On Topic: Roger and DeAnna Cummings Episode Six

Note: On Topic is designed to be heard. If you are able, we strongly encourage you to listen to the audio, which includes emotion and emphasis that's not on the page. Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print.

Sanjit: I'm fortunate to be joined today by Rodger and DeAnna Cummings, founders of Juxtaposition Arts as part of this ongoing conversation on cultural leadership and cultural practice. So thanks to the two of you for joining me.

Roger: it's an honor and a privilege to be here. 

DeAnna: Thanks so much. 

Sanjit: Great. Well it’s important I think as we need to mark I think this moment in time as we have a conversation about issues regarding culture and equity and resilience for us to think about where we are right now. And I'm thinking about it in relation to the fact that we’re on Thursday, we're recording it on Thursday May 28th. In a moment where the entire country, but certainly the City of Minneapolis has really been struck with the tragedy of the killing of George Floyd and the subsequent aftermath on this. And while these things take a while to process, I wanted to know Roger and DeAnna are there initial thoughts that you have about what you're experiencing and what you're witnessing and thoughts that you may have about how a community starts the healing process.

 

Roger: Okay so how am I, how am I feeling about community healing? So I was born in Cleveland, Ohio in ‘68 and so like on some level, I was brought into existence in this environment, in this atmosphere. So I’m sure people were asking the same questions as far as healing and how can there be healing. And there has to be a lot of equity and a redistribution of a lot of wealth and opportunity and things like that. I think that's something that's the only way that they will begin to see some of the healing. But as long as you know where the developments are booming and there's buildings going up everywhere and you can be rest assured that there is not one brown person that is behind that or owning that or designing that. It’s just going to continue to be the same as ‘68, is the same as ‘78, it’s the same as ‘88, ‘98 2008,’18 and I’m sure ‘28 unless it's reduced to dust. 

DeAnna: And I would add to Rogers point and sort of putting George Floyd in a historical context and what I've been thinking about, two things I've been thinking about. One is I'm curious about our societal lack of conversation around the fact that the police force is an extension of slave catchers. And from the very beginning the police were created to protect property, which was black bodies. And it seems as if we have these conversations about police and the violence police do as if we collectively either we don't know or we have forgotten or we don't acknowledge and realize that.

So when we talk about reforming police so that you know that all police aren't bad, that's true but the system itself is rotten to the core. And so that's what I've been thinking about it. And then the other thing I'm thinking about in terms of culture, is how do black people specifically, where are spaces where we can process and heal from this historical trauma that is done to us again and again and again and again. That quite literally shortens our life span and thinking about the lack of you know sort of historical and legacy spaces where that work can happen. Which ties to a bigger thing that I'm just thinking about constantly, which is about the lack of institutions that exist you know beyond one generation in communities of color and how that is a tragedy in our communities, and tragic in the broader community as well.

Sanjit: What I'm struck by is both of you answering my initial query from distinctly different points of view but also coalescing on this idea around the importance of space. Roger, you were mentioning talking about developments and inferring from that gentrification and through that, talking about who owns the space and who it is for. And DeAnna, your thoughts also about returning to space. About a space for that kind of collective degree of not just reflection but it seems like articulation of a more equitable environment. I guess I'm wondering if we could talk about that for a moment. We could talk about how important is a space now and how do you start to go ahead in envisioning ideal spaces for a more equitable community.

Roger: Sure so I think like the history of cultural spaces that matter are important and so to be able to create space for people that don't have either the resources or the opportunity to be able to benefit from those space’s. So when an example would be Broadway would have an Art Crawl and there were no studios for people to go into to see art, this is you know early 2000’s. And so it was important for us to create those spaces where the north side and an artist of color would have studio spaces that they could afford and their practice could bloom or explode. And so now they’re catching benefit from their practice because there was a space that you could seed and it wouldn't be super stressful and we will charge a dollar square foot now. And I think like those things are important and also to create spaces that are accessible and in a larger space that's also dynamic but being very culturally specific. You know buildings that provide opportunity not just for us at Juxta but for the broader community.

