Season 01, episode 10 May 25, 2025
Originally recorded December 17, 2024
SPEAKERS Dayna Del Val and Laura Zabel
SUMMARY
In this conversation, Laura Zabel discusses the vital role of arts in building community, the importance of recognizing creativity as a fundamental human right, and the need to demystify and de-hierarchicalize the arts. She emphasizes the significance of economic security for artists and the impact of guaranteed income on creative freedom. The discussion also touches on the commodification of art and the necessity of fostering connections between rural and urban communities through artistic endeavors. In this conversation, Laura Zabel discusses the innovative approaches of Springboard for the Arts, emphasizing the importance of advocacy, storytelling, and community engagement in the arts. She highlights the need for flexibility in mission-driven work, the role of artists in community conversations, and the balance between technical skills and creativity. Zabel envisions a future where artists are recognized as vital contributors to community change and where the value of arts is integrated into everyday life, addressing systemic barriers that hinder access to creative expression.
KEYWORDS
arts, community, creativity, economic security, human rights, Springboard for the Arts, guaranteed income, rural-urban solidarity, demystifying art, commodification of art, nonprofit culture, advocacy, storytelling, community engagement, creativity, leadership, artist perspectives, community change, economic justice, arts participation
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TAKEAWAYS
- Building community through the arts is essential.
- Creativity should be recognized as a human right.
- Art is not just for the elite; everyone can be an artist.
- Economic security is crucial for artists to thrive.
- Guaranteed income can enhance creative freedom.
- The commodification of art limits its accessibility.
- Demystifying the arts allows for broader participation.
- Rural-urban solidarity can be fostered through art.
- Art can help bridge divides and build trust.
- Community connections are vital for a healthy society. Nonprofit culture often discourages risk-taking, but innovation thrives on it.
- Advocacy and storytelling are integral to supporting artists.
- Flexibility in mission allows organizations to address pressing community issues.
- Artists play a crucial role in community conversations and planning.
- Creativity in leadership is essential for navigating challenges.
- Balancing technical skills with creativity enhances artistic expression.
- Artist perspectives bring valuable insights to community development.
- Art can catalyze change and foster connection in communities.
- Storytelling is vital for healing and understanding cultural narratives.
- The future of the arts requires systemic change to support artists’ livelihoods.
Dayna (00:00.00)
Laura Zabel, welcome to Brave Middle Ground!
Laura Zabel (01:50.234)
Thanks for having me. I’m super excited about this project and excited to be here with you.
Dayna (01:55.653)
Thank you. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you. And when I started thinking about guests I wanted to reach out to early on, you were at the top of my list because, as we’ll talk about, you run this organization, Springboard for the Arts. But what I have always admired about you as the leader of that organization and the mission of that organization is that you are in the business of building community through the arts and of bringing people together and of, I think, kicking isolation to the curb, if at all possible.
Laura Zabel (02:29.574)
Yeah, yeah, that really resonates for me. I feel like that our work is fundamentally always about building those kind of human connections, whether that’s between artists or between communities and their artists or artists as folks who are making space and creating space for people to build connections with their neighbors and other people in their community.
Dayna (02:56.444)
Yeah, and it’s just such powerful work, which again, we’ll get into, but I want to start with the question that I start with everyone, and that is, what does brave middle ground mean to you?
Laura Zabel (03:09.208)
Hmm. I guess like my first the first way I think about that is I think I spend a lot more time thinking about common ground, or like shared ground, shared space. And the way that that makes our interdependence and dependence on one another more obvious and more…
It just brings it to the front of our awareness in a way that I think when we’re not in shared space or seeing someone else’s common ground, then it’s easier to imagine that we’re maybe farther apart than we are, or that our future is not wholly dependent on other people’s health and wellbeing as well.
Dayna (04:04.147)
So I haven’t told this story yet exactly, but the day after the election, I was in the shower preparing for my little 90-second reel that I did every day through 2024. And I was really working up to just like a furious unleashing of how outraged I was. And I was getting kind of excited about it because…
you’re in the nonprofit sector, I was in it for a long time. But one of the kind of joys of stepping out of the nonprofit sector is I don’t have to be quite so careful anymore. And I really love that. But as I was getting more and more worked up and, you know, using three and four syllable big words for anger and all these kinds of things, this tiny little Spark voice that speaks to me often said, “No, that’s not what you’re going to do. That’s not what’s called for. That’s not what your audience needs. Guess what, Dayna? That’s not even what you need. What you need is to humanize this moment and take a different approach. And so I did.
I took a very gentle approach and I encouraged people to, you know, get to know their neighbors, even if they had a yard sign to the opposite political campaign in their yard. At the end of the day, if your house is on fire, your neighbor’s going to get to you first. And you want to know the people who might literally save your life at worst, and at best, might be the people that you stop and talk to on your walks or whose kids your kids play on a soccer field with and all those kinds of things.
So this common ground piece I think is really resonant. But the middle ground piece is resonant for me, and I want to push on it with you a little bit because I think we’ve gotten super comfortable with this very binary thinking, black and white thinking. And one of the things that Springboard does so well is Springboard takes the arts and sort of demystifies them and also de-hierarchicalizes them, if we’re gonna just make up words. I’ll never forget the first time I came to your office, I was with an employee who used to work for you, Carl.
