- My name is Angela Brown and my business is Brown Angel Skin & Hair, a plant-based clean beauty product line that features vintage Black actresses on the labels.

My business is a micro business, and I was concerned about taking that risk to get this new concept out.

The Comcast Rise Grant is given me an opportunity to take that risk and scale up my business and take it to the next level.

I feel that my business helps increase representation for Black women on the shelf.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] After two years of pandemic related challenges, what have we learned about the role the arts play in our culture?

- We are at a moment in Seattle's history, where we have a real possibility of losing our cultural fabric and losing our cultural community.

- [Narrator] How has the pandemic impacted art and creativity?

- Lighting and staging companies, so many of them went out of business during the pandemic so everyone's scrambling to try to find a stage, you know, and sound and lighting and all those things.

And sometimes you have to outbid other festivals just to make sure there is one.

- [Narrator] Seattle community arts leaders examine these questions and more on tonight's Civic Cocktail.

(audience clapping) - Hello, everyone and welcome to Civic Cocktail.

I'm your host Mark Baumgarten, sitting in for our regular host, Monica Guzman.

Tonight, we're talking about the arts and checking in with a few of the people who foster the creativity that brings Seattle to life.

We want to know how the pandemic has changed the way that they do what they do and what they believe are the best ways to keep art alive in this tumultuous world.

Later on, I'll be inviting two leading lights of our region's music festival industry to talk about the return of those outdoor celebrations.

But first, I'm speaking with a pair of instigators in the world of visual arts, primarily.

Vivian Phillips is an arts and communications strategist who has helped many arts organizations.

And she is the founder and president of Arte Noir.

Greg Lundgren is a curator, artist and entrepreneur.

He is also the creative director and co-producer of Bumbershoot and the founder and director of the Museum of Museums.

Vivian, Greg, welcome to Civic Cocktail.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

(audience clapping) - Okay, so when the pandemic hit in the spring of 2020, it disrupted everything, including our social lives.

A big part of those social lives in Seattle and every other city is the arts.

So audiences had to experience the arts through screens like this one and many arts organizations had to rely on their own creativity, philanthropy, and government assistance to survive.

Now the arts are back, but it's a very different world than it was when everything shut down.

So I wanna start by going broad.

And I wanna start with you, Vivian.

Can you tell me what is the state of the arts in Seattle right now?

- You know, I think it's really hard for me to get a good grasp on it.

I know that there are a lot of artists that are still looking for a place, you know, a place to be.

But then last night I was at the Paramount Theater and there were like 2,800 people in the theater.

And I understand that Hadestown is 96% sold out.

So that's like 20,000 people, (audience cheers) who will come and sit in those seats, right?

My hope is that that will continue, that people will get more and more comfortable, but we have to recognize that there are small arts organizations that are presenting in their own spaces and people are not that comfortable being in a crowd in small spaces.

I don't quite get it because I'm like squished up between a bunch of people at the Paramount and everybody's happy, but I think that we are still coming back.

I think there's a lot of opportunity.

And I think that there's a lot of creativity that was really expressed during the pandemic that I see continuing to be engaged at this particular point in time.

So when you ask me what's the state of the arts, you know, what do you want, numbers and cents?

(laughs) You know?

We still need more money!

(host and audience laughs) That's the state of the arts, you know.

Artists are still... (audience clapping) I'll let you go, go ahead, go ahead.

(audience laughing) Give it to me.

Artists are still working to secure a living wage.

And until that changes, I think that the state of the arts is gonna be on life support.

- Hmm, Greg, what about you?

What are you seeing?

I mean, you're you know, an entrepreneur, you have a number of different smaller spaces.

Are people showing up?

- I think that people are showing up.

I think that it's been a very difficult time and I think that, as a museum operator, we are largely based upon attendance.

And so attendance is critical to our success.

And I think that it's a business model that was designed pre-pandemic.

And so we are responding to, and we opened in an atmosphere that we weren't really familiar with and no one really knew how that was gonna play.

I'm confident that we are gonna come out of that.

And I think that ultimately the pandemic affected everyone in different ways significantly, but I think that as it relates to arts and culture in Seattle, I think we have the same problems that we did three or four years ago.

And I think that we have to, I really do think that it's a critical time.

I don't think, I think it's a time where we have to really fight for it and not take things for granted and not expect arts and culture just to be here just because we're a big city.

I think that it's something that if it is going to survive or if what I want it to be is to thrive that it requires a lot of participation.

And I think we are, as Vivian said, like, you can go to a Mariner's game and they can pack a 70,000, you know, seat stadium.

- When they're winning.

- When they're winning.

(audience murmuring) - [Vivian] When is that again?

- (laughing) Right now?

Anyway, well, that's another discussion.

