: You know, I was always an organized actor. I was the actor who <laughs> everyone said, "You organize the parties. And you keep us-- keep us in line." And I had an affinity whenever I was acting on stage that I could always see the big picture. I could see how things were moving. Not just myself, but all the different pieces. One of my mentors was running a theater, a summer stock theater in Kentucky. He said, "Would you come by my production manager for the summer?" That led to becoming an assistant director and then I was hired to be artistic director of that summer theater when I was 25-years-old and started really learning what it meant to lead an institution, to lead an artistic company. I was really fortunate to have mentors like Oskar Eustis and Edgar Dobie who, you know, changed my graduate training to help me continue to be a great actor but also helped me to learn how to be a producer.

Jo Reed: Help us out here because artistic director I think is a term so many of us hear but I think few of us really get what it is that an artistic director does.

Rick Dildine: It certainly evolved over the past 50 years over the regional theater movement of America from the sixties to now where we-- How would I like to say is that my number one job and I learned this from Martha Lavey who was late artistic director of Steppenwolf. She told me, "Your number one job as artistic director is to listen to the community, to know where it is, to know what it's thinking and then to put together a group of artists and stories that respond to that." I find myself a lot of times being the keeper of the mission. I am the keeper of the vision, the values. I am that thread that runs through the organization. So, you know, what we saw a lot of times we've seen at the regional theaters in America these all-knowing auteurs. I don't think we're in that anymore. I think we're at a place where an artistic director is a community organizer. But you're listening to the people that you serve where your mission is playing out. I'm here in Alabama. Our mission is to build community with transformative theatrical performances. Well, that's going to play out very differently here than if I was in New York or LA or Dallas, Texas. So I'm listening here. That's what I think the artistic director's job is.

Jo Reed: Well, you've talked about how the job changed in the past 50 years. I would also imagine it's really changed in the past 9 months.

Rick Dildine: Oh, my gosh, yeah. Absolutely. I think you're going to see theaters get much more local in their theater making. I think that's something that's on the horizon. You know, I would not be surprised if we see more resident companies pop up in regional theaters around the country. I wouldn't be surprised at all. For me, you know, artistic directors, we don't just think about art but these are jobs. We work for a board of directors who give us specific tasks and objectives. But I'm also half of a leadership team that's financially responsible for the organization. So we've had to make tough decisions. Every theater in America has basically gone to surviving on donations right now. So that's a whole different dynamic versus when you have shows that are bringing in tickets and subscribers and people are regularly in your building, how we are only able to engage with them digitally for the most part.

Jo Reed: And how do you work to keep Alabama Shakes in front of mind for members of your community? I mean, obviously through shows like Speak the Speech, but how else are you looking to do that?

Rick Dildine: Well, I have been hosting what I call Kitchen Table Chats and I bring together what I call unexpected storytellers, so groups of people. And I've interviewed chefs, DJs, historians, poets, teachers, all different types-- other not-for-profit leaders. People who are storytellers in themselves. And I bring them together over Zoom. And we talk about what is going on in our community, how are they telling stories. I think for our arts organizations' survival, we have to start thinking of ourselves not as arts institutions first but as civic institutions. So continuing to connect beyond our artistic walls to our civic brothers and sisters, that's been key to us over the past nine months.

Jo Reed: Let me ask you bluntly, given how difficult the situation is for performing arts, is it difficult to see past getting through this moment to look at the long-term, which I know is one of the functions of the artistic director?

Rick Dildine: Yeah, it's so fascinating you asked that because just this past week my partner, the Executive Director Todd Schmidt and I were talking about, <laughs> back in like the eighties, nineties, we were all about ten-year strategic plans. And then we were like five-year strategic plans. And then we got to, okay, let's do a three-year strategic plan. <laughs> And right now, we're like 90 days is what we can think about. So I have been going back and forth, how do I plan artistically and then make sure that the capacity is there, the resources are there for shows, you know, quarterly, over a year. How do you plan for or plan a season when a pandemic could pop up mid-run of your show? You know, all of us, we've put in tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars in these productions and we have to protect our donors, resources, our artists' lives and livelihood and safety and their time and their creative energy. It's a lot to take on and think about. I have found resilience in thinking short-term and really focusing on, okay, how can I take the moment I'm in right now, respond to it and create something? And then I build on that. And then I build on the next one.

Jo Reed: And I also wonder, Rick, if in the midst of this crisis do you also see a space opening up for adaptability, for flexibility, for imaginative thinking going forward?

Rick Dildine: Oh, absolutely. Yes. It's been exciting to see how the digital world has evolved. I think we're going to also as theaters have to-- You know, recording our work has been really about archival purposes and I think some of the theaters, a handful of the theaters that had prepared with multi-camera recordings were ready to go. But I think going forward, the videographer is going to become part of our creative process because we're going to need to be able to pivot mid-run to recording. But another big thing is that recording our work has opened us up from an accessibility standpoint. More people that couldn't get to us can now see the work. So I think that's going to be part of our world, which is going to lead to creativity. How do we tell the story through three cameras and live at the same time? It's a thrilling proposition. I'm excited about it and I'm excited about what it's asking designers to do.