And he said, “Well, at Springboard, everyone can be an artist.”
And it was really the first time I’d ever heard anybody say that. So talk about this de-hierarchicalizing that Springboard does, Laura, because that’s the middle ground piece that I’m really fascinated with. Arts and everything else being binary, and Springboard coming in and saying, nope, arts are across everything.
Laura Zabel (06:54.106)
Yeah, and I think the… Like I’m obsessed with this idea that creativity is a human right.
We each have a right to express ourselves, to connect to our culture and the cultures around us, to know that our story is heard and held. Like those are fundamental pieces of being a human. And I think if you start from there, then what a lot of people think of as an artist becomes a lot broader.
There are a lot of different ways to be an artist and a lot of different reasons that people make art. But fundamentally, they all connect back to this shared humanity that we have and a desire to say something, to express something, even if it’s just to ourselves or to our families or to our neighborhoods. And so at Springboard, our work is really focused on supporting individual artists, but like you said, we take a really broad definition of who that is.
And a lot of times I feel like we’re in the business of trying to help more people identify themselves as artists because a lot of our systems inside of arts and culture are designed to exclude people, designed to reward certain kinds of art over others and also really designed to push us towards a definition of artist that is about the commodification of art. Like a lot of people’s sort of fall back definition of whether you are a professional artist is whether you make your living as an artist. And Springboard really starts from the perspective that there are a lot of different reasons to make art, and people have their own definition of success. And our role is to help you as an artist, as a creative person, as a creative worker, figure out what your definition of success is and work towards that rather than some kind of prescribed, like, “This is how to be a real artist or a professional artist.”
Because I think if, you know, if the goal is healthier, more equitable, more just, more joyful communities and systems, then we all need to be thinking creatively. We all need to feel like our stories are heard and told and feel that sense of belonging and wellbeing. Like that’s our end goal. That’s the why for us. And the how is by supporting creative people to do those things and to have their own agency and power and to build power and agency with their neighbors. But our goal is never ,like Springboard is an arts organization, but our goal is not product. Like at the end of the day, I don’t really care what you make. I mean, I care.
The goal isn’t like pots or paintings or plays. The goal is that people have access to their own creative process and have the tools to share that with the people in their community.
Dayna (10:16.261)
So when I ran The Arts Partnership, I used to say to people, “You know, we have cave art older than farming.”
So people were literally telling their story, preserving their story, making sense of their time and place before they could guarantee they could eat.
Laura Zabel (10:42.756)
Mm-hmm.
Dayna (10:43.514)
And so it goes back to, again, this basic human right. Find a child anywhere on the planet in any circumstance, and chances are good that they’re using their imagination, that they’re drawing in the dirt if they don’t have access to any tools, that they are singing, that they are dancing. I mean, the very first thing we experience in utero is the rhythm of our mother’s heartbeat. So, I love the way of thinking of it as a basic human right because it is a basic tenet of being a human being.
Laura Zabel (11:22.97)
Right, right, and we’ve done a lot, like our systems, and particularly the way our economy works, has done a lot of work to cut that off, especially for adults. And to tell people that it doesn’t have value unless it’s making money. And that, and just from a practical perspective, the way our economy is right now leaves so many people in such a precarious position or working multiple jobs just to be able to support their family that we haven’t left, we haven’t valued the space and time to be creative, to be connected to our community in the way that we should. And I feel like that’s part of the cost we’re paying right now.
Dayna (12:13.277)
Yeah. It’s interesting because when I was first thinking about this conversation with you, of course I was thinking about essentially art and STEM and this idea of STEAM and STEM as being these two areas. But you bring up this really important point of this commodification of art. So you have movie stars in particular who are making obtuse amounts of money. And I’m not here to argue whether or not they should be making that amount of money. But, you know, if you’re making $40 million to make a movie, that’s pretty obtuse money. I don’t care what you’re doing.
And then you’ve got culture bearers in small communities really working to preserve, you know, native language or native traditions or anybody’s historical, artistic perspective. And that great divide as well of needing to figure out, what happens when you have this very small, niche thing that’s being made that’s actually got incredible cultural relevance? How do you compare that or how do you hold that in the same bucket as a Marvel movie, which is technically art? But I mean, do you have any thoughts on that?
Laura Zabel (13:32.486)
Yeah, yeah, I think part of it for me is like a lot of people, a lot of really great, brilliant people in the arts, I think, over the years have gotten really good at pointing out that art is work, it is labor, it is a job, it is a profession, it is a career. Those things are all true, but it doesn’t mean it’s the same as other forms of labor. And I’ve been thinking a lot about the kinds of labor that we’re called to do. And I think that includes creative making, art making; it also includes caretaking and caregiving in our families and our communities and like community work, community organizing, other kinds of work that our economy doesn’t financially value those things. But we do them because we’re called to do them. It doesn’t take away that they are work. There are a lot of, well, those things are a lot of work, and require a lot of labor and skill. But it does mean I think we need a little bit different frame for thinking about those kinds of labor.
And for me, I think, I’m really interested in pushing on the idea that there are things that our economy doesn’t value, and that that’s a problem with our economy, it’s not a problem with those things. Like we need to find ways of supporting people’s value and ability to contribute in their lives, to their families, to their communities, regardless of what their job is or how they make money.
