‘A Rich and Vibrant Tapestry,’ Stretched but Strengthened
Guided by Our Strategic Plan, Chautauqua Institution Confronted 2020’s Parallel Crises with Resolve and Resiliency
Annual Status Report on 150 Forward
By Michael E. Hill
One morning every summer, I open the front door to my home on the Chautauqua grounds and greet dozens of bouncy 5-year-olds who’ve assembled on the front steps. These are the members of my Children’s School Advisory Board, and they come with a list of “demands”: Make the Miller Bell Tower taller. Create a zoo for mythical monsters. Change the color of the steamship Chautauqua Belle to blue, or maybe purple. More hugs! Name a kid co-president!
Often, these young idealists offer ideas with a fair degree of practicality: Add a kids’ zipline to the Children’s School playground. Offer kid-affordable ice cream. More gardens and milkweed for butterflies (they’d been out digging that week). People who litter should go to jail for a week.
These mornings are among my favorite moments each Summer Assembly. The scroll pictured above — what I affectionately call the “Children’s 95 Theses”—is now framed on a wall in my office, and I look at it often. It’s both fun and inspiring to hear the ideas of these future leaders of Chautauqua and of our country. It’s also important to get them dreaming about that future, and their role in it, at a time when the world seems so big and wondrous to them. A tradition that started my first year as president in 2017, I thank the Children’s School teachers and staff for creating and carrying on this wonderful ritual every year since, with one exception.
Of course, few if any of our favorite traditions and moments were possible in 2020, at least not in the ways we’ve been accustomed. The loss of normalcy is far from the worst loss the pandemic has visited upon many in our communities. The ways this period has been tragic and traumatic have been documented and recounted exhaustively — and we’re still living it.
At Chautauqua, we confronted this sad and challenging environment with resolve and resiliency. We created the means by which we could continue to be together, even while staying safely apart, welcoming lifelong learners and lovers of culture and conversation to join us along the way.
While our sudden need to pivot (to use a tired word) was unexpected, we were not caught flatfooted. Years of strategic planning, thinking and doing prepared us to meet the moment. What follows is an accounting of Chautauqua Institution’s 2020 — lumps taken, lessons learned, and goals achieved, or at least advanced or reordered. As I said to conclude our 147th Summer Assembly: Our work has just begun.
Our strategic plan, 150 Forward, was approved by the Chautauqua Institution Board of Trustees in May 2019. The 20-plus months since have seen some of the highest and lowest moments of Chautauqua’s modern history. We experienced in 2019 the most successful Summer Assembly in recent memory, in terms of census, earned revenue and fundraising, but also in terms of program quality, speaker and artist diversity, and audience satisfaction. 2020 was shaping up to be even better. Then, the pandemic. And while our trustees, prudently, suspended the season of in-person programming in our venues for the first time, a Chautauqua season still came together, our community still assembled, and together we navigated our disrupted lives and world via a suite of new online gathering spaces, and by experiencing the summertime grounds in a more relaxed mode.
150 Forward, while of course never anticipating a disruption as violent or severe as a global pandemic, was exactly the lodestar we needed it to be. It provided a clear roadmap for Chautauqua to deliver upon its core mission at a time when it may be needed more than ever.
The accomplishments of the last 10 months have been nothing short of astonishing. Our staff — despite new and challenging circumstances and, for many, a new paradigm of family and work life — banded together to create an entirely new kind of Chautauqua experience over the course of just a few months, buttressed by the expressed confidence and significant investments of a visionary board of trustees. Our community joined us on this journey, engaging with our exploration of the best in human values and providing helpful guidance and feedback on what worked and what didn’t. Finally, and importantly, a new cohort of Chautauquans was able to access and participate in our offerings for the first time.
Amid collective misery and unspeakable tragedy, Chautauqua, I believe, was able to provide a glimmer of hope to the world, or at least a forum in which we could process this traumatic era together.
