Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast: Making Art Work
Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast: Making Art Work
#327: David Holmes, Diane Scott, and Drew Tucker (Grants Panel Discussion) (pt. 1 of 2)
Today we released part one of our first Arts Grant Panel interview. Since artists and arts organizations were left scrambling for support this spring due to the budget cuts at the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities, we decided to launch our first panel discussion with experts who have experience as grant writers, grantors and grantees. Our goal is to shed light on grant funding and provide suggestions entities should consider when writing for grants.
Joining us are:
David Holmes, an Educational Programming Manager at Candid, where he helps nonprofits and individuals find funding. He also coordinates national trainings and educational programming for the Midwest region. https://candid.org/
Diane Scott, The Director of Artist Services at the Regional Arts Organization Mid-America Arts Alliance, She is the founding director and principal designer of the Artist INC professional development program. Now in its 16th year, Artist INC programs have been offered in eight states and completed by more than 2,500 artists. https://artistinc.art/about/artist-services-team/ and https://www.dianerscott.com/about
Drew Tucker is a vibraphonist, educator, and national arts leader redefining what it means to be an artist and advocate today. As Director of the Jazz Road program at South Arts, he oversees millions in national grant funding to support jazz artists across the country. https://www.southarts.org/about/staff-and-board-directors and https://www.itsnotaxylophone.com/
If you want to apply for an arts grant, make sure you listen to this interview!
Welcome to the Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast, Making Art Work. We highlight how entrepreneurs align their artistry, passion, and vision to create and pursue opportunities to capture value in the arts. The views expressed by guests on the Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast are solely their own and do not necessarily represent the views of the podcast or its hosts. The appearance of a guest on the podcast, the venture they represent, or reference to any product or service does not imply an endorsement or recommendation by the podcast or its hosts. The content provided is for entertainment and informational purposes only and does not constitute business advice. Here are your hosts, Andy Heise and Nick Petrella.
Andy Heise:Hi, Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast listeners. My name is Andy Heise.
Nick Petrella:And I'm Nick Petrella. At the time of this recording, there have been deep cuts to grants in both the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Since artists and arts organizations are left scrambling for support, we decided to launch our first panel discussion with experts who have experience as grant writers, grantors, and grantees. The goal of this episode is to shed light on grant funding and provide suggestions entities should consider when writing for grants. With us today are David Holmes, Diane Scott, and Drew Tucker. To save time, I'll read their brief biographies, but you're encouraged to visit the links in the show notes to read more about them and their organizations. Dave Holmes is an educational programming manager at Candid, where he helps nonprofits and individuals find funding. He also coordinates national trainings and educational programming for the Midwest region. Dave, thanks for being here.
David Holmes:Welcome. So glad to be back.
Nick Petrella:Diane Scott is the Director of Artist Services at the regional arts organization Mid-America Arts Alliance. She is the founding director and principal designer of the Artist Inc. Professional Development Program. Now in its 16th year, Artist Inc. programs have been offered in eight states and completed by more than 2,500 artists. Thanks for joining us, Diane.
Diane Scott:Hi, thanks for having us.
Nick Petrella:Drew Tucker is a vibraphonist, educator, and national arts leader redefining what it means to be an artist and advocate today. As director of the Jazz Road Program at South Arts, he oversees millions in national grant funding to support jazz artists across the country. a former cultural ambassador for the United States State Department, Drew has built a global career balancing creativity with community impact, performing internationally, building arts organizations, and mentoring the next generation of artists. Welcome back, Drew.
Drew Tucker:Thanks, man. It's always great to be here.
Nick Petrella:Thank you all for coming on the podcast. As we talked about earlier, we'll ask each of you a question tailored to your own experiences, and once you've completed your answer, the other two panelists are welcome to contribute their thoughts as well. So before
Andy Heise:we get started and dive into each one of your areas of expertise, let's start with a shared question. What's one thing that you wish more artists understood about grants right now? Dave, you want to start?
David Holmes:Sure. I think that... The thing that I always wish that artists understood about grants is how much they have to prepare in order to submit and that they have to have all of the information together. It's so much easier if you get it together and then start looking for grants because a lot of the grant applications are similar. But if you have to dig up all the information and then you forget it right after you submit it, you're doing yourself a disservice. Yeah.
Andy Heise:Diane?