Springboard, over the last several years, has been doing a pilot around guaranteed income. And so that’s put us into a conversation nationally around guaranteed income, around basic income. And one of the things that I’m most interested in in that conversation is there’s tons of research about how guaranteed income helps people find better jobs, it stabilizes their employment, their healthcare. Education for kids, the educational outcomes are better, like all these very practical measures. And I think there’s this kind of under-researched piece that we’re really interested in is like when you support people with a little bit of safety net, they make things for their community. They volunteer, they make, you know, artists who might have been pushed to make really commodified artwork because it fits a funder’s definition of what they want or a gallery or producer or whatever. Just a little bit of safety net frees up people’s time to return to a creative practice, to make things for the people in their own neighborhood, in their own community, to pursue an idea that maybe isn’t, you know, the idea that is what’s fundable right now, but is something that their community needs. And I think we see that over and over again in our pilot but also in non-arts focused pilots, that when people have a little bit of breathing space, what they want to do is those forms of labor that we’re called to do. They want to take care of their family. They want to be creative and connect to their own culture and, you know, in the creativity that they have or with their children. They work with their neighbors. They volunteer in their neighborhood. They solve problems creatively.
And I think, it’s really made me think about like the way that the structures that we’re all living in and, and working in really inhibit our ability to just access that everyday creativity, which I think like you’re saying is really different than like people whose goal is to be a movie star, or like, you know, sell paintings for millions of dollars. Like that’s a very specific and very small path. It’s like I think, as like comparing people who want to be a professional basketball player with folks who like really value running every day or playing basketball on the park, right?
Like we somehow in other places we can allow a more full spectrum of participation and understand that it has different value to different people. But in the arts, we’ve had this sort of narrow band of what we point to when we talk about art.
And that has to do, course, with like art forms that are Western and white and recognized in certain ways. I was just watching this video this weekend about ballet shoes. I love ballet.
Dayna
I just watched one this morning on ballet shoes!
Laura Zabel
I… This is maybe like an algorithm at work, but I didn’t realize that like that’s a fairly recent like dancing on point in ballet shoes is like less than 100 years old. But so why do we consider that one of these like, you know, classic art forms or tent pole art forms that’s like, that’s what we think of when we say the arts. But other art forms that are much, much older get sort of pushed to the side as like, that’s like folk art or traditional or whatever.
Dayna (18:54.567)
I was just going to say like square dancing. So every culture has this.
Laura Zabel (19:02.958)
Right, yeah, or quilt making or, yeah. So I think part of it like, I’m always very clear, like part of the challenges we have specific to the arts in articulating our value are self-inflicted. And it’s because like the funding structures around art, which also are about a hundred years old,
Dayna (19:09.775)
Mm-hmm.
Laura Zabel
came out of not out of a deep appreciation for the ways that culture can shift structures and build power and create common or middle ground, but came out of, you know, wealthy folks desire to preserve their social status. We’re, you know, it’s like fighting an uphill battle to undo those things. But I really think we’re in a moment right now where that is, that’s what feels urgent to me, is to find a different way of expressing what art is for, who it’s for, and what are the like real systemic structures that would enable a more creative society?
Like that’s pretty grand, I really, I think that’s the task.
Dayna (20:04.167)
Well, you know, it’s interesting as I’m listening to you talk about what is and isn’t valuable in quotation marks, “art.” I’m thinking about it really comes down to what was women’s sphere and what was men’s sphere? And so you could certainly say, “Well, yes, but to be an on point dancer is only for women.”
Yes, but who was producing it? Who was choreographing it? Who was promoting it? Who owned the space where they got to perform? That’s all predominantly white, wealthy men. You don’t, there’s no history really of men getting together for quilting circles or men getting together to make jams and jellies to raise money for the community school, all those kinds of things. So as…
Laura Zabel (20:35.558)
But there are really rich and often, like, under-told stories of women building power through those kinds of mechanisms like quilting and homemaking and other kinds of traditionally feminine coded, know, practices were ways that people passed information and built those connections across, you know, with their neighbors and with their communities so that there were safety nets there when things went wrong or someone needed help.
Like those social connections, think, yeah, we’ve sort of, we’ve, in dismissing those art forms, we’ve also lost a lot of the ways that people were building what is real power, but less recognized.
Dayna (21:47.764)
Kind of dissident power. Coded power maybe is a better way to say it. Yeah, you’re absolutely right. And it’s interesting because, so I’m, I don’t know, it’s 20 months away from having been fully immersed in the arts all day, every day for more than a decade. And what I am realizing is that after this long rest, which I felt I deserved and really wanted, I am now craving places to re-enter the arts as a participant, as an observer, as a maker, all these things.
And I think it’s because, to go back to the original point, this human right, this human desire to make, to produce, to develop, to leave something behind.
Again, sometimes just for ourselves, sometimes for something much larger. But I just wonder if you can share with us some of how Springboard is really doing more than talking the talk, because you talk it so, well. How are you walking the walk, too? Because I know you’re doing that.
Laura Zabel (23:09.54)
Yeah, so we think about our work in these kind of two spheres. One is about economic security or economic opportunity for creative folks. You know, so we do like really practical things like business skill development and business planning and access to capital for artists to grow businesses because they are also these important players in local economies. This ability to, you know, make places that people want to live and engage with and there’s value. There is value from an economic perspective.