- I think that we've seen that audiences will return to the Paramount, they'll return to the Showbox, they'll return to a stadium.

And I think that they will return to an arts program or to an arts venue.

But I think that we still have the same issues that we did four or five years ago, and I think they're compounded by the pandemic.

So if we are looking for a hundred people to show up, we might get, you know, 25 people to show up.

It affects smaller organizations more than it affects larger organizations.

- [Mark] You said critical, but does it feel existential?

- Oh, it's always been existential.

(laughs) I feel like we are at a moment in Seattle's history where we have a real possibility of losing our cultural fabric and losing our cultural community.

And I think that's what I'm here to fight for.

I think that, like, if I felt like Seattle was so vibrant and there was so much energy and so much support, I'd probably just get a studio and be an artist and make work and just not participate in the production of it, not participate in the curation of it, not participate in trying to like bolster that economy.

But I think that we are in a place that really does need a lot of support.

It needs to be thought of differently.

It needs to, and to look at new models and really look at arts and culture as a business, look at arts and culture in competition with the sports industry, the video game industry, Hollywood, you know.

I love data and I love statistics.

And the United States spends $4 trillion a year on entertainment.

This is like surplus income that we spend on, you know, books and, you know, video games and all of that.

And the art world takes such a small sliver of that pie.

- Right.

- And I think that if my, if I had one job in this life, it's just to make that arts sliver of pie just a little bit wider, 'cause that little bit wider can be a couple billion dollars.

- Right.

- And I think that really does significantly change not only Seattle's cultural landscape, but our country.

And I think that that's possible.

It's not about inventing new arts patrons.

It's not about creating more money.

It's about just re-prioritizing arts and culture, especially on a regional level, the way that we prioritize sports, the way that we re prioritize video games, the way that we prioritize other ways of spending.

So I think to me, the answer is just shifting and changing the way that we spend our money.

- Hmm.

Vivian, yeah, I mean, you spoke to this struggle with smaller arts organizations as well.

Has it ever, when's the last time that it didn't feel incredibly difficult or is that just the state of being if you're in a, you know, a smaller arts organization?

- I truly, in the 30 plus years that I've been working in the arts in some capacity, I don't know when it ever felt like (sighs), we can relax.

It never felt that way to me.

And I think that what was happening pre-pandemic is we were approaching this point in time where there was more opportunity for more artists and we were starting to, I think, solidify our talent pool, keeping people here, right.

And there were a lot of efforts that were going forward, specifically, I know with the city of Seattle, that was around looking at the livability of this city and looking at how do artists and the creative community, because we have a pretty broad creative community, but part of it is tech, right?

And the tech workers make way more money than the creators and the creatives that are gig workers, essentially, who don't have healthcare, who have to work four and five jobs, who have to room with other people.

They can't afford places on their own to live.

And you know, I'm making a broad generalization, obviously, but transportation is an issue and people have to move out of the core of the city into the outer sections of our region.

Then they have to pay more to come to work if they're coming to work in the city.

So all of that had always been a pressure on the arts.

And I do feel like, you know, we're at this place now where at the end of the pandemic, people started to leave.

People started to leave Seattle, not even at the end of the pandemic, you know, because we are still in a pandemic.

Right.

- Right.

- You all have on mask.

(laughs) We all do.

But I just feel like there was never a time when we could relax.

I feel like the arts and I know this is gonna sound, you know, maybe overly critical, but it feels like we're always under attack.

It feels like the arts are the first thing to be cut out of every single budget, be it education or be it policy.

You know, it's always, the arts can go because it's frivolous, because that's how people see it.

But now think about the pandemic.

How did people maintain a sense of themselves?

They turned to the arts, wherever it was available.

And I was just looking at a short video that Path with Art did.

And that's a program where people suffer isolation in every day, you know, pandemic, or no.

And they pivoted in a way so that they could provide the people that they serve with the instruments they needed to maintain contact and not be isolated.

Who else does that, unless you're like trying to get paid for it?

The arts is where that always happens.

And I look at the innovation that took place during the pandemic and Donald Bird is somebody who I think about and how he pivoted to creating an environment where his company could still get paid, could still work, but he worked with other artists to create film, right.

So that the work could be not only documented, but could be captured and shared.

And I think I see a lot of that happening in the arts community.

We're all kind of, you know, can I work with you?

What are you doing?

What can we do together?

We're the most collaborative sector ever.

And yet, we're always on the chopping block.

- Hmm.

So... You know, during the pandemic, the arts also, there was a message around the need for the arts.

We saw a lot more money put into, you know, government funded grants going into venues to help them stay open.

I guess, Greg, where were we headed before the pandemic?

And are we in a better place now, as far as an acknowledgement of the needs of the arts community?

- I think that's a really difficult question.

