One More Conversation with Diane Ragsdale (EP.73)
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Updated
January 14, 2024
This week, the world lost an amazing light of a human: Diane Ragsdale.
This episode is a previously lost and unreleased conversation that host Tim Cynova recorded with Diane at the Banff Centre in February 2020, a few weeks before the world shut down for the global pandemic... and they promptly forgot they even recorded this conversation together.
Originally intended to be titled, "Investing in Personal and Professional Growth," the conversation explores Diane's thoughts on the role of the arts and artists in society, the role arts management and leadership programs can and should play, and how we can craft our own learning and development plan. It also includes a few clips they thought would eventually be left on the cutting room floor.
Sending love and strength to Diane's family and friends, students and colleagues who are located all over the world.
Guests: Diane Ragsdale
Host: Tim Cynova
Guests
Diane Ragsdale is Director of the MA in Creative Leadership, an online master’s program that welcomed its first cohort in summer 2022 and for which she additionally has an appointment as Faculty and Scholar. After 15 years working years working within and leading cultural institutions and another several years working in philanthropy at The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in NYC, she made the shift to academia and along the way became a widely read blogger, frequent speaker and panelist, published author, lecturer, scholar, and advisor to a range of nonprofit institutions, government agencies, and foundations on a wide range of arts and culture topics.
Diane joins MCAD from both Banff Centre for Arts & Creativity, where she served as Faculty and Director of the Cultural Leadership Program, and Yale University where she is adjunct faculty and leads an annual four-week workshop on Aesthetic Values in a Changed Cultural Context. She was previously an assistant professor and program director at The New School in New York, where she successfully built an MA in Arts Management and Entrepreneurship in the School of Performing Arts and launched a new graduate minor in Creative Community Development in collaboration with Parsons School of Design and the Milano School of Policy, Management and Environment. Diane is a doctoral candidate at Erasmus University Rotterdam where she was a lecturer in the Cultural Economics MA program from 2011–15. She continues to work on her dissertation as time permits.
Her essay “Post-Show” was recently published in the Routledge Companion to Audiences and the Performing Arts (2022); and a teaching case that she developed from her doctoral research on the relationship between the commercial and nonprofit theater in America–currently titled “Margo Jones: bridging divides to craft a new hybrid logic for theater in the US”–will be published in the forthcoming Edward Elgar handbook, Case Studies in Arts Entrepreneurship.
Diane holds an MFA in Acting & Directing from University of Missouri-Kansas City and a BS in Psychology and BFA in Theater from Tulane University. She was part of Stanford University’s inaugural Executive Program for Nonprofit Arts Leaders, produced in partnership with National Arts Strategies. She holds a certificate in Mediation and Creative Conflict Resolution from the Center for Understanding in Conflict.
Host
Tim Cynova, SPHR (he/him) is the Principal of Work. Shouldn’t. Suck., an HR and org design consultancy helping to reimagine workplaces where everyone can thrive. He is a certified Senior Professional in Human Resources (SPHR) and a trained mediator, and has served on the faculty of Minneapolis College of Art & Design, the Banff Centre for Arts & Creativity (Banff, Canada) and The New School (New York City) teaching courses in People-Centric Organizational Design, and Strategic HR. In 2021, he concluded a 12-year tenure leading Fractured Atlas, a $30M, entirely virtual non-profit technology company and the largest association of independent artists in the U.S., where he served in both the Chief Operating Officer and Co-CEO roles (part of a four-person, shared, non-hierarchical leadership team), and was deeply involved in its work to become an anti-racist, anti-oppressive organization since they made that commitment in 2013. Earlier in his career, Tim was the Executive Director of The Parsons Dance Company and of High 5 Tickets to the Arts in New York City, had a memorable stint with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, was a one-time classical trombonist, musicologist, and for five years in his youth he delivered newspapers for the Evansville, Indiana Courier-Press. Learn more on LinkedIn.
Transcript
Diane Ragsdale:
Ultimately, you should just go in and this should really not be more than 15 minutes or something. You're just going to get one sentence on each of these things.
Tim Cynova:
Am I?
Diane Ragsdale:
Yeah.
Tim Cynova:
I don't know. How much editing do you think I'm going to do? Can we just chop each sentence?
Diane Ragsdale:
I know. Especially because I speak in sentences that are three minutes long. I realized at one point, I'm like, "Okay, you've now been speaking for two minutes without breathing. That's not going to be helpful when Tim goes to edit."