And then the other sphere we really work in is around community development. And a lot of that work looks like supporting artists to make projects for their communities at these intersections between arts and environmental sustainability, or arts and social isolation and well being. We’re doing a big project right now that feels relevant to your work and this conversation around rural urban solidarity, so supporting a set of artists here in Minnesota. And then through partners, artists in Michigan and Colorado and Kentucky to do projects that help us understand what rural urban solidarity can look like. Help us have conversations across the continuum of rural and urban communities.
So like one of those is a project that artists ‘designed that’s a phone line that’s been at rural events and urban events where you just walk into the booth and pick up the phone and talk to somebody in another community.
Dayna (25:00.436)
I love that.
Laura Zabel (25:01.028)
And like understand one another. There’s a really beautiful traveling billboard in Colorado that I think the name of the project is “My Sky is Your Sky” that is about like this idea that, you know, within even the geography of a state, we’re all living in the same, you know, under the same sky. I think what’s really beautiful about those projects is that it really points out that that there’s, you know, in this moment when there’s so much narrative about rural urban divide or polarization across rural and urban places. I think when you come down to the level of individual humans, most of us have experience in both rural and urban places. We grew up one place, and we live someplace else now. Or our family is from somewhere, and we live somewhere different. Or we went to school somewhere, and we came back home. Like that, that divide, I think is a convenient narrative that is very beneficial to some folks in politics. But it doesn’t really bear out at an individual person level because most of us have feet in multiple places or have experiences or relationships across those continuums. So helping people kind of reconnect to that idea and build, or rebuild, those connections and those conversations one at a time. I think artists are really well suited to do that because they can create a creative experience where we’re having a shared experience together, and it isn’t about like, “Let’s all sit in a room and have a conversation about rural-urban divide.”
It’s really inviting people to just connect or tell a story or see something that gives them a different lens on someone else’s experience, or that provides a shared experience. I’ve definitely seen people in those kind of artist-led projects, you know, doing a silly dance together or making a mural together. Then you’re focused on a task you’re completing together. And if you start there, instead of starting from like, “Here’s my political identity or here’s my ideology.” Then I think you might come to that conversation with a different kind of empathy or a different kind of trust and relationship or vulnerability because you’ve had a shared experience.
So that’s long work. It’s not like the, not an easy fix, but I think that’s the work that I feel most drawn to right now is that kind of everyday work of like, what can we do creatively in a community to help people understand an issue differently, to help people come together, to think about how to address a challenge in their community creatively, to think about the stories we tell about ourselves and our places, differently, and in particular, I think the stories we tell our children about the value of our communities and our neighborhoods and our places. Those things are for me where the work starts and the work of rebuilding something that looks like, or maybe it’s building for the first time. I don’t know that we’re trying to go back to some time in the past, but we’re building towards something where, you know, where community really is built on trust and mutual respect and shared goals for just the health and well-being of our families. Like that feels pretty fundamental, but I think we just have fewer and fewer opportunities to do those things. So we have to build them.
Dayna (28:47.505)
Hmm. Hmm. I have lots and lots of thoughts, but we’ll start here. So I used to sort of jokingly, but really not jokingly say to people, “I live 11 blocks from the Minnesota border on the North Dakota side. And so I often likened myself to Moses. I could see the promised land, but I knew I was never going to get there.”
And then I would say, because Minnesota for the arts is the land of milk and honey. I mean, if we’re just going to carry the Biblical metaphor out, or I guess that’s a simile. So in some ways, I think from an outsider perspective, success for Springboard has come because of your placement in a state that is by far and away the country’s leader in putting money toward support for the arts.
I certainly understand that not every legislator is gung-ho for the arts. Not every citizen loves the taxpayer dollars support the arts. A lot of people don’t even probably know that it happens. But the fact remains, you have this Legacy funding. It is a game changer in terms of just…
taking, not unlike your supporting artists, taking a little bit of pressure off of the bottom line to be a little bit more expansive. But I say all of that to then go on to say: and yet in spite of all of that, or because of all of that, maybe some of both, I have always thought of Springboard for the Arts and you as its longtime leader as being like, what’s my favorite adjective to use around this? Jaw-droppingly, I think that’s an adverb in this instance. We’re going with jaw-droppingly audacious in your visioning. And I say that because we’ve been on, I don’t know, a half hour, we’ve hardly talked about art, capital A-R-T.
So I want to know, Laura, did you bring this audacity to the work? Did the work open the door and allow you to become audacious? Is it a yes and? How did this happen that Springboard in St. Paul, Minnesota, and Fergus Falls, Minnesota, has this national foot that is really helping to participate, lead, guide these huge conversations?
Laura Zabel (31:36.838)
Thank you for that, first of all.
Dayna (31:40.576)
Well, I’ve been a long time admirer, a long time envier.