DeAnna: Yeah and in terms of equity, I think there's economic equity and the importance of physical space and property as a way that wealth is passed on, largely in this country, at least for working class people. So there's the importance of that financial stake in a place. And of course the data that Minneapolis shows that home ownership and property ownership for people of color and specifically for black folks is, we have some of the largest disparities in the country here in Minnesota. But then I think there is also equity in representation, in space so that there's a thing that happens. I think we could do the research and prove this out where, before people become economically disenfranchised from their community, before they become economically gentrified out of their community, they begin to be culturally gentrified out of their community. So they begin to look at the way their communities are changing and being developed and they don't see themselves reflected in the shops that are opening or the cultural centers or the cute theaters or you know the various amenities that are coming to the neighborhood that weren't there before. 

So I think there's something really powerful and important and critical to spaces where our history is reflected where we can see ourselves in what is taking place in that space and what is on the stage or what is on the wall or what is being produced. So I think that's another piece of equity in the built environment, equity in space and the importance of those spaces, again lasting beyond one generation. Institutional spaces that communities can draw from and contribute to or for multiple generations.

Sanjit: That notion of the intergenerational space. Space that isn't, that’s maybe I'm calling it more asymmetrical space. Space that’s not simply about commerce or living, but rather it's a stickier, more amorphic space, that involves different forms of creativity, that involves different ways of considering what makes up a family and how that family extends to the community. That’s something it seems like it is so missing from urban planning dialogues. I guess I'm wondering how you feel that the work that both of you have been doing has been trying to go ahead and move that needle and nudge that along.

DeAnna: I would say that I mean to a greater or lesser degree everything we do at Juxta, everything we've done at Juxta and I would say even beyond Juxta throughout our careers outside of Juxta, really is about trying to move that needle. One of the things I was thinking about in terms of preparing for this conversation and thinking about my history and how I come to do the work that I do. Is that I think that Rodger and I share a desire to do work and to create a company, a business, and an institution that is benefiting people in multiple kinds of ways. So we're not and I don't, we’re not interested in doing work just from a perspective of sort of giving people exposure to things, or opportunity to things. We want to do work that everybody benefits from, everyone who participates is benefiting from it in multiple ways. So I mean that's the reason we own buildings on Broadway, that's the reason we’ve continued to buy additional buildings because we think it's important to have community ownership of physical space. That is why we have our core work at Juxta Lab where we're training and employing young people and artists who you know, 100 people who work at Juxta. But that's just at the root of everything we are doing, we're trying to move the needle economically, socially, politically, physically, starting at the intersection at Emerson and West Broadway and expanding from there.

Sanjit: Okay well you know I’d love to know a little bit more about the inception of Juxta. In a sense I've certainly kind of read about it. I’ve been fortunate to have a lengthy conversation with you Roger. But I just wanted to know if you can talk about when the spark really occurred and kind of what that gestational process was like.

Roger: Yes I think on some level what you see at Juxta with the textile customization, the large-scale public art in the form of murals, and the graphic design were things that all the founders were doing in high school. So you can see this in you know we were doing flyers, we are airbrushing shirts, so a lot, like the majority of those things were part of our practice as teens. And we wanted to formalize it and be able to like make an actual organization and program; it came out of part of Payton's practice which was being able to show young artists how to be professional artists through a particular interpretation through portfolio development and exhibition and mentoring. And so like that's what we started to like, take those concepts and formalize that into an actual curriculum and then a program and then an institution like that so that was probably early ‘90s ‘93, ‘4, ‘5.

DeAnna: And Roger and I met in high school and Roger and Peyton who was the third founder of Juxta, Peyton Russell, met in elementary school. So we all grew up together, Rodger and I have been a couple since high school and Roger and Peyton were best friends since elementary, we all grew up together. I sort of think about three aspects of my background contributing to what became Juxta, and I think all of us actually had some pieces of each of these three things. One was strong mentors, key people in my life who, one of whom, Lorraine Berman was a mentor to me in a formal program through a trio program at my high school. But people who hired me for my first jobs at the Minneapolis parks, at the Pacer Center, at the Board of Public Defense who really took me under their wing as a young person that they found to be bright and curious, though I was a kid that was considered at risk and you know I barely graduated from high school. I graduated at the very bottom of my class, out of 1500 like I was literally number 1500. But I was a gifted and talented kid as well and mentors, adult mentors really saw that in me and Roger had the same from some of his mentors like Travis Lee and other folks Gerald who hired him for his first job. 

Roger: Gerald Graves.

