This is part 1 of a two-part series.
In this episode Alyssa and guest co-host André Solomon sit down with Grace Stewart, the Diversity, Equity, Accessibility, and Inclusion Project Manager at the American Alliance of Museums. Together they will discuss the Alliance’s Facing Change Initiative and how the project is addressing equity in museums across the nation.
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Alyssa: Hello, AMT-Lab listeners, and welcome to an interview episode brought to you by the Arts Management and Technology Lab. My name is Alyssa, and I am the Podcast Producer.
In this episode, I along with guest co-host André Solomon, sit down with Grace Stewart, the Diversity, Equity, Accessibility, and Inclusion Project Manager at the American Alliance of Museums. Together, we will discuss the Alliance’s Facing Change Initiative and how the project is addressing equity in museums across the nation.
Please note that we are recording this episode as of April 10th, 2020, during the coronavirus pandemic. We are practicing social distancing by recording over Zoom. Therefore, you may hear differences in the audio quality, particularly as we switch from speaker to speaker.
We hope you enjoy this episode brought to you by AMT-Lab.
Alyssa: Okay, so I am here today with our guest Grace Stewart and our co-host André Solomon. Could you take a moment to introduce yourselves to our listeners, starting with Grace?
Grace: Sure. Thank you for having me. My name is Grace Stewart, and as you said I am currently the DEAI, as we like to call it, Project Manager at the American Alliance of Museums. And, my core job right now is to work on the Facing Change Initiative. Previous to that, I was in Memphis for seven years. I have worked at the metal museum there, as well as the National Civil Rights Museum.
André: So, my name is André Solomon. I am, also as Alyssa is, a candidate for a Master of Arts Management here at Carnegie Mellon and a guest co-host today. For my studies, I'm really focusing on, again, DEAI work. As well, social justice advocacy and cultural policy. Really trying to advocate for people who aren't always at the table in arts.
Alyssa: Alright, excellent. Well, thank you very much to the both of you for joining us today. So, recently, we had the pleasure of hosting Grace here at Carnegie Mellon at the MAM Speaker Series to talk about the Facing Change Initiative. According to the Alliance website, “77 percent of museum directors believe that expanding the racial and ethnic diversity of their boards is important to advancing their missions.” Yet, 46 percent, or nearly half, of boards are 100 percent white, and “only 10 percent of museum boards have developed a plan to become more inclusive.” The Facing Change Initiative’s goal, therefore, is to help leaders achieve their goals of diversifying their boards.
André: Also, the project currently has 51 museums selected from Chicago, San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose Area, Houston, Dallas, and Fort Worth, Jackson, and Minneapolis and St. Paul, all for the Board Diversity and Inclusion Program. In addition, 10 Facing Change Diversity Fellows were selected to act as coaches for the selected museums. Around 4 million dollars in grants from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Alice L. Walton Foundation, and the Ford Foundation back this project. With this, the Initiative will focus its efforts on leadership, engagement, and development, plus will offer an online resource center for inclusive museum governance, and will have board matching support to connect individuals interested in serving on a museum board.
Alyssa: Alright, so to kick off our discussion today, I’d like to first visit the idea you brought up in the lecture that we are conditioned to not talk about race. In fact, race is the top indicator of social inequities and disparities, and when we start discussing it, we start to feel uncomfortable and vulnerable. And when that happens, people start to ignore the topic altogether. So I’d like to ask you, Grace: How do we set expectations for leadership or a board that in order to move a project on diversity forward, they’ll need to be vulnerable about the realities we live in and start getting comfortable with talking about race?
Grace: Sure, that's a great place to start. I think one of the things that we've learned is that we probably can generally working with our boards. [Internet Drop] I think working with trustees is a particularly interesting group to work with, because they're often in their daily lives leaders. They're often the voice of authority and are viewed as correct and having all the answers. So, being in a space where they don't have all the answers or have to be really ready to make mistakes and to admit that they don't necessarily know everything, because none of us know everything about this work, it’s very challenging. And, it takes a lot of relationship building on the front end to get everyone comfortable with that kind of work.
