Episode 13: City Arts & Lectures

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A transcript, lightly edited for clarity and length, follows.

Show Guest: Alexandra Washkin, the Design & Communications Director of City Arts and Lectures

Voices of the Community Introduction: Welcome to voices of the community which explores critical issues facing Northern California communities. We introduce you to the voices of community thought leaders and change makers who are working on solutions that face our fellow individual community members neighborhoods cities and our region. This is George Koster your host. 

Series Introduction: This episode is part of our series exploring COVID-19’s impact on nonprofits and small businesses in San Francisco. We started the series back in April 2020 during the height of the first phase of the Covid 19 pandemic and the Shelter In Place requirements. Over these past nine months the Covid-19 pandemic and economic meltdown has wiped out millions of jobs in both the nonprofit and small business sectors as well as shuttered tens of thousands of small business operations.

The goal of the series is to shine a spotlight on the nonprofits, small businesses and their staff who are struggling to deal with the impact of the COVID 19 pandemic on their operations, services and sustainability. The series of interviews we conducted features voices from a cross section of organizations that make up the fabric of our community. Each of them brings a unique perspective on how they and we are dealing with the issues facing our community during the global pandemic and economic depression.  

Show Guest Alexandra (Allie): Being in the theater, you know, what did we provide? It, wasn't just the hearing, the speakers on stage, but it was meeting your friends and meeting in the lobby with the person you haven't seen in a long time and talking about what you like to listen to and watch

Episode Intro - Show Host George: In this podcast episode our featured voice is Alexandra Washkin, the Design & Communications Director of City Arts and Lectures. This fall, City Arts & Lectures launches its 40th season virtually from the Sydney Goldstein Theater. The Sydney Goldstein Theater was the old Nourse Auditorium that City Arts and Lectures resurrected from being a storage facility for the San Francisco Unified School District.  The Sydney Goldstein Theater is both the platform for City Arts and Lectures’ diverse and innovative programming as well as a wonderful resource for other arts and cultural organizations to present their programming.

Show Host George: I'm joined remotely via zoom by Alexandra Washkin, the Design and Communications Director of City Arts and Lectures. Thanks for being here, Allie.

Show Guest Allie: Thank you for having me.

Show Host George: I would love to have you, provide the audience just kind of a quick overview of what City Arts and Lectures is and, how do you work with the arts and culture communities here in San Francisco Bay area?

Show Guest Allie: Yeah, so we are a, Season of live conversations onstage typically, we do about 40 to 50 events in a year from September to June. So, we run on a school season generally. And, we host artists, writers, politicians, all kinds of speakers and culture.

We always enlist a skilled interviewer to just kind of have an organic conversation with this person. Sometimes they come with a book or they come, you know, to speak about a certain subject, but we really try to just get, you know, the guests to be themselves and to be on stage in front of an audience. The theater holds 1700 people.

We host events that sell 300, if it's a smaller guest. And then we hosted events that sell it out. So, we really try to book a diverse group of people that will bring in different audiences and different sizes, all different you know demographics of people.

George: And then you also have, various categories like science, you do a whole project with Eight Twenty-Six Valencia street?

Allie: Yeah, we do.  Typically, we've kind of announced programs in groups of around six to ten and they're often grouped by series. And two series actually run in the fall.

One that's kind of nebulous and changes depending on who we want to host that fall. But the second one, does benefit, Eight Two Six Valencia for college scholarships. And, Dave Eggers is really great in helping us, secure guests that will appeal to a regular audience, but then also to a lot of students and teachers that come out for those shows.

And then in the spring we do another two series, one that does change often it's, cultural studies, which is kind of ah generic term. But then we do a second one that's conversations on science. So that's the only series that we do that's a little bit more thematic. In this past spring, we did a program about psychedelics.

We'll do programs about climate change and we'll kind of, package them, you know, subject driven and then. The guests, hopefully we'll have a draw of their own, but we try to package them so that the subject really draws people in. And that too brings a different audience. I mean, we have subscribers that just come to the science series and wait for it every year and get really excited.

And then on occasion, we'll do some, one offs, like we'll do a special program. That's a concert with a little conversation element or, you know, a different visual element. We've done film screenings on occasion. Those are just kind of special extra things. 

George: With the, meltdown, if you will, of COVID-19 and its impact on, live events, such as City Arts and Lectures, how has COVID-19 impacted, City Arts and Lectures and then how have you and Kate and Holly and the team pivoted to try to address that?