DeAnna: Gerald Graves from Prince of Glory. The other thing, the second thing was all of us had a strong interest in and passion for entrepreneurship from a very young age. Just thinking about you know, I had a typing business, I had a word processor so I could type people's papers and would charge the money when I was in high school and college,  Roger and I had a greeting card business. And then we tended to attract people in our circle who were people you know like-minded people of that nature. Peyton was an entrepreneur, as Roger said he used to do flyers and backdrops and so on and so forth. And then the third thing I would say is we all sort of have had a non-traditional education, educational path to some degree or another. Rodger and I both went to the University of Minnesota, both dropped out of the University of Minnesota. He dropped out after a couple of years, I dropped out after about four years and we started Juxta a couple of years later. And in part because we were young people who enjoyed sort of learning by doing. And I think we're still really built in that way and those three components of mentorship, entrepreneurship, non-traditional education, learning by doing really make up the core of what Juxta is still today.

Roger: Yeah when you look at it we have like design philosophies and pedagogical philosophies and so one underlying thing for us that you'll see at Juxta, is the influence of non-traditional learning. So you know how we structure our classes is from our experiences. So John Taylor Gatto was a teacher in New York who you know wrote books, Weapons of Mass Destruction, The Underground History of American Education so not traditional approaches to education. You know it comes from what we experienced in grade school, in high school. So Dennis Lambert was one of my teachers at Marcy Open and he was instrumental in how you teach to different learning styles there and how you break up the classroom to be able to teach in a different way. As well as team teaching and then also just maybe doing the opposite of what our public educational system was doing for us so that's kind of how we approached it.

Sanjit: Well it sounds like you're both, well there’s so much that you both said just now but I feel like it's worth unpacking. One of them is just the profound sense that is certain places in your trajectory that the current framework of an educational system let you down whether it's not by seeing or providing the territory of engagement. DeAnna as you're talking about in high school whether it's not going ahead and feeling like that there is the degree of institutionally focused or institutionally supported mentorship that may have existed in higher ed is well. It sounds like that's had a profound impact on the way that you set up Juxta and in particular to provide a kind of account or pedagogical model, is that a fair way to reframe things?

Roger and DeAnna: Yeah yeah for sure that's right, that's exactly right.

DeAnna: Um I think that what you heard into what we said Sanjit, is our philosophy and our pedagogy that believes in an asset-based approach to learning. And so an asset-based approach which utilizes learning by doing, hands-on. It's a heuristic learning model says that the way to learn is to do what you can right now while you're working side-by-side with a mentor who is more advanced than you who may be an expert at a particular thing and you're seeing and learning that person doing the thing and then you pick up the next piece as you learn it and and you sort of grow from there. So that's that's very much part of sort of countering what we didn't have in the way in which we structure our approaches at Juxta, is exactly that. Mentoring is another key piece, a cohort learning model is another piece. So what Roger and I again as individuals have gone on to do later in life is both of us attended Harvard. I have a master's degree in public policy from the Harvard Kennedy School and I've participated in a ton of fellowships and leadership development courses and you know all kinds of leadership development and advanced learning as a professional. And have found that a cohort model where you are learning with a group that you learn over multiple years and you build a sense of community with that group of people is a very effective way to teach and to learn. And especially for non-traditional students who are coming into these spaces already feeling othered, unsure of whether we belong in these spaces and you know who have a lot to unpack and manage out of the gate in being in these spaces. So we're trying to give young people and artists at Juxta a leg up, that's the way we think about it. So that when they graduate Juxta, when they leave Juxta, when they go on to do the next thing that they're going to do they have an advantage over their contemporaries, even their contemporaries who come from more wealthy and privileged backgrounds. 

Sanjit: You know I’m, you both are talking so eloquently about mentorship and I'll confess a degree of feeling like the term mentorship has been so overused in many ways. And by that I think oftentimes it's true original intention has been subjugated, recast, undermined, whatever term I'm trying to think of. Because I think it's gone on to mean for so many institutions that it's someone with more experience giving advice to someone with less experience. And in reality for me and I think one thing that I'm profoundly moved by the work that Juxta is doing, is that it seems to me that mentorship is really about an exchange of ideas and values from individuals that are coming to the table with different perspectives and different life experiences. And I guess I’m wondering, how's the term and the concept of mentorship changed for you both. And I’d say this both from a programmatic level within Juxta, but also for you personally. Are you still receiving mentorship and if so, how is that changed over time? But I don't know, and feel free to disagree with my skepticism about the way the mentorship has been overused.