Laura Zabel
I’m coming up on… I mean, I’m coming up on 20 years at Springboard, so like, it’s long. It’s part of it. And I think it’s like part of both. Like, I feel like I… What I do know is that I came to this work not from a like…being at all an expert in nonprofits or, but being a theatre maker. And I think my theatre skills and ideas about theatre really carried me. Like those were my first sort of ways of making work. And like the thing I always say about that is that like theatre is made by doing, you don’t sit around a table and talk about a play. You have to stand up and try it. And you have to try it with other people, and you have to receive feedback in real time and adjust in real time. Like whether that’s in a rehearsal process or in the process of performing. You’re like feeling feedback all the time and incorporating it. So I think that is like a, that’s like the basis for how I think about how work gets done. Is like, we’re not, we’re always trying something and we’re standing up and seeing what happens, and receiving feedback and then changing it on the fly and letting it grow and develop.
Like one of my favorite quotes is that Lorne Michaels quote about Saturday Night Live. Like the show doesn’t go on because it’s ready, it goes on because it’s Saturday night.
Dayna (33:19.114)
Because it’s 11 o’clock and boom, yeah, yep.
Laura Zabel
Like, right, you’ve got to just let it go. And I think that’s where I come from. It’s like, “Okay, well, let’s do it. We have to.”
Dayna (33:29.655)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, there’s people in the audience, so there’s no backing out now.
Laura Zabel (33:31.598)
Right? People are waiting. And so I think that’s actually a really helpful way to, and very different than I think a lot of nonprofit culture, which tends to be kind of risk averse and like for all kinds of good reasons, but I just didn’t have the benefit of that knowledge. So I made it up my own way.
So that’s one thing. I think the other piece that I find different about our approach to the work,
that I think has really been, is a real driving force for what our work looks like now, is that our work has always been about like little “a” advocacy. Like for me, if your mission is about supporting artists, then absolutely you need to be doing practical things that improve people’s lives on the daily.
But also, telling the story about that work and advocating for that work and for those people and for those communities is absolutely a part of the work. It’s not like, we have a marketing budget and we do this one thing with it. That is our mission. We need to be in these conversations.
And I also think we’ve really benefited from a mission and a mandate that is broad enough that it can encompass a lot of things that has allowed us to drive the work where it needs to go. I often think about like somebody running…I think it’s much different and challenging to run an arts nonprofit that is specifically focused on one artistic discipline or like a theatre company that produces a season of shows.
You can evolve that work and iterate it towards things that feel relevant and timely, but it’s within a structure that’s like very tied to a of other things. And Springboard, I always think of Springboard as like a platform organization. So if the most pressing issues in our community is around healthcare, then we’re gonna work on healthcare. If the most pressing issues in our communities are around social isolation and wellbeing, then we’re gonna work on that.
Similarly, if we have the opportunity to work with a partner around environmental sustainability or around economic justice, and it’s the right partner at the right time, then we can move towards that. And that allowed, I think that has allowed us to build what now feels like a very intentional ecosystem of resources and programs that isn’t, Springboard isn’t defined by this is what we do; this one thing is what we do. It’s defined by like our job is to make sure artists are in all of these conversations.
So like I often say, like right now we have, we have this, what is now the longest running guaranteed income pilot in the country, not just for artists, but for anyone. And in St. Paul, we also have an ice-skating rink in the parking lot of our already used car dealership.
Dayna (36:43.3)
I saw that.
Laura Zabel (36:47.2)
So like that is not a range of programming that most nonprofits… And probably some people would say like it’s not advisable to have… Like when I came into this work, I feel like there was a lot of talk, you know, 15, 20 years ago about like mission drift and like staying in your lane essentially. And like that’s wholly unappealing to me to stay in my lane. I’m always much more interested in someone else’s lane and how what we’re doing could be a part of that than like carving out some narrow band of work and just repeating it.
And you know, as with anything, there’s downsides to that. But I do think like that’s, there is something different about Springboard’s work. And I think it’s also because everyone on the staff is a practicing artist, which is a thing that’s true at a lot of arts organizations, but not acknowledged or kind of celebrated as an asset.
Like a lot of artists work at arts nonprofits, but a lot of times we sort of say like, okay, we’ll put that aside while you’re at your job. And I feel like Springboard, we’ve always said like, “This is about artists doing things for other artists. It’s about our own lived experiences. It’s not about like experts coming in and telling artists what to do.”
And I think that also is part of what has helped the organization stay creative and relevant, even as we’ve grown.
Yeah, those are, those are some thoughts I have about it. And, and like, like, you know, just from a, a not a self-deprecating place, but a, an honest humility that like all of those things have downsides too.
Dayna (38:30.832)
Yep. Yeah. I mean, curiosity is fantastic and a willingness to get up and fail epically in front of people is so important, not just in the arts, but across leadership altogether. And yet almost nothing in our systems prepares us to be comfortable doing that except the arts. And that’s really only if you are in one of those rare places where you don’t get penalized even there for being “out of the box.” I mean, I think about, I spent a summer in college studying Shakespeare with the National Shakespeare Conservatory, and we had to come with a monologue. And so I worked up my Joan of Arc monologue and I was very serious and I was, you know, in the Catskills to become a serious Shakespearean actor. And I did my monologue, and the man who was in charge said, “Okay. That’s an A plus monologue. Good for you. It was boring as hell. Do it again.”
And I was like, “What?”
I mean, an A plus was as high as you could get. And he was a hundred percent right. I was acting for the grade.
