Speaker 1: Please welcome Syreeta Ricks. Good morning. Good morning. And so it's so funny you hear someone reading about yourself and you're like, who is that person? And so I am Syreeta. I am so happy to be here this morning. And I am probably going to stand, if you don't mind, and I'm going to use this stool as my assistant. And so did not bring note cards. I actually have my notes on eight and a half by 11, because I don't know if you all have experienced this, but with being on Zoom over the past 20 months, I don't know what happened to my eyesight. But I think my glasses are in my backpack. And I'm still quite I'm not quite used to wearing glasses just yet. And so I am going to talk to you just for a few minutes, 20 minutes of joy reinventing your event culture. And here we go. All right. So who are we? Opening Act. We are nonprofit based here in the city. We center the voices of students of color through our innovative school based after school theater programs. We also have a college and career readiness program, talent development. And of course, you know, we do theater. So it's all about being live on stage and live performances. We take great pride in providing multiple pathways for our young people to define their success. Right. So normally young people, they step into an after school space and it really is just about that moment. But what we do as an organization is we've created a continuum or a pathway that we want all of our students to actually be with us for a number of years. So throughout the duration of their education, starting as early as middle school to post-secondary education. Before I go into the challenge, a little bit about me. We all know March 2020, the world went kaboom. I had actually just started with the organization in February of 2020. And so it was like, oh, my goodness, what in the world is going on? And so, you know, we were forced early in my tenure to close the curtain on 100 percent of our in-person events, our workshops and our school based performances and activities. And so stepping into the role as executive director, you know, and you come into an organization that has been in existence for well over 20 years. Right. Everyone knows opening act for their live events, for their after school programs. It was like, oh, my goodness, what are we going to do? And so I tell people all the time, you know, onboarding is fantastic. But when it's disrupted, you really have to lean into relying on your team and those that may hold historical knowledge. And so what did we do? We reimagined our events over a third as a nonprofit, over a third of our operating budget comes from in-person events. And so we had to shift 100 percent of our in-person events from the stage to the screen. I can't even tell you the amount of time that the team came together just to really think about. Right. OK, here we are. Pandemic. We have to keep our doors open. What does it look like for you to reimagine an event that you've been doing for well over a decade and you could easily do it in your sleep? And so we redefined our focus. We took a step back. We said, what are the three things? Right. I think initially we started out with 10 things, but we said, what are the three things that we want to focus on? And so one was hope. Number two, joy. Number three, community. Now, the entire world, there was a global focus on a health crisis and social justice unrest. And so we decided to create spaces that were not necessarily driven by fundraising. Right. As a nonprofit, you definitely want to use your events to bring in and engage donors. But we decided to create spaces for people to come together and share the collective experience. Right. And so for the very first time, our students, our donors, our staff, our broader community were all sharing the exact same experience, which was the global pandemic and the social justice unrest. Zoom fatigue. Right. And so it was just like, OK, we have hope, joy and community. But as a team, we were experiencing Zoom fatigue. And so as we were thinking about creating or reimagining our events, we had to say to ourselves, OK, how do we make sure that every second is meaningful? And so with the challenge of the abrupt shutdown, it gave us the opportunity to flex our creative muscle. And so whenever we measured or whenever we discussed, OK, what will this particular event focus on hope, joy and community? We had to ask ourselves the question, OK, now with the focus on hope, how do we make sure that every second, every 10 seconds, every 15 seconds, every 30 seconds, we're focused on hope? If it's all about joy, how do we galvanize the community to really lift up joy in a matter of seconds? And then how do we build our broader community? And so this is like so appropriate. The approach. 20 minutes of joy. After trial and error. I mean, our first couple of events, we were like, yeah, we're going to do it for 45 minutes. And then, you know, it's an hour and 17 minutes. Right. And so then it was like, OK, we're going to get 30 minutes. And then it was like it's 43 minutes. And so we found our sweet spot, which was 20 minutes and 20 minutes of joy. And what did we do? We played this safe. We said, let's talk to the folks that always engage with the organization that are committed, that kind of know our history and are with us. And so we talked to board members. We talked to staff. We talked to other folks in the community. And we just asked really two simple questions. What are the non-negotiables for opening act events? And it was students, celebs and fun. And then what made our in-person events so magical? Students, celebs and fun. And so it was like, OK, you know, we had those three core components. And so we decided that we would create a series of events, 20 minutes of joy, and we would have students, celebs and it would be fun. And it was really that simple. Now, going back to our three focal points, hope, joy and community, every event that we created, we really had to first define what does hope look like in this climate? What does hope look like for our students? What does hope look like for our donors? What does hope look like for the staff? Again, everything was done from a very inclusive intentionality because we did not want to negate the opportunity to bring hope to anyone that engaged in our program. So it wasn't really about our events, I should say. We kind of transitioned from it being so student focused to being more community focused. And we created a series of smaller virtual events that were synchronous and asynchronous, so prerecorded and live. Our content was relevant to the current climate. Right. So we, you know, as an organization, we have kind of behind the scenes said that, you know, we are focused on social justice. We're focused on educational equity. Right. But this gave us an opportunity to show and tell. And so I think it gave us the courage, right, to say, OK, we have this short span of time. We have these events that we can now broadcast well beyond our intimate community. And so we want to make sure that not only is the content increasing hope, but that it's relevant to the current climate that we're all in. And so for the very first time, we stepped outside of our comfortability or the familiarity of just arts education. And we