Guest Commentator: Jane P. Moss, Director of Development, People’s Light @peopleslight
What role can leaders in the business community play to make an impact in shaping the direction of the arts and culture sector in this unprecedented environment?
In August 2020, Amanda Schalich, Director of Institutional Advice, SEI Investments, was elected to the People’s Light Board of Trustees following her participation as a board observer through the Arts & Business Council’s Business on Board program. During her observership and the beginnings of her board tenure, People’s Light, a Malvern non-profit arts organization that serves as a civic and cultural center with theatre at its core, has gone through waves of shutdowns, uncertainty, pivots, experimentation and creativity which continue today.
As Board members, business leaders bring valuable insight to the workings of People’s Light in these times. They review our shifting financial plans, support staff leadership in the planning and decisions necessary from week-to-week, and serve as champions for the work going forward. The board is central to our critical work in Equity, Diversity & Inclusion, which is threaded through all aspects of the organization. As we answer the question “what’s important about a theatre now?” trustees play a key role in shaping the answer and sharing it with the community-at-large.
With the support of the Board, the Theatre now adjusts to the new parameters of safety for artists, staff, and audiences with a range of projects that respond to needs in the community and speak to our times. All projects the Theatre launches during this time are guided by four goals: 1) to keep staff and as many artists employed as possible 2) to maintain and take the opportunity to deepen relationships with audiences and communities 3) to respond to the needs and concerns of the world around us and 4) to insure the Theatre’s resources for an unknown future. As we decide on major initiatives, we have prioritized those with potential for after COVID.
Innovations and efforts have included: mask-making by our costume shop, needed meals provided by our for-profit subsidiary Farmhouse Bistro, parking lot drive-in concerts, socially distant family edu-tainments in outdoor spaces, extensive digital programming, and mobile in-community work to come in the spring. As part of our initial digital offering, we launched Rapid Commissions of Black Artists with whom we have relationships. We asked these artists to respond to the killing of George Floyd and subsequent national unrest and reckoning. The result is a collection of pieces – from short film, to poetry to oral histories, to song –that emerge from and speak to this historic moment of activism.
People’s Light is a nonprofit arts organization who has hosted a graduate of the Arts and Business Council’s Business On Board leadership development through board service program. At the beginning of the program, People’s Light was matched with Amanda Schalich, Director of Institutional Advice, SEI Investments who observed the board in action while participating in four months of informative and enlightening classroom sessions.
Now more than ever, the business community can play an extraordinary role in shaping the direction of the arts and culture sector.