Jo Reed: You know, I'm very conscious that while Shakespeare was writing, in fact, theaters were closed because of plague.

<laughter>

Rick Dildine: Mm-hmm.

Jo Reed: And I'm sure you are as well. <laughs>

Rick Dildine: Yeah. The irony is not lost on me. That's right.

Jo Reed: Yeah. But I also take a great deal of hope from that. I'm such a lover and believer in theater and that experience that happens during a live performance that I just believe in its resilience so deeply.

Rick Dildine: Yeah. Yeah. I do, too. I do, too. I am, it's been a tough time to watch so many artists out of work and trying to figure out how to continue to create. You know, Paula Vogel is a prolific tweeter and she said the other day on Twitter, "A great harvest is coming." That just brought tears to my eyes because that is true. There will be a great harvest of work coming. There are ideas that are bubbling right now. There are relationships being made that that is going to create a great harvest.

Jo Reed: You've said you believe theater should be a home for artists, not a hotel.

Which I think is marvelous. How do you hope to do that?

Rick Dildine: Well, one of the things that is key to that is investing in artists consistently and regularly. So we are seriously looking at rebooting our resident acting company. So asking artists not to come in and do one project but say, "We're going to start a relationship now for multiple projects. This is going to be a place where you're not going to be here for six weeks and go, 'Ah, I got to reset.' No. You've got the confidence and the belief in you that we're asking you to be with us to build the house." Because we are. We're rebuilding a house now. That's why when my first season I programmed 14 shows, 6 of them running in rep, and asking artists to do more than one project in that first season. Because I wanted them to be involved not in a moment but in a bigger idea, the fulfillment of a mission. And the-- You know, as humans, we're so complex. We can't grasp the entirety of humanity in 14 shows. But we can when lots of different people are involved over longer periods of time, the threads and the networks are so much stronger. The impact is deeper.

Jo Reed: And I wonder if there are things you're doing now during the pandemic that you can see continuing to do, you know, we ended up doing it because we had to but damn, this is really worth striving for. And particularly around Speak the Speech. If there are things you learned from that project that you can build on moving forward?

Rick Dildine: Yeah, well, the outdoor as a canvas. Unexpected spaces. These were ideas that I had brought to the table in my first season and for one, you know, who knows what reasons some things happened or didn't happen. But actually now, we're forced to look to unexpected partnerships, relationships, spaces, styles. This coming spring the entirety of our program will be outside. On the pond, we're actually doing a project on the water and then in our garden and then in another little nook in the park. So those things, I think once people see them and experience them they're going to want them all the time. But you know, you're always working against, "Well, we've never done it that way before." <laughs> And so when you're working against that, but now you can't do it that way at all. <laughs>

Jo Reed: And I'd like to end on Shakespeare: I'd like you to share why you think Shakespeare continues to connect with us and can actually be a great source of solace now as we struggle to connect with one another.

Rick Dildine: The ability for Shakespeare to capture a human rhythm is what has always as an actor turned me on, that when I lean into the language I can actually feel my heart beat stronger. And the fact that language can do that and capture that and can remind you that you're a living, breathing person even though you're speaking iambic pentameter, <laughs> that you are a living, breathing human being, that's pretty remarkable. And I think that's why people keep coming back to it over and over is because you find something new in it every single time there's a new discovery because we have history, you know, as we live our decades and our lives. Today's my birthday. <laughs> And as we--

Jo Reed: Happy Birthday.

Rick Dildine: Thank you. As we go another year around the sun, you find you're connecting with new characters and you graduate into a new generation and you learn something new. I think that for me that's the joy.

Jo Reed: And Rick, I think that's a great place to leave it.

Rick Dildine: Thank you for including us.

That was Rick Dildine he’s Artistic Director of Alabama Shakespeare Festival…you can find out more about Speak the Speech, their one-woman production of A Christmas Carol and everything Alabama Shakes is up at ASF.net

You’ve been listening to Art Works produced at the National Endowment for the Arts….subscribe to Art Works and then leave us a rating on Apple…keep up with the arts endowment at arts.gov or by following us on twitter @neaarts. For the National Endowment for the Arts, I’m Josephine Reed…stay safe and thanks for listening.

Jo Reed: I'm Josephine Reed from the National Endowment for the Arts with The Chairman's Corner, a weekly podcast with Mary Anne Carter, Chairman of the Arts Endowment. This is where we'll discuss issues of importance to the arts community and a whole lot more. The National Medal of Arts is the highest award given to artists and art patrons by the United States government and it's administered by the National Endowment for the Arts. And I know you thought, Mary Anne, that the holiday season is a perfect time to talk about a few of the recipients and some of the great work they're doing. But, first, maybe we can have a little background on the National Medal of Arts.