Some of the things that we start off talking about really is [Internet Drop] when you are in a learning space, and that happens when you're outside of your comfort zone. So, you can stay in your comfort zone and not grow. But, you can step out of your comfort zone, and that's really where learning happens. And, it's very hard to learn and grow if you're not willing to get uncomfortable. So, we ask people to get comfortable being uncomfortable. And, we define this as a difference between a safe space and a brave space. And, safe spaces, essentially, are comfort and in brave spaces you push past that to get to that learning.
We also want to set up, kind of, a container for that vulnerability. So, we start out by setting expectation. Growth helps put people at ease and recognize that this is what's expected. We also try to demonstrate that, you know, even though we may be facilitating a conversation, and we may have some areas of expertise, we try not to refer to ourselves as experts in this work. Because, it's really hard to be an expert in this work. You can have a lot of experience to draw on, but, you know, we really don't know what equity looks like because it doesn't exist in our in our communities. And so, we're all working towards an ideal, and that means you're going to make a lot of mistakes along the way. And, there's going to be a lot of learning even for people that have been doing this work their whole lives. So, really saying that upfront and sometimes giving examples of mistakes that we've made, and maybe recently or areas that we've recognized about the journey, there's no end point. It's a constant learning, and I think setting up that expectation to allows people to be humble to admit that there's going to be more places to learn, more things to do. And, I think that helps them get a little bit more comfortable with that.
We also tried to establish some shared values in this space. This is very much values-based work. And so, being able to get input from our participants about “what are the things that you care about, you're here because this is important to you.” We care about empathy, we care about, you know, being, learning, pushing ourselves. And, I think setting that all up at the beginning gives, it gives us as facilitators, but it also gives the rest of the board and participants that place to refer back to because you're going to finish [Internet Drop] from the beginning. Then it's easier when it shows up in the conversation to point back to it and say we already agreed about this. Let's not be judgmental of each other since we are [Internet Drop] all learning. And, then you can address it a little bit when the uncomfortableness arises. Having that thing to refer back to is really, really helpful. So those are some of the things we talk about with our participants and, and again and recognizing that in these spaces [Internet Drop] with trustees. [Internet Drop]
Alyssa: My goodness, I apologize once again folks, but I don't know like what happened there for a second. Zoom just actually, like kicked me out very randomly. Um, yeah, André, if you're able to start over again, that'd be a big help.
André: Yeah, no problems.
So, In 2018, the Facing Change DEAI Report was published, and it included five key insights. One of these insights is that “systematic change is vital to long-term, genuine progress,” and among the recommendations for this insight is having organizations create a diversity plan. What sorts of items would you recommend be on an arts organization’s diversity plan?
Grace: Sure. So I think it's a great question. I would start by saying that I think there for us, there's a difference between a diverse [Internet Drop] museum to do is to move away from just focus on centering equity. And that's a little bit different. When we're counting diversity, diversity really is just numbers. It's just counting the difference of what's in the room. And, it's actually not necessarily the best indicator of inclusion or of equity. And, we see that because we often see when museums and when any organization really brings on diverse, whether it's staff or board members, they often have retention problems. So, they might be able to recruit diversity, but they have trouble keeping diversity, and that's really because they kind of stop the work at the numbers. And so what we want to do is shift past the numbers and start looking at outcomes. And so that's why we really want to center equity [Internet Drop] DEAI plans really is we want the plan to be actionable.
What we've seen in the field over the last 50 years is that a lot of institutions, particularly arts institutions, are very genuinely interested in being more representative and being more diverse. But, a lot of their work has been aspirational and not actionable. And so, what we really want is for any kind of plan to be actionable, and what that means is kind of moving beyond the statement. A lot of organizations might have some kind of diversity and inclusion statement that says something like, you know, “we, this museum, really value this and it's important to us,” and then that's kind of it. I think that's a good start. I think you should start there by saying your values, but we really want to move past that.
I think one of the things that we encourage every plan to have is a space for shared language and setting your definitions. Because, what we also see is that people get tripped up over the definitions. So, we might say, you know, we really value diversity and inclusion, but we don't define that. And so, now we don't really know what we're measuring, because everyone's coming to the table with different ideas about what that actually means. And so, be as specific as you can be for your institution about what is diversity for you. And that might change according to who your audience is, to what your geographic region is. There might be particular members or particular groups in your community that exist just in your area that don't necessarily apply to everyone. So, I think being very specific and making sure that you have a shared language to move from.