In May 2019 I introduced 150 Forward to the community via the imagery of Chautauqua as “a rich and vibrant tapestry”:
Composed of single threads woven together, their interconnectedness forms whole cloth. [This plan] seeks to weave together Chautauqua Institution’s storied past with our inspired present and our bright future. Just as our founders, Lewis Miller and John Heyl Vincent, imagined a community of learners and seekers on the grounds and beyond, this plan asks us to be bold enough to imagine the Chautauqua of tomorrow that will live on the grounds, off the grounds, and online. The plan also celebrates connections among our four founding pillars of the arts, education, religion, and recreation, acknowledging that sometimes the best way to enter dialogue is through song or play or spiritual inquiry.
Through quick, decisive action, we are much closer to the version of Chautauqua envisioned in that paragraph. With the introduction of new fibers, our tapestry is stronger than ever.
As promised in our initial communication about 150 Forward, this centerpiece article in the Fall/Winter 2020–21 online version of Chautauqua Magazine serves as my annual status report on our progress in addressing the strategic plan’s key objectives and cross-cutting imperatives. While much of our work for about half of 150 Forward’s life has been necessarily colored by a need to respond to worldwide crisis, I believe what you’re about to read will demonstrate that our advancement toward these goals has continued apace, if in somewhat of a different order than originally imagined.
To quickly recap, the Institution is focusing over the first three to five years of 150 Forward on achieving concrete, measurable progress, as reviewed and adjusted periodically, toward the following four broad key objectives:
- Optimize the Summer Assembly on the Chautauqua grounds to provide a first-class experience around the arts, education, religion and recreation;
- Expand Chautauqua’s convening authority year-round to broaden its impact beyond the Summer Assembly;
- Drive the implementation of a comprehensive, science-based approach to improving the health and sustainability of Chautauqua Lake and elevate its conservation as the centerpiece of the region’s economic prosperity; and
- Grow and diversify revenue to address critical needs, increase financial resiliency, and fund Chautauqua’s future.
By design, the key objectives and their corresponding strategies must be implemented organization-wide and require the involvement and investment of all stakeholders. Cross-cutting imperatives, on the other hand, enable Institution-wide action on important organizational capabilities needed to achieve Chautauqua’s mission. All require sustained attention for the duration of the plan. We’ve identified the following four imperatives to receive our focus over 150 Forward’s first three years:
- Strategic partnerships;
- Mobilization of technology;
- Labor and talent solutions; and
- Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Accessibility (IDEA).
These initial areas of focus are meant to set us on a path to realize 150 Forward’s overarching goal: Convene diverse perspectives and voices to discover and advance the most important, relevant conversations and experiences of our time during the Summer Assembly and year-round, on the grounds of the Institution and beyond.
Key Objective 1: Optimize the Summer Assembly on the Chautauqua grounds to provide a first-class experience around the arts, education, religion and recreation.
Clearly, Key Objective 1 is most acutely affected and suppressed by the pandemic: We didn’t hold a normal Summer Assembly on our grounds in 2020. Still, Chautauqua was an active community, and our staff in several areas — primarily our enterprise and community-based activities such as the Athenaeum Hotel and its satellite foodservice operations, Chautauqua Bookstore, Smith Memorial Library, and recreation programs and facilities — were able to adapt to a new environment, learning lessons that will serve our patrons well when we are again able to operate more normally. I’ll note, too, that our independently operated on-grounds businesses and services joined us in finding safe ways to serve our community.
The food and beverage operation based out of the Athenaeum was able to quickly shift to a takeout and delivery model, beginning with the Afterwords Café and Plaza Market, and continuing with Heirloom Restaurant, which introduced online ordering. The changes not only maintained an important revenue source, though at a significant reduction, but provided our on-grounds and immediate local community a convenient foodservice and grocery option as isolation and quarantine travel orders began taking effect.
Our 2020 operating plan offered an opportunity for renewed focus on recreation, one of our four core pillars of programming. Five of Chautauqua’s six recreation areas were operating and serving the public in 2020, including the Chautauqua Golf Club, Chautauqua Tennis Center, Children’s Beach, Sports Club and, eventually, Chautauqua Health & Fitness.