Mary Anne Carter: Sure, Jo. The National Medal of Arts is awarded by the president to individuals or groups who-- and I'll quote here-- "are deserving of special recognition by reason of their outstanding contributions to the excellence, growth, support, and availability of the arts in the United States." And the National Medal of Arts began in 1982 and, since that time, hundreds of artists, arts advocates, philanthropists, and arts organizations have been honored with this prestigious medal by the president. And our listeners can see a list of all the medalists on our website and I'm sure they will agree it is a diverse and illustrious list. Many of these men, women, and organizations have not only added immeasurably to our artistic landscape through past accomplishments, but continue today to make our world a better place.

Jo Reed: So, let's begin with some of the folks you want to highlight.

Mary Anne Carter: Well, Jo, there are so many I would love to talk about. But, today, I'm going to focus on three. The first is Dolly Parton. I mean, who doesn't love Dolly Parton?

Jo Reed: No one.

Mary Anne Carter: Right! A country music star like none other. She's a singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist. She's also a marvelous actress. Of course, I loved watching her in "Nine to Five" and "Steel Magnolias". She's also a very successful businesswoman with such ventures including Dollywood in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. But there's also Dolly's extraordinary humanitarian work. Many of our listeners will know about the Dolly Parton Imagination Library, a program that sends free books to children in sixteen hundred communities around the world, from birth to age five.

Jo Reed: But, with Dolly, it doesn't end there, does it?

Mary Anne Carter: No, we're just scratching the surface. Recently, Dolly was in the news, you may have seen, for her contributions to fighting the Covid-19 virus. She donated one million dollars to Vanderbilt University Medical Center to support research towards development of a vaccine. That research was used, along with others, by biotechnology corporation Moderna in creating their potential vaccine that has been reported to be ninety-four percent effective and, in fact, this week, Moderna has asked the FDA to greenlight its vaccine. So, thank you, Dolly Parton.

Jo Reed: Well, I think the next recipient you want to mention might be the only person who could actually follow Dolly Parton.

Mary Anne Carter: That's right. Staying in the field of music, the next medalist spotlight is for Yo-Yo Ma, cellist extraordinaire, who has recorded more than ninety albums and has received eighteen Grammy awards. He is an artist that some have called omniferous, demonstrating a keen interest in all styles of music from all over the globe. And, like Dolly, Yo-Yo responded to our current crisis, specifically the sense of loss and isolation that so many of us have and are-- continue to experience due to the Covid-19 lockdowns. In the early days of the pandemic, Yo-Yo shared many performances online that he recorded from his home. He invited other artists to submit their own videos of music making from home using the #SongsofComfort. That online community grew and grew, reaching more than eighteen million people. The communal connection forged by #SongsofComfort inspired an album of the same name featuring Yo-Yo and pianist Kathryn Stott. That is due out on December 11th. And here's a quote from Yo-Yo and Kathryn, "Songs bring a sense of community, identity, and purpose, crossing boundaries, and binding us together in thanks, consolation, and encouragement. It had long been our wish to explore this medium further. But we would never have imagined that the catalyst would be a pandemic that fundamentally re-arranged our ways of living."

Jo Reed: I am a big fan of Songs of Comfort. It's beautiful on so many levels. I mean, the music itself is beautiful and the diversity of the artists and the music that's being played and that creative way people have of reaching around the globe to connect. It's just inspiring.

Mary Anne Carter: I agree, Jo. And, speaking of inspiring, I want to raise up a National Medal of Arts recipient that has suffered a huge loss in the last few weeks and that is Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival. Since 1933, Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival or, as it is fondly called and known, "The Pillow," has been an annual summer retreat and nexus of dance creativity and discovery located in the beautiful wooded hills of Becket, Massachusetts. It has offered artists a place to develop and present their work for students to study with renowned teachers and for audiences to see world-class dance from all over the world. But, on Tuesday, November 17th, a fire consumed one of only two indoor theatres on the Pillow campus: the two hundred and thirty-seat Doris Duke Theatre. Fortunately, the fire was contained to just that one building and no one was injured. But, still, it was devastating and the building was destroyed. As a National Medal of Arts recipient and a long-time Arts Endowment grantee and, most importantly, a beloved member of the national and international dance community, I extended sincere condolences to the Pillow on behalf of the National Endowment for the Arts and I really look forward to visiting a re-vitalized campus next year. And, in a letter to Pillow supporters acknowledging the fire, the executive director noted that "We will rebuild." That is a powerful declaration of fortitude and belief in the resilience of the creative spirit that applies to all in the arts community across our country, especially during this time. Because, through the arts, we will get through this pandemic together.

Jo Reed: Mary Anne, thank you.

Mary Anne Carter: Thank you, Jo.

Jo Reed: That was Mary Anne Carter Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts.  Keep up with the arts endowment by visiting the website arts.gov or follow us on twitter @neaarts.

For the National Endowment for the Arts, I’m Josephine Reed. Stay safe and thanks for listening.

Music Credit: “Renewal” composed and performed by Doug Smith from the cd The Collection.