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- We are almost literally on the Eve of the beginning of the summer in the Carolinas and questions persist like talent, like, is hospitality bouncing back?

What about those jobs and what about the summer itself and what is it all going to tell us about what is going on in the Carolina?

We're here to help you unpack that.

I am Chris William and welcome again to the most widely watched and longest running program on Carolina business, policy and public affairs seen every week across North and South Carolina for more than 30 years now.

Thank you for supporting this dialogue.

In a moment, we will begin the dialogue.

And later on, he is the newly minted general director of SPOLETO USA from Charleston MENA Mark Hanna joins us.

And we hope you will too.

We start right now.

- [Announcer] Gratefully acknowledging support by Martin Marietta, a leading provider of natural resource based building materials, providing the foundation upon which our communities improve and grow.

Blue cross, Blue shield of South Carolina, an independent licensee of the Blue cross and Blue shield association.

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The Duke Endowment, a private foundation enriching communities in the Carolinas through higher education, healthcare, rural churches and children's services.

(upbeat music) On this edition of Carolina business review, Carl Blackstone from the Columbia chamber of commerce, Vicky Lee Parker-High of the North Carolina business council and special guest Mena Mark Hanna, general director of the SPOLETO festival.

(upbeat music) - Well, it is fair to say almost happy summer.

We are this close on the Eve of the beginning of the summer season in the Carolinas.

So many things happen.

We are glad to have our panelists returning, Vicky Lee and Carl, welcome again.

Good to see you both.

Carl, I'm gonna start with you whether that's fair or not.

And since we are on the Eve of the beginning of Memorial day, et cetera, et cetera, and then the summer kinda rolls downhill from there.

The new hospitality model that we have in place, it was eviscerated in 2020.

It's come back but not completely, what does a new model look like?

Will it ever be the same?

And does it matter?

- I don't think it will ever be the same.

Now, does it matter?

Yes.

I mean, because hospitality in itself, you've gotta make people feel like they're the most important.

Well, we've got less people to do that.

And so, the hardest thing that we're gonna have to do is find new folks to backfill some of these positions in the hospitality industry that quite frankly aren't there.

So we've gotta retrain, we've gotta find new folks to do it, whether that's through immigration, legal immigration, whether we do get kids earlier to start working in the industry, but it's a vital piece of our economy.

And quite frankly, a lot of the hospitality industry has been rated, as you mentioned.

And it's just gonna be, we have to have more patients when we go on vacation, when we go out to eat, and a lot of us don't have that right now.

And so I do think it's gonna be a challenge going forward and how we address this is gonna be a long term problem.

- Vicki Lee to follow up on something Carl just alluded to.

And that's the idea of there's this new level of expectation.

Is this a new natural level of restaurants and hotels and motels?

Is this how it's going to be?

And we just, we need to overly simplify, but re-adjust our expectation when we go out.

- Well, we certainly are gonna have to adjust our expectations, at least for the foreseeable future.

I recently walked in a restaurant and they had a big sign.

It's like we're hiring, but be patient.

You know, we only have a very limited staff.

And so they just had a sign up front to let you know that, you know, it's gonna take longer to be served.

It's gonna take longer to get, you know, to get your food.

So, I think, you know, the owners are really putting it out there, making it clear to the patrons that things are changed.

And I think now more consumers are understanding that a lot of people are not going back to that industry even though restaurants have opened, I've known people to open them and even open more restaurants, but getting people staff that they need is still a challenge.

And that's gonna be going on for a while.

- You both know this probably better than I'm even going to articulate it or even ask the question.

It might even sound a little bit ignorant, but Vicki, I wanna stay with you for a second Carl, and I do want you to wade into that.

Vicky, from Elaine Marshall, secretary of state in North Carolina, her office reported that a record number of filings in 2021 of new business creations were over 40% more than they were in 2020.

Now, obviously we know some of that is in response to kind of the elasticity if you will, of people coming back and new businesses being created.

But this is more than 178,000 new business creations in North Carolina.

Is that an accurate number?

And is that net number?

- Absolutely it is.

And fortunately, I say this, that the secretary of state's office had the foresight to do a very in-depth survey of these new businesses and they tracked them over the last couple of years.

And what we found with there were a number of really important things that they learned.

But what was really important is that the majority of them were, well, almost majority, 48% of them are new business owners.

So it clearly showing us that a lot of people took the pandemic as that time to really reevaluate and pivot and look at their lives and launch those businesses that they had been thinking about or considering for some time.