I think the other thing is having shared content and shared understanding. And, everyone, again, comes to this work at different places in their journey. And so, if you're working as an organization or as a board on creating some kind of Equity Plan, making sure you build in opportunities for training, so that everyone in your organization is going through training together, or at the very least you have a task force that's going through the training together and are able to then disseminate and share that information. So that you are all coming to this work with the same understanding. And, you know, there are lots of frameworks you can use for training and pick one that works for you. You know that the reason there are a lot of them is because institutions and organizations are unique and not every single framework might fit the best. So, find one that works for you, and then apply it. And, that way everyone's working from the same lens. And, that's going to help you, I think, with whatever your plan is.
Again, like we said with having that kind of diversity and inclusion statement, starting with your values. And, a lot of organizations already have value statements. If you don't, this is a good time to work on them or to relook at them, if you already have them. You know, we have a mission statement often. You know, usually we have a vision statement. I think having a list of values, what are the things that are important to your institution and making sure that equity is included in that. And, then including those values in your Equity Plan I think is important. Because again, this work is grounded in values. And so, kind of reiterating that from the beginning.
We would also, you know, one of the things I think to think about is, when we're talking about making it actionable, that of course, comes with some ideas around measurement. And, you know, I know we are all very data driven here at CMU.
Alyssa: [Laughs] Yeah, I was going to ask you about how you go about evaluating this.
Grace: Yes, absolutely. And so, there are a couple things with metrics and evaluation that can be very tricky with this kind of work. What we've seen is, you know, traditionally and quite frankly now, a lot of our metrics are around outputs, right? Because we're looking at diversity. How many people of color are on the board? We can measure that. And, that could be an indicator of whether plan is working. But again, if we're not looking at retention, right, then we might not really be getting at the heart of what we really want to do, which is create an equitable situation where people are sharing. And so, we want to try and shift away from just measuring outputs. I think it's a good place to start, but we want to shift into measuring outcomes. And, the outcomes may be different for different institutions. And so really thinking about: what are your goals, what are you wanting to see happen, what do you want to see change in your community and finding ways to make sure your metrics are able to mesh with this. These are long term processes, so it's really hard to measure real outcomes in a short-term way. And, I think especially when you're dealing with grants and projects and funders, they want to know, like the end of each year, the progress you've made. And so, we then fall back on to our outputs. Because we can say, well, we had 100 people participate in the program, and we have this many museums engaged, and this many trustees, and they brought on this many new board members of color. And then, again, that shows something. But it doesn't, again, doesn't really get at equity. And so, I think we have to, even in our conversations with funders, start to explain why we need to measure outcomes, why we need community input.
So often institutions are self-assessing [Internet Drop] you know, in your plan, opportunities to get feedback from your community. You know, we're creating these plans for community engagement for inclusion. And oftentimes, that happens in a boardroom inside an institution with all the same people that haven't been able to figure this out before. So, seeking outside input, and whether that's through having community conversations or having your community review your plan before you publish it, getting input from them, and then having your community hold you accountable, so that you're not going through your own checklist and being like, “yeah, we did a great job. We did a great job here and there.” And, you know, are you really the best person to make that call about whether you're, you know, community outreach or community engagement your inclusion of your communities is happening? Or is your community the best person and the best group to make that decision? So, I think including that in there.
The other thing I would add is to embed your plan across departments. So, if you're creating a task force to work on this plan, make sure that that task force includes representation from different departments. This is not just your C suite level, folks. This is not just-- if you're doing a board plan then it’s your board but then you’re looking in different committees. But, if you're doing an organizational plan, you should include all departments. And, you know, I think sometimes especially in museums, we see a lot of our community engagement our equity work, centered in education. Because, they are the folks that are, you know, most directly touching our communities or we see it centered in curatorial work in programming. But it needs to be centered everywhere. You know, if your HR department is not included, if your accounting department is not included. If you’re marketing for everybody, equity work is something [Internet Drop] to dismantle some of our, you know, white dominant culture that prevents inclusion is by looking at where it exists everywhere. And so it's important to have, you know, representation from all different departments at the table, and then to embed the equity work into all those departments. When we talk about how equity works at museums and we start talking about accreditation and our standards, it's important to look at how we are equitable at all levels and according to all of those standards and best practices. If your collection at your museum is not equitable, it's not diverse and inclusive, then your collection really isn't excellent.