Following the model initiated in March for our essential Buildings and Grounds teams, the staffs in these patron-facing areas were among the first to test-drive protocols designed to meet, and in many areas exceed, federal, state and local regulations and guidance. Their efforts helped teams around the organization understand more completely what it would take to keep our community and employees healthy and safe.
The response from our on-grounds and regional community demonstrated something we already knew but came to appreciate more deeply this year: Chautauqua has plenty to offer even outside its usual programming schedule of events. We provide the kinds of services and amenities appreciated by today’s travelers and those seeking family experiences. The potential for innovation and growth is substantial and exciting.
Finally, the CHQ Assembly online platforms permitted us to continue many of the programs and traditions that would normally take place on our grounds, though most of the participants — from lecturers and artists to audience members — weren’t able to be with us in person. This allowed Chautauqua to maintain a significant presence when many of our contemporaries in the world of thought leadership, arts and culture scaled back significantly, or went completely dark.
We delivered not only on our mission, but opportunities for the engagement so intensely desired by everyone involved. Lecturers could work through their newest ideas at considerable length (and, in many cases, promote new book sales). Artists could safely perform and share their latest inspirations. Students could train with a world-class faculty and experiment with new ways of expressing their art and creating community. Audiences could visit and engage with all these worlds, at their leisure.
It was heartening all through the summer to hear constantly how meaningful all this was, from all parties. We learned much along the way that can and will be applied to enhance the on-grounds experience for all.
Key Objective 2: Expand Chautauqua’s convening authority year-round to broaden its impact beyond the Summer Assembly.
As we contemplated in March and April how Chautauqua might find a solution to maintain its traditional summer programming, Key Objective 2 provided the clearest roadmap. Suddenly, a solid plan on an 18-month timeline was tethered to a jetpack — and a remotely coordinated team launched it in a beta stage within eight weeks. We called it “CHQ Assembly,” combining our well-established three-letter digital brand with a word that dates back to our founding as the Chautauqua Lake Sunday School Assembly. The online platforms that compose the current version of CHQ Assembly — and that delivered a 2020 season to our patrons — are primed to continue serving our mission and community both in-season and year-round in the years to come. These include the Video Platform, Virtual Porch, Online Classroom, Poetry Makerspace and new online home of Chautauqua Visual Arts.
For the time being, CHQ Assembly experiences will be digital, of course. But a foundation has been laid for CHQ Assembly — or, all those platforms and programs that give Chautauqua a presence outside its gates and traditional Summer Assembly — to be a more consistent voice and leader in selected national conversations.
The 2020 beta implementation of CHQ Assembly’s first iteration is not the whole story of our progress toward broadening Chautauqua’s impact beyond the summer. A number of other success stories have been bubbling below the surface, and promise to advance our goals in both the immediate and long-term future.
- A significant gift led to the formation of the Chautauqua Institution Climate Change Initiative, to launch in 2021 with the hire of a full-time director and new year-round online and in-person programs. The program is designed to be a model for how Chautauqua might achieve deeper mission impact and brand strength by investing more in selected issues of the day — and continuing the conversation beyond the Summer Assembly toward citizen engagement and positive action.
- Chautauqua has strengthened some of its most meaningful institutional partnerships to create unique, engaging programs that expose new audiences to our platforms and work. Using just our fall CHQ Assembly programming season as an example, we collaborated with Wynton Marsalis and Jazz at Lincoln Center, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), the Sphinx Organization and the Eastman School of Music and Bowdoin International Music Festival. Our friends and neighbors at the National Comedy Center have provided hours of laughs by permitting us to share content from their Virtual Comedy Festival with CHQ Assembly subscribers at no charge. And we have entered the second phase of our partnership with Mather and the Mather Institute, which will eventually lead to original programming regarding their crucial research on the 55-plus population (in which Chautauquans have been invited to participate).
- Our in-house content development has continued apace, too, offering continuity for programs typically limited to the Summer Assembly, including artistic performances, recitals and conversations, Authors’ Convenings and the ever-popular Chautauqua Heritage Lectures from the Institution Archives.
- On a regional level, Chautauqua Arts Education programs have continued online with all key local school partners in place for programs such as Professional Development with Kennedy Center teaching artists and the popular Young Playwrights Project led by Chautauqua Theater Company (to occur in the winter months online, and culminating in the spring).