really took a deeper dive into social justice. We took a deeper dive into economic instability. We took a deeper dive into mental and health crises. And we still made it fun. We kept the fun in it. And then here we go, joy. And so with the world just being in this place of sobriety, I'll say we focused heavily on joy and we focused on the emotional wellness of all of our virtual audience members. And so our curricula is embedded in social emotional learning or, you know, if you're not familiar with that term, executive functioning. Right. So we really focus on the soft skills of our young people. What are those competencies that will make them successful beyond the classroom? And we took those same competencies and we looked at adults and said, we all need it. Right. And so we created Opening Act for All, which is free access to arts education from anywhere in the world. And we also created High Noon Improv. And so High Noon Improv is every Thursday at 12 noon. You zoom right in. We have one of our fellows or our teaching artists leading you through 30 minutes of just fun improv activities. During our events, we encourage participation in the chat feature with fun facts and prompts. And so this is like a whole strategy meeting. Right. So we would sit before our events and say, OK, what are the prompts? We would actually assign folks and reach out to folks and say, OK, so you're going to jump in. You're responsible for the chat. This person is going to chime in. And what we recognized was that the more we engaged in the chat, our audience members engaged in the chat and we started calling people out, too. And so we really used it. So you would have it felt like you were sharing space even though it was virtual. Right. And we had conversations with one another via the chat. And then finally, building, strengthening and sharing community. We invited everyone to everything, everything that we did, every event we sent out, not only a blast to all of our community of supporters, but personal outreach. And so I was reaching out to people who probably hadn't engaged with the organization and maybe five to 10 years and just inviting them. Because, again, our sole focus was to let the world know that opening act cares, that opening act is still here. The opening act is a space where we can build community through hope and joy. And we just leaned into as many innovative ways that we could to engage our audience. We elevated the importance of healing centered arts education and we kept it fun and mission aligned. And so even in our e-blast communications to invite people to our virtual events, we just made sure that there was a statement about hope. We made sure there was a statement about community. We ensured that there was a statement about joy. And again, we kept it fun. Right. We're a theater organization, arts education. Right. And so although it would have been easy for us at that time, because we work with vulnerable communities to kind of like mission drift and try to focus on all of the things that were impacting our community. And our students, we had to stay true to the core of the organization, which is keeping it fun, elevating the voices of young people and inviting our donors and our supporters for once to actually be in the moment with us. Now, that all sounds wonderful, but I'm the executive director. And so everyone, of course, was looking to me to say, OK, Z, so this sounds wonderful, hope, joy and community. Our events are amazing. But how do we know that we're successful? You know, what does success look like for us in this moment? And for me, it was these three, the three A's. Acumen. Are we building the intelligence or the understanding of our community about the importance of after school programs, theater and healing centered work? That was it. Are we building the acumen? If someone attends one of our virtual events, can they walk away and say, hey, I know what that means. Advocacy for our young people. Are we creating events that help them to self advocate for what they need? So the advocacy was not necessarily about us advocating on their behalf, but it was really us taking a look and saying, OK, what do our young people need right now and how do we use our events to help them self advocate? So they were a part of everything. The decision making, the ideation, feedback. We kept them fully, fully engaged in the process and then accountability and action. And so all of our audience members, we were very clear and very bold. This is a call to action. Right. You have a there's a ton of virtual events going on right now, but we wanted to ensure that we elevated or we were very clear about what is accountability look like in this time right now? And then what actions can you take to support the organization? And we still kept it fun. And so I would never do this. My staff, I was talking to them. I was like, you know, I have to give a quote. And they were like, Z, it's what you've been telling us since day one. If you've never done it before, it cannot be said that you failed. We literally approached every event with that mindset. We have never done this before. Right. And so not everything worked. There were some days when we were like, oh, my God, we missed the mark. But we learned from it and our events have become better and better. And so this is a collage. I mean, we were on it. We were having events like every virtual events about like every two weeks. And this is a collage of all of our events. So, again, going back to hope, joy and community. Advocacy, acumen and accountability. You know, the far right leveling the playing field for young artists, for young black and brown artists in New York City. So we invited some influencers. We reached out to local officials. We had Jumaane Williams and he gave just a great testament of how arts education was so important and critical to his success. We have on the far left our middle school Summer Arts Institute. So, you know, we got our young people together from middle school and we held a couple of events. There we are with our 20 minutes of joy. This particular event, we spotlighted one of our alums and I just had a dynamic conversation with him. We have our Yes Fest here in the middle, second row. And that was two days. Oh, my goodness. Two days of virtual events with all of our students showcasing their talent. And then we had our annual gala. And so I felt like after I was like, we need to maybe go into production. This is actually our first in-person event this year. And so, you know, the world has reopened and we were thinking about how do we slowly, slowly immerse ourselves back into real life. And so we held an event in Central Park and improv in the park and we just invited folks. We had had our new swag and we just came together. We came together. And so, you know, even as we were thinking about this event, right, we're like, OK, you know, virtual events, you hope for 100, 200 people. But we really looked at the number of folks that participated in our virtual events. And then we said, OK, if we get 5 percent of those folks to come out to the park, right, then we know that's how we measured our success. And we had an amazing time. And so I can actually show you better than I can tell you. And so I'm going to let Chris take it over.