Tim Cynova:
This is Tim, and this isn't going to be one of our regular Work Shouldn't Suck episodes. Well, at one point it was going to be, and then multiple things changed in unexpected ways. It happened this week that the world lost an amazing light of a human. Diane Ragsdale was a generous friend, a brilliant colleague, a fun collaborator, and actually, technically, my boss for three of my faculty appointments over the years, the Cultural Leadership program at the Banff Center for Arts and Creativity in Canada, the Arts and Entrepreneurship Leadership program at The New School in New York City and most recently, the new Creative Leadership program she helped launch at Minneapolis College of Art and Design.
What follows is a conversation Diane and I recorded at the Banff Center in February 2020. Yes, that February 2020, a few weeks before the world shut down for the global pandemic, and then we probably forgot we even recorded this episode together. I only remembered it two days ago and fortunately found the files buried deep in my digital drive before editing it together in this version. It's now a time capsule filled with Diane's reflections and has taken on different meaning for me since her passing.
Editing it together was like getting the chance to have one more conversation with a friend, to hear Diane's excitement, hear how she was wrestling with ideas, hear her brilliant mind work in real time. For those who knew Diane, you know she was passionate, amazing, and kind. She was so energetic and enthusiastic about ideas and learning. On more than a few occasions, as we tossed around ideas and projects, she would shout, "Yes!" And point repeatedly and excitedly like, "Yes, that's the idea we need to explore." Or, "You should totally do that thing" or "You should record a podcast about that, Tim."
The crafting, insights and care Diane brought to every offering she undertook and every person who was involved in them was, and continues to be, truly inspiring. And oh, my gosh, Diane lived at her learning edge. It was next level. And that's actually what this conversation was and is all about. Our original title for it was going to be Investing in Personal and Professional Growth.
Spending the last day listening to her voice after learning of her passing was comforting, and knowing we won't have another spirited chat like this is heartbreaking. To hear her voice again like we are riffing over a glass of wine, to hear about what she found intellectually stimulating at the moment, to hear about her thoughts on the role of the arts and artists in society, the role of arts management and leadership programs can play and should play, and how we can craft our own learning and development plan.
All are cherished moments now. And I'm so glad this recording includes things we thought would be outtakes too. Laughing together about the silliness of me trying to edit this conversation, for instance. It's one of the highlights of my career that I was able to work with Diane in various capacities over the years.
Just last week, we are strategizing fun new things to work on together, which is even more so why her sudden and unexpected departure will take time to process, as I know it will for countless others who knew her as well. Sending love and strength to her family and friends, students and colleagues who are all over the world. Now, one more conversation with Diane Ragsdale. Diane, welcome to the podcast.
Diane Ragsdale:
Thank you, Tim.
Tim Cynova:
All right, Diane, let's start with your professional journey. What did a young Diane Ragsdale want to be when she grew up?
Diane Ragsdale:
Evidently, I had two competing goals. On the one hand, I evidently told my parents from a very young age that I really wanted to be a waitress at Denny's. Was my grand ambition. When I was a little bit older, that shifted to wanting to be a doctor actually. So when I went to college, I was pre-med and realized pretty quickly that maybe it was just that I really liked my biology teacher in high school and I didn't really want to be a doctor.
So I was pursuing a BS in psychology at Tulane where I went to college, and also taking a bunch of theater courses because I'd done theater in high school a bit, and got the bug and ended up with enough credits to get two degrees. So I had a degree in psychology and a degree in theater. And when I got to graduation I thought, "Well, I'll audition for acting programs and if I get in, that's what I'll do. And if I don't, I'll take a year, study for the MCATs and maybe try to become a doctor with the goal of becoming a psychiatrist at that point when I realized I didn't really want to be a brain surgeon or whatever it was that I originally thought I might want to do."
And I got into acting, went to an MFA program, worked briefly as an actor in my 20s. One of my jobs was with an ensemble theater in Boise, Idaho called Idaho Theater for Youth. Really fantastic company. And I came in, I acted with them, I directed a little bit with them, I wrote a little show with them and taught kids how to juggle and all sorts of things. And along the way, they said, "Would you like to be the marketing assistant? We need somebody to write press releases." I was like, "Sure."
And not too long after, they said, "Do you want to be the marketing director?" And I said, "I don't think I can do that because I don't know what marketing really is. That's not my thing." And they were like, "Well, it's either that or we have to lay you off because we don't have enough money for a marketing assistant and a marketing director." So I took on the marketing directing role, and that was really my full two-footed jump into arts administration, I think, at that point.
And from there, I worked on turning around a struggling music festival up in Sandpoint, Idaho. And then I bounced around a bunch of different festivals, film festivals and music festivals: Sundance, Seattle Film Festival, Bumbershoot, which is in Seattle, WOMAD USA, which was Peter Gabriel's World Music Festival at the time, just doing contract work and really expanding my aesthetic and learning about a bunch of different kinds of jobs that exist in relationship to the production and consumption of the arts.