Laura Zabel (39:49.902)
Right, and I think for so many artists like that, like the technical proficiency, being able to hold onto that and engage like your real creativity and sense of experimentation and risk, like that’s what makes a great artist is to be able to marry those two things.
Like we all know, you know, artists who are great at living in the experimental place, but maybe have not, like don’t have the technical chops. And like, you know, it’s easy to get focused on the technical pieces or the skills of being an artist. And then over time, I think lose that piece of like, “Right, it’s supposed to be present and exciting.” You know, those are the, like, if I think about like theater experiences that have been meaningful to me as both an artist and as an audience member. There are often things where like something went wrong and then there was an amazing outcome or like, you know, that’s especially in theatre. Like you’re there to see the thing that no one else is gonna get to see because it’s different every time.
Dayna (40:56.577)
Yeah, it’s an interesting thing to grow up, to mature, to develop as a leader and hold on to the kind of naive optimism that you come into leadership with, because you and I started from very similar places.
Boy, what I knew about running a nonprofit would have fit in perhaps a child’s thimble. I mean, I just knew nothing.
Laura Zabel (41:28.102)
I think that’s the best way to do it, honestly. I don’t know.
Dayna
Yeah. Well, I think you ask a lot of questions you don’t ask otherwise. And of course, I mean, this conversation is an example of why, I think people like you and when I was doing it advocated so hard for getting artists to the table. They’re going to ask you different questions. They’re going to bring a different perspective. They’re going to complicate the process for sure because that’s the only way change actually happens. And we just don’t have enough of that. So, I’m just, it’s a really interesting conversation to me because it’s proving what I’ve always thought about you, which is so lovely. You know, I didn’t expect you’d get on and say things like, “Well, you know, our spreadsheets say that our work is super meaningful.” But it’s really nice that it’s working out.
I want to read these two paragraphs, which are from your Principles and Vision page on your website, because I think they have, they synthesize down this work in case people are listening and thinking, okay, I don’t really understand this. So, “Springboard for the Arts mission is to support artists with the tools to make a living and a life, and to build just and equitable communities full of meaning, joy, and connection.”
And actually, maybe that’s the only sentence that I need to read. Full of meaning, joy, and connection. Equitable communities full of meaning, joy, and connection. Laura, how in the world are artists doing that? Just practically.
Laura Zabel (43:08.484)
Yeah, I mean, I think…it goes back to sort of where we started. I think the problems that we have right now, the problems that all of our communities are experiencing, fundamentally they’re cultural problems. Like, we do not have pathways for connection. We do not have ways of making sure that the people who are most impacted by big systems are, have a voice in those systems or feel welcomed into those places. And that is, like, everything from, you know, the development of rural downtowns. You know, where we’re doing, we’ve been doing a project for several years now called “Artists on Main Street.” That is a program for small rural communities, in the upper Midwest who provide some training for artists in kind of basic community organizing, community development ideas, and also to have the chance to talk with artists in their community about what are the challenges facing their downtown or their main street. And then those artists design creative ways of getting people downtown, of supporting local businesses, of activating public spaces.
So like really practical ways of using, like you were talking about, that creative process, that process of asking different questions, the process of creating projects that attract people, attention and dollars to a place, but are also creating these shared experiences and room for that common ground or that middle ground.
So it can look like that. It can also look like really just supporting artists to build more viable creative businesses because we know that those small micro businesses are a huge part of how both urban and rural local economies can be more sustainable, more durable, more locally rooted to benefit the people who actually live there rather than just the global corporations who are extracting resources from rural and urban places.
And it can also look like, like, you were saying, like, bringing artists into community planning process or urban planning process to say, “What do we want the future of this neighborhood or this town to be? And how do we ask some different questions, and what else might be possible here?”
I think artists are very good at seeing the opportunity and challenges, you know, like that’s a big part of a creative process is saying like, “Well, I’ve come up to this roadblock and I’m gonna have to find a creative way to get around it.”
And so that’s really a useful process to put into community planning that often can feel very rigid or bounded or like it’s kind of limited by people’s imagination or sense of what might be possible for their place.
So we do a lot of supporting artists to do those kinds of projects that are really about, you know, the hopes and dreams of the communities they’re from.
One of my favorite recent examples is, alongside our Guaranteed Income pilot that’s actually supporting artists with monthly income. We also hired a group of artists to do narrative and storytelling projects about guaranteed income and economic justice. And one of the artists made a coloring book, and I think, you know, a lot of times if you’re like we’re gonna try and work on policy change, then you’d like hire a lobbyist or hire a PR firm write letters to the editor go lobby at the Capitol. And she was like “In my community I feel like I need to talk to young people, to the parents of young people, about the value of rest the value of taking care of yourself the value of of each of us our own kind of deservingness to just be and to be healthy and whole and that if we start there with the messages we tell our kids about their value, then that’s the path to actually making change.”
And I think that’s like, that’s what an artist can do. They can come into a conversation and say, “Yes, I see all of your traditional ways of doing this. I also see they’re not working very well. So what if we start someplace different? Or what if we speak in a way that resonates with the folks who are from my neighborhood?”