And I mean, talking or listening to Vivian, I think about 20 years ago and Seattle 20 years ago was not as wealthy of a city as it is now, but it had 10 times the art journalism, it had five times the arts publications, it had five times more galleries, like we had a much more robust arts ecosystem in 2020 than we do in 2022, pandemic aside.

- Right.

- So how do you justify that we can become such a wealthier, larger city, but have an arts community that's diminished?

And I don't think that that is something that we should just accept.

I don't think that that's something that we should say, oh, that's just the way that cities grow.

Or that's the consequence of the pandemic.

I think it's a trajectory that we've been on with or without the pandemic.

And I think it's a trajectory that we have to address and that we have to be creative and we have to be aggressive and we have to try to solve it because in another five or 10 years from now, I think it could be that Seattle is an area that is very inhospitable to arts and culture.

And we talk about people leaving Seattle.

We talk about, you know, how many opportunities there are for artists or reasons to stay in Seattle.

And I think as an arts producer, as an arts entrepreneur, I think it's my job and it's my passion to try to create a city that has more opportunity, to try to create a community that has more philanthropy, to try to create a community that sees that value and really takes an active role in that.

And that's not just about millionaires and billionaires.

That is about, you know, I look at this kind of a like micro grant.

So like every time that you go see a show, every time that you buy a book, every time that you, you know, purchase a $25 piece of art, like that is your way of participating in your local community.

And so if we can't rely on the billionaires to underwrite and support the programs that are vital to our culture, then I think that we should be, you know, repositioning ourselves to reach out to the hundreds of thousands that can give $25, that can give $200.

I think there's a lot of ways to get to those big numbers.

And I think we've maybe always relied on corporations or wealthy individuals to kind of fill in that gap.

And over the course of 20, 25 years, that hasn't happened.

And instead of just pointing fingers or throwing up our hands, I think we have to look at alternative solutions.

And I think for me personally, that alternative solution is getting a lot of people to give a little bit, instead of looking for a few people to give a lot.

- Hmm, so in order for that to happen, you need people to interact with art.

Right?

- Definitely.

- And you both are people who create space, where people can interact with art.

So let's talk a little bit about what that takes.

And in particular, I wanna talk to you first, Greg, about Museum of Museums or the Museum of Museums, MOM.

So you opened March 2021 after a false start before, right?

- Yeah, we built the museum during the pandemic.

We got the keys in May of 2019.

And so the business model was a pre-pandemic business model.

We spent a lot of the pandemic tearing out walls and, you know, converting a 1945 medical building into an art space.

We opened for a week in October of 2021.

And we were shut down by governor decree, which I don't blame Jay Inslee for, but we went from like being open for five days to being closed for seven months.

- Right, to be clear, everybody had to close, not just you.

- Yes.

We were not being picked on.

But it was a really difficult time to open an art space in general.

Like I think that opening any kind of gallery, any kind of for-profit art space in the city is a risk and it's something that most people wouldn't do because it just doesn't have a history of penciling out well.

I was inspired by a model that was community-based and community-driven that relied on people, you know, paying at the door or sponsoring through membership.

As Vivian points out like, you know, we have been anemic.

We have been at the mercy of grants.

We've been at the mercy of a lot of goodwill.

And I think that the future of art has to be self-sufficient.

I think it has to find ways to be something that people want to participate in and is sexy and is something that is digestible and understandable.

And if you make it too exclusive, if you make it too opaque, if you make it to intellectual or even academic in some ways, you've really, you've diminished your audience.

And I think as an arts community, we need to be reaching out to the largest possible audience.

And that is across the board, whether that's youth, whether that's seniors, whether that's low-income, whether that's high-income, whether that is the amateur that knows very little about art or the academic.

I think that we really are in a place where it is critical.

And I think that it is not something, I don't think I'm being dramatic.

I think that like the next five years of Seattle's future are really going to define if we emerge from a pandemic with a robust arts economy or whether we're kind of a wasteland.

- Hmm, so I wanna stay with you for a little bit longer.

- [Greg] Sure.

- Like just the nuts and bolts of opening an arts venue right now, what have you been running into?

'Cause there are a lot of things.

I mean, it's difficult to do anything right now, but especially I think, trying to open up a space while there's a lot of inflation, there is supply chain issues, there are staffing issues.

How has that impacted getting this effort off the ground and I'm gonna talk to you next, so.

- I think any business that you open is, I call it like there's takeoff and then there's kind of reaching your- - Cruising altitude.

- Cruising, altitude.

And we're still in takeoff mode and we'd be in takeoff mode with or without a pandemic.

And so we don't have like three years of financial history prior to the pandemic to compare it to, like this is a very kind of unique model for the city and it opened in at a very inopportune time.