Roger: No, for sure, no I definitely agree. So out of like let's say of my five mentors Travis Lee, Saitu Jones, Joe Graves, Dennis Lambert, Doug Freeman. None of them said that you know I am your mentor or I want to be your mentor or can I mentor you, it’s like it never happened like they always saw a spark and and a way to provide opportunity, a way to provide feedback and a place that we can observe and help. So similar to if your parent owns the store or and you just come in to help sweep up and you know restock and things like that, that is mentoring yes but not really. Or you know, how the Amish will get their young people out in the fields or show them how to build a house, are they mentoring them? Uh I don't know. And I think it is overused, and I think it’s something that you just do. So whenever we work with young people we're not like yes I am mentoring you now. Similar to like hip hop in a way, which has had a very you know that's not, like my DNA is in hip hop as far as competition, as far as mentoring, as far as things like that, but we never said I'm going to go to a hip hop party or I am going to dress hip hop it's just something that you do. And that's how we approach this, it’s just like ingrained in our DNA to show others. And as far as us still being mentored, or people still teaching us, that are in our inner circle, absolutely. All those people that I just named with the exception of you know, like my sixth grade teacher or my 10th grade first job that are no longer around, still give me jewels and help me with the opportunity and advice and other things. So that I can do that to others, I can, when it’s my time, I can hand the baton and other people you know can run their leg of the race.

DeAnna: I would say Roger I really like that and it is a reflection of my belief as well. And again I think the way in which we conduct the work we do at Juxta, the work we do period, is mentorship as an active commitment. Sanjit you said two people coming together exchanging ideas, coming from different perspectives as a part of that exchange and I would agree with that but I would add to that not just an exchange of ideas but an activation of ideas. So when I think about mentorship in my life what it has looked like is a lifelong commitment to care about me. And to help me take those next active steps that I need to take to do what I said I wanted to do or what I said I believe is important in the world. So it is people who have made a commitment to support me and my values and to live my values mostly in a professional context but I would say that it extends beyond just profession, it's a care for each other. I think about Travis Lee who was at my social distant going away party on Friday and just reflecting on the fact that Rodger and I have known Travis since we were teenagers you know since we were 17, 18, 19 years old. And he is at the front of the line, the reception line and is there you know greeting people in it and making sure I'm okay, for a couple of hours while we're having this event that's sending me off to McKnight. That's what mentorship looks like and Travis has been in our life for 30 some years playing that role. And it goes both ways, he is enriched and and we are enriched as well so it's also not a, it's not—

Roger: One way.

DeAnna: I'm the older, wiser you know and you listen to me we're exchanging it it definitely goes both ways.

Sanjit: You know I think that this goes back to this idea of that embrace of asymmetry, the embrace of the fact that it's not, I don't think mentorship is something that exists in a flowchart or a programmatic diagram. It seems to me that mentorship is something that you're not able to contain in a spreadsheet or an org chart, it's more timeless than that. It combines the professional and the personal aspirations that one has, as well as it seems to me, it's also about kind of a more intimate sharing of the specific struggles that one's going through. And I guess I just wanted to know, have there been times when you thought the work whether it was at Juxta or even before Juxta came into light, where things were hard, things felt daunting and what was the turning point to to get around or out or through that.

Roger: Hmm, man it’s still hard like it's not like somehow it's a everything of the gravy, now it's if I can still it's a super strug— is a super struggle to get this capital campaign finished and that’s hard, because that's like an important work that side that's like our legacy work. So it's just like in life there's always been really grimy times, to the point where you're bringing like a change in you know bottles that you saved up so that you can get like food and that whole thing and that was in a not-so-distant past. So it's just 360, like you’re gonna hit those times and we continue to hit those times as well. So when we're up we're happy and we feel honored and blessed to be up and then when we’re down we know this isn't going to be a permanent thing and we just got to deal with the stress and strain. So anything from you know the economy getting bad, and us you know having to not have a robust offering as we could, to yeah anything. I think that's just a part of the ecosystem that we're in so there weren't any turning points where like now it's all paved in gold and we're just gliding by

DeAnna: Yeah I agree with, I agree with Roger, I agree with everything Roger said. But to your points of what do we do when we find ourselves in those hard places. Because that's exactly right, it's a cycle it's up and down and there becomes periods of time over our 25-year history where we can point to the work being really hard for a while. And we're in that space right now, to Roger’s point, it's, the work is hard right now. Both the capital campaign being part of the challenge right now raising, you know, raising multiple, 14 million dollars, double-digit million dollars is hard. Um and it's especially hard I think for people of color who aren't connected and networked into institutional and individual wealth in the same way that other folks might be. Uh or for and especially for people leading cultural, people of color leading culture events, leading institutions also. But it’s also hard right now because we’re at a cyclical phase where the work needs to be different. The way in which we do the work needs to be different for the scale of the operation we are today.