Another one of those projects is a beautiful project that Candice Creel Falcón did in rural Minnesota. She made a billboard of a painting of her goats, and it says, “In rural, we tend to the herd.” And I think that’s like this beautiful metaphor for her of like what it means to live in a rural place and how we take care of one another and how we need one another and so it sort of takes this concept that feels very rooted in the values of her place and helps people see the connection to a policy intervention that might seem kind of outside of what feels comfortable or outside of what people have traditionally known.
And I think that’s another thing artists are really good at is saying like, “I can help you, like I can provide an entry point for people to see this issue differently or to see its connection to our values and our way of life.”
So yeah, we do a lot of the work that Springboard supports and trains artists to do ends up really being, I think, at the end of the day, about narrative and storytelling. And that’s both about like, what are the stories we want to tell? But also I’ve been thinking so much lately about, I feel like so much of our work really at the end of the day is helping people know that their own story is heard and held. I think that’s the root of a lot of the polarization and unhappiness and isolation-feeling is feeling like “I’m left behind. Or no one really sees or hears my story, understands my history, understands my family.”
And I think we just need a lot more outlets for that. And I think art, and specifically artists, are really good at making sure that people feel like they can move forward because what has come before is held somewhere or is understood or is seen. And I think we tend to want to skip over that part. Those of us that are, like, invested in change and big change, we often want to skip over the human part of that and just get to the practical. Like, how would this policy be different? Or how could we structure things differently? But I think that never works unless we start with what is the story people need to tell first? Yeah, whether that’s about the highway that got built through the historic Black neighborhood here in St. Paul and in almost every city in America. Or the story of mental health institution that was the biggest employer for a hundred years and has now closed in a rural community.
Like those, those aren’t just practical challenges to recover from or to move forward from or to heal from. They’re deeply personal cultural stories, thousands of stories that need to be told and listened to. And so I think, you know, like I said, our work ends up being in all these different sectors, all these different domains. But if I could say what I think the fundamental part is, it’s about that piece of people feeling heard and having the skills and the outlets to express themselves.
Dayna (51:24.298)
Hmm. So let’s move ahead into the future. Let’s go seven years. What is Springboard’s role seven years from now, whether you’re there or not? And then the follow-up question is really, how has the understanding of the value of artists and the arts evolved because of the work that Springboard has done?
Laura Zabel (51:58.446)
Yeah, I think, like, working backwards from that question, because I think they’re connected. I feel like obviously not wholly because of Springboard’s work, but in the last 20 years, certainly there is a different awareness of the kind of multiple ways that artists can contribute; that it isn’t just the like performance on a stage or the object in a museum, but there are things about process and public space and shared experience that are really important. And that are really valuable, especially to city leaders or community developers.
I think where we still have a lot of work to do is that that doesn’t always result in people then knowing how to pay artists to do that work. And or making sure that long-term there is a healthy ecosystem for those artists to exist. Like we tend to want to call on artists as like this magical force to do a project and then never think about them again.
You know, but if you want the artists to be there to help you do the organizing work, to help you bring community voices into, you know, a new bridge project or into solving environmental extraction in your community, then they need to be able to live there on the daily. Not just when you need them.
So I feel like that’s where there’s a lot of work to be done. And certainly the pandemic really pointed that out, just how precarious and fragile most artists’ livelihoods are. You know, we really just saw like the bottom fell out in 24 hours and there was no net.
Dayna (53:18.764)
Yeah.
Laura Zabel (53:39.138)
And so one of the things Springboard did during that time that you were also a part of was a lot of emergency relief work and direct emergency relief for individual artists. And we also helped other folks start emergency relief and convened a small group of folks, including The Arts Partnership in some community-specific and locally-specific emergency relief. So I think two things: the pandemic really pointed out that fragility, and like for us, I’m super proud of that emergency relief work. But also like anyone who’s done emergency relief, it makes you realize you could do that forever. It doesn’t actually change anything about why there was an emergency in the first place. Like it doesn’t change any of those systems things. But it also was a moment where a lot of organizations, locally rooted organizations, stepped up for their creative community on behalf of artists and in support of artists.
And I think for us, there’s like a glimmer there of something that feels like a movement and certainly points out that like most artists going back to where you started, except for like, well, actually probably including, like, movie stars and very successful artists. Most artists are really dependent on the resources that are where they are…
Dayna (55:01.649)
That are in front of them. Yeah. Yep.
Laura Zabel (55:02.15)
geographically. And it isn’t actually a thing we can solve in a top-down way, but we do need to support those locally rooted resources more effectively. So that was a long way of saying like part of what we’re working on now that I really hope in three years is more robust and has really taken hold is this national network of place-based organizations, that’s called the Creative Change Coalition that really grew out of all of that emergency relief work we did with you and other folks of, like, how do we help people see that local ecosystem more clearly? How do we help people understand its value? And how do we support one another and share ideas across that network? Yeah, just almost exactly a year ago, we started this new coalition and have been, you know, supporting work like the Rural Urban Solidarity Project. We’ve also been convening folks to talk about different topics and issues, everything from, you know, really nuts and bolts stuff about accessing funding to supporting drag performers and creating, you know, healthy and safe environments for those performers in our communities to addressing environmental issues in our neighborhoods, in our communities.
So I really, my hope is that, you know, three years from now, that that really does feel like a cohesive network and movement of people that are sharing ideas and sharing resources and building power together and building a voice that can, in a more sustainable way, help people see that like, you know, what you said is true, that like there are resources in Minnesota that don’t exist in a lot of other places.