Speaker 2: Why am I not here?

Speaker 3: Yes, you are. I can hear you. We didn't make it work.

Speaker 4: You want these kids to be on that stage to this beat as they dance, as they act, as they try, as they sing. All of those kids just doing their thing. So one more thing from J. Amaya, this house opening act is dope and now I am out. Ah. Oh my God. Yes. Yes.

Speaker 2: Be brave. Enough to stand and say, I'm not afraid to be this way. And in times like this, when all seems hopeless, your dopeness can help someone cope with what they're yet to notice.

Speaker 1: Thank you, Kibo.

Speaker 2: Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Speaker 1: We find joy in what we do. We find hope in what we do. We find community in what we do. And we grow closer together through these connections.

Speaker 3: You're here to take care of humanity. It's a gift. It's really, really necessary. Lives are changed and the world is better because of your organization.

Speaker 1: Those glasses are everything. Thank you. I like my accessories. I guess I'll take these off right now. I had to have my daughter go and get these. I was like, go get my friends. He's inspiring me. He's amazing. Yes.

Speaker 5: Thank you for giving us a chance to be in the mix and see artists perform who we can look up to and, you know, artists who we can look at and be like, man, yeah, that person looks and sounds like me or that person, I can relate to that person. Just giving us a chance to just be in the room, you know, just to be in the room because sometimes it's hard to even get a Broadway ticket. So thank y'all for what you do. And I hope this encouraged somebody today.

Speaker 6: Opening Act created a space for me to just be a teenager and be hopeful and, you know, just to want more for myself and my future.

Speaker 7: I just want to say thank you for giving me the opportunity. You know, thank you for like, putting my poem in front of you guys. I appreciate it. Z. You're killing it. You're killing it, Z.

Speaker 1: I'm trying, Kenny. I'm trying. Thank you.

Speaker 5: This is so beautiful. I love Opening Act. I love what it stands for. I love what it does.

Speaker 1: We got this. All right, here's the Opening Act team. I see Erica. I see Marcus. I see Kathleen. Suzie, you're here. Here we go. Three, two, one. We got this. We got this. We're here virtually and we'll see you back when the world opens up. Mwah. We love you. We love you. Good night. Good night. Thanks, Chris. Well, every time I see that, I get a little teary eyed because this was actually a month, a month into the pandemic. And so I'm going to actually read what I have on my paper. You know, when I think about that event and I think about it was our first big virtual event. And had we not focused on hope, had we not focused on joy, had we not focused on community, we probably would not have had such a successful gala, virtual gala. And I honestly believe that it is the hard work that drives the hard work of nonprofit organizations, which lends itself to magical, meaningful and memorable events. Right. So I'm not going to read what's on my paper. I'm just going to talk from my heart right now. When I think about reimagining events, especially now, I'm not going to say post-pandemic because we're still in it. It is these the hard work and the hard work that really drives everything that we do at Opening Act. And so we don't negate that this is hard work. It's very hard work trying to fundraise in this climate, trying to make sure that you fulfill your mission and your obligation to your constituents, trying to make sure that as a staff, you know, you stay inspired and you stay, you know, on top of your day to day task. But at Opening Act, not only with our events, we always remember that it's hard work. It's hard work. Any of the events are the hard work, but together we can do it. And so I'm still choked up from the video. Excuse me. I want to say thank you all. This was absolutely amazing. You don't often get a chance to talk about what happens behind the scenes. And so kudos and a million thanks to the Eventbrite team for having me here today and for all of you just listening and being a part of this. Just super amazing in person, in real life space. Take care.