So if you [Internet Drop] do. No one wants to go to work and be like, “we'll be mediocre.” If you want to be excellent it has to happen everywhere. And so, I think that that's another important part. Sometimes we create these diversity inclusion equity plans that exists completely in isolation, and they need to be integrated back into the organization and always. So, those are some of the things I would think about right away to include in the plan, and that's a lot. And quite frankly, that's a lot of work. So I think also, sometimes we want to just very quickly create something and it's about being like okay, we need an equity plan. Let's get together next week. We have a two-hour meeting and then by next week or the week after you will have written it up, we'll do some edits. But, really doing a plan, well I mean, you're looking at 12 to 18 months if you're getting community feedback, if you're getting engagement, if you're doing any kind of surveys of community engagement and who's included in order to have that reflected in your plan. You have to take the time to do it.
Alyssa: Yeah, and really, you can see like the quality, like, that comes from a diversity plan, like, if you take the time to really build it out and make it as effective and as excellent as possible. And, something that I really wanted to quickly bring up within the Facing Change report that was published. The Alliance actually has a few definitions for diversity, inclusion, and I believe accessibility and equity in there. So I'm actually curious, like, if museums or other arts organizations could use those as starting points and then use these definitions, like, to shape what is best for their organization, like, whether they are part of a museum or part of a theatre or part of an orchestra?
Grace: Absolutely, I think it's a great place to start. For us, it was really important to set those definitions. So, for us so that as we're talking about our work, people know what we're talking about. Now, institutions may look at those definitions and say they, you know, they might want to get a little bit more specific, you know, if you're looking at community diversity, for example. You know, you know, I just came from Memphis not too long ago, and Memphis is 65%, black. So, when we're talking about diversity, we're taking that into consideration. You know, if we're looking at the Twin Cities, for example, they have a large Somali refugee community there. They need to take that into consideration. So, diversity might mean something a little bit different if you start to get really specific about it, and I think being specific about it allows you to make sure that you're actually including your community.
You know, I've heard from a museum, particularly from a group of artists in the community around this museum, they were very frustrated. And, it was a Latinx community that was saying, you know, we really aren't represented in this museum, and we want to be represented. And so, the museum's response was to bring in international Latinx artists, which was not actually what they wanted. They wanted people from their community to be represented. And, if they are a Brazilian population and you're bringing in a Colombian artist, like, that's still missing the mark. And so, being really clear about who is your community, what is the diversity you want to represent I think is important because it helps keep you on track.
Alyssa: Absolutely. So, as mentioned before, one of the goals for the Facing Change Initiative is providing an online resource center for inclusive museum governance. This will have case studies, sample documents, and custom content for thousands of museums. If you’re able to talk about this point of the project, could you give us more information about this, including how it will be built and which platform it will be featured on?
Grace: Sure. So we are in process. So some of the work is happening and some of it's still a little bit aspirational. But one of the platforms we're using right now is iCohere, which is a learning platform, and an educational platform kind of similar to Blackboard. And, this is where the museum's move through the program and so we are developing it now. We'll be launching it hopefully in the next couple of days. And that way, it will give us central learning space for all the museums to be able to come to be able to go through their trainings to be able to download and share information with their trustees, to answer questions and engage with their fellows. And, really that is to try and centralize how that program works because previously it was happening through like email and phone calls and spreadsheets and was just very, very cumbersome. And, as we're looking at how to scale this program, you know, having 50 museums go through the program is great. We have thousands and thousands of museums in the country. So, if we want to make real national change, trying to figure out how to scale something. And so, having being able to use technology to like centralize, that learning is going to be really helpful.