Diane Scott:You know, we just selected a cohort for one of our grants and announced it yesterday. And one thing that I'd like artists to really remember is that all the people in the process really care. And so the panelists who review your applications, the people who work at the organizations, right, like they are really on your side. They super, super care about the process. They take it really seriously. And they want you to succeed. Unfortunately, there's just not enough money for everybody, right? That particular grant had 260 applications for 25 slots. Wow. Yeah.
Andy Heise:Drew, anything to add?
Drew Tucker:Yeah. I guess I wish more artists sort of knew or understood that the process of applying for the grant can be as beneficial as the possible outcome of getting the grant.
Andy Heise:Yeah.
Nick Petrella:Great. All right. Let's start with Dave. What kind of tools does Candid offer to grant seekers and arts nonprofits?
David Holmes:Great. So Candid is a national nonprofit, and we have regional partners throughout the country. So we have over 1,800 partners. If you go to Candid.org, you can look up and find us and see where those partners are. And the things that you can use at each of these partners are resources. Our foundation directory, which is our directory of over 300,000 grant makers, and you can search it specifically for arts grants, for individual grants, for things that are in your region, for things that are the type of funding that you want to see. That's probably the main thing that people would use. of Candid that's going to help you if you're looking for arts grants. But there's also a number of learning tools if you've never written grants before. If you don't understand some of the things about researching and where to look for different opportunities, we have what we call our knowledge base on our candid.org site. It's a free searchable resource that enables you to find different places to Learn about individual grants or arts grants or writing a proposal or putting a budget together. And finally, we have a tool called GuideStar, which is for arts nonprofits in particular. All nonprofits in the United States are listed on GuideStar.org. And you have a chance to go in there, update your information if you're an organization. It's free to update. And then you become much more visible to some of the people that use it to decide who to give money to. And that would be donor advice fund managers or even people on Facebook when they're pulling information about a nonprofit to fundraise for it comes from GuideStar. So those are some of the tools that we have.
Nick Petrella:And can anyone access those? Is there a cost to
David Holmes:that? Yeah. No, there's no cost if you use the Foundation Directory at one of our partner locations. It does have a cost if you get it from home, but it is free. And if you look in your city, a lot of the cities and even small towns throughout the country will have it because it's usually in the public library. Great.
Andy Heise:Diane, many granting programs have moved away from project-based granting towards practice-based granting. Can you explain the difference between these types of grants and how does applying for a practice-based grant differ from applying for a project-based grant?
Diane Scott:Sure. So, you know, traditionally, individual artists were given grants for developing a particular project. And so, you know, when you apply for a project-based grant, you're really talking about what that project is, providing a vision for that, usually a timeline, also a budget for the particular project that you're going to make. There had been a move towards practice-based grants for a while, but COVID really sped that up. During COVID, grantors didn't have time to go through that whole process to get money out into individual artists' hands. And even if they did, most of the projects couldn't have happened because we were all isolated. And so they literally just gave out money. And they did that just as a triage thing. But what they found is that that worked really, really well. And that artists, when they were approached with trust in that way, really performed performed at a super high level, being able to make choices about what they were going to do with the money that were wholly, you know, personalized towards what they actually needed. And so here at MidAmerica Arts Alliance in our artist services division, like many other grantors, we have moved entirely towards what we call practice-based grants. And so you might refer to those even as unrestricted grants or trust-based grants. And so when you get a from the artist services division, you can spend that money however you'd like to spend it. And we really have no parameters on that whatsoever. And I'm always fascinated by the choices that people make with that money and what kind of impact it can really have. But, you know, that sounds awesome. It does sound awesome, right? Like you can use it for whatever you need. However, it changes how you apply for grants quite a bit. a lot. And so, you know, all grants have two components. There's past and there's future. And when you are doing a project-based grant, about 75% of that evaluation is about the future, right? Like, what vision are you proposing to me? And 25% is, you know, do you have a good history of doing things? Does it seem like you're going to spend the money like you said you're going to spend it? Those sorts of things. But when it's a practice-based grant, it's almost exactly the reverse. Like 75% of that evaluation is on what you have done, right? And how well you've documented that and shared that with people. And really only about 25% is kind of a future facing, like how do you think you'll spend the money? What kind of impact do you think that that'll have on your career? And so it puts a higher stress level and amount of importance on keeping good documentation of your work, and making really good choices about telling the story of what it is that you do.