Allie: Yeah. I mean, obviously everything changed. I mean, we were in the middle of. Or maybe just like a couple of weeks into our spring series and obviously we couldn't convene no matter the size of the audience. The theater closed. We could no longer, I mean, our guests are flown in from all over the world that could not happen.

Even if they could. It was like people weren't comfortable, as it was kind of unfolding. You know, we were having to decide what exactly are we going to do with all the different guests and events. We had an empty theater. We ran into technical challenges. I mean, we have just kind of by nature, been a bit of an old school organization for a long time.

We've been around since 1980 and we've done things in a very simplified old school manner in a way. So, we ran into technical challenges, you know, software, I mean, all the things that everybody was really trying to figure out at the same time, zoom and microphones and getting your sound. And, you know, if we are going to have the guest, can they hear us? Can they see us? How do we do audience questions? Like just running into all these new challenges. And thankfully we're a small staff, which we are so grateful to be and we're all very resourceful. We all kind of just found different ways to step in and figure it out what to do.

We did have to basically, hire a new person to handle the technical aspects. Those were skills that we definitely didn't have. But we have a fantastic person who has helped us do all kinds of technical things over the years who just happened to also have these other adaptable skills to the 2020 meltdown, [laughter].

And so, it's always been really important for us to pay artists and writers.  So, we've really tried to maintain that through all this, some events had to be postponed. Some of them, we just kind of had to change the formatting of them a little bit, but once we got everything that we could at least do switched on to a digital format. I mean for a while, we were pre-recording the events and then just airing them live because of the technical challenges of it.

Now we are back to live, that was always a really important thing. You know, the live organic audience engagement and, keeping a ticketed model to allow us to pay the artists and the writers who are coming. And so now that we've done that we finished the spring season, the events that we had announced prior, and, now we're entering the new fall season where everything is being you know  booked and programmed online first, not with the intention of being in the theater and that being taken away.

So you know, we're going with the flow a little bit. I mean, people are definitely getting used to it now, doing all this and tuning into an event online. We are a nonprofit, so we had a membership program kind of built into our donation model.

Where there were perks of becoming a member or being a member that were mostly related to convening in person. It was, you know, buying a ticket before other people and coming to a party with the guest. And that we just, I mean, there was no point in even pushing those, because we didn't know how long this was going to go.

So for the first time we actually did a somewhat general ask for our annual membership, which was incredible. I mean, people really came out and supported us and even just sent us really sweet notes. And, you know, we had donors who had been in our membership around our mailing list for decades and never even donated before, and even just sent us a small check and a nice note.

And we tried to think of like, what would people really like and appreciate to have right now? And being in the theater, you know, what did we provide? It wasn't just the hearing, the speakers on stage, but it was meeting your friends and meeting in the lobby with the person you haven't seen in a long time and talking about what you like to listen to and watch.

And, you know, everybody's isolated at home. So, we thought, well, why don't we get the artists that we, you know, know and love and get them to design postcards for us. And so, we had, four different artists make us some cool drawings, and we made them into postcards. And so, we folded these up and stuck these into an envelope with a note, just explaining, you know, you guys know what's going on. The world sucks right now, but we're still here. We're going to do what we can. And that for us was just kind of reminded us that there was an audience out there. I mean, being just on the computer the whole time and not seeing all those faces, listening to the guests was such a weird transition, but reaching out and, you know, just saying, hey, we need your support right now.

People were really responsive, which was great. I mean, right now we're just kind of keeping with the digital model because obviously large events, are going to be the last thing to come back amidst all this. So we are, I mean, further out, I think we're probably trying to think of some creative ways to get people, to be able to convene whether it's events outside or small events, what kind of more intimate things can we do as they become safe.

But, for now, we're just going with the flow and doing online ticketed events. And we have a bunch of events listed on our website. We're adding more, every week. 

George: So, people can support, City Arts and Lectures by purchasing tickets to virtual events coming up, becoming members.

Allie: Exactly. Yeah. And, it's also been always important to us to offer tickets to teachers and students for discount or for free, which we are very grateful to be able to keep doing this fall. And yeah, make a donation, buy a ticket. And we even ran into challenges with our website being formatted to sell live events. We had to make a lot of different shifts and so now we've kind of got the website to show you different things and to make it easier to donate if you want to. But then also to be able to browse our archives. The programs that happened in the spring, you can now watch for free.

And then even some of the events that are happening live after a couple of weeks, they will also become free. We have a couple of years, we're still working on further back, but we have audio archives for many years of our recent programming. So yeah, there's a lot to check out.