But I do feel very optimistic.

I feel like we are gonna survive through this chapter.

I think people have shown their support and enough people have shown that it matters.

And so I don't feel, I think that if we were in a, without a pandemic, I think we would we'd be, you know, cooking with oil.

We'd be really, you know, buzzing.

I think instead, survival is success right now.

And I think that I'm proud of what MOM has become.

And I think it continues to evolve into a better organism.

And I think its future is bright.

Has it been hard?

It's been super hard.

I think that what we have to do is we have to look at the museum as something that you can't just take for granted.

And like we have a lot of energy that's spent on social media and like outreach and trying to like really connect to an audience.

And I don't think maybe 10 years ago you could kind of have, you know, social media's less important or you could be a little bit lazier with that.

I think that right now, you have to realize that everyone is distracted.

Everyone is concerned about their financial place in the world and Seattle's a very expensive city to live in.

And you have to remind people why art is important.

You have to give people a reason to come out.

And that can't, sometimes that is like, this is a good place to take a date.

Or this is a good place to learn about something you don't know about, or this is a good place to take a selfie.

I mean, sometimes you have to, and it sounds bad to say because you should be able to say, no, you should just come here because it's important, because I say it's important.

But sometimes you have to sugarcoat the medicine and sometimes you have to make it accessible to people who normally don't participate in arts culture.

And I think that we need to continue to do that.

And I think the arts world is relatively small in Seattle.

And in doing the research and doing the homework on, if I should open a privately-owned museum in Seattle at all, I looked at what the numbers were in Seattle.

And in 2018, Seattle had 40 million tourists.

And I don't think that a lot of people in the arts world understand that or know that data and to have, you know, I think that we say there's so often when we talk about our arts community, we have the same 200 people coming through to see a show.

We have the same people are showing up to your, you know, February opening as they are to your June opening.

And I think that we need to really look at a broader audience and you know, it's like, I want to tap into that 40 million people.

Right now, I think that it's projected that 28 million people will come to Seattle this year.

And so that's an incredible resource of people.

And it helps for us to be able to share our story with people who are not regional to Seattle.

It helps to share our artists with people who are not regional to Seattle.

It helps to take some of that tourism money and help fortify our arts ecosystem.

So I think that we really have to be a little bit smarter and a little bit more aggressive and look and see all the resource that's around us and find creative ways to tap into that because we live in one of the wealthiest regions in the history of the world.

And if we cannot do it in Seattle, how could we ever expect a city with less resource, with less wealth, with less community, with less technology?

How could any other city survive or succeed or preserve their arts community if a city like Seattle can't?

So I do feel like, I feel like we are in a place that has the tools and the resources to solve this problem.

And I hope that if we can, that other cities can look at us and copy us and mimic us and take the tools, take the programs and take the blueprints that we've created and apply that to their communities.

- So Vivian, you're in the middle of opening up a space right now.

- I'm crazy.

- Right, are you crazy?

Talk about what the difficulties are, but also, you know, adding on what Greg was talking about, what your goal is with this space?

- Yeah, yeah.

- What you want to achieve?

- Well, you know, one of the things I was thinking about as I was listening to Greg is in the creative sector, facing failure (laughs) is, you know, the thing you do, right?

So you don't run away from fear.

So I didn't run away from the opportunity to do a crazy thing, like open an art space in the heart of the central area, right in the corner of 23rd and Union, post-pandemic.

So, you know, it was a cold, hard shell that got delivered to me that I had to raise a bunch of money to build out.

And we're almost done with the build out.

What we intend to do, we will host Onyx Fine Arts Gallery.

So there will be a Black art gallery in this space, but we are also providing Black art retail.

So we're working with local artists and sourcing products from other places as well that you can come into this space and be surrounded by Black art.

You can purchase it.

And 100% of the proceeds from the sale will go to the artist.

So what we're trying to do is create a revenue generating operation for artists.

And I just feel like, you know, the opportunity came, I seized it.

I felt crazy for doing it.

But I think it's going to work.

It is a nonprofit model, which is not the best model I have to say, for the arts.

I'm the person who said does Seattle or the King County region needed another non-profit?

Absolutely, no, but I started one anyway (laughs) so, that's what we're trying to accomplish there.

But beyond that, the thing that I think is the most exciting for me is that we will purchase this piece of property.

It is at the street level on a 432 residential complex that has part of what is serving to gentrify my community and make it look like something that we don't recognize.

So I wanna try to restore what I recognize in my own community.

(audience clapping) But we're purchasing this piece of property and I'm excited that we are an institution that will be a gift to the community.

It is a community-owned entity, right?

As a nonprofit, it's a public entity.

So I'm simply trying to re-instill a sense of vibrancy, a sense of place and a sense of recognition in a community that nurtured me.

