What the Heck is Rainbow Sprinkles? An NAS Journey to Shifting & Sharing Power
Social, climate, and racial injustice have been perpetuated by systems intentionally designed to foster inequality. As a result, the only way to achieve racial, climate, and social justice is to dismantle and rebuild the systems designed to uphold injustice, exclusivity, and inequality.
Amidst the challenges and uncertainties of our times, we along with others have felt the responsibility for significant change, and in 2021, we initiated the next level of program building for NAS: a non-hierarchical and intentionally diverse co-creation process to design a program for systems change in the arts and culture sector.
Momentum and positive action are ever more critical. Leaders struggle to find time, energy, and structure to map and to lead change. We have long believed that providing the space and resources for leaders to vision and chart paths is the place NAS can support systemic change to take place, and to do that, we need to build a new type of program. One that isn’t designed by us, but by the people it’s meant to serve.
A little history because where we’ve been is part of who we are today. It’s not that we’ve built programs in a vacuum all these years. We have learned a lot about program design over the decades through formal and informal methods. We’ve tried and failed hard, and tried and succeeded. We’ve always sought out advice and counsel from those whom we serve, trying for that balance of enough of their time to better understand needs and gather feedback without overwhelming them or asking for free labor. But while we brought that feedback and the needs into our processes, we left them – the individuals – outside that internal design space. We told ourselves “design is not part of their job. They are busy birthing projects, creating art, leading organizations.” And that is true – and it is also true that everyone deserves agency over their future and NAS’ job should be building structures/purchase on how to assist with making that happen without overwhelming anyone’s day to day abilities/operations. To do this we sat with our history, our own story, to figure out what to bring forward, what was holding us back and how to chart a different way towards the future.
Our team is small and resources limited, so we chose to start with recalibrating one part of our work, focusing on organizational structures and stewardship. We hope that working with leaders in a process of change towards equitable and inclusive organizations will contribute to a movement within the arts and culture field to actively challenge and change the systems that perpetuate inequalities in our communities. With great ideas all around us, connecting bright minds creates a stronger beacon for positive change in cultivating what works and examining what does not.
Amidst this work, NAS examined our biases and history. NAS is old-ish and has wisdom to share but we too get stuck. Our organization is almost 40 years old – I don’t know how that translates to nonprofit years – is there a multiplier or divider? We are middle aged. We’ve passed through almost four decades with the arts and culture field and in that time, moved through three distinctive eras of our own development and change. And even as people change within the organization, the culture can sometimes get stuck and ways of doing things become stale and no longer serve. We’ve been shifting our culture these last several years to live our values in a more integrated way and push ourselves to be what the field needs not just now but tomorrow. Our board has changed, too, and their partnership has meant we can push harder, push differently. This is the alignment that made the move last year possible – to center co-creation in all that we do. We felt that integrating our resources and abilities with others who were different but hold similar values would better support the tomorrow.
Okay, so back to present. Our first effort towards this new (for us) co-creation centering held three objectives:
- Draft a vision that could contain but not restrain the new program
- Design a process that would feel functional and not prescriptive
- Identify and invite thirteen amazing collaborators to co-create a new NAS program
- Pay them for their time.
We named the effort Rainbow Sprinkles, words that brought possibility, fun, and joy during a tough time (middle of the pandemic). Our hope for the new process was to join with others in creating space to support systemic change – to work with and support leaders who have been in the middle of or on the edges of change, who could accelerate with support, and who could lead (or already were leading) new business models development, structures, and ways of being. And, in doing so, set up a range of examples to inform others in their paths to change.
We invited the advisors who would co-create this new program. The group was a combination of NAS alumni and partners who are Black, Brown, Indigenous, and White leaders, leaders of different ages and at different stages of their careers, and leaders with different artistic backgrounds and differing views of the world: Torrie Allen, Michael Bobbitt, Sally Fifer, Casandra Hernandez Faham, Jim Leija, Tim Lennon, Rachel Moore, Andrew Proctor, Michelle Ramos, Madeline Sayet, Eduardo Vilaro, Joan Vorderbruggen, and Ngoc-Tran Vu.
We put NAS in service of the co-creators, believing that we could provide a trusted place to experiment with and forge transformation, and help with resources for leaders to vision and chart paths for this type of systemic change.
The co-creation process was messy, awkward at times, and full of joy. We had guardrails and guideposts on the journey – design principles (which were refined and added to during this process and will be on our website), the “why” behind the effort, and a shared agreement around how to operate as a community inside this effort. We were building something new, testing new tools in the process, and adapting as we went along. We faced lots of hurdles along the way, like a realistic timeline (what we thought would be a four-month process grew into nine months), coordinating meetings with 13 busy people during a pandemic, creating a meaningful design space entirely online, and working against a productivity norm that we HAD TO GET TO THE PROGRAM as quickly as possible. We sketched a process in words and created a visual in GroupMap that formed a template for the work ahead.
The group got to know each other and began to build trust – this was accelerated by the fact that all had some relationship with NAS. The NAS team took the role of deep listening and facilitating throughout most of the process. The co-creators moved through and built out foundational elements such as clearly defining structures and behaviors in the field that should be in the rear-view mirror – to move away from, and the elements of what the future could look like – moving towards. They reflected on bad program experiences (not just those with NAS) and riffed on good program experiences (not just those with NAS). They created a “north star” – the horizon towards which we would begin shaping a new program — and created the prototypes that would form the basis for a new program.