For obvious reasons, the accomplishments within CHQ Assembly stand out from the rest in 2020, but all the initiatives in Key Objective 2 are primed to raise Chautauqua’s profile as we continue to realize the vision laid out in 150 Forward.
Key Objective 3: Drive the implementation of a comprehensive, science-based approach to improving the health and sustainability of Chautauqua Lake and elevate its conservation as the centerpiece of the region’s economic prosperity.
The primary news under Key Objective 3 is simple but profound: In 2020, Chautauqua Institution was a member of a public-private Chautauqua County coalition that brought the Jefferson Project to Chautauqua Lake. Thanks to a lead gift of $25,000 and other community member investments and professional networks, we were able to provide critical support to this effort, which delivered best-in-class scientific tools and analysis to our region. Initiated in 2013, the Jefferson Project created “The World’s Smartest Lake” at Lake George by combining an advanced sensor network, cutting-edge science and high-performance computer models. The project has succeeded in significantly suppressing the threats to Lake George’s health, and Chautauqua Lake is now poised to benefit in similar ways.
The initial phase of the Jefferson Project’s presence on Chautauqua Lake, from late summer to late fall, involved the deployment of sensors and collection of survey data for advanced analysis of the physical, chemical and biological characteristics of the lake and their effect on harmful algal blooms. HABs are a major threat to the health of Chautauqua Lake — not to mention the people, wildlife, communities and economies that depend on it. The Institution was proud to provide workspace and housing for Jefferson Project officials during these initial stays on Chautauqua Lake, and we look forward to hosting them as this critical initiative continues.
The aforementioned Chautauqua Institution Climate Change Initiative, though more national in scope, also has a role to play in this work. Included within the newly hired director’s purview is a charge to leverage Chautauqua’s commitment to a science-based solution to Chautauqua Lake conservation as a living and grounds-based laboratory for citizen action and engagement.
It’s worthwhile to mention here that the Chautauqua Utility District (CUD) continues to ensure the safety of the water supply, drawn from Chautauqua Lake, that serves Chautauqua Institution and neighboring communities. In December, it also served as a critical interim solution for the residents of nearby Mayville, New York, who received drinking water from CUD while village authorities managed a contamination issue in its water supply.
Key Objective 4: Grow and diversify revenue to address critical needs, increase financial resiliency, and fund Chautauqua’s future.
While the loss of our primary business operations predictably led to a reduction in revenue in 2020, this year provided us opportunities to experiment with new sources of funding that delivered real results. The most visible example of a new revenue source is CHQ Assembly, which features a subscription video platform that feeds hundreds of hours of high-quality, live and on-demand Chautauqua content onto members’ TV, desktop and handheld screens for a yearly or monthly fee. We expect this subscriber base will continue to grow as we add new features and programs, and especially once we’re able to produce and broadcast out our traditional live, in-person Summer Assembly programs. We also expect our success with online subscribers might lead eventually to increased ticket revenue, as new fans make their way to Western New York to take in the full Chautauqua experience.
Also part of CHQ Assembly, the launch of Chautauqua’s new best-in-class Online Classroom created a new line of business of master and enrichment classes during the Summer Assembly and year-round, including multi-week Writers’ Center workshops in fall and spring as well as master classes with members of the in-residence Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra Septet. The new online Gallery Store gave our popular museum-quality gift shop, physically located in Strohl Art Center, a new way to reach consumers year-round. The store saw brisk sales in the lead-up to the holidays — a shopping season in which it had never previously had a presence.
As mentioned in Key Objective 1, the amenities we were able to operate on the Chautauqua grounds demonstrated an amazing ability to innovate, and in many cases exceeded revised revenue projections. The experiments in foodservice and renewed interest in outdoor recreational activities provided valuable experience that will inform future planning.