Then had the chance to work with another organization that was struggling at the time called On the Boards, which is a contemporary performing arts center in Seattle. I was the managing director there. And with the artistic director, Lane Czaplinski, we helped that organization through a challenging period following a move into a new facility. And from there, I went to the Mellon Foundation in New York City, and eventually became the program officer for theater and dance. I loved that job. I loved New York. I never wanted to leave.
I met a Dutchman on a vacation in Amsterdam, and I ended up jumping the pond to marry him. And went back to school to pursue a doctorate, which I still have not completed, which is really embarrassing to me. But in the meantime, been teaching quite a bit over the last decade at Erasmus University in Rotterdam where I taught in the cultural economics department, and then in New York at The New School where I've been for the last few years, both as an assistant professor and helping to launch a new program in arts management and entrepreneurship for artists.
I also, a few years ago, started working with the Banff Center for Arts and Creativity, first as a facilitator/lecturer. And now I am the director of the Cultural Leadership program, which I co-lead with a colleague named Alexia McKinnon.
Tim Cynova:
I'll point out for our listeners that this might be the most majestic setting for the podcast recording we've ever had because we are, in fact, in the Banff Center recording with the Rocky Mountains covered in snow right behind us.
Diane Ragsdale:
It's pretty amazing. You can't look in any direction without seeing a rocky mountain really when you're up here. So yeah, lucky us.
Tim Cynova:
It is by far the most distracting classroom ever to teach in because you just find yourself staring out the window and then realize people are waiting for you to say something.
Diane Ragsdale:
Yeah.
Tim Cynova:
Several months ago we had lunch together, and you laid out your plan for the 2019/2020 professional development season, the personal Diane Ragsdale professional development season. Let's pretend we're back at that lunch. Hey, Diane, what do you have in the works for your professional development for this coming season?
Diane Ragsdale:
Oh, my God. Tim, I'm so excited. Here's what I've got going. First, I'm going to do Patti Digh's hard conversations around race course. And then going to head up to Banff and do a course in Truth and Reconciliation Through Right Relations. And then I'm going to do a 40-hour course in mediation and creative conflict resolution, which you turned me onto a year ago.
So that, I think, was the plan that I laid out for you. I remember at the time, I was a little terrified thinking about getting into it. But felt deeply that it was something I had to do if I was going to step into classrooms and meeting rooms of all sorts in the cultural sector and feel like I could really hold space and speak or not speak with some degree of confidence and competency.
Tim Cynova:
And you've completed all of those things. So this is in hindsight?
Diane Ragsdale:
The Patti Digh course. This is a fantastic course. You can take all of it online, and there are a handful of sessions where everyone does a synchronous online conversation with Patti and collaborators that she brings on, but the rest of it you can do at your own pace. It's videos, it's readings, it's exercises, it's conversation with community, and it's also really intense.
She says when she's framing the course, "We make it overwhelming because part of what we feel people need to go through is that experience of being overwhelmed by the truth of what has happened." And I was doing the course in the midst of a really intense period in which I was working about 70 to 80 hours a week between my full-time job at The New School and my job here at Banff.
And at some point, I realized I was doing some of these exercises and videos, trying to squeeze it in at the end of a long day or on weekends cramming a few of them in. And I thought, "This isn't the way I want to do this." So I wrote to her and I said, "Can I go a little bit slower and take more time?" And she said, "Yes, of course."
So she keeps the content up there for about six months afterwards, and I actually have still a few remaining exercises that I need to do. But I'm largely finished with that course. And then I did complete the Intensive and Truth and Reconciliation at Banff, and I also did that terrifying 40-hour course you and I both did in mediation and creative conflict resolution.
Tim Cynova:
Since you said terrifying, we can talk about this one first and then maybe back up a little bit. Because we both, yes, completed the Center for Understanding Conflict's Intensive Mediation Program. For our listeners, this specific program uses a non-caucused approach. It's built around everyone being in the same room and not a mediator that's shuttling back and forth between parties in different rooms.
And one of the things about this particular model is it is taught acknowledging that while a mediator is a neutral party, there's not a neutral impact on the mediator when they're mediating, particularly when they're doing really challenging cases, if you will, around whatever it might be.
We both went through it. And then, when you finished the program, you texted me to say, "It was awesome, terrifying at moments and exhausting and I learned so much." And I read that text and I thought, "Yeah, that's pretty much exactly how I felt when I got to that point too."
Diane Ragsdale:
And the terrifying part is unlike the other two courses, there was active role playing every day. This was one where we're not just going to read this in a book and watch the pros do it. You're going to get in the hot seat in two ways. Sometimes you had to role act a couple in divorce, which required some significant, I thought, chops. And I've studied acting, and I was still a little bit like, "Wow, this is hard." But the more terrifying part, of course, was when you had to step in and be the mediator, learning the process and understanding what it really means.