And, even more surprising that only 15% of them said that they did this because they lost their jobs or because they just had no other choice.

So this wasn't a desperate move.

This is not a desperate move.

These are people who have been probably thinking about creating their businesses for some time.

And they saw that downtime as a chance to hone their skills, file their, you know, LLCs and get moving on their businesses.

- Carl, that's not just specific to North Carolina, south Carolina's phenomenon going on.

Is it enough though, let me ask you this question.

Is it enough that it replaces the businesses that went away or were shuttered to people that they call it great resignation?

- No, I think we're seeing numbers that are absolutely blowing outta the water in the sense that we're 61% higher in new filings from year over year.

But over the last three years, we're still up 33% in total number of businesses.

And so what you're seeing is yes, we're seeing some that are no longer in business, but the new numbers are far greater than we are losing.

So then we are netting a lot more.

The problem is a lot of these are small businesses, and if they want to grow, we gotta have workforce.

And that's a challenge in itself, but the population shifts as well.

I mean, what I don't know about these numbers is the geographical distribution.

Where they are, and that's gonna be a deeper dive, but really, we're seeing a ton of new businesses along the coast, we're seeing a ton of new businesses in the upstate of South Carolina, plenty in the Midlands.

We're still back to an old conversation.

We've had years, for years is the urban, rural divide.

How much can we push some of these jobs into the rural markets where they do have more of a opportunity for workforce?

- Let's, we've got about two minutes before we bring our guest down.

I want to get two issues in here.

One is housing, and I know we can't do that quickly but, Vicky Lee, housing as we all know because of this great good fortune as Carl just alluded to.

And as you have alluded to is expansionary in the Carolinas for sure, but it also means asset prices, real asset prices going up, having people trying to buy homes that maybe can't afford homes given median income issues.

When does this level out, is this going to become a crisis now on housing and how do you unpack some of that?

- Well, I mean, my first thought is someone is buying these homes.

There's a lot of construction going on here in North Carolina and they're filling up.

I see cars, you know, in front of these homes.

So there is still a market and a demand on that for these homes and for the prices that they're asking.

Now, of course, that also does create for those, many of those who simply can afford them, that is still a real issue.

I do know in North Carolina, there are a few projects that the state and other developers are looking at to create affordable home and housing.

There's more discussion about it, and around that topic than I've heard in a while.

However, I haven't seen the prices match that as of yet, but they still seem to be selling.

- Carl, again, Palm out of state.

- I mean, we're having this discussion about attainable housing now as well.

And what is attainable... - Affordable or attainable?

- Attainable, and affordable, right?

It's two different conversations.

And both, we're far behind.

The problem we're seeing is with inflation, the cost of goods and services going through the roof.

Those prices are going higher obviously.

People that really wanna move are willing to pay that price, but it's taken inventory of folks that really, at least can afford it.

And so the problem we've gotta have from a workforce conversation, we need to be, we really need to double down the number of (indistinct) that we offer developers to provide attainable housing in the urban markets.

It is going to, we've had such a flood.

We cannot keep up with construction, we just can't do it.

And so we've gotta come up with some more creative ways to incentivize the private sector to fill this void.

- We are back.

And it seems like when SPOLETO festival USA announces plans to be back, we are really back.

Joining us now is the new General Director of SPOLETO, an interesting experience for him, not just, not even 40 years old yet, but from New Jersey to Berlin, to Houston, and now to Charleston, South Carolina in the low country, we welcome the general director, fairly new in the job, still fairly newly minted, his name is Mena Mark Hanna.

Mr. Director, welcome to the program and welcome to the Carolinas.

- Thank you very much for having me.

It's a pleasure to be here.

- Mena, let's talk about, when you first learned that you would have the job for this iconic festival and your enthusiasm and the great excitement in October and now six months or so into it, and really on the eve of the opening of the festival, which is very exciting.

What's your sense now?

What is the festival and what do you see in what you're trying to do that hasn't been done with SPOLETO before?

- So, you know, I think you go through different phases of preparation and excitement.

And the first phase obviously is like planning and thinking what the possibilities could be for SPOLETO when I first signed on.

And SPOLETO is an incredibly exciting place to do this kind of work, to bridge different perspectives together through the arts.

It's the country's premier interdisciplinary arts festival.

It's really one of the only interdisciplinary performing arts festivals at this level in North America.

And that gives a lot of uniqueness.

There's a lot to leverage there.

So I was thinking about all the cool things that I could do back when I signed on in October.