And there is great work happening all over the country, often led by one or two artists who are just like putting it on their back and carrying it. And we really want to make that more visible and more resourced and more durable so that it, because we know when there are inevitably emergencies in the future, that’s the network we need. So yeah, my hope is really that that is…that that really gets a strong foothold and can be, yeah, something that feels like movement building, that isn’t just like, this one organization can do this, but really is, you know, might look different in a lot of different places, but it is resources and ecosystems that need to exist everywhere.
Dayna (57:40.627)
I love that vision. Okay, this is my last question for you.
Even though you and I both agree that being creative is a fundamental right to being a human being, I think it’s the thing that makes us human and not something else. And quite frankly, I mean, elephants paint and chimpanzees paint. So, I mean, it’s not just humans, but we have an innate desire built into us, I think. Even though we know that that is a piece of who each and every one of us can and could be, for many people the arts are absolutely so far beyond their day-to-day thinking, at least as they perceive it, particularly as a maker. Why in the world should anyone care?
Laura Zabel (58:38.278)
Yeah, I think, so I guess I would answer that a couple ways. One is that I just saw I think this came out of the new NEA, National Endowment for the Arts, like arts participation study that is something probably get these numbers wrong, but something like 70 or 80 percent of people in the country say that arts and culture is important and nearly 40 percent of people in the US believe they don’t have enough access to arts and culture.
And in that 40%, my hunch is that that is, it’s two things at the same time. One is a real call to action and need to validate more art forms. Cause I would wager a lot of those people are making art and do have access to art, but they just think that other people don’t think that’s what art is. You know, like we were talking about before.
And there are also some real barriers that are preventing people from accessing those things. And I think one of the biggest ones is time, and the way that we think about valuing people’s time or the pressure for people to be working all the time or busy all the time or that everything we do has to have this sort of practical outcome. And I think that’s like a cultural shift towards really valuing people’s ability to contribute to their communities in whatever way, like whether they call that art or not, or whether they call it volunteering, or whether they call it community building or caregiving, like, the space and time to be a part of something bigger than yourself, that is about your own self-expression, I don’t really care whether you call that art, but I do want everyone to have that.
And so I think that demands thinking about different kinds of, especially economic structures, things that support people to be able to make a living wage, to be able to afford housing, to be able to feed their families so that all of their time isn’t worrying about those things.
So I think for me, I guess the answer that I’m giving you is that it’s less about some kind of convincing and more about, like, how do we actually change the reality of people’s lives so that they can do the things they want to do? And then I, then I trust that a lot of the things that people want to do are about making and culture building and being creative.
But they’re…we have to address the conditions for them to be able to do that. And then I think the value kind of proves itself.
It doesn’t mean I won’t keep advocating for the value of artists, because obviously that’s important. But I do think like, we don’t have enough of that conversation in the arts about the real realities that a lot of folks are facing and the barriers that have been put up for them, whether that’s in acknowledgement of art forms or whether it’s in like super practical ways that our economy is just set up for people to be used up and not able to feel like they deserve or have space for creativity, for culture bearing, for connection.
Dayna (01:02:00.034)
Well, and then we haven’t even touched on, which we’re not going to do in this conversation, because it’s a whole nother conversation that I hope we can have another time. But we haven’t even really touched on the, again, to go back to my made up word, hierarchical standing of white, European men. And then many, many, many, many centuries later, a few women get slipped in who are white and wealthy. And the way that that has also, continues to be the kind of thing that we might see a day of international dance, for instance, but we have access to classical ballet all the time. Or, you know, a choir might do a piece by a composer of color, then you’re not going to hear a concert of it. So again, that’s for another day, but that’s a whole other issue that is equally important to this time and value piece, is the various roadblocks that are put up, are just in many instances higher for some kinds of people than they are for others.
Laura Zabel (01:03:16.388)
For sure, and it means, I mean, that is a loss of creativity and innovation that we all pay the price for. Like when we tell only some kids that they can be artists when they grow up, when only some kids feel like that is a viable path for them to pursue as adults, then we all miss out on creative solutions, on creative ideas, on the places and spaces that build those kinds of connections that would help us in so many ways economically and socially and culturally.
So it isn’t even just a cost to those individuals. I feel like we all, we all pay the cost for that. And yeah. And like I said at the beginning, like I think a lot of that, like, yes, the arts as it’s structured in the U S lives inside of all of these other extractive and, top-heavy hierarchical systems, but we’ve also created, replicated those systems. So it’s both. Like we want to change those big pieces, but we also have to like look at ourselves and change the existing systems that we call arts and culture in this country.
Dayna (01:04:33.145)
Mm-hmm. Laura, this has been a fantastic conversation. I’m so happy that you agreed to join me. And I look forward to coming back and talking more about it because we didn’t touch on education. We didn’t touch on all kinds of things, which are also these huge systems, which both keep the arts out and also are places where some change could happen that could be seismic without upending the entire apple cart.
Laura Zabel (01:05:02.22)
For sure.
Dayna (01:05:03.245)
So we will be back as things evolve, but I loved this so much. Thank you for joining me. Everyone else, we’ll talk soon.