What they're teaching you is to be genuinely open and empathic with each party, and hear each party, and respond to each party, and guide them through a process in which they shift from holding onto positions to going deeper and deeper into understanding what's underlying those positions, their deeper needs. And eventually making the turn to being able to creatively collaborate to find new solutions that will meet both parties' needs. And it's not an easy process. It's time-consuming and people are really complex, and the skills that it takes to navigate a party in conflict through that process are just really high level.
Tim Cynova:
I had a headache every day, every night I went home. And I stayed right there because it's so intensive, morning till night. And then you have a lot of readings and things you're studying for cases for the next day, and my brain just hurt, especially when you're in that role of the mediator and you're trying to hold these two parties and figure out how it can be useful.
Diane Ragsdale:
I'm so curious because you were the person that turned me on to that training. What led you to take it in the first place?
Tim Cynova:
Previously, I'd done a lot of work researching different crucial or critical conversation models. So I went through the crucial conversation training and then subsequently became trained as a trainer to do that. I went through Fierce Conversations, Susan Scott's model. I went through Difficult Conversations with the Harvard Negotiation Project. And this was all in an exploration to find a model that we could use at Fractured Atlas to use in parallel with our work around anti-racism, anti-oppression.
So I went into an exploration to find out. I'd read the books, but I wanted to see if there was some kind of educational component that we could then use in the organization. And so that's how I got into it. And then I realized every meeting I was in felt like a conflict negotiation or a mediation. With my HR hat on, you're trying to thread this really thin needle or maybe you don't... Threading a thin needle might be the wrong...
Diane Ragsdale:
Yeah, I don't know if that's right.
Tim Cynova:
It's probably not right. I'm like, "I don't even know what that means." I may have used a needle and thread.
Diane Ragsdale:
Just threading any needle I think is...
Tim Cynova:
This is true. Yeah.
Diane Ragsdale:
Is its own...
Tim Cynova:
It's difficult enough. So I felt like I need to figure out how to deepen my skills in this area because I was not going to be able to level up my professional skills and my personal skills if I didn't do some more intensive work. And was tipped off to this program by someone who is a trained mediator, has a background in HR and said, "It's really great." That's all I knew of it. I showed up and there's a room of 25 people, I think 22 of them were attorneys.
Diane Ragsdale:
Same with me.
Tim Cynova:
And then there are three of us, I think two of us worked at nonprofits and I forget what the other person did. And I quickly was like, "I just jumped into a deep end of a pool with people who do this for a living and I used to play trombone."
Diane Ragsdale:
That's great. And at one point, I remember showing up at your office on my birthday one year for a lunch and picking your brain on, "Okay, if I could invest in any professional development in the next year, what do you think I should do? What was the most meaningful thing you've done?" And you mentioned this course. And then I called and they were already sold out or it had passed for the year. So I had to wait an entire year.
And by the time that summer came when I actually began to register for my fall of professional development, it was after having been in just a few too many rooms where I was doubting whether I was doing a good job of really holding space for the conversations that were emerging. Finding myself sitting and thinking, "Oh, I feel like I should say something, or maybe I shouldn't. I'm not sure. If I do speak, I'm not sure I know exactly the right thing to say." It wasn't just race issues, but certainly those were among the kinds of issues that were cropping up more and more in rooms.
But more than anything, I think it was just that profound understanding that we've all grown to have over the last few years that there are growing cultural divides of all sorts. And I believe with others, I'm not alone in this, that cultural institutions are among the places in society that have the capacity to bring people together across those divides on equal terms, but we can't do it if we actually don't know how to hold space for that. And I was really curious in understanding that from the inside out in trying to first just figure out, "Well, how do I even do that in the smallest room, much less on a much bigger scale?"
And in hindsight, I'm glad I did three back-to-back courses. There were great resonances or ways in which these three programs overlapped and spoke to one another. They all each had a spiritual aspect to it, I would say grounded, not necessarily in... Certainly, the mediation course is grounded in what I would call a Buddhist philosophy. Truth and Reconciliation course at Banff is grounded in an Indigenous worldview and philosophy. And Patti Digh's course in racism also has spiritual components to it as well based on the understanding that you have to make these changes from the inside out.
They each have aspects in which you are required to deal with your own trauma, your own historic relationship to conflict before you can really begin to come into a room and think that you have some enlightened perspective, starting with the idea that we each have to recognize where we have been already harmed or traumatized or affected by the way that we were raised and unpack that a bit. And I was really grateful for those deep dives in each of the courses as well.