That's what we're trying to do.

- So I wanna talk, we've just got a few minutes.

I wanna talk about art.

How about if we talk about art for a little bit?

I wanna know, what do you think people, and just from kind of what you're seeing out there, what people are responding to, Vivian, what do people need from the arts right now?

What are they looking for?

What are they being drawn to?

- Yeah, I think people don't know that they're looking for what they get.

I think people engage with the arts and it's, you know, oh, let's go have some fun, but then you start to be moved by a piece of music that you hear, a dance that you see, a painting that you witness and you recognize that the art is really speaking to you and helping you to understand a little bit more about yourself.

So once that happens, I think it becomes habitual.

People continue to go back and want more and want more and want more.

And I think that people are very comfortable with exploring and experiencing things that they don't understand.

It's critical that we do that right now because we're so faced with so many things that are opposite of what our personal morals might indicate.

And the arts is where you get an opportunity to experience something that's not necessarily in your home, in your neighborhood, but it is in your city.

And I think it is the connection that people have an opportunity to make with one another and with artist that they're finding and being fulfilled by.

- Hmm, all right, so unfortunately that is the end of our time.

- All right.

- And I wish that we could talk for so much longer and we will in the green room a little bit later, but I appreciate you, Greg and Vivian, for coming on the show.

- Thank you so much.

- Thank you.

- And thanks to all of those here with us at our live audience at Town Hall Seattle.

(audience clapping) We're gonna take a quick break and be back soon for the second part of our Keep Art Alive program.

(upbeat music) Hello, everyone and welcome back to Civic Cocktail.

In the first segment of tonight's program, we looked at the gradual return of arts venues in the midst of the pandemic.

Now we're going to explore the impacts on a part of the region's cultural sector that was completely shut down for almost three full years, summer music festivals.

They're back.

And so we invited a couple of the people responsible for Seattle area festivals to tell us how the return is going.

Kevin Sur is the founder and owner of Artist Home, which stages a number of music festivals, including Timber Outdoor Music Festival, which takes place in Carnation later this month.

Reese Tanimura is managing director of Northwest Folklife, which has been operating for more than 50 years and took over Seattle center, yet again, (audience clapping) this past Memorial day weekend.

Kevin and Reese, welcome to Civic Cocktail.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

(audience clapping) - Now I love a music festival.

And you know, I can think of many times where I've been basking in sun, screaming at the top of my lungs some song that I love as it all just washes over me.

It is a wonderful experience and it has been missing for far too long.

So Reese, I wanna start with you because your festival happened the month before last at Northwest Folklife.

And I just wanted to start with how you experienced the return.

And maybe if you could share a magic festival moment with us.

What's something that you experienced that you, when it happened, you thought to yourself, yes, this is what I was missing.

- Sure, well, let me, I would be remissed if I didn't say that Northwest folk life is a folk arts festival.

So music is a huge part, but it really is, you know, encompassing of cultural arts, which is dance, fiber arts, movies, all the things, so wanted to make sure that our artists are not just musicians.

- Absolutely.

- Didn't feel left out there.

And I'll start with that magical moment, which, you know, there were a few, but my co-director, Benjamin Hunter, who came on as the artistic director in August, we have a cultural focus every year called, you know, it's to delve deeper into an aspect of an cultural heritage or some kind of theme.

And he really was like, you know, we've all undergone this huge change together over the past few years and we really wanted to talk about metamorphosis.

And as a part of that, he put together a couple of showcases with this, what we called the Super Folk Band.

And it was basically a group of local artists from, you know, around the region playing together with some traditional artists as the basis.

So we had a koto player, I think it was a suzuki player.

Don't quote me on that.

And then a fiddler and an accordion player.

They came up and played some of their traditional tunes in this band, percussion, we had a xylophone player, we had a, you know, keyboard.

And so they all grew the music around this.

And the idea was to showcase the metamorphosis and how music, but the art and the communication is created between our artists that can happen in a moment, which is part of the live festival experience, right, is that moment and that experience.

And there was a moment when our koto player was basically playing a really kind of traditional tune that just the musicians were listening and then they just swelled in.

And there was just this kind of movie moment where we're standing out at the Mural Amphitheatre lawn and the wash of music was like a soundtrack.

And that was, you know, that was the moment was like, we're back, we're together, we're doing something together, we're building it back together.

And that was it.

And everything else was just, you know, the icing (laughs) on the cake after, you know, many, many months of worrying and agonizing and also, you know, some joyous like building back to this moment, so.

- Yeah, that's beautiful.

Kevin, so your festival is happening later this month.

You're in the middle of it right now.

So thank you for spending some time with us.

What are you looking forward to the most that you've been missing?

- I'm looking forward to just being in it.