And so what we have done over and over every time we’re at one of these points is we pause and we do a plan. We make a strategic plan or we make a business development plan or we stop and we assess and we talk to our team, we talk to board members, we talk to partners, we talk to the broader community of folks that we work with. And we assess what the next short, mid, and long-term of the work needs to look like and how it needs to be. So we haven't done a full-on strategic plan since 2004. 2004, is that right? Yeah we haven't done a full or no I'm sorry that's not true, since 2010. We haven’t done a full on strategic plan since 2010 and we've done some interim plans to extend that strategic plan a couple of times so we're in the middle of a strategic planning process currently and we’ll be completing that plan aligning with our capital campaign. Because that's a part of what has to happen with regard to a new building, is we need to have a programmatic plan and and strategy that the building can hold and contain and you know bring to fruition. So we've been, we've been really, I would say we've been really smart about understanding that a strategic plan and a business plan and the right operations model is important to our success. So as much as you hear us talking about sort of more theoretical things like mentorship and you know support and culture and all those things, we also understand you got to have a solid business plan to hang the work on.

Roger: And if I could add on to that like as people are listening to us, if you could just create a list, if you can create a list of development projects or capital campaigns that are eight million. And up just start locally and then look and see if any of those development projects are lead like they, like the ED or the CEO are people of color. And then go to a region, you know go to Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, or North Dakota, South Dakota and do the same thing. And then do it on like a national level 8 million or 10 million and up capital campaign led by people of color. It’s like almost non-existent and so that's the struggle, do they give, do people give, do people support black led cultural institutions, black led workforce development institutions that are on that level that are like building.

So just for visuals, being able to build a building, people of color build a building that’s more than two stories. So on some level you don't get any points for building a one-story building. We've been doing that since reconstruction. So let's go to 3, 4 and start to come up with a list of how many people have done that and then you start to see how and why we're frustrated, how and why there’s angst, how and why there is no equity even though people use equity. And then like I also look at it as a motivator, as a way to get unstuck. One of my mentors Ashanti Alston, he was locked up for a long time, he’s Black Panther, he's coined the term black anarchism and so he says black culture has always been oppositional and it's always been about finding ways to creatively resist oppression. So it's not so much tied to the color of your skin but who you are as a person and someone who can resist and see things differently when they're stuck and thus live differently. And so like that's that's how we approach that’s kind of our philosophy around that too. How can we do things differently and approach things differently when we get stuck.

Sanjit: That's really, that's great to hear both of you start to talk about these kinds of roles and how they evolved and the importance of planning. I'm curious, I'm curious to know your thoughts about apathy. And I say that because it seems to me that when you have communities that have been intergenerationally underserved, when you've got communities that feel like they've been intergenerationally disenfranchised from social processes, from political processes. I'm wondering how do you contend with apathy based on the work that you're doing. And in some ways I can relate to you know, Roger you're talking about that kind of arduous climb of looking in the capital campaign. You're talking, you were talking about how these models need to not just be evolutionary but revolutionary in nature. I’m just curious how do you, how do you contend with or counter apathy?

Roger: I would say I'm the more apathetic one in the relationship. I am the Yin to DeAnna’s Yang, as far as that she helps even on an organizational level. Cause I am very fatalist and you know I’m not as sparkly and happy and positive outlook-y in life. I think that's just a part of my personality, is to look at everything that is just like rotten and bad and corrupt and can go wrong and De is the opposite of that. So how do I combat that? I don't, I embrace it cause that’s, I look at the trajectory and this is where I'm at in life and I got here. I was like this in 5th and 6th and 7th grade was always like this, so that's the energy that I've been coming back so I'm going to continue that trajectory.

Sanjit: Well, you know I appreciate the self-reflection Roger. But I guess I was also meaning apathy towards the work you're doing within communities that feel like they've been historically disinfected and you're trying to convince them that what Juxta has to offer provides an avenue for change, for growth, for development. The parents of an individ, an individual that's skeptical that your pedagogy and your practice that you're promoting through Juxta can really be of benefit, then can go ahead and get people unstuck. 

