Over the course of pursuing my master's degree, similar conversations kept re-occurring in the spaces I was occupying; themes included: the pressure of inflation on performing arts organizations in the midst of funding cuts, the ongoing ceiling on the salaries of everyone working in the field (from newly minted interns to long-serving executives and artists), and the constant shifting of funders' priorities causing continuous scrambles to meet those calls to action while attempting to maintain some semblance of work/life balance. Depending on who was having the conversation, the culprit seemed to change. Individuals blamed institutions, artists blamed managers, managers blamed funders, and so on until the finger pointing at those in our own eco-system seemed to be the first resort of us all. 

 

It occurred to me that we were leaving a group of people out of the conversation. No one seemed to be talking about the water we all swim in; the pressures put on our industry by those who are not professionally a part of it and yet control so much of how we are bound in our decision-making: our contributors, both institutional and individual.

​

Ever since I had the opportunity to live in a foreign country for three years in my early adulthood, I have shifted my perspective to think about pretty much everything within a global context. When the conversations mentioned above regarding sustainability in the field of the performing arts continued to occur, I almost immediately thought: "I wonder what they do in other countries and how we might learn from that?" This led me to my thesis research topic. At first I wanted to look at international contributed income models in general, but a wise mentor suggested this scope might be a little large. She suggested instead that I might want to look at the United Kingdom, a place that had both major similarities and major differences to the United States and which has recently experienced shifts in the functioning of its funding models. I determined that I would examine the difference in contributed income and its effect on strategic decision-making in dance organizations in the U.S. and the U.K.

​

And so, my research began. In addition to reading numerous related documents, I confirmed interviews with leaders at a variety of dance organizations in the U.S. With support from Brooklyn College's Tow International Graduate Research Grant, I traveled to England and Scotland for a week to interview leadership at dance organizations there. Now that this research has been completed, I have collated my findings into three video learning modules that can be digested within 20-30 minutes' time. In coordination with those learning modules, I am hosting 3 facilitated conversations for anyone who identifies as a member of the performing arts industry to come and talk about the findings therein with each other. The documentation of those conversations, and their eventual posting as a public resource on this website, will serve as the outcome of the research. With any luck, we can stop blaming each other, and come together to find solutions to build a sustainable future for our field.