Tim Cynova:
I didn't know when I signed up for the mediation training that it had roots in Buddhist philosophy tradition, and it coincided with my own really seriousness in a meditative practice where I was getting into actually meditating on a regular basis rather than 15 minutes here and then three months later, maybe do it 10 minutes.
That combination resonated in a really deep way, in a way that you realized when you're in a room and you don't know what to say and you're searching for that, you suddenly miss like, "My body's entirely tense and I'm not sure what's happening and I'm not able to parse the facts and the stories. And what is this telling me about myself?" And it was a really helpful process to go through.
The thing I'm thinking about, as you're going through your own list here, is I need refreshers on these things. Because it's been about a year or two that I've done several of these programs. Now I need to set time aside to do a refresher because even though I use the skills, I'm starting to lose it in a way that would be nice to not have to go back through that 40-hour course. But how can I make sure that these are top of mind when we're getting into challenging situations?
Diane Ragsdale:
This is one thing I actually think about quite a bit. A few years ago when I first came up to Banff, I had designed a course in beauty and aesthetics ostensibly to teach ethics or moral imagination to leaders, business leaders, other leaders. And in designing the course, one of the challenges and differences from when I had done it once before at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, was that the first iteration when I taught it to seniors, undergrad business majors, it was a 12 or 13-week course, whatever a typical term is.
And so you had the hope of building a practice. I curated aesthetic experiences every week. I gave them practices to engage in. And my hope was that by the end of the term, after doing this week after week after week, that something might stick and that they might actually continue the practice. And when I came and did it at Banff, it was a one-week intensive. And as we all left at the end of the week, I thought, "Oh, I wonder if anyone will really be able to hold onto this in any meaningful way. Or is it two days from now or two weeks from now when it evaporates out the back of your mind and you stop using it?"
And in general, I think I'm curious about how you can turn these experiences into ongoing practices. The intense experience has value without a doubt. And then, like you, I'm looking for what's the ongoing way to do this, and whether that's staying in a community of some sort where you periodically come together and talk about your experiences using these tools or something else, something much more every day.
Tim Cynova:
One of the questions I wrestle with is how to make it stick. Fractured Atlas, I've taught crucial conversations. It's an intensive two days. A lot of people come in with a personal thing in mind. Maybe there's a conflict that they have with their roommate or a family member not necessarily work-related. And then they're processing that, and then they address that. And then three weeks later, they're back at work trying to coach them and like, "Oh, right, yeah, facts and stories."
And you're like, "Oh, God." It lasts for a little while and then it just quickly falls off even when people are being coached. So I've been trying to figure out how we can make this part of just life because it's in everyone's best interest to communicate better. And I was talking to someone about a year or so back, and they were asking about crucial conversations.
And then I tipped them off to Oren Sofer's book about nonviolent communication combined with a meditative practice, and came to realize that you really need a curriculum everyone in the organization can commit to for a year. Let's just become better communicators for 2020, and every month we'll do something different, but it'll help us in life certainly and hopefully in life at the workplace.
Diane Ragsdale:
I think that's a great idea. In fact, as I think about it, when I showed up asking for your advice on professional development, it was as much from wanting to be a better facilitator in various rooms, but also personally realizing that there were times when I felt I was not communicating as effectively as I wanted to, that I had a self-righteous streak that would rise up once in a while, that I could be really impatient at times. And I've always been, I think, a sensitive person and a person with sometimes strong enthusiasm or passion for things.
And combined, those can also create really fertile conditions for having your emotions right under the surface all the time. And recognizing that walking around in life, I needed also better tools for how can I get better and better at being able to show up as a human but not let the stress of the day, whether that's what's going on in the world or what's going on in the workplace, get to me in a way that I felt it was often getting to me.
And I also took up meditation. Headspace was an app that my husband used and turned me onto, and I find it really valuable. So a couple of points. One, I think that most of these skills are deeply valuable for just day-to-day living and getting on in life in this insane time as well as whatever we're going to do in the workplace and making us more effective communicators. But I love your idea of everyone in a company going through a yearlong journey together. I think you should do that.
Tim Cynova:
When I teach, I have this slide, the second slide when I'm teaching people-centered organizational design or team design that says, "If you're working with humans trying to achieve something, there's something in here for you." And I think the same thing with if you're planning on communicating with anyone in life, and we probably all are, then there's something that we can all get from this and learn from this. And at the same time, there's plenty of opportunity to practice.
Diane Ragsdale:
Yeah, without a doubt. Look at Thanksgiving, all of the articles that come out around that time, "Oh, everybody's getting ready to go home and see their family. Are you ready for the conversations you're going to have in light of the political environment et cetera?" I use these skills all the time. I use them at home, I use them in the workplace, for sure, with students. And I believe that particularly for people who are teaching in universities... I don't have much experience in K through 12 education.