Roger: Yeah that’s those are like, that’s why it’s important as far as visuals I think. If people can see, oh man you were able to get a two-story, three-story building you're able to not just paint a mural but paint a mural that we can be involved with and we can make money from. And so I think when you start seeing and then being able to access what you see, that's like a super important part of that. Cause if you don’t ever see anybody who looks like you that's doing urban planning, that's doing engineering, just doing architecture, that's like running things, and setting direction. I can’t hire and fire and do all that then it just becomes kind of like, boo like I can't jump over the moon if I can’t see other people jump over the moon as well. And once you see that then I think that's important I think that's on some level, part of the reason why things are like this is, because they don't. People will not give you the opportunity to be able to show ot her people that you can jump over the moon and thus it’s like training fleas in a way unless you hit your head to a certain degree to stop jumping.

DeAnna: And I would add to that what I think is sort of what is inside of what Roger’s saying is, we don't try to convince people of anything. We don't do, so in terms of how do we, how do we convince someone that this op, the opportunities available at Juxta are right for them or they should give you know, give it a shot or or come check us out. We don't and actually I believe that when folks say that apathy is the reason for lack of participation, I think that's actually a cop out. And the reason people aren't participating in your thing is because they don't want to and you haven't made it attractive. Because people show up and vote with their feet, they vote with their participation, they vote with their presence so if they're not participating in what Juxta is presenting or offering then that's because we're not offering something that they find attractive or that they feel like they need. 

So I don't think people are apathetic, I think the protests last night that became you know riots last night are proof that people aren’t apathetic, people show up for what is important to them. And we think about our work at Juxta across-the-board in that way, in that when we're meeting with a funder, I remind our team, when we’re getting ready to meet with the new funder, somebody who hasn't funded us before we're not trying to convince them of anything. We're not trying to convince them and make them change their mind in terms of what they think about Juxta or what they think about the north side. We're trying to tell them the truth, we're trying to be as clear as possible, as honest as possible, as transparent as possible. So that they can see into our work and if they find the values match with that, then we are excited for them to support us but we're not trying to convince them to support us.

Sanjit: Right. You know and I think in some ways that's a really great segue. I really appreciate both of your thoughts about reframing this notion of apathy and in talking about it being, about community need and needing to go ahead and improve value, and merit, and opportunity to communities. DeAnna, congratulations you're about to take on a new role, starting at the beginning of June as Program Director of Arts at the McKnight Foundation. And within that one of the questions I had wanted to ask both of you, is about that relationship to philanthropy. In many ways it feels like a lot of philanthropy is set up on a tremendous degree of traditionally white intergenerational wealth that came on the backs of an underserved community. And still operates to a certain degree with a feudal mentality or maybe better placed a colonial mentality. And you just mentioned talking about how you've created a kind of firewall with Juxta about your relationship and you're showing philanthropy kind of what it is that you were doing. I just wanted to know what both of you thought, are the more revolutionary ideas about how philanthropy can operate now and into the future.

Roger: Oh so I wouldn't say it was a firewall I would say it's more we’ve created more of like a fugitive community that you can grow and do that whole thing with. So what can philanthropy, I think that philanthropy can help us and help them manifest their values in a way that wouldn't be authentic in a way if they did it. You know what I mean it's like you can help support, like philanthropy can help support and all that, like indigenous communities and what they are trying to do, what agenda’s set and where they identify as an area where they need support with or different communities in and around the region. So they can help support that but they can't do that, so they will give us the opportunity to be able to do the work authentically by financially supporting. De, I don't know. What do you, what do you think?

DeAnna: Mmhmm yeah yeah. Roger you said something about philanthropy letting the—

Roger: Living their values.

DeAnna: Folks and the folks who are the intended beneficiaries of philanthropic good will be the decision-makers about what is needed. So I think that that sort of idea is in many ways really radical, in terms of the relationship that nonprofit institutions and cultural workers have with philanthropy and donors. Often donors believe that they are the experts and take quite a judgmental and sort of paternalistic perspective in their relationship with nonprofit organizations. To your point Sanjit, Juxta over the years has declined funding from institutional donors who took a real paternalistic perspective towards our work and we had to say yeah we know what, we would prefer, we will give you your money back because we cannot work with you in this way. So I mean that is part of how again we approached the work at Juxta from a place of sort of self-respect and real confidence in the track record of what we do and and the value of what we're bringing to the table. 