The other thing that I think is really interesting, [Internet Drop] the resource center that does live on our website. And so, that's part of the offerings AAM has with our other resources. And so, there's a section of our resource page that is dedicated to equity and inclusion and trustee resources. But, the other thing that we're working on that I think is going to be, I think has the potential to be really impactful, is a board matching portal. And so, that would work. You know, we've kind of been joking internally it will be like Board Bumble. Where you can have potential board candidates, someone that might be a really great diverse candidate on your board, get matched up with an institution that has like values and like interests. And, that means that provides a skill that that institutions board might need, whether that's accounting or HR or you know community outreach. And so, a lot of what we hear from boards and, and we hear internally within organizations as well, is that they really want to be more diverse, but they just can't find anybody, right, that just doesn't exist. It's a pipe [inaudible]. And, what we found is that, you know, actually, there are lots of people that could join boards. They're just outside of the current network of the board. And, usually board recruiting processes include, you know, people set around the room that are already on the board and offer up nominations of people they think would be great. And, those are, of course, people that they know. And so, if you and your personal network as a trustee is not particularly diverse, you aren't going to be able to offer diverse candidates. And, because all of this is about relationship building, sometimes is very challenging to move outside of your network. And that's a long-term process.
So to facilitate that a little bit more quickly, the board matching portal would be a place where we actually have a ground team, that we're working with some consultants on that go into the community and help to scout potential board members. People that would be interested have those needed skills, we would take them through a training so that they will learn about specifically about museum governance. So, nonprofit governance in general and then what that looks like on a museum so that they can then be matched with institutions in their area. And, then we can create this kind of, you know, it's like a dating site where people can come together.
And so, we're working on that platform now. So, it's not quite ready to launch but hopefully we'll be getting there soon. And, we're looking at different ways that can work. And, kind of, we're still figuring out some of this, but I think it will have a lot of great potential. Because, it will help build those relationships, and I think it's going to help move us past the pipeline issue. And of course, the thing that we've, you know, previously talked about and that we're continuing to tell our boards is, like, getting diverse folks on the board is one part of the issue. Making them feel included, sharing power with them, examining your own culture so that you can recognize what barriers exist: that's really the hard work. And so, that's what we're wanting our boards to focus on as we prepare this, this portal to help them recruit new potential board members.
André: Yeah, and I don't know, I know we're getting a little airing on time. But, I kind of wanted to ask a little bit deeper with that. And how and again, if you don't want to answer this. But, how in the terms of consulting, because for example like to get diverse board participants and members is really great, but what are the, you know, the expectations or the limits. Like for example, are they people who, who are diverse and have a good amount of money that they can contribute to the board or is it are they diverse, but normal? Like, I feel like there's also like a subset of discrimination that could come about because of wealth or their own networks?
Grace: Yes. So those are all things [light laughter] that we're contending with. And, what we're trying to do is to find candidates across that spectrum, right? Like there are some museum boards who have very high give or get requirements, because of the nature of their board. And, some museums are examining that and then making decisions about whether that in and of itself is a barrier and if there's anything they can do about it. And, some are not there yet, and that's a requirement. They need that for their financial stability. And so, what we want to do is provide enough candidates in that portal where there's a variety. Some museums that's not as big of a deal, right? We have museums all the way from your large multimillion dollar art museums to your smaller historic houses, and so the means for each institution for their board members may vary. And so, for some of the financial piece is not the primary case. And we are encouraging people for it to not be the primary piece. We'll see how that goes. So. So I guess, the short answer is that there will be people across the spectrum. Will there be some folks that we're calling kind of the Jackie Robinson, people that are ready to just go into whatever situation they have the money to back them, and they'll be good, and they've been on boards before, maybe not that museum maybe not a museum? Yes, there'll be some of those. There will also be people that have never served on a board before but have been really engaged as activists in their communities and are going to be bringing a different skill set. And, we're asking museums to right now to go through who's on their board and what skill sets are missing. Because what we don't want to do is just say, oh look, here's a great black person, they will go and be black on your board. What we want to say instead is, oh, you need some more financial investment help here is a person of color, who's a financial investor. Their skill set that they will be bringing to you is financial investment. And, you will get the, what in some ways is, the bonus of having their perspective, which is also very, very needed on your board.
Alyssa: If you'd like to check out more of the American Alliance of Museums and the Facing Change initiative, check out their website at www.aam-us.org
Thanks for listening to the Arts Management and Technology Lab podcast series. You can read more on the intersection between the arts and technology at www.amt-lab.org Or, you can listen to more interviews and discussions in our podcast series on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play or Stitcher. Thank you for joining us.
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