But I believe in the next few years it's going to become a minimum standard requirement to teach in a university or to work with adults in any way to have done these sorts of trainings and to have these sorts of skills. I can't imagine anymore being in a classroom without having had the opportunity to gain the perspectives I've gained from these trainings. Also, from tons of podcasts and books that you've turned me onto, other people have turned me onto, it's just becoming what you have to do. It should be considered core curriculum really.
Tim Cynova:
Well, speaking of curriculum, you currently lead, co-lead and/or teach in multiple leadership programs.
Diane Ragsdale:
I do.
Tim Cynova:
Thinking about this, how do you approach assisting others on their own journey?
Diane Ragsdale:
At The New School, so it's an arts management and entrepreneurship program for performing artists or artists related to the performing arts. So actors, directors, musicians, composers. We have some dancer choreographers, filmmakers. We are recruiting for artists who are talented, entrepreneurial and socially engaged and trying to strengthen their skills in those areas and help them find the ways in which they can really bring those together and do something in the world, not only make a living when they graduate, but also make a difference in the world.
At the orientation this past year, there was this moment when one of the students remarked, "It's extraordinary because we're each so different and it's like you've created a program where we can each go on our own path." And I said, "That's right." And unlike much of the experience of getting a conservatory degree where you're one of X number of musicians that plays that instrument, one of the great things about this program in bringing together artists across a number of disciplines, who each have very different ambitions in terms of what they want to do in the world, is that we had to quite intentionally create a program that would not box them in and turn them into generic arts administrators, but just the opposite: try to take what was distinctive about each of them and encourage them on their own path.
So I think there's a way you do that in the curriculum that's also just a philosophy or a notion that we're trying to avoid pigeonholing them in any way. And I think in general that's got to be part of it, which is encouraging people to look inside to find most of the answers that it's probably... Yeah, there's some skill building, but much of the work is observing and seeing an individual's strengths and helping to cultivate or foster those, asking good questions.
But it's not about this idea that you can march through a certain series of courses and come out the other side a leader. I came up in that era at the point at which you realize, "Oh, yeah, I'm probably not going to have a Broadway acting career, so I'll become an arts administrator." And that notion that you should then stop with the acting or whatever your practice is, your artistic practice and that you'll be entirely satisfied simply by being the development associate at a major cultural institution, that that's going to satisfy all of that need that you had before to act or be otherwise creatively engaged.
Some people do find, I think, that they really love that work and it's as creative to them as anything else. But in this program, we were really trying to say, "We don't want you to stop your art form." So no matter what, this program is for people who know, "I want to continue to be an artist, but I want to gain some additional skills and knowledge." And even at Banff where some people are in arts administration roles, we're trying to encourage them to get back in touch with their creative practice, in a sense, and to remember what that was about and/or to make time for that.
I believe there's a way of being in the world that is an artistic way of being in the world. And you don't have to be spending your days being paid as a professional artist for that to be a meaningful approach to life, to work. And so being able to combine that with skills in business or skills in community organizing or skills in leadership, which you teach, is a great thing because I think we're actually going to have individuals graduating from The New School program who will go out into the world. Some of them will start arts enterprises, some of them may take on existing arts organizations.
And some of them, I think, are just going to go out in the world and create awesome things beyond the arts in every other way that really just respond to their particular values, their beliefs about what's important in society. And we should all be so lucky to have someone encourage us at some point to think about that and to dare to start our own business. I wish when I was much, much, much younger that somebody had encouraged me to think about starting my own thing. It didn't occur to me and it's still something that I've never done. Maybe I will at some point.
I feel really fortunate that I've really deeply enjoyed every job I've had for the last 25, I don't know, plus years that I've been working in the arts. I've jumped all over the place, different cities, different parts of the arts and culture sector, different jobs, a generalist to a great extent. The continued possibility of trying on new things is a great privilege. I try to encourage anyone who comes to me for career advice to say, "There's no straight line, and whatever idea you have in your head of what a career should look like, just try to let go of that and follow your heart, follow the opportunities that come your way, follow the questions that come your way, follow your curiosities."
My income has sometimes gone from something quite decent to the point when I think my annual income was $14,000 or something and I was like, "Oh, my gosh, I really declined from where I was at one point." And yet, I have no regrets about the various jumping off of the shore thing to try something new. That really relates back to this ongoing professional development. It's the notion of wanting to renew and continue to be relevant in the world in a way.
Artists' lives are structured around gigs. We know we're in this gig economy now. I had a pretty sure thing, or what felt like it, when I was at the Mellon Foundation, and likely could have stayed there for quite a long time and had a rather comfortable life. I'm really glad I jumped off and had to hustle. I've really, ever since then, felt like I've been hustling to make my way forward. And I feel like I'm learning a really essential skill that's going to become more important over the next two decades when you think about the jobs that are going to go away and the demands on many of us to look around, see what's missing, see what sorts of skills are needed and make ourselves valuable in some way.