So in terms of cultural leadership which was something that I know you wanted to talk about, I feel like part of what I hope, what I'm curious about in my work in philanthropy and I don't want to over speak anything because my new boss Kara has been really committed to the fact that I'm not starting at McKnight until I start at McKnight. So I don't need to plan, think, do any meetings in advance, I start on June 1st and that's when I start, which has been a practice, an exercise for me and sort of going with the flow because that's not my natural character. I like to know everything and I like to have things very planned out. But that being the case I'm curious about how philanthropy might contribute to seeding the next generation of PLC cultural leaders black and brown and Indigenous cultural leaders such as that reality that Roger described. That there are, we can count on one hand the number of black led cultural institutions in the United States with budgets greater than 5 million dollars. And we can count on one hand the number of black led cultural institutions in this country that have been in existence beyond one generation of leadership, beyond the founding generation of leadership and that are living precariously. So I'm curious about the institution of philanthropy and in general its desire to exist in perpetuity and how that sort of timeline might match with a desire that cultural institutions should exist in perpetuity and how we might be able to marry our values and our sort of structure to help, to change that. I have no idea what that's going to look like but I'm curious about it. I'm curious about how I might be able to contribute to working on that issue from my new role.

Roger: And I would add, you can add onto philanthropy, higher education and as well as like the bigger cultural institutions, in that they need to have a responsibility too. So they think a win is being able to get a provost of color or somebody of color but then there's kind of like nothing beyond that. Like are you giving full rides, do you have access to make the commitment that you talk about with equity and inclusion and really get people full rides at like these four year institutions. And then like the bigs, like the cultural bigs, the same with that as far as like leadership. Again you don’t get points for having the receptionist of color, or the outreach and engagement person of color like somebody who's actually making decisions because those institutions are benefiting from people of color work. Same with higher ed, they are benefiting on the people of color sports to be able to fund that but then like nobody's calling shots there's no extension into the community, and you know helping with these walls that you know keep you out as far as you know financial aid housing and supporting that way.

DeAnna: Yeah, the Walker Art Center is a great historic partner to Juxta. We've had a long and and an important, historic relationship with the Walker and The Walker-Mia impact for that matter, are better institutions because Juxtaposition Arts exists. So how do we institutionalize those relationships such that Juxta and Penumbra and Tu Dance and Theater Mu are stable, solid, regenerative organizations that are not fighting for their life, decade after decade. While our bigger cultural partners don't struggle in the same way.

Sanjit: Yeah and I think that for me, that notion of not just looking at likely partnerships, but also looking at unlikely partnerships. And knowing that oftentimes those partnerships come with an acknowledgement of the power dynamics that is so critical. I feel like you know we've really, in some ways this entire conversation has been suffused with thinking about cultural leadership in so many different aspects from hearing about how you two grew up, to the formation of Juxta, to some of the challenges, to talking about philanthropy. But I did as we start to round out on time in this conversation I wanted to know from both of you. How would you individually define the qualities or what cultural leadership means to you?

Roger: Oh I think cultural leadership has to be on some level autonomous as far as you know cultural leadership that’s tied with cultural production and a cultural practice. Cultural leadership needs to be authentic in that, in that practice. Uh what else,  that is kind of hard with my cultural leadership. Like on some like it's never defined or saw myself as like you know he’s a cultural leader in north, like that’s just like not the narrative. So what is the future of, I would hope that cultural leadership in the areas can grow and be supported. Like for instance, where can cultural leaders go to get support and that they have a lot to carry, there's a lot that they're responsible for. Not just a bricks-and-mortar but also the human capital, to be able to get health insurance for, to be able to know you have a retirement plan. Like where do they go and are invested in to be able to lift the weight of those types of challenges. And for a lot of them there is no place for the majority of them, there is no place. So you have to go ahead and on some level self-medicate and try to figure it out on your own. And that's like that model I think needs to go away. I think we need to be supported and encouraged and grow and taken care of. Because you know as we’ve seen in the past once you know, once we fall off and then can't lift that weight anymore and it goes back to zero and somebody else has to figure out how to build this institution and these like cultural institutions again from scratch, which is super problematic.