It actually happens next week.

So as you probably imagine, I'm in it, behind my computer and on the phone, but I just want to, you know, this will be the first time we've done our festival in three years.

And it just, you know, the reason we got into it and the reason that, the thing that has driven us since day one has been propelling artists, not just booking a lineup that people know, you know, wanting to put artists on a pedestal with intention to help push them forward instead of just trying to book everyone that has a draw of booking the ones who deserve that stage, who no one's giving it to because no one is willing to stick their neck out and saying, that's what you should like, that's what you should listen to.

And so I look at that void of all these artists that we haven't been able to do that for a long time.

I think, you know, with a break, I mean, I'm kind of living my dream like a dream job, you know, we have this, it's all driven from my experience as a former working musician and trying to right a lot of wrongs I saw in the industry through everything we do.

But through that, I found an amazing community of support that just believe in discovery, that believe in music and who, you know, you realize, oh, my job is helping people create memories that they're gonna take with them to their grave and creating a, putting a stage and a moment together where people aren't necessarily, I look at the photos of our festivals and you never see anyone with a phone in the air.

And I realize what we've accomplished is, you know, a lot of festivals and things are places that are designed to be seen at.

And we've really done a good job of creating places where people just want to be present.

And that's the one thing that we haven't been able to do for three years.

- Hmm, like I said, you know, we had the first segment and there was a lot of, kind of, you know, acclimating to the realities of sort of this new reality, the pandemic, the economic pressures, everything like that.

If you're putting on a festival, you kind of like, you don't get to ease into it.

It's one weekend and you are diving into it.

So just with respect to the fact that one of you has gone through it and the other one is right on the verge, Reese, what were the difficulties that you faced when staging this festival that you hadn't experienced before?

- Some of them were new, but some of them were old.

Like, I think, even Greg were talking about the things that existed before the worry, you know, for folklife, it's a lot about, what's the weather gonna be like on the weekend, it's, you know, largely outdoor stages and workshop areas and so.

And also, you know, what's the continuing interest.

And I don't think, there's a part of me that's always like the interest is there, even folks who wander into the Seattle Center because it's a public space, right, there's an interest, it's coming into this thing that a lot of folks have never seen the scale of that as something they can walk into without buying a ticket or anything, right.

So, but there is that, you know, there's always a back of the mind, like, have people moved on or are they going for, you know, what's popular or whatever it is.

So, you know, some of the things, the labor costs have gone up, the nuts and bolts of it.

There have been, you know, we've been out for enough time that folks left our industry to go to more stable jobs or go to areas that had reopened already, or the cost of living generally, like they can afford to live there and do what they want to do in our sector.

There's also all the supply chain, will you have this or that or, you know, will we have enough of whatever?

Also those prices keep going up.

And then at what point do you just shut people out and cause a barrier for that to be, you know, inaccessible?

Also, you know, at what point does it just become no return because people won't pay that?

And so I think what we faced going in was just not to look at it as how to return to where we were heading into '19 and '20, but how to look ahead and rebuild and reimagine what we want our cultural scape to look like and embody that into, you know, this event, which was sort of like the coming back.

We had a soft landing.

We did get a Shuttered Venue grant, which allowed us forward capital to be able to imagine things that we hadn't before to absorb some of those rising costs in a way we hadn't before.

And in a way just set our, like for me, it set my mind as like, if arts had this capitalization, imagine how innovative, like, we can continue to be.

- So you're saying if you had regular- (audience clapping) If you had regular government support, that it helped you imagine what that could be, that it would be helpful obviously.

- 'Cause you get into a pattern, right, like you survived this year.

Okay, like what do you have to do?

Well, this worked and that is, you know, kind of innovative, but will that work?

If we do too, if we stretch too much in that direction, are we gonna, you know, are we gonna shoot ourselves in the foot and lose money on that?

And at some point it becomes a breaking point where like, if you know, you get into a debt situation, you either close down or- - Right.

- So I mean, those are the nuts and bolts behind, like the magical part does come when folks have that ability to breathe and imagine and- - [Mark] When there's a solid foundation.

- Move forward, right.

- Right.

- And do things differently because not because they have to make a bottom line, but because they are wanting to imagine something different.

- Yeah.

Kevin, economic pressures, you know, you're seeing the same thing.

Staffing costs going up, inflation.

- [Kevin] Yeah.

- How is that impacting work that you're doing?

- Yeah, I mean with music festivals, it's amazing how every like major kind of event in the world like affects you, and it affects from staffing shortages, which come from three years of not doing it.

And a lot of industry people have moved on.

Lighting and staging companies, so many of them went out of business during the pandemic.

So everyone's scrambling to try to find a stage, you know, and sound and lighting and all those things.