George: And so, what would you say over the last 40 years, City Arts and Lectures, biggest impact has been on, the arts and cultural community in San Francisco?

Allie: From what I understand, City Arts was one of the early organizations to really promote, like I said, that organic conversation with a public figure. So, I think we've been able to maintain that. And people really rely on City Arts as a place to find out, you know, what to read or what to listen to, or what's on the pulse right now. And I think I said it before, too, by creating that space, I think we then made another space where it was a place for people to convene. And, you know, running our own theater made that much easier to do. And we are just able to help people stay in touch and stay entertained and stay informed and give a platform to artists and writers who might not have one otherwise, or ones that have one, but just love to come to San Francisco and, be a voice to the public.

George: And then final question. What would you say, has been, or could be, from your perspective, good outcomes coming from the COVID-19 pandemic, not only for City Arts and Lectures, but our arts and cultural community at large, or just our community at large?

Allie: Yeah. By hosting events online. I mean, I don't know if I mentioned that we're also on KQED here in the Bay area, but then also 50 stations across the country. And, all of those listeners that we had from the radio who were in, you know, Nebraska, New Jersey, they could actually never come to an event in person.

And though they still can't. Now that we're doing events online, I think we're actually reaching a much broader audience than we ever have before. And I think that's probably true of a lot of arts events. There's the access, hurdles, some of them have really, you know, been overcome through these amazing technological advances.

And I think in addition, something we've found to be really cool is that, um, we, a couple of years ago we did an event, um, where part of the conversation was a coffee demo. And it was about a book about, um, a coffee farmer. And after the conversation on stage, we had a little coffee prep pouring demonstration.

It was super cool. And we'd never done anything like that. And we had so many people who were like, that was so cool. Like that was my favorite event of the year, like, wow. Oh, cool. Okay. And so, in approaching these zoom events, we've kind of been thinking in that format of like, well, because we're not restricted to the stage and can people see up close and you know, what else is there?

We're able to do some more creative things. So, we had an event in the fall with these two fashion designers who have a company called Female and they actually did from their studio. So, they could show clothing pieces and, you know, show their workspace within the event. This fall, we're doing some events with, a couple chefs.

We have an event with Ottolenghi, Yotam Ottolenghi from London and he's going to do a cooking demo as part of his event. And we have a couple other events on the horizon where we are adding these extra elements that we couldn't do at the theater. But now that we're remote, we can get a little more creative. So, it's kind of loosening the boundaries, I think of what an arts organization can do and offer. There's just a lot of creativity to be found within an all of these new, weird restrictions of the world.

George: Thank you, Allie, for sharing, City Arts and Lectures work today, I'm going to make sure that everybody who's listening and watching, this interview will have all that stuff on our websites.

Please stay safe. Give my best to, the whole city arts and lectures crew and hopefully on the other side of this, we'll have an even more interesting arts and cultural, experience, at the Sydney Goldstein theater.

Allie: Definitely. Thank you so much, George. 

Episode Outro - Show Host George: That’s it for this episode of voices of the community. You have been listening to the voice of the voice of Alexandra Washkin the Design & Communications Director of City Arts and Lectures. The City Arts and Lectures team are continuing to bring their blend of writers, critics, scientists, performing artists, and cultural figures from around the world through experimenting with the new virtual theater format along with hosting old favorites like Drive In movies. To find out more about the City Arts and Lectures 2020 - 2021 season go to city arts dot net.          

Series Outro: We hope that you enjoy the insights, points of view and personal stories from the voices of change makers and their nonprofits and small businesses featured in this series. To  find out more and get engaged with the nonprofits, small businesses and staff members featured in this series please go to my web site george koster dot com and click on Voices of the Community to find links and listen to our ongoing series exploring COVID-19’s impact on nonprofits and small businesses in San Francisco. After listening to these stories we hope that you will consider making a donation and volunteering to provide a hand up to your fellow community members.

Series Credits: I want to thank my associate producer Eric Estrada, along with Mel, Michael and Lila at the San Francisco Public Press and KSFP. To listen to our next episode in this series and to our archived past shows which feature community voices working on solutions to critical issues facing Northern California communities, please go to george koster dot com. While you are on our website please consider making a donation to help us provide future shows just like this one. Please subscribe to our show on Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Podcast or where ever you get your podcasts. Follow us on twitter @georgekoster and please email us with feedback and show ideas at george@georgekoster.com. I'm George Koster in San Francisco and thank you for listening.

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