Andy Heise:It sounds like– so project-based grants is like I have this idea. The idea is the first thing, and then the artist– is this the right artist to be able to execute on that idea? Whereas maybe practice-based kind of flips– to your point, flips that script and says, is this artist worth– not worth– is this artist– ready for this type of
Diane Scott:a grant opportunity? Yeah. If they get this kind of infusion of cash with no restrictions, are they going to be able to use that in a way that's really meaningful? And I have to say, what people use this money for, it almost brings me to tears. You think about these things when you apply for a project, and the projects are exciting, but oftentimes what you really need to take that next step in your career is that piece of equipment or something boring, like no one ever wants to buy people a computer or a camera or something like that. But honestly, we all need those things to do work.
Unknown:Absolutely.
David Holmes:I just want to comment on that is that I wish it was similar. The movement was similar on the foundation level and the grants to nonprofit organizations. I think every few years and usually when there's a crisis, somebody will come out and say, we need to give more general operating support. We need to give more unrestricted funds. But it's definitely something that that funders are slow to. particularly for funders for arts nonprofits are slow to respond to. And they're still kind of rooted in the project base. There are some, there are some organizations that have, you know, changed the way that they think about it and they're much more trust-based, but it's, it's slow.
Unknown:Yeah.
Drew Tucker:Diane, I just want to say I love the way you articulated that. That was really, really nice. And as we're going into an era of redesign on our Jazz Road grant or doing the tweaks, taking stock of the evaluation, we have some flexibility. And it's the way that you put that being about the past or about the future really kind of locked it in for me. So I think we're going to take that one to the drawing board and see. So I really appreciate it. I just want to let you know.
Diane Scott:Oh, great. Yeah. It really does make a difference. And I have seen just huge movement and people like a lot of times what people need to buy is time, right? Or they need to buy mental flexibility. I have to say a lot of people take that money and they put it in the bank so that they can say no and know that it's not going to crash them to say no to something.
Unknown:Yeah.
Andy Heise:Yeah. Well, and one thing that strikes me, like the other thing that strikes me about this is you know, assessing a project based grant is maybe a little simpler. Like you said, you were going to do X, Y, Z. Did you do X, Y, Z? And did you spend the money appropriately? Yes. Okay, great. Successful quote unquote, successful grant. Whereas you know, a practice based grant, the outcomes are a little more nebulous and it's harder to measure that, the, how the, how the funds were used, et cetera.
Diane Scott:Yeah, it really is.
David Holmes:To be fair to the foundations, that's what they're thinking about is being able to measure the impact that their grant has had because they have certain things they want to achieve. And that draws them back towards a project base because they know they'll get a report and they'll say, well, this did happen. It's going to happen in the future. So we can say this is a good use of our trustees' money.
Nick Petrella:Is one more competitive than the other or it doesn't matter?
Diane Scott:They're all so competitive.
Nick Petrella:Right, right.
Diane Scott:They're all so competitive.
Nick Petrella:So this next question is for Drew. A lot of artists hesitate to apply for grants because the odds of winning feel so low. From your perspective, what can an artist gain even if they don't get a grant?
Drew Tucker:You know... I'm reminded of a movie that I liked. It was iRobot, iRobot, iRobot with Will Smith, remember that? He's doing his detective work to try to get to sort of the bottom of it and he finds this hologram of his friend and he asks these questions and then the hologram says, sorry, I've got predetermined answers. He's like, you have to ask the right questions. And then when you finally ask the right question, he goes, now that's the right question. And I think in the arts world, I don't think, I've seen evidence bear out in the arts world that a lot of people just don't know the questions to ask. You know, and you learn it the hard way, right? So it's like you hear about the story, which I also have experience of touring and having to not realizing that the money you took in isn't exactly the money that goes out, not budgeting for the right thing, getting to a place and only having a conversation with no offer letter or backline sheet. and getting there and hearing that, yeah, we had a drum set and it's like two broken, the snare with a broken bottom head and the snare's hanging off and all the fuzzies are missing off the cymbal stand. So it's like you don't even know to ask that question. And the process of getting there is really so long if you're doing, just by learning and by getting it. And even if you hear about it, yeah, of course I need a budget. I made 100 bucks on this gig. And the other thing is you don't really know how to even measure your value. to answer your question, when you apply for these things, different grants from different programs, they might be practice-based, they might be project-based, they might be a local or state grant, they could be a large organization, but regardless, or it could be individual donor, but regardless, each one of those will ask you questions that likely you haven't thought about yet. And the search for finding that answer is going to put you that much further ahead on your path to being able to be a self-sustaining artist. So, I mean, we've had people who have said man I didn't even think about uh if I needed what I needed