DeAnna: Yeah, I would say I just keep coming back to the active side of leadership. And I haven't been a person and Roger wasn't a person, neither of us set out to be leaders, I mean that we didn't set out to build an institution. So to some degree cultural leadership looks like the active space one takes in the cultural ecosystem that is a lived space. That is a get up and put one foot in front of the other everyday kind of space. So that's what I think about when I think about what cultural leadership looks like. I don't think it always looks like a physical space though, I think that I'm thinking about today and I'm thinking about covid-19 and I'm thinking about what cultural spaces of the future look like. And I believe that we don't yet know fully what those spaces are going to look like but they may not always be physical. That being said I don't think virtual spaces can completely take the place of physical space, because we're human beings and being together matters and being physically together matters to us and it always will. So I think sort of being really thoughtful and strategic about all the kinds of spaces that we need today is going to be important work for those of us that are leaders in culture to think about over the next you know this sort of next new normal period that we're going to find, that we’re finding ourselves in and are going to find ourselves in for some time.

Sanjit: Yeah, go ahead Roger, please.

Roger: So like right now at this space in time we've been invested in heavily, DeAnna and I, as far as education and support. And so like as a cultural, in air quotes cultural leader, the things that I want to be able to do is make my mom proud, make Saitu and Travis proud and like that's who I look like if I can just do like what they did for me for a larger group of people. I think that you know, is what I'm supposed to do for this leg of the race and that's my goal. So if that's what cultural leadership is like that's what I want to do, so we got a lot of influence as far as what you should be providing when you are invested in heavily and that's how it should be, regenerative for the next generation.

Sanjit: You know and DeAnna, you also brought up covid-19 and this is one of the longest conversations I've had without bringing up the pandemic at least until the end of the conversation. And so it's actually been nice to not have that necessarily be on the front burner of what we’re talking about. But it does make me kind of wonder, certainly I think I'm amongst a group of individuals that are certainly looking at not just how do we get through the pandemic but what's the more articulate, visionary world we want to see on the other side of the pandemic. And what are the steps that cultural or educational or philanthropic institutions can take to go ahead and move from evolutionary to revolutionary. And I guess I'm wondering are there things that both of you are thinking about that you would like to see or you think there's a fundamental opportunity to change how we think about emerging into a post covid-19 world?

Roger: Things that I’d like to see change in the post covid. I think we’re seeing that there’s more than one way to provide knowledge or education or things like that as far as virtually. I think that’s one thing that's changing, I don’t think it should be a permanent thing but I think it’s helping people stretch in that way, being able to communicate in a different way temporarily. I would also like to see a more— like what's coming out of this is people to be more hygienic and cleanly, you know I think that's like an important thing. And so I think I like the hand-washing and you know that whole thing moving forward. I think things are going to change as far as you know restaurants like that level of cleanliness and what’s expected in those things. I don't know, that's hard.

DeAnna: I think for the sector for the arts and culture sector and when I talk about the arts and culture sector my arms are wide open. So I'm talking about the educational system that is part of the sector and nonprofit, for-profit etcetera. But the secor is going to shrink, which always happens when you have a significant economic downturn. I think that part of that is necessary, I think if we're being honest and we look at the sector as a whole, we're riding on a bubble. And we've known that for a couple of years, many of us were riding on a bubble and living a bit on a bubble. So there’s going to be a shrinking that happens for the whole sector, for the entire economy for that matter. But I think we have to be careful not to believe, not to fall into this sort of belief that the system itself, the economy itself, will make those decisions and those that don't make it, don't make it and those that are strong enough to survive, survive. I think we have to be really really thoughtful and strategic and sure that those critical institutions, artists, etc., are supported through this time because we need them to be whole when we get onto the other side. So that sort of just let the chips fall where they may and let the market decide I think is a dangerous way to go. Because we know that people of color, institutions run by communities of color, rooted in communities of color are going to suffer disproportionately during this downturn. So again, things I'm thinking about as I'm shifting to my philanthropy hat in a few days here.

Sanjit: Well it's been such a pleasure to talk with both of you about your work and about your sense of the broader ecology regarding cultural equity. You know I have been really drawn to this community and it's hard to imagine them almost rounding out on one year of being here. But I have to say, despite the tragedies over the past months with the covid pandemic, as well as the recent tragedies this week, I'm really heartened by knowing that the two of you are out within this specific cultural ecology and doing the work that you're doing. So thanks for taking the time to join me today.

Roger: Thank you for having us. It's an honor and a pleasure.

DeAnna: Thank you so much and I look forward to more.