And sometimes you have to outbid other festivals just to make sure there is one.

And then next thing you know, there goes your grant money, you know, but thank God it's there.

So yeah, I mean, all those factors really come into play and those challenges are there.

But I think for a lot of our venues and for a lot that I've been trying to make this work, quite frankly, it's been a rocky road for one- - You're talking about general music venues.

- General music venues.

- Yeah.

- Because like the venues are really the foundation of it all, at least for like the side of music where musicians are trying to be a name.

I write this music.

I am trying to be known for this.

That drives ticket sales.

That pays me.

And the venues are the path for those musicians to get from your 100-person Conor Byrne to your 800-person Showbox and so on and so forth.

And if those venues weren't around, we wouldn't really have the talent developing itself to be on our stages because we're just the top, we're this thing.

- So the health of the larger music economy is necessary for these one-off or not one-off but you know, single weekend festivals every weekend to really thrive?

- I think if you're a festival like ours and especially like, you're depending on artists that are, yeah, we have a number of artists that are household names, but we are highly dependent on discovery and finding those new artists.

And if they don't have a place in Seattle, then we're not there to find them and put them on our stage and yeah.

- So Reese, you're a musician, you're both musicians and you are deep in the music community and in the music economy, what is the state of the music economy in Seattle right now?

- I think we're at a crossroads.

And I think we were already standing here in '18 and '19 and trying to do this work and figure out like, what does it mean to go forward?

What is the future like, right?

And the pandemic really in a way, made us evaluate some of the ways we were doing things on autopilot and just trying to struggle to catch up.

And then when you're stuck at home for two years, you have to think about like, who am I, what is my place?

And that the cultural health of that is something that a lot of folks actually did recognize, right?

Like books and, you know, movies and online and concerts and the things that we missed doing helped us reckon with what we, maybe, what is valuable.

If we don't have those things in our life that connect us to our roots or connect us to community or connect us to just the experiences that we're having around us and within ourselves, we end up being a little dead inside.

The value of art is hard, because there's an economic side.

And then there's just a functional person, human side to it.

It's like deep inside, we do what we needed.

And if we don't pay attention or nurture that, by the time we lose it, we're in a state that's not good.

- Hmm, so.

(audience clapping) This musical ecosystem, it involves artists, it involves music festivals, it involves venues and it involves philanthropy and the government, like you were saying, Reese.

Kevin, are you seeing any efforts to like an acknowledgement of the state of the industry and efforts to shore it up?

I mean, what's happening out there after, you know, we go through this reckoning, is anybody responding and you know, acknowledging the importance of it?

- Yeah, I mean, the venues have really banned together and got the Save our Stages Act done in WANMA, which is the Washington Association of Venues, which started the week after the lockdown, which I was proud to be a part of helping start that.

Their efforts turned into a major save the day for a lot of the stages and from musicals to Broadway, to my music festival, to folklife, to every venue that exists.

And my biggest concern when it started, which is why it led to this massive rally of let's get every venue on a Zoom screen right now and let's talk, how many months do you have left?

And- - You mean how much money do you have to keep you running, right?

- Yeah, there are venues that are like, we're completely, we're gonna be done in two months 'cause there was no help coming.

And it took the venues advocating for themselves to make that happen.

Luckily here, not many closed.

They were able to, right now they are all like, they're each other's therapists right now in their therapy groups because it is a very crazy world in terms of just their economy.

One week it's everyone's, yeah, we're back and ticket sales are great.

The next week, you get one piece, bad COVID news, ticket sales stop for a month.

And everyone's just like, and then you lose production workers.

You lose sound engineers.

You lose everyone 'cause there's nothing for them to do.

But I think like the biggest factor, like and to kind of get back to what Reese was saying and what Vivian was talking about earlier was just, I came here from San Francisco, from the Bay Area and a lot of the same economic factors that were really coming into play here, in say 2018, 2019, were the things that made me leave San Francisco.

And I grew up in a rich, amazingly rich music community where you can start something from nothing.

You can have this DIY artistic-driven thing and have a community there to work on it with.

And I found myself there with the Silicon Valley explosion and everything in the nineties, looked around and all the venues went first.

And then within a year I looked around, there were no musicians.

There just was no artists.

I've been scared since day one.

(laughs) Like I came up here and within two years, I had a functioning, great sustainable business that honestly made a difference for a lot of artists.

And it wouldn't have been possible for me to do that if this place wasn't affordable, not just for me, but for musicians.

And I think that, you know, Vivian was talking about how wealthy our community is.

We may be wealthy, but every time that wealth increases, we become a little less rich.

And I think that when I look back at where I came from and what that turned into, all the people that made it rich, whether the folks around it, who weren't intimately involved in it realized it or not, all that culture is gone.