The process itself became part of the change everyone was trying to manifest. Instead of just the outcome – a program – it became a road trip of adventures, each of us involved in the exchange of knowledge, the sharing of experiences and views, and of passion for and definition around what change could mean. As you can imagine, this adventure had quite a few bumps. We didn’t know what we didn’t know, relative to the process roll out and our own limitations at the time. The co-creation work meant being vulnerable ourselves and taking a hard look for and at bias, blind spots, and assumptions. That kind of openness and honesty was, at times, uncomfortable. I for one can say that there were times I felt my hearing clouded with defensiveness or fogged by what used to be at the expense of what could be. (Side note: I took a really, really deep breath or many at those times, figured out what was going on behind that reaction, learned something about my bias, and got out of my own way.) This is the beauty of working in co-creation with thoughtful, caring, candid people who share common values and trust. The different voices and energies pull all of us through, over, or around the bumps.
At the end of this blog, I’ve included detail on the results, the building blocks created by the group. And the Rainbow Sprinkles’ adventure continues – we are working now to test and pilot the program via the prototypes and will soon be setting up more conversation at this stage.
Momentum is important as many tackle systems change. Clearing paths for the momentum to build is our work – right now, in this moment, with others, through co-creation processes. We are now in the midst of two more co-design processes – one focused on the next iteration of Creative Community Fellows and one focused on the NAS Homecoming, bringing our community together across all programs and cohort years to reflect, recharge, and reimagine (many brilliant minds creating more light and heat).
For all of us at NAS, we are finding that each time we begin a new process, it’s a bit different. We bring forward learnings from the previous processes and establish new norms with the new team of co-creators. Our mindsets change, the tools we use change, even our internal meeting structures change. And there is tension to be recognized and worked through – sometimes easily seen and sometimes not – between the ways we used to do things and the ways we are moving to do things now, between timeliness and effectiveness.
We are deeply grateful to the Rainbow Sprinkles co-creators without whom we would not be here, in this moment. We honor them in moving this work forward and opening up the design process even more. The NAS team continues to push ourselves in our practices and culture, and our board is right there with us … but that’s a story for another blog.
Change is necessary. Change is hard. It’s a journey. Care to share your journey? Want to be part of this one with us? Reach out.
The Sprinkles in this Rainbow
North Star: To work with leaders who have been in the middle of or on the edges of personal, organizational, and/or community-level change, who could accelerate and deepen their ideas, practices and relationships with support and who could lead the development of more just, people-centered, and sustainable organizational structures and ways of working in the arts and cultural sector. We believe that NAS can provide a trusted place to experiment with and forge change, and that we can help with resources for leaders to envision and chart paths for this type of systemic change.
Moving away from solo/cult of charismatic leader models, cultures of burnout, rigid hierarchy, cultures of trying to do everything all the time, “one size fits all” leadership support, every organization has its own back office, traditional unaccountable/non-transparent boards of directors, categories of “White” and “everyone else”, interests of the wealthy as a driver, curatorial lens as ego, single leader model, being considered just staff, growth for growth’s sake, acceleration, business as usual, leadership training focused on the leader only, 20th century succession models, confusing leadership, logic/business models that serve only the few, annual budgeting, traditional boards of directors, organizational solutions.
Moving towards leadership training that focuses on the community/ecology not just the ED, co-leadership models and other models of org charts; new succession models; boards of directors with shared governance among supporters, artists, staff; holistic ways of running organizations that embrace all the ways to be connected to a community and/or collaboration in and out of the arts community, networked solutions, models of mutual aid and coalition building, missions rooted in community needs looking at changes over time as communities change – how have we/can we pivot? Timelines and horizons for existence; artistic choices that make the world a better place; advocacy and activism around policy (financial, tax, immigration, intellectual property).
The NAS Design Principles.
Evolved by the Rainbow Sprinkles Co-Creators and integrated organization-wide.
Equitable Access: If we don’t work to dismantle inequity, we become complicit in it. That’s why we design our programs to be accessible to all, actively engage partners and participants and historically disinvested communities, and bring equity work into all of our programs.
Courageous Conversations: Uncomfortable dialogue is an essential part of meaningful change, and the force that drives action. We offer visionary leaders of today and tomorrow the tools and support to have the important and sometimes challenging discussions that enable more potent strategic decisions.
Critical Thinking: With new strategies and skills, leaders can more effectively challenge existing processes and methods. We develop and deliver programming in partnership with leading thinkers and wise practitioners, chosen for their lived experience, relevance, and critical thought.
Building Bridges: Bringing together unlike leaders from a diverse range of disciplines, geographies, generations, belief systems, and roles yields powerful results. We create wide-ranging networks and unexpected partnerships that spark transformative change.
Strategic Transformation: In times of greater social, political, environmental, and economic uncertainty, there is opportunity for change. We give leaders the tools, support, and space to critically reimagine their business models, impact and roles in their communities.
Sustainability: We honor the health and well-being of the planet. We commit to environmentally sustainable practices to support and care for the planet. We commit to support and care for arts and culture stewards and to provide space for reflection, self-care, joy, and fun to ensure they have the long-term support they need to achieve their visions.