in the green room. I didn't even think about the level of the kind of doors that would have to be there for me to be able to pull my, all my instruments in and asking about if there's even an escalator or an elevator, or I got to slub this stuff up to the third, to the third floor. You know, I didn't think to ask, I didn't even know I could ask at this point in my career about getting hotel rooms or what the value is and saying, well, I'm going to get hotel rooms and hospitality here and lose a little bit on the money. Cause it's going to help me get to this next venue. How do we route all of these sorts of things? And what's the benefit in doing it? Another, another thing that I'll, A lot of people have said, And these are people who were not awarded the grant. They said, man, I didn't know how to measure my value on the road, how much money I should ask for, because a lot of the conversations we have are like, listen, you're not asking for enough for these artists. I understand that people will have up to $15,000 and still only feel that they can ask for $100 or $150 an artist for a four-hour gig. And so it's like, I didn't realize how much. It's like, well, if you think about your time, it's not only what are you making on the road, but what are you sacrificing back home? Are you giving up a week's worth of lessons? Are you giving up up do you have to pay for daycare do you have to what's your wife now having to give up from work what's the opportunity cost of you actually going on tour how many hours are you actually putting into booking these gigs calling these people back and then assign a dollar amount to that and then maybe that might be a little bit steeper than the market can afford but then you can have a point of reference but the point again being that people just didn't even know how to ask these questions not whether they were asking the wrong ones they didn't know those questions to ask so we started slowly pushing to and starting asking like does the venue have a area for breastfeeding mothers? Does it have a refrigerator that has access? Things like that so that we can start, when they send out those offer letters, venues and presenters can start thinking, oh, yeah, I never really thought of that. You know what I mean? How do we help? Is there an area? Can this person bring their child if they have a sitter? Where can that child be if they had to bring this child on tour with them for a week because this is their career? And by learning to ask those questions, I want to say it's invaluable because you're shaving years of hard lessons off of off of your career, but it's definitely enough value for you to put in those extra couple of hours to kind of flush those applications out.
Nick Petrella:Yeah, that absolutely makes sense.
Diane Scott:I totally agree. I actually think the primary reason as an individual artist to apply for grants is not to get money because the odds aren't fantastic in many situations. The primary reason is as a professional development activity. It makes you think through who you are. It makes you be able to communicate that better. But even more importantly, and kind of to David's point earlier, if you keep good records of what it is that you've done and applied for, it becomes easier and you become better. And you find that you're using those things in many other circumstances as well. We provide feedback and many of the granting places will do that as well. So that can be super useful. And you're also getting where else you get for free, you know, five professionals in your field to really spend time with what you are doing and give you constructive feedback. And oftentimes opportunities that aren't the actual grant will come from those professionals. reading about your work.
Drew Tucker:Yeah, that's what I was going to add to that as well. It's like you put your work in front of not only the other people who, like I've seen, I have professional development activities that we put on that we do here at South Arts. We do a lot of different sort of professional development things. And of course, we also have panels. Well, some people who haven't won, I've been like, but that is a great project and would be great. You know, maybe it's a technology based grant. And this person really understands technology. It wasn't the right time for this. Or there was way too, there was 30 artists from New York and we can't have or 30 artists from New York, but this artist, I would love to be able to put them in the mix to be able to come out and pay them obviously a good wage to be able to come out and apply that trade. And also, I know for a fact that some of the panelists have seen artists and been like, oh, wow, I am in this area. I needed a drummer. And I just remember that artist I saw while I was here and was able to do it. So just to Diane's point, it's definitely a lot of great connections that will happen just by getting your work in front of people.
David Holmes:Yeah, at Candid, we always talk about building relationships and people think, well, these are big, you know, impersonal foundations, big givers, and there's no way to build a relationship. Like, yeah, there is. There's total. You totally get in front of people that remember you. You can make connections. You can share information. They may call you. And it does lead to more support in the long run. It's always a good idea to not try to live in isolation and just say, I don't want to, you know, I don't want to talk to them and I'm afraid that they don't want to talk to me. It's like, that's not really how it works.
Nick Petrella:Yeah. You know, it's kind of similar. Andy will probably remember Jamie Garner was on this podcast a couple of years ago. He's a vocalist and toured all over the place. And he said, take the audition because it's happened to him where someone remembered a year or two later, you know, yeah, he didn't fit this particular type, but When we needed something else, a different style, he was perfect for it.