And so that is a thing that when the pandemic started, I was like our smallest venues, these places that are the economic pathways for musicians to go from a 50-person room to a 200-person room, et cetera, that's the path.

That needed to be saved or else San Francisco, at least from my perspective, was going to happen again.

And now that we're still in a pandemic, but businesses are open, that threat is still there and government does need to be involved.

It needs to get involved.

And I think our city leaders and our government needs to have a different metric for what success is for this city.

And it's not based on wealth- (audience clapping) And it should never be based on wealth.

It should be based on the richness of our lives, which comes so much from art.

And aside from that, anytime a big economic factor is coming here and they talk about jobs, the first question is, what does it mean for the people who are here now?

Does this make their lives richer?

Or does this make them go?

And that is typically of that population, those are your artists.

And then those are your venues.

Those are your festivals.

Those are your museum curators.

You know, so.

- [Reese] It's also your ethnic communities.

- Yep.

- The diversity, the gentrification, the displacement, you know, when we talk about wealth, we're also talking about not just wealth, we're talking about disparity, right?

The wealth is coming at a cost to the majority of folks.

And I think that needs to be really clear.

Who's benefiting from that wealth?

It's not a very small population here.

You know, the way you hear sometimes the city leaders talk about it and definitely some of those companies talk about it, they act like everybody's benefiting from it.

And we all know that's not the truth.

When we think about how we move forward, it's about government, it's about dollars, but it's also about the policies we put in place that are value based.

- So same question as I asked Greg and Vivian, you know, we went through this pandemic period.

Kevin, you talk about venue owners coming together.

You know, there's everything that you're saying, Reese, has been like some version of a conversation that has been happening I think on a broader scale in the last three years.

Do you think that this period of stress caused by the pandemic and economic concerns has brought the conversation out?

Is there a silver lining here where we are now having the conversation about the importance of music and the arts to our communities and we have seen government action, like you said, through the Shuttered Venues grant?

Do you see momentum here that can be carried forward?

- Yeah, I mean, and also give credit to King County.

They were the first governmental body to grant any money to independent music venues in the country.

That happened before the Save our Stages Act.

So you do have to, you know, King County was kind of the first to step up and it was very, it was the first little thing that gave those venues that had a month or two, a lifeline, to get to the Save our Stages Act.

So didn't wanna leave that out.

But I do think the conversation needs to happen.

You know, like I've pitched these stories in the past, be like, hey, you should talk to people from San Francisco because it's a microcosm of what's happening here and I really don't wanna see to happen here.

But I think it is a cautionary tale that has already happened in other places.

And Seattle needs to pay attention to it and fight to find new solutions to it because artists, creatives are driven by connection.

They're not driven by this economic factor.

And it takes people connecting to that and paying for that.

- I'll maybe add that, you know, from an asset-based perspective, if you look globally at economies and countries that invest in their cultural scape, it means tourism, it means that they can draw people to their cities and their workplaces that want to have that life there, right?

Like we've resisted being a big box city.

Well, I don't know how well we're doing now, but you know, for the long time, we resisted having big box stores.

So what is it that keeps the cultural landscape such that people are interested and engaged and there's a different, you know, different set of values that governs how people choose to invest in their life here, including the environment, including all the things that make the Northwest special, right, the Pacific Northwest, sets it apart from what's happening.

There's even a lot of cities across the nation, smaller cities, that realize that the economy that comes with investing in arts and culture is, you know, not always just measured in dollars and cents, although it is measured in dollars and cents, but to the social vibrancy and health of their citizenry.

So like, you know, we're talking about places like Columbus, Ohio, we're talking about places that, you know, if we talk big city, Chicago invests a ton of money into public-facing, free, open arts experiences, which they pay for to make sure that, one, their landscape of artists stays healthy and two, that they can draw people to the city because it's not just about the Pier and their big, you know, Ferris wheel.

It's about the concerts in the park that you can see the symphony and any number of artists that are like from, you know, sort of emerging local to big name artists.

- That's a lot of the vibrancy that we wanna see in our city, right?

Unfortunately, we are out of time.

And it's been great talking to both of you.

I wish we could keep talking.

And we will keep talking.

And so will everybody here afterwards.

Reese, Kevin, thank you so much for coming on Civic Cocktail.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

(audience clapping) - And thanks to all of you here with me at Town Hall Seattle, you've been a great audience.

So give yourselves a round of applause.

(audience clapping) And to everybody participating remotely, thanks for joining us as well.

Civic Cocktail will be taking a summer break for the month of August, but we'll be returning on September 7th with a focus on education, how local schools have prepared to welcome students for the new school year and the steps they've taken to address educational inequities, pandemic related and mental health issues.

Thanks, everyone and good night.

(audience clapping) (upbeat music)