The Coach: Marte Siebenhar
Although cultural institutions were created in the public trust, the trust of the community is an earned commodity.
5 QUESTIONS WITH Marte Siebenhar
Founder + Principal, Cultured Innovations
Miami, FL
Marte Siebenhar’s passion is creativity. As a coach, consultant, and facilitator, she combines artistic creativity and business strategy. Through her firm, Cultured Innovations, Marte helps creatives, nonprofits, social impact makers, and boards across the United States become more prosperous and successful. Often called in to assist with high-stakes conversations and periods of transition and growth, Marte’s work prioritizes sustainable strategy and financial abundance. This starts with clarity and alignment around purpose, values, and value. Her Practical Creativity™ methodology seeds innovation through imagination and play.
Marte is a classically trained professional musician and an alumna of Manhattan School of Music. She served as a Fellow with the Kennedy Center and The Miami Foundation. Previously, she was an arts manager, strategic planner, nonprofit executive, and marketer at Midori & Friends, Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Bakehouse Art Complex, and New World Symphony. Her biweekly live interview show, Practical Creativity Live, invites individuals to unpack the role of creativity in their lives and work. Marte’s first book, Messages from the Heart: Cards for Inspiration, Reflection, and Empowerment, is available on Amazon.
1. What have your clients needed most from you these past few months?
Help with handling uncertainty. This is an unprecedented, tragic, disruptive crisis. What gets us through this and into a place of true resiliency is the ability to accept, adapt to and weather whatever comes. These past few months, I’ve been helping clients with not only realigning with identity and values, but also getting brave and creative.
These times aren’t business as usual, so taking the opportunity to question and recalibrate assumptions, business models, and to experiment is vital. Clients have gained traction and success by getting out into the open, showing up, and communicating about what they’re up to, what they need, and their gratitude for audiences and donors. They are also sharing how they are living their values and holding themselves accountable. Others are maximizing this extraordinary time as an opportunity to experiment and innovate in ways that would have been impossible before.
2. You talk about how cultivating joy is crucial. Personally and professionally, we have all been challenged. Talk to me about the importance of this practice right now?
Yes! At the Kennedy Center, we used to say that “joy is a strategy,” and it’s definitely been true for me. I embrace joy as a purposeful act of self-care. Ideally daily, I seek out activities to pursue fun, creativity, connection, inspiration, feeling good, and gratitude: for health, family, my spiritual life, and a satisfying career that collides me with imaginative, incredible people while also aligning with my purpose.
3. How can we best stay creative when the news is so terrifying?
By recognizing the power we do have: the power to choose and to use our imaginations on purpose. I practice mindfulness, so when the pandemic threw our world into a tailspin, it helped that I could see that although I was not in control of what was happening outside of me, I had a choice about how I responded to what was happening both inside and outside of me. Even now, when I feel fearful, I remind myself that my work has always required tackling fear daily, whether stepping on stage, starting and sustaining a business, or facilitating hundreds of high-stakes meetings along the way.
Here are two easy ways anyone can cultivate greater creativity:
1. Set a timer for 10 minutes to just remember a happy memory or event. Re-experience the feelings of love, of connection, of joy. Milk it. Make note of insights. See if you can repeat for 3 days in a row. If you enjoy it, you can weave it into your routine.
2. Learn! Create a “curriculum module” to experiment on purpose. Identify one new skill you would like to pursue (flower arranging, balancing on one foot, appreciating your strengths, cooking an egg, cross-stitch, whatever) and designate a segment of time (a week, a month, a quarter) you will devote to this learning. Keep it to no more than 5-10 minutes per day, then journal to document observations, without criticism and self-judgment. The purpose is to show up and deliberately go into the unknown. Even simple insights may surprise you.
4. Clear organizational strategy and leadership development are vital right now. What are some of the most important lessons to be learned from this moment?
First, give up perfection. This is one of the most generous things you can do for yourself, your team, your audiences, and your community. They don’t need you to be perfect, they need you to be present and persist in your mission they rely on you to pursue. Second, accept that getting through the pandemic will mean making choices that do not carry certainty. That’s scary and uncomfortable, but accepting it can make things easier. Third, when you’re uncertain, look to your values and go with what best honors your “true north” in each decision. Fourth, be generous. Resiliency is a team sport, so now is the time to get creative and collaborative, not to play a zero-sum game. For our ecosystem to get through this crisis, we—and our audiences and community members—need each other. Fifth, be curious and experiment. The best leaders tend to be dedicated listeners and learners.
5. This is a time for outside the box thinking — especially for the cultural sector, which was already experiencing a crisis of relevancy. What advice do you have?
Although cultural institutions were created in the public trust, the trust of the community is an earned commodity. Using the term “crisis of relevancy” calls into question the depth of that trust. It also indicates separateness between the community and institutions. What is the reason for this? Few cultural institutions deliberately or continuously examine their work and business operations for practices that create separateness, either implicitly or explicitly. That must happen in a structured, accountable way.
Now is the time for every institution and cultural worker to take equity personally. This can be done by examining every level of decision making for how individual and collective choices advance equity. (I define equity as a collaborative, continual process to ensure fair access to all). It’s time to examine how we all leverage the privilege we have to include, absorb, and elevate the value of all lived experiences, contributions, and viewpoints, and to be accountable for our choices. Organizations that do this work are transformed, because it means relevancy is a lived practice from within: where it always starts.
Marte Siebenhar’s passion is creativity. As a coach, consultant, and facilitator, she combines artistic creativity and business strategy. Through her firm, Cultured Innovations, Marte helps creatives, nonprofits, social impact makers, and boards across the United States become more prosperous and successful. Often called in to assist with high-stakes conversations and periods of transition and growth, Marte’s work prioritizes sustainable strategy and financial abundance. This starts with clarity and alignment around purpose, values, and value. Her Practical Creativity™ methodology seeds innovation through imagination and play.
Marte is a classically trained professional musician and an alumna of Manhattan School of Music. She served as a Fellow with the Kennedy Center and The Miami Foundation. Previously, she was an arts manager, strategic planner, nonprofit executive, and marketer at Midori & Friends, Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Bakehouse Art Complex, and New World Symphony. Her biweekly live interview show, Practical Creativity Live, invites individuals to unpack the role of creativity in their lives and work. Marte’s first book, Messages from the Heart: Cards for Inspiration, Reflection, and Empowerment, is available on Amazon.