Andy Heise:So Dave, how do you at Candid and the Candid organization, how do you work with individual artists that are looking to get substantial grants from foundations?
David Holmes:It's a good question because there's sort of a different level. There's looking for grants as an individual. And we can show you how to search our tools and to use other resources to find things that are specific to the type of art that you're doing or the type of subject matter that you're focusing on. And we can do that kind of searching and look individually. specifically for things that are targeted towards individuals. And what I always emphasize with that is to make sure that you pay attention to what is the size of the Likely Grant, look at their history of giving, look at the eligibility, make sure that everything is connected. What I also talk about is the idea that if you were looking to get substantial grants from a whole lot of different sources, it sometimes works better if you're somehow affiliated with a nonprofit organization. And essentially, if you have a fiscal sponsor, by which I mean a nonprofit that's already established that partners with you and is in charge of kind of taking the money in and getting it to you. And there's lots of information about fiscal sponsorship on the candid.org website. But it's not a one-step kind of thing. It's an agreement that you have to have in place before you start seeking some larger grants. It does open up many more foundations and many more givers because of the restrictions in the law that says they have to give for charitable purposes. A lot of them are more comfortable giving to established nonprofit organizations. It also helps when you're doing searching. It goes beyond just saying I'm looking for somebody who's giving money to artists who are doing painting. You can say, well, what is the subject matter of my painting? What is it? How does it affect our community? How is it connected to community development? And you you could think about all of the different ways that your project might appeal to a potential funder. You know, if it's a documentary about coal mining, you know, it's the coal, you know, somebody who's interested in history, somebody who's interested in the region where the coal mining happens, somebody who's interested in film, somebody who's interested in education, all of those things are, well, we try to keep talking and asking because if you think about it too narrowly, you may miss out on opportunities.
Nick Petrella:Diane, you've been in the grant space for many years, and I'm wondering if you could share some of the common errors individual artists make when applying for grants.
Diane Scott:Yeah, I kind of think they fall into two big buckets, right? The first is applying for grants first. that aren't really made for you, right? And so people will, because there are such a limitation in the amount of grant dollars out there, people will apply for grants and try and mold themselves to the grant, even though they don't do that type of work. And so I can't tell you how many people I've had, for example, in my office crying that they have applied for this particular grant. And I'm thinking of one here in Kansas City over and over and over again, and they never get the nod. And this grant is for people who are doing like really cutting edge unusual types of work that don't have traditional streams of support. And yet this person is a representative painter. And it's like, that's great. You're a wonderful representative painter. This grant isn't for you. There are grants for you, but this isn't it. And so that's one of them is really thinking through what that fit is and trying to not mold yourself to things that aren't a good fit for you. And I have to say, not only am I a grants myself. And I know how tempting it is to try and squish yourself into that hole. The other thing, and this is something that I see more and more, you know, when I started working with artists a couple of decades ago, we would ask people, you know, are you a visual artist? Are you a musician? Are you a filmmaker? And literally people could check those boxes, right? Like we had our categories and they could check those boxes and that was pretty much correct. artists don't work that way anymore. They work across so many different disciplines and in such a huge variety of things. And so now if somebody tells me, you know, I'm a writer, filmmaker, you know, I paint and write poetry on the side, right? Like, I totally believe that. That's exactly how a ton of people are working. However, that does not play very well in grant applications. People, you know, you have limited amounts of space to talk about what you're doing. You know, usually it could be two 250 words to talk about your work. You got five images or maybe five minutes of samples, and you just cannot throw everything that you do into that. You have to really curate that down to something that people can understand in that 15 minutes that they're going to be spending with your grant application.
Nick Petrella:Yeah, that's a good point.
David Holmes:of describing it is people wanting to change who they are or what they are to fit what they think that a grant maker would want. I say this all the time and I said, you don't want to drift over from what you do into something that you don't because then are you going to drift back when the money is somewhere else? People just don't like that. They want to find somebody that fits with them. And that's what we talk about as the most important thing. Find a good fit. And there are more people out there that may be interested in what you're doing, even if it's what you consider to be rarefied. Think about how it fits in with something that a funder might have an interest in. Don't change.
Diane Scott:You know, I always say there are 8 billion people in the world. So even if what you do only appeals to 0.01% of people, that's 800,000 people. There you go. Yeah,
David Holmes:it's beautiful.
