Speaker 1: Please welcome Gabe Florence.

Speaker 2: Check that, make sure it's working.

Speaker 3: Hey, check, check. Awesome.

Speaker 2: Sound okay? First off, Gabe, tell us a little bit about Pioneer Works.

Speaker 3: So Pioneer Works is a cultural center that we built in Red Hook, Brooklyn.

Speaker 4: It works across the arts and sciences to build community and activate ideas. We have many different ways in which that's activated. We have a residency program that works across arts, music, and technology. We have a public programming space where we do lectures, we do supper clubs, we do community lunches, we do panel discussions, we do huge exhibitions, we do music performances. Really kind of like to stretch things into not being limited in terms of what we program. We also do publishing, so we disseminate ideas through publishing books, publishing records that are often made in the space with a community that we support there. Also, we got into the online space recently, so we do online content and things like that. We like to say, every time I describe Pioneer Works, it changes in our head, and we're always trying to trap it into what's your statement, what's your mission statement. I think for us, it's kind of like people are like, well, you do everything, and it's less about doing everything and more just about not being limited in terms of the possibilities of what we can do. Not being scared to fail in certain areas where you're not experts in. And also just being principled about, we believe that culture needs to be as accessible as possible. I think the baseline is to be free, so 85% of everything we do is free, but that's kind of the lowest bar, I think. So beyond that is, how do you really activate your communities around you? Work with local partners. We're generalists. In this room, there's so many different people working in different non-profits, and almost every person that introduced themselves today, I was like, oh, we could work with you on this, we could work with you on this. The thing is, a lot of times, I think you isolate in your body, you isolate in a business, you isolate in your non-profits, and it's hard to do the work, but still to listen and let people know you're there, and to talk to different people and communities. It's always amazing what you don't know in the cultural communities, of like, I don't know about half of these people and the work they're doing. So we always just try to be very open and make sure that we open our doors as much as possible to organizations.

Speaker 1: Awesome. And like our other creators, I'm sure the pandemic presented some incredible challenges for you and Pioneer Works, and I'm curious how you coped with those unprecedented challenges.

Speaker 4: It was just all so easy. I mean, man, it was extremely, extremely difficult. And it's interesting, we went through Hurricane Sandy. I don't know if everyone remembers that, but our building flooded five feet. We were just getting off our, kind of on, we just had our non-profit status just kind of cleared. We finished major, like, first construction, and it's like everything was destroyed. It was the hardest, it was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in terms of I was swimming in the water. And, you know, then it was like the hardest work I've ever done, probably for the next year. But it pushed us ahead two years. And I think this pandemic, which we're very much still in, and I think we also all have to appreciate that we're in New York City and we're really lucky, but the world is still very much in it. But we completely had to re-navigate how we thought about almost everything and make really hard decisions. And, you know, we couldn't keep everybody working there. And it was really sad to have to make some hard decisions. But we did a lot of things that we wanted to do for a long time, like digital content. I think we all were like, we need to get into the digital space. We were planning it for three years, and we're just, like, really carefully kind of setting it up. And then it happened, and you're like, all right, we're going to do this new thing we wanted to do. And I think that the idea of coping, like, how do you keep people also inside of the institution the same? How do you keep connected when you're in these, when you're used to this kind of the privilege of being together? I think the privilege of, like, you can just bump into someone and an idea comes. And on Zoom, in this kind of, like, very difficult space to communicate, to think of creative problem solving, and we're not so good at, like, logistics and planning and these things that you have to be, like, really methodical about. And so it was really difficult emotionally. It was difficult financially, truly. But the good thing is that you really can take a minute to reflect. What have we done in the past 10 years? And really feel that the community, like, really supported. I mean, it was amazing. The people that came out and supported us. We had a gala coming up. We sold a lot of our tables already. Everyone gave money. We were setting up actually to, Pioneer Works was privately purchased initially by the founder, Dustin Yellen. And he sold the building to the foundation for a huge discount. But it was a lot of people who raised the money to do that. And we thought it was all going to fall apart. And instead of it falling apart, it kind of, it all came together. And, you know, the whole Zoom virtual community, now it's like, I hate, I mean, I hate Zoom probably more than most people in this room. But, you know, now it's like you can take some meetings on Zoom. You can communicate more to a global community that you kind of expand. We really expanded during that time. And so now life is more fluid. You know, all of these things, technology is just a platform. So to go between analog and technology in this more fluid way, like we really learned a whole lot. You know, we did like certain things. We're always about a global culture, global community, global audience. And we did this one event, 24-hour ragas, which is a 24-hour Indian classical music concert we do every year. And we did it online. And it was filmed like in Rajasthan, all over India and all over America. And it was, we had people donate. And you saw the people donating like their names and where they're from. And there were names all over the world. And it was just like a beautiful 24-hour moment. And it was the first time where I like, I was like, I'm going to miss this if we go back to the real world where it's analog. You know, so there's those beautiful moments that happen out of it. But we survived and we're surviving. And it's like really when you feel that the work you've done comes back to you. And so I think we're all really grateful that we're still standing and standing stronger, I think, than we were.

Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, that's beautiful. And you mentioned a couple of things that I'd love to dig into a little bit more. You talked a little bit about the collective power, your community supporting one another. You also mentioned, you know, that self-reflection. And I'm curious if you can give kind of some specific examples of what came out of that reflection. Like what things were reassessed?

Speaker 4: Well, when the pandemic happened specifically, we were like, what are we good for? First of all, like what, how can we serve the community? And I think you have to think locally first. I mean, we, the first thing we did was provide tech support for some of kind of like local schools, local nonprofits, which we worked with for a long time. And also we were like, there was a food situation. There was a lack of food. There was a lack of accessibility to it, information about it. And so we decided to work with our local partners and restaurants that we work with. And we hired local restaurants and chefs to make food. We paid them. And then we give free lunches and distribute about, I think, 200 a week to the community and then provide tech support. Like we help them do kind of a virtual prom at the local school. And there's just a lot of ways we're like, OK, this is ways that make sense in the community. I think that the moments of like reflection were really about, you know, you within kind of also being like you get a certain amount of success. And I think that there's an inertia to success. There's an isolating factor that I kind of talked about before. But it was really a moment to be like people came and people needed us. And, you know, we really needed them to figure out what to do with ourselves. And so it was a really nice moment of cross dialogue that I think happened in a really in a really beautiful way. Yeah.

Speaker 1: Awesome. One last question for you. And it's if you had to give one piece of advice to the other nonprofits in the room today, what would that be?

Speaker 4: I think to kind of come back to, I mean, I think have fun is really important as well. Because, you know, you have to take this work serious. I think we all have this privilege. Like, you know, we live in a very capitalist, brutal society, but the nonprofit space is like this natural subversion. Right. It's like we take money that people don't have to pay taxes on and they give it to us and we can use money not to make more money. And it's like that's really it's so beautiful because it's a really rare space. And I think it's also kind of a new obviously foundations have been around for a long time. But the culture specifically, even in America, is very specific. The culture of philanthropy and the culture of giving in the culture of what we can do through that, I think, is like it inspires me every every day. And you have to you have to believe in your work to take money from people. And I mean, for I think for for us, it's like you have to know that you're doing good with the money. And how do you pay people? How do you treat your employees? Who are you allowing to work in the space? Internships, you should question. We don't do them really unless they're like, you know, for underserved people or through college programs. You really just like just be conscious and make sure you're not doing things for the sake of them. I think the pandemic was that moment of like, why are we doing all of this stuff? And we're having these events all the time. We're filming everything. Are we doing anything with with with the content? So, I mean, I think the the idea of advice like you can't really teach someone like this is the way to do something, because we all have our own systems that are totally unique. But everyone would agree here, like you have to work with the people around you. And don't start community programs instead of instead of talking to the person who's already doing community programs close by and bring them in, because they're doing better work than you can do. You know, there's people doing better work. So don't do things for the sake of them or for tokenism or for just like the idea of like, yeah, we do this thing. It's like, no, there's other people doing it. Why don't you talk to them and bring them? And they're going to make your program so much more powerful. It's like, don't be competitive, be inclusive, please try and be free. You know, I think there's there's a shift of the idea of accessibility and cultural institutions that is really sad sometimes, you know, and like there's reasons for them. But I would question those reasons. I think, you know, don't don't mimic and try and listen and learn and be, you know, be fresh and follow the trends of society. Like society is telling us what's wrong and what to do about it. And I think we can all like listen and actually do something about it. So just like being successful and oh, we're so cool. So, yeah, I love that. Thank you so much.