The System Change Agent: Brian Loevner
People want data showing something will have an actual effect before they invest or change. We can’t do that.
5 QUESTIONS WITH BRIAN LOEVNER
President / Founder, BLVE
Chicago, IL & Toronto, ON
Brian Loevner (he/him) is an executive leader, consultant & producer. Most recently, he was the Managing Producer of The Second City from 2015-2017, managing all theatrical production in Chicago with a yearly budget of over $12 million dollars. From 2004-2013, Brian served as the Managing Director of Chicago Dramatists. As a fundraiser, Brian has raised over $5 million dollars for organizations and productions in the last 10 years. In addition, Brian successfully pitched the MacArthur Foundation, ending in the creation of a program to provide cashflow loans to arts organizations during the 2008 recession. Brian has also produced over 150 theatrical productions with companies such as The Kennedy Center, The Lyric Opera of Chicago, Hubbard Street Dance, LaJolla Playhouse, Woolly Mammoth Theatre, Famous Door Theatre and Timeline Theatre. Further, his work as a consultant has been in assisting non profits, such as One Aim Illinois, Calgary Arts Development, Chicago Fringe Opera and many others in building strong teams of professionals, creating systems for success and planning for the future.
1. Regarding your work with Cultural Triage, you’ve said: “It is time to redefine organizational models and maintain clear decision making rather than remaining reactive and losing the perspective necessary to think with thoroughness and care.” How do you help facilitate organizational life cycles (mergers, partnerships, closures), and what do you see most hindering this process?
There is a reality that we work in the arts. So the barriers to success in organizational change are based in ego and a fallacy of singularity. As artist/leaders our ego is necessary, but is also a significant hindrance to structural change. Also, as arts organizations, we are often lulled into a sense that our work is singular, that our arts ecology would crumble without our work.
So….in helping facilitate organizational life cycle, we first need to break through these issues and understand that in this process, in really risking significant change, we will find traumatic experiences. It will make us question our place in the community, our funding structures, hierarchy, board structure, program delivery and the type and quantity of art we produce. It will be jarring. And we need to process and find a way to begin these difficult conversations without building unnecessary barriers.
I have found that a core team model works well. After an initial wide and deep assessment of the organization, we build a core team of stakeholders, leaders, community members, staff, board, and funders. These voices will work together to help lead the building of a new, more community centered, more equitable, more diverse and more engaged organization.
2. What is the elephant in the room when we talk about changing our structural systems in the cultural sector?
To me, the elephant in the room is that change is SLOW. No one wants to change until they see someone else change. This is a long term, generational change. We will not see the fruits of this work for years or decades to come. People tend to want data that shows something will have an actual effect before they invest or change. We can’t do that. We believe in the need, the momentum, the effects of pandemic, the desire and the tests being done in our ecology now. We have to move forward and begin changing as we learn how to change. It’s not easy, but it’s necessary.
3. You’ve said, “Entities can get funding to change, but not always the money to perpetuate that change.” Tell me more.
Here’s an example:
Before merging, two organizations are each getting $50,000 grants from a local foundation on a yearly basis.
When the two organizations announce their intention to begin merging, that same foundation gives them each an additional grant to help defray costs of merging (money to change!).
Once the merger is complete the newly merged organization begins getting a yearly $50,000 grant from the same foundation.
Can you see the math problem here? Previously, the two organizations received $100,000 in total grants from this foundation. But now, as they are only one organization, instead of two, they receive $50,000. But the long term expenses of bringing two organizations together means that the organization needs more funding, for longer. Not half, immediately.
4. In order to diversify audiences, engage broader communities, and increase support for local arts ecosystem, what are the greatest opportunities to evolve current practices?
Great question. Again, these are long term opportunities. But I think that the creation of more neighborhood-based arts collectives would go a long way to pushing structural change for the ecology. If local arts and humanities organizations of all kinds merged and partnered their efforts into direct neighborhood community service, it would be transformative.
I also feel strongly that there is an opportunity to build off the trend of deep diversification of staffing at arts organizations nationally. As we know, many organizations are diversifying in different ways, some are making other changes to their organizations that will help support diversity, others are only making one dimensional changes. If we work with organizations on “what's next” after taking DEI courses, building an EDI committee and looking more diverse, maybe the future of the workplace and organizational structure can be built from that foundation.
5. Year after year, arts giving remains stagnant at ~4% of overall (private) charitable giving. Next era donors — those inheriting the largest intergenerational transfer of wealth in history and new wealth creators — are turning away from the arts to support areas they see as greater drivers of social progress. How can the sector best make its case for relevance among rising philanthropic leaders?
The arguments for and examples of arts and culture driving social progress are endless. Everything from Vaclav Havel in the Czech Republic in the 1990’s to Augusto Boal in Brazil in the 1970’s to Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Ukraine today. We know that the effect of artists and their ability to reflect the world back to our communities is powerful.
There is no Netflix without non profit arts and culture. There is no Disney+, no Broadway, no Spoleto Festival. Nonprofit arts and culture organizations are feeding the entertainment industry with creative innovation. If we disinvest in the nonprofits arts and culture community, we will lose a generation of artists and creative output.
The Path Forward interview series, an initiative of MCW Projects LLC, investigates how cultural and philanthropic leaders are re-envisioning the future of the arts.