Andy Heise:Drew, in your experience, how much of getting a grant is about aligning your vision with the funder's goals, and how can artists do that without compromising their authenticity? Similar conversation we've had here, but it's a little bit of a different take on it.
Drew Tucker:Sure. Well, I think it's important to know what kind of grant you're going for, right? So different grant makers, different sizes, different grant makers in different municipalities, they all have different essential goals that are sort of passed down to them by either their board or by the constituents they serve. So you have like local grants, right? So they might be like city grants. Maybe they have community redevelopment agencies that have a certain amount of money that they put out requests for or put out bids for. And those grants, Grants are typically going to be about, for example, developing that area, bringing in tourism, developing local businesses, maybe repairing a blighted area to sort of make it more palatable. So when you're applying for a grant there, it's not about whether you can say authentically, um, well, you have to change your project and be inauthentic, but you need to speak to how your project would be able to help them reach those goals. I mean, you know, sometimes it gets a little abstract because we're artists, but when you think about, uh, if it was a breast cancer organization looking to fund breast cancer research and you wrote a proposal about lung cancer research, that's great. It's probably an amazing proposal, but this money is, is, is, is set aside for breast cancer research, right? So, um, Now, if that cancer researcher was like, listen, I think I'm finding a link between lung cancer and this cancer, and here's how it's going to benefit breast cancer. They're not watering down their research. They're just being able to communicate the value to these funders or to this organization. that is going to help them to see that this is something that's worth granting and worth awarding. Same thing if you go into maybe larger organizations. If you go into larger organizations like your Duke Foundation, your Ford, your Mellon Foundation, these are organizations that are taking these endowments and this money that they have and they built up through this philanthropy and they have certain mission statements that they're out for. And a lot of times it's things like advocacy or it could be things like awarding legacy gifts or support supporting other large organizations in doing this work or re-granting. And then of course you have government grants, which are very specific as well. A lot of times they're meant to bolster American pride, maybe overseas, perhaps it's about building in some sort of sense of some music culture that's like an Appalachia or somewhere else that's been lost to make sure we put preservation of things like that. So knowing those things, if you have a, and then you have other organizations that are more specific again. So if you have a project, for example, let's say you're really into the environment and you're creating suite and you want to go around and do this research and find the frequencies of the ocean and compose a piece to that. And you want to raise awareness through this by interviewing people around the country and how they've been affected by climate change. And you want to turn that into this whole opera, for example. So great applying for that through an arts organization. You just can talk about that art, talk about your experience, talk about how you learned at Berkeley and that you met a teacher who helped you with this and that, etc. But when you're talking to an environmental organization that you may think has some overlap that may want to invest in that, maybe you want to keep some of those things out and talk about really what effect is this going to have on the environment? Will it raise awareness? Will it be able to build community around a certain topic or a certain subject? Will it be able to help with advocacy? Is it something that they can find value in? Because if you just go on about your experiences and that you're from this area and you grew up learning punk and pop and then you blah, blah, blah, you know, these things– you got to understand the panelists probably will likely not mostly be musicians. They're going to be looking for a project that will reach those goals. So it's not about whether you can water that project down or change the project if you don't think it's authentic to you. It's about honestly asking yourself, again, the right questions. what value will this add to these people? I've researched this organization. This is what they're about. How can I communicate my value in those types of ways? If it's a local organization, how can I say how, what does doing a concert do? Well, if you have several concerts, kids come out, families can come out. You can get more of a sense of community. You can build this community and rally around this particular concert series that you want to do, for example. and how you communicate that to people who may not be musicians, but really would love to fund this thing, but they want to hear how it's going to be able to help them and what they're trying to do. So, um, Being able to do that also is an extremely valuable skill that has a lot of wonderful crossover because it's not only when you're talking to big organizations or funders, but if you're talking to individual people who you want to buy your album, right? I mean, if you were talking to individual people at a concert who are reaching out to you, my kid loves you. I came here. What kind of conversation are you having with them to keep them enrolled in your ecosystem and coming back to other concerts when they see you? Versus if you're like, yeah, man, you know, I played a lot of C7 chords, you know, but, you know, I just wasn't soloing right over the form. I just didn't really have a good show. And this little kid's like, what? All right, I don't want to come back to this show anymore, Mom. You know, I mean, it goes all the way down to there and how well you're able to communicate what you do. Because everything that an artist does authentically that they love doing adds some value. It adds value to the people around them, to themselves, and they're happier when they go out into the world. It adds some value. The question is how well you can communicate that value to different people with different wants and needs.
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