Our efforts this year were possible because our community stepped up in a truly staggering and humbling way, providing us a lifeline of more than $6.8 million through increased annual giving and donations of the cost of unused 2020 tickets. We’re endlessly grateful for these patrons’ support and generosity. We also recognize we can’t continue to tap into this single well of philanthropic support if we are to meet 150 Forward’s ambitious objectives. This is the impetus for a number of structural changes to and investments in our Advancement operations, including the forthcoming hire of a senior director of corporate and foundation relations and implementation of a new marketing campaign in support of planned giving. Plus, Chautauqua’s Washington, D.C., office affords us proximity to many institutions that share our values and mission focus — and many of the people and organizations with transformational giving capacity.
Cross-cutting Imperative: Strategic Partnerships
That many of our current strategic partnerships have already been showcased in the course of this report is a demonstration of the interwoven nature of the pillars and crossbars of 150 Forward. From Jazz at Lincoln Center to the National Comedy Center to Mather to the Jefferson Project, our institutional relationships strengthen Chautauqua’s programs and initiatives at all levels and across our operations.
Many of our partnerships also help to enhance and deepen engagement with the Chautauqua Lecture Series and Interfaith Lecture Series, our primary platforms for scholarship and thought leadership. Over the past year, and especially because we were able to provide a forum via the establishment of CHQ Assembly, we strengthened our ties with a number of prominent leaders, and in many cases their associated organizations. A few examples:
- PBS President and CEO Paula Kerger participated in our week on “Art and Democracy” and spoke about the “American Portrait” project, which Chautauqua helped to pilot last winter and which took on even more resonance during the pandemic. PBS also provided us with invaluable intel as we created CHQ Assembly; their friendship and partnership were instrumental in our launch.
- Former U.S. senator Barbara Mikulski, the longest-serving woman in the history of Congress, offered us counsel prior to, and then participated in, our week commemorating the centennial of the 19th Amendment’s ratification.
- Fr. Richard Rohr returned to the Interfaith platform for a four-day series of lectures, and introduced us to his Center for Contemplation and Action colleague Brian McLaren, who concurrently served as our chaplain of the week.
- A new relationship with the U.N. Foundation delivered a week of lectures and conversations with officials associated with the United Nations at the highest levels to mark the global body’s 75th anniversary year.
- Our connection to the Auburn Seminary’s prestigious Senior Fellows Program via Vice President of Religion Gene Robinson continued to pay dividends, as were enlightened by homilies from the Rev. Traci Blackmon, and lectures from author Lisa Sharon Harper and filmmaker Valarie Kaur.
In the arts, Chautauqua Theater Company safely produced two solo shows staged and recorded in collaboration with Detroit Public Theatre and PBS member stations WNED Buffalo and Detroit Public Television. Both productions aired in Buffalo and Detroit in October, with winter premieres on CHQ Assembly and the potential for national PBS distribution.
We have much more in the works for 2021; this will once again be an exciting report to give at this time next year.
Cross-cutting Imperative: Mobilization of Technology
The story of this Cross-cutting Imperative is one of good planning and future return on investment, all guided by a new technology roadmap designed to achieve the goals and objectives of 150 Forward. Chautauqua’s ability to quickly adapt to a new reality was aided by foundational work completed in the months before the pandemic, led by our in-house Information Technology team. Subsequently, the technologies engaged in launching CHQ Assembly were selected for their capacity to facilitate our future aspirations.
First, and fortuitously, the IT staff completed a move to all-cloud storage across the organization in January, a move that eased our transition to mostly remote work during the early stages of the pandemic. Then, infrastructure built to enable on-grounds simulcasting became an essential tool in content production and transfer for CHQ Assembly’s Video and Virtual Porch platforms. With clear direction provided by the technology roadmap, IT staff in concert with program and support staff around the organization vetted and then installed, developed and configured a series of new cutting-edge platforms in about eight weeks.
A season with drastically reduced activity on the grounds meant a chance to further assess and implement technology-based enhancements to the patron experience when we are able to gather again. These promising future developments represent significant investments of funds and time, and include new, modern ticketing, point-of-sale, CRM systems, alongside new HR and finance systems. Much more to come on these activities in the coming months and years.