And of course there's still a lot of cool things to be done.

But, the reality of managing a complex multipolar interdisciplinary organization, especially in the difficulty of supply chain disruptions and an inflationary economy, and the great resignation, really starts to hit home.

And I think that for the past several months, it was about understanding those complexities and how they intersect with the uniqueness of this organization and the public value that it brings, not just to the low country, but to the entire Southeast.

Now finally, on the Eve of the festival, it's just the excitement and anticipation of opening night, which is multiplied by 120 times because we have 120 plus events in 17 days.

- Well, absolutely.

It's very exciting.

Do you think the last two years, and Vicky Lee, I promise I'm gonna give you a chance here.

The last two years of no SPOLETO, was there a lot of cultural momentum loss, or do you feel like you're picking up almost exactly where it left off?

- Oh, that's a fabulous question.

You know, you look through what has happened over the last two years.

You've had a pandemic that has put the performing arts on pause.

You've had a strive for social equality that has led to social and political convulsions.

And you think, "Man, these haven't been easy years."

But, and that's true.

But the flip side of that is that we're actually in the midst of a cultural Renaissance.

I think that artists and performers now believe more than ever now that there is a duty to understand how the past bleeds into the present and how that can inform our future.

And that's what's so exciting about SPOLETO in 2022 and how it's different than SPOLETO in 2020 or 2019.

- Vicki.

- Yes.

And congratulations on your new role, I'm excited for you.

Of course, coming from a business world, I'd really like to hear a little bit about, how are businesses getting prepared for this event?

And the anticipation of how it will, you know, boost the economy and the impact.

I know there were, like you said, you mentioned some challenges about inflation and supply chain, but I would also imagine there's some excitement around the economic boosts that this brings.

- Oh, of course.

I mean, you're talking, festivals are really unique organizations because they're not like opera companies or presenting holes or symphonies, which are there throughout the year.

It is concentrated activity in a highly concentrated period of time.

It's a 17 day de-limited experience.

And what that means is that you really have not just the eyes of the nation, but to a degree, the eyes of the world on what's happening artistically here.

So, it really puts Charleston and the entire, and the Carolinas and the Southeast on the spotlight in terms of what's happening artistically.

And I think what we should think about when we talk about SPOLETO is that it's not really like an opera company.

It's not really like a theater company or a dance company.

It's like an artistic occurrence.

It's almost like the Venice (indistinct) or the Edinburgh festival or the Con film festival where people come to a location and soak up the activity and the presence that is happening, because of the catalytic and kinetic effect that bringing all these people from around the world brings to this area.

So that's, I mean, I see the excitement, I see that it's really building up and it's not getting too hot yet, but you can sort of feel the temperature rise.

- Carl.

- I'm thoroughly impressed and love hearing the renaissance side of this, that things are coming, they're changing, which is interesting.

Charleston has changed too in the last 20 years.

And through the festivals almost 40 years, there's been an evolution, but over the last couple, obviously with the COVID has suppressed everything.

How fast do you feel that you can change or at least embrace other parts of the arts generationally speaking, as well as bringing a new group of folks to this festival in post COVID era?

Is it, because you still got folks that have been old school in some sense and in the style of what they want to see SPOLETO be, but with a new vision, how do you bring those together?

- Yeah, a hundred percent.

It's definitely a challenge.

I think, you know, SPOLETO has existed effectively in a specific iteration for a long period of time.

And Charleston has grown around it.

Charleston has also grown through the pandemic.

I think that's a detail that people miss, that there are a lot of people who have moved to Charleston because remote working is much more of a possibility now, and it's a nice place to live with lots of good food and beaches nearby and culture.

So people from San Francisco, New York, Chicago are moving to Charleston, so on and so forth.

So SPOLETO has to grow with Charleston, and it also has to grow to a degree where it can anticipate future growth.

And when I talk about growth in the world of nonprofit cultural entities, people sometimes get nervous because I think the vernacular that's normally used is stewardship and not growth.

But I think what the festival needs to do is grow.

I think that we need to actually set significant and ambitious growth goals to satisfy the artistic and cultural quench of the population of this city and to engender and create a cultural ecosystem for the entire Southeast of which the festival can be a cornerstone institution.

- Thank you.

- Director Hanna, as you described this, I find myself being pulled into that, is just not an arts festival that's been restarted, but Carl, you just used Renaissance and Mena, you also said something about performing arts being on pause, but now that you are back and, let me ask you, what is corporations DEI, diversity, equity, inclusion?