Last summer when I started on this path, it was also just peering ahead and thinking, "I think more and more people are going to need people who just know how to go into rooms with people who can't get along or don't want to talk or who need to get some kind of work done, but who are sitting across the table with one another with fundamentally different values, and yet we've still got to get something done. We've got to fix this community, we've got to fix this company. We've got to fix this neighborhood or school or whatever it is. And what would it be to be able to be one of those people who can sit in that room and help?"
And I don't assume that I'm there yet. I think this is a process of learning over a long period of time and I feel fortunate to get the chance to practice and try to keep getting better at it.
Tim Cynova:
What advice would you have for people who say, "All right, I can't do all of those things at the same time. Where should I start?"
Diane Ragsdale:
When I first started, I went and talked with a few people who I knew were doing their own professional development work. You were one of them. There were a few others. I knew people in my network who tended to care about these sorts of things and got a lot of recommendations. Which courses do you know people have done? Take any particular topic area. Let's say hard conversations around race. There's a whole area of coursework in this.
I talked with several people to say, "What do you know about this program, that program? Do you know anyone who's been through this or that?" And I also had certain constraints in terms of time and all of that. So I think just talk with people who've been through these programs ahead of time, and start with the thing that scares you, start with the thing that you're probably lacking in. I had felt myself sitting and standing in rooms feeling increasingly uncomfortable about how to have conversations around race.
I knew that that was an area where I needed to improve my capacities to be present and not harmful. Then it was a matter of, "Okay, there are various courses out there, some of them are going to really throw you off the deep end potentially, and are you ready for that? Some of them have different approaches. Are you somebody that would rather be at home with a video and a notebook or somebody that would rather be in a room with 10 other people doing a face-to-face exercise of some kind?" And those are going to be two very different experiences, and people learn differently that way.
Tim Cynova:
I'll toss it to you for closing thoughts, unless we want to pick up another topic before we close.
Diane Ragsdale:
Ultimately, you should just go in and this should really not be more than 15 minutes or something. You're just going to get one sentence on each of these things.
Tim Cynova:
Am I?
Diane Ragsdale:
Yeah.
Tim Cynova:
I don't know. How much editing do you think I'm going to do? Can we just chop each sentence?
Diane Ragsdale:
I know. Especially because I speak in sentences that are three minutes long. I realized at one point, I'm like, "Okay, you've now been speaking for two minutes without breathing. That's not going to be helpful when Tim goes to edit."
Tim Cynova:
Let me toss to you a question about the Truth and Reconciliation program. So Diane, I want to circle back to what was number two on your list, the Truth and Reconciliation program at Banff. They have an amazing Indigenous Leadership program, and every time I look at the booklet, I think there's so many different programs and workshops that I want to take. Tell us about the Truth and Reconciliation program that you went through and what was that like?
Diane Ragsdale:
It was extraordinary, really transformative in many ways. And I felt it was important to take it, large part because I was working on the Cultural Leadership program here and the context of truth and reconciliation and the calls to action are so ever present in Canada at the moment. And cultural institutions in particular, among those who are really being called to respond, that I felt I needed to understand that context in order to really have any integrity in working in the cultural leadership program.
It's essentially a program that brings together both Indigenous and non-Indigenous individuals to go through a process over the course of a week of first truth. You get a profound and deep experience of understanding the cultural genocide that happened in Canada. And making a connection between that and your own history and relationship to that story and your own relationship to trauma.
And then over the course of the week, you really move eventually to the point of making your own commitments to what they call the calls to action. And there's a booklet with hundreds of calls to action. Individuals and organizations are being asked to take those seriously and to work side by side. Non-Indigenous people are being asked to work side by side with Indigenous people to try to advance the rights that were lost over time because of the cultural genocide that happened.
It was incredibly moving. It's a dark, dark history. We have, of course, our own history in the United States. It's embarrassing, the extent to which we have not begun to have the kinds of awarenesses in the US about our own history and the fact that here in Canada, land acknowledgements are done everywhere. In the US, maybe once a year or twice a year, I'll be in a room where someone will do a land acknowledgement, much less grappling with these tragedies and histories that are so problematic, and thinking about what it means today to be not a performative ally but a real ally and working to improve rights, conditions et cetera for Indigenous peoples.
And so it's a critically important program. Banff is becoming, I think, the gold standard in this kind of work training. Globally, I know people are coming to study in their programs and they're also exporting them to other places as well. So I felt really fortunate to be able to take the course, and highly recommend certainly to anyone in Canada to take the program. And I'm hopeful that this sort of work is going to start happening in the US as well.