Cross-cutting Imperative: Labor and Talent Solutions
Another important outcome of our experience over the past year is the realization that much more of our work can be done remotely than perhaps was previously thought possible. This shift in mindset was of course spurred by the pandemic, and thankfully bolstered by our Information Technology Department’s advance work in preparing our systems and processes to function effectively with cloud-based tools. This new environment has permitted much of our professional staff a new degree of flexibility in balancing their professional and family lives. What we’ve proved, mostly to ourselves, is that a distributed workforce can work — even for a legacy organization like Chautauqua. This opens new possibilities in terms of attracting the nation’s top talent to our staff ranks, and for our presence in settings where major decisions are debated and decided.
During the Summer Assembly, of course, we will always operate “all hands on deck” on our lakeside grounds, delivering the traditional Chautauqua experience that will always be the purest manifestation of our mission — an experience that has attracted and delighted millions over our nearly 150 years. And we are no less committed to our year-round home in the verdant setting of Chautauqua County, where the vast majority of our staff lives and is intimately involved in their communities, and where the Institution is proud to be involved and invested in initiatives tackling the region’s challenges. Being in those state- and national-level “rooms where it happens” will advance Chautauqua’s strategic goals and deliver tangible benefit to our home region and economy.
We’ve been fortunate in recent months to begin or complete searches for critical leadership positions across our organization, many of which — both the search and at least a portion of the salary — are funded by philanthropy. Soon we will bring on our first-ever chief diversity officer to help lead the Institution’s efforts around inclusion, diversity, equity and accessibility (IDEA), and also, as mentioned previously, a senior director of foundation and corporate relations and a director of the forthcoming Chautauqua Institution Climate Change Initiative. Also this year we hired a director of golf, Kirk Stauffer, who is one of the region’s premier players and educators and raises the profile of our already well-regarded Chautauqua Golf Club. Joe Futral has begun his work as our director of production, overseeing and helping to streamline processes and resources across our various venues and program areas. And renowned organist Joshua Stafford is the new director of sacred music within our Department of Religion, and the first to hold the newly established Jared Jacobsen Chair for the Organist of Chautauqua Institution, honoring our late, longtime and beloved organist. Our choirs and community are fortunate to benefit from Josh’s considerable skill and experience, particularly when it comes to his mastery of the historic Massey Memorial Organ.
Finally, our Department of Human Resources has spent considerable time over the past year combing through our benefits packages, seeking improvements for our current Chautauqua staff that will also make the Institution a more competitive player in the employment market. This is parallel to renewed efforts to enhance our performance and succession management processes; recruitment campaigns, particularly those targeting the seasonal workforce that is so critical to providing the traditional Summer Assembly experience; and hiring, onboarding, orientation and administrative processes. All of these initiatives take their cues from the strategic objectives outlined in 150 Forward.
Cross-cutting Imperative: Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Accessibility (IDEA)
From the beginning of my presidency, I have repeatedly asked our leadership team and our entire community: How can Chautauqua claim to convene some of the most important conversations in our world today when critical partners in those conversations are not at the table, in our pulpits, on our porches and on our pedestrian pathways? Those who have visited our grounds or seen wide-angle photos of our Amphitheater audience have remarked often and with appropriate concern, especially in recent years, about the homogeneity of our core constituency. And the same could be said about the composition of our leadership team and our board of trustees. They’re right! So, in the years since, we have taken some concrete steps toward making our Chautauqua community one that more closely reflects our national community. We’ve added some much-needed reflections of diversity to our board of trustees (work that continues) and we continue to emphasize IDEA when we are searching for new hires. We’re excited to share some headway there in the coming months, as well.
We’ve also made time to really assess ourselves as a community and as individuals, particularly following the murder of George Floyd and subsequent weeks of social unrest and activism. This is ongoing and never-ending, difficult but critical work.
Our most important strides so far are the establishment of the chief diversity officer position, one that will report directly to the president, and, now, the search to make that hire. We expect to announce an appointment during the first quarter of 2021, with the incumbent’s start date planned for prior to the 2021 Summer Assembly. The new chief diversity officer’s charge includes shaping and leading Chautauqua’s IDEA work in the community, and also with the Institution staff as a critical member of the executive leadership team. Of the many hoped-for achievements of my tenure, welcoming a new leader to this role will be a true triumph, and I’m thankful to those community members who stepped up with significant financial support of this work.
