Generator is seeking a New Position to join the team as we continue to experiment with leadership models and program development. We are looking for a collaborative, curious, and passionate individual to join us. You can find the full Job Call here. We have written this blog post to contextualize the current state of Generator and where we imagine this New Position could fit. In the name of transparency, we are sharing this outside of the job call for any and all who are interested in how we structure ourselves.
Generator Context
Since 2015, Generator has undergone various changes in its leadership structure, including experiments with single leadership and co-leadership models. Generator recognizes that, for an organization of its size (with an annual operating budget of $160k), it is the individuals and the relationships that form through their collaboration that profoundly influence the organization's development. We are enthusiastic about welcoming a new member to support the organization and collaborate with the team.
Current Team Structure
We have debated about how much of this structure to set before hiring this new collaborator and how much to leave up to iteration with the new team. We have settled somewhere in the middle.
Organizationally we are asking the following questions:
What is the action behind developing relationships with artist producers and small performing arts organizations on a one-size-fits-one basis?
How does our programming support artist producers through the changes in the means of production in the sector?
How do we take action, while moving at a pace that is aligned with the individuals and values & capacity within our organization?
What does it mean to nurture practice individually, as a team, and with Generator’s communities?
The team will comprise of three roles with similar hours and a fourth role on a retainer. These four roles will ask connecting but separate questions, these questions are:
How do we sustainably steward the resources we have?
How can we bring in new resources?
How do we widely share the resources we have?
What is the big picture and how can it be held while we look in our separate directions?
We have placeholder names for these roles and a seasonal metaphor about how these roles fit together and how their tasks relate to the tasks of the seasons:
We have also done a bit of thinking about what Job Portfolios may look like: https://airtable.com/shrkENjwnL0a5Zq1Q
For clarity, the humans we have in these roles are:
Patricia Allison (Sharing Resources Externally - 17.5 hours/week)
Bianca Guimarães de Manuel (Internal Resource Maintenance - 21 hours/week)
This Job Call (New Resourcing - 17.5 hours/week)
All these roles are paid $30/hour
Kristina Lemieux (Balance - retainer) until early 2024, the new team will determine the best Balance individual for their dynamic $1,000/month
You can find bios for everyone named above here.
We are sharing our sketches in hopes of finding someone who wants to come and develop practice and iterate with us.
The Board and Hiring Committee recognize that support will be needed to envision, and transition to, a new leadership structure, and they are committed to providing that support.
Programming Development
The performing arts sector continues to go through major changes: the way we produce, play, work, advocate, and create is rapidly changing.
Historically, Generator was the place where artists learned through programming the hard skills required to make art (aka means of production). Later, in collaboration with peers/team, coaching sessions, and co-working at the office, the Generator Generations (aka communities) would transfer the knowledge acquired through the programming, into their artistic practices. The goal was to ensure artists had agency, developed the confidence and skills needed to have sustainable artistic careers.
Generator had 2 major consultative processes over the last 5 years, the Equity & Justice Organizational Review and the Artist <> Producer Racial Innovation Cohort (not public) that invites action around how our programming (and organization) can better serve our communities. We want to be accountable to our communities, by actioning the requests surfaced through these reports.
At this point in the organizational history, we want to propose ways of engaging artist producers that are reflective of where our sector is currently at. A major area to focus for the year of 2023/24 is finding the space between skills (hard and soft) and practices that nurture community, transformation, and peer companionship.
Generator wants to shift its relationship to knowledge - from an organization that teaches to one that learns. We want to affirm that through knowledge, practice, and connection everyone can dive in and learn something transformative. Plus, Generator acknowledges the continued importance of sharing what we learn, to nurture confidence, and unlearn traits inherent in white-supremacy culture (perfectionism, expertism, urgency).
For the year of 2024, the focus will be on a one-size-fits-one approach to the deepening values-centered practices with artist producers. We have designed a program Thought Network (working title) that responds to what was outlined in this section. Similarly to the team structure, we are holding the balance of creating boundaries that are flexible and responsive (instead of rigid and defined). Providing this new role an exciting drawing board to start from.
This call also signals a change in Generator programs:
Artist Producer Training is on pause
Resident Companies and Company Collaborators Reimagining or Winding down
We will continue without major change:
ArtistProducerResource.com
Financial Literacy Programs
We will be announcing a new program in the new year once the New Position is up and running.