One of the most beautiful things about that program is that philosophically, there's an idea that truth and reconciliation happens when Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples come together to talk. And the generosity and kindness of the Indigenous facilitators and participants on these programs, their strength and capacity to be in the room with non-Indigenous people going through these programs, I find extraordinary. It's a humbling experience to sit in these rooms and learn this way of being present with one another.
And it reminds me a bit when I did the Patti Digh course, there's a section of it in which they talk about the necessity to recognize your incompetence, having conscious incompetence, which they call it. So often when we embark on these journeys of self-improvement, let's say, in the areas of gaining cultural competencies, that there's a tendency to want to get as quickly as possible to the stage of mastery or seeming mastery.
We don't want to sit with the uncomfortable feeling of, "Oh, yeah, before I didn't realize I was actually harming people in the way that I was behaving and certain things I was saying or the ways I was being in certain contexts or rooms." Now, I'm aware of it and that's really uncomfortable. So I want to get as quickly as possible to being able to, in a sense, perform a competent way of being in the room. I know the words to use, I know what not to say.
And people can really quickly gain, I think, the five or six back pocket phrases that they can whip out. And yet, over and over again in these programs, I've encountered this idea of, "Actually, no, you need to stop and sit in that space of conscious incompetence. It's awkward, it's messy. It's where you don't know, it's where you continue to grapple. It's where you have to say a thing and then maybe apologize for it and trust that the people in the room will go, 'Thanks for apologizing. Let's move on.'"
And really do that work over time so that it's not really about, "Do I have the five or six phrases that will make me appear woke in a room et cetera?" But have I learned how to really be humble and stay humble? And recognize that for quite a long time I will need to be quite conscious and conscientious in this arena. It may be years before I have real unconscious competence where you can just be in a room and comfortably be with people and do better, let's say. And do better.
Tim Cynova:
I think this is where my own personal meditation practice has been useful when I'm sitting with the uncomfortable. Or I'm recognizing something is uncomfortable, I'm not sure why. Or this is uncomfortable, I'm not sure why I need to just sit with this for a little bit by myself to start to tease it apart so that I can then figure out what to do with it besides just, "This is uncomfortable. I'm not sure why." And then quickly, get beyond this thing. But actually just sitting with it, and my meditative practice has given me a tool to be able to do that.
Diane Ragsdale:
Yeah, it's a great tool for that. I think the arts also. We are good at ambiguity, we are good at the unresolved. And what's that? Negative capability and things like that, right?
Tim Cynova:
Negative capability.
Diane Ragsdale:
Yeah.
Tim Cynova:
I have negative capabilities in a lot of areas of life.
Diane Ragsdale:
We're going to go look that up. But I think that there's a way in which the arts can also be a really effective tool for helping people get comfortable with these sorts of things. So yeah, it's good.
Tim Cynova:
So as we start to land the plane, I want to get your closing thoughts on the topic of investing in self personal, professional development.
Diane Ragsdale:
When I first met my husband, he came to visit me in New York and came to my apartment. And I had, I don't know, a couple thousand books or something, and there are a good number of them that might fall into that category of self-help book. And he looked at those shelves and he was like, "Interesting." And I thought, "Oh, my gosh, I've just exposed that I'm a complete neurotic mess to this man."
In a way, I think I have, much of my adult life anyway, been on a quest to be better. It's at the heart of the aesthetics and beauty class that I was trying to teach in ethics: how can we be better? How can we do the right thing, show up as better human beings in relationship to one another? And I think I have continued to work at it because I recognize the many ways in which I'm not great, in which I need to work on myself. We live in times where I think many of us are going to have to show up as better.
We all have different ways of going about those improvements. For some, it's reading a book. For some, it's taking a course. For some, it might be a religious practice, a spiritual practice of some kind, combinations of these. I was excited, I was just reviewing papers for a management conference that's coming up. I was asked to review the abstracts, and there were a couple that were about spirituality in the workplace. And I know this is not a new thing. It's been going on probably the last couple of decades a growing interest in this.
But I'm excited by the possibility that we can show up at work and think about what it means to be a better human being in that context and that there's growing consciousness, that human development requires time and attention and sometimes coursework. And yay for the companies that might actually invest in this sort of thing. I really do hope you'll do that yearlong course with your team at Fractured Atlas. And for those like me who didn't have that opportunity through an institution, find the time to do it for yourself. I'm so grateful I did.
Tim Cynova:
Diane, it's always a pleasure spending time with you, getting to work with you. Thank you so much for being on the podcast.
Diane Ragsdale:
Thanks, Tim. And sorry for the five-minute sentences.
Tim Cynova:
Well, now that you said that, I've got to leave it in.
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