What can they learn from what arts inclusiveness has already been for decades?

How do you apply that?

And how would you tell DEI initiatives within organizations to think differently about it?

- I think the arts are very effective or can be effective if harnessed correctly at bridging disparate perspectives.

What a performance can do for a group of people is if it's done correctly, if it's a performance that challenges the preconceived notions of that work of art, if you take something that exists, let's say you take an opera that exists and that the opera is written in the 19th century and has a specific scope and a specific context around it.

But if you talk about that opera and understand the problems of the 19th century that are written into the opera, and then actually adapt it for this day and age, what you're doing is that you're actually bridging the desperation between the 19th century and today.

And so we can do that between people.

We can actually bring people into a concert hall and they can have a joint cathartic sort of experience.

And that's really needed now after the pandemic, because we've just been through a joint trauma.

So we need a joint catharsis through the arts.

You can also do that through the idea of what arts can mean in the 21st century.

The arts are not just about entertainment.

They're not just about, like, listening to good music, seeing incredible dance.

It's about understanding that humanity is capable of transcendence.

That humanity is capable of going beyond the mundane, that we can look at something beautiful, deeply effective that is emotional, that is all inspiring, and that we can see ourselves in that.

So when we take a seat in a piece, when we sit down in a seat to watch a performance, I expect that performance to endow an audience member with a newness and a comprehension that they did not have before they took their seat.

And I think that's the principle of DEIA that the arts is embracing.

If the arts really wants to be inclusive, we have to build that inclusion through all of these different disciplines.

We have to build that inclusion through all of our different stakeholders.

We have to understand the other people if we're gonna express humanity.

We have to understand other people if we're gonna celebrate who we are.

And the only way we can do that is by understanding other people.

- Vicki.

- I mean, I was just listening, I was so involved.

I mean, just for pushing on that a little bit more.

I mean, I guess with companies, when we see that and we see so many diverse individuals come together and working so harmoniously together, is there a hope that that could be reflected in those communities outside, those businesses outside?

Is there a way that you think that they can learn that this can happen in the workplace as well?

- I think so.

I also think that there's an opportunity for partnership.

I mean, I don't think these have to be siloed off.

I don't think the nonprofit cultural world and the corporate world are two completely, you know, extent entities.

As a matter of fact, you know, I'm going through a series of hires right now at the senior strategic level of this organization.

One of the people we just hired is someone who has worked for a decade at Disney and then, you know, worked in the nonprofit sector and then worked in the public sector.

And that overlapping experience is the kind of infusion of ideas that I think that these organizations, if we're really gonna create public value, that's what these organizations are charged with.

If we're gonna do that, then we actually have to bring in all of these different perspectives, not just from an ethnic perspective, not just from a background perspective, but also from a work experience perspective.

So I'd invite corporations to come in and see, you know, what we're doing that is harmonious.

And to help us be more efficient in trying to get to our harmonious ends.

I think there's a lot we can learn from each other.

- Carl, we've got about a minute and a half.

- Yeah, quick question, I mean, how does SPOLETO or the arts, but SPOLETO specifically embrace this new era of social media and this new generation of having everything on a device?

How, because that's the next market, right?

How do you embrace that?

- Yeah, I mean, you know, I am, I have been told by my marketing and PR department that I need to be a little bit more like social media forward.

So I've recently, I had like Instagram super private and stuff like that.

And like, it was all just, and I was just like, "Okay, I guess I gotta embrace the public nature of what social media is."

And also what my position is.

And I think it starts to a certain degree with a personality behind these accounts to understand that there's something that's driving this creation, to understand that there's an impetus there that's pushing forward.

And I think that's something that's sometimes missing in the social media world, is that it feels like, you look at Instagram and it feels like it is a curated experience for what an ideal life can be.

And I think that what we want to do is actually have a little bit more of a personality in our social media presence.

And I think that it's very cool to a certain degree to take the opportunity to peek beneath the hood, to look behind the curtain and see what's happening behind the arts, to see how we're building it up.

Because when you come into a performance, all you see is the magic and the majesty.

You don't understand what goes into it.

So I'm gonna start using social media to kind of just show what's going on behind the scenes.

- And, I'm sorry to cut you off Mena, but thank you.

It's an interesting way to describe the shoehorning into a social media platform.

Director Hanna, thank you.

Please come back, best of luck going forward.

- Yeah, thank you.

I've really enjoyed this conversation.

Thank you for having me.

- Vicky Lee, good to see you, Carl goodnight.

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