In the meantime, our community’s ongoing self-assessment and conversations continue, especially as seen in the Mirror Project, a collaboration between the Institution and the African American Heritage House (AAHH) at Chautauqua. The project began as a series of prompts for thoughtful reflection, punctuated by summer programs on our Virtual Porch community engagement platform with credentialed facilitators. Then, during the fall and winter months, Chautauqua Literary Arts, led by director Sony Ton-Aime, officially joined the effort to facilitate Mirror Project Reading Circles, in which we select one book per month by an author of color and members of our community participate in book discussions. This effort continues the proud tradition of our literary arts programs providing educational engagement to a distributed community cohort. I’ve participated in a number of these conversations and have found them thoughtful, moving, inspiring and occasionally infuriating — and, thankfully, it’s in those moments that we’ve seen the occasional true breakthrough.
Chautauqua’s longstanding commitment to providing a platform for diverse perspectives was again evident in its lecture series, all of which were able to provide real-time response and analysis to the national reckoning with racism and injustice that dominated the news during the summer of 2020. We heard from a record number of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and people of color) voices across three major platforms (Chautauqua Lecture Series, Interfaith Lecture Series and Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle). Also, in terms of gender diversity, for the first time in memory, the Chautauqua Lecture Series featured more women than men in 2020.
The arts also regularly surfaced IDEA issues for our collective benefit. Our colleagues in the Performing and Visual Arts Office (PAVA) have made the most of a difficult year by showcasing the work of BIPOC artists. Chautauqua Theater Company, in addition to hiring the acclaimed actor and director Stori Ayers to help lead its IDEA work, coordinated with the group We See You, White American Theatre to create an action plan with clear deliverables and metrics. Chautauqua Opera Company became a signatory to the Black Opera Alliance’s Pledge for Racial Equity and Systemic Change in Opera. And the PAVA leadership team worked with the Sphinx Organization in Detroit to produce several programs examining the systemic lack of diversity in classical music, and how to address it.
Chautauqua’s 2020 student population, dispersed by the pandemic throughout the nation and world, trailed only our 2019 cohort in terms of diversity across the various disciplines. The Festival Schools leadership team found such success that they will continue to use technology to increase access to Chautauqua’s training model, even once in-person attendance begins again — we hope in 2021.
While this list represents a good start, it’s just that: a start. We know we have much, much more work to do, and we’re committed to doing our work!
Even with the hope of vaccine approval, manufacturing, distribution and uptake, we know there is a long, bumpy path ahead until our society and lives return to anything resembling normalcy. As I invoked in my Thanksgiving message, we offer our continued and unsurpassed gratitude to those on the front lines of this pandemic: Thank you to our hospital and long-term care staffs and first responders; retail and grocery workers; delivery drivers and public works and transit employees; factory, field and fulfillment center laborers; government and elections officials; teachers and journalists; and families juggling the needs and care of multiple generations. Thank you to our Chautauqua-based businesses and community members for maintaining a safe level of energy and activity on our grounds, and for following regulations and guidelines meant to keep us all healthy.
As we move into a new year, Chautauqua Institution’s staff continues to embrace and aspire to the vision laid out in 150 Forward. We’re planning for in-person programming and activity on our grounds in 2021, following a thoughtful, measured approach guided by science, government regulations, and industry best practices. When I gavel in our 148th Summer Assembly, I hope to do so before a safely gathered Amphitheater audience.
I also hope that some morning this summer, my doorbell rings with a gaggle of kids waiting anxiously outside, ready to share their biggest dreams — and most creative demands. In that moment, I will breathe a bit easier and return my focus to that enjoyable place of dreaming of how to make Chautauqua all it can be for the generation at the door and those who will ring the bell in future generations, seeking to dream alongside us. It’s within those dreams that this magical place has emerged; it’s within those dreams that we are called to be more and to do more for a world that needs us to never settle.
Michael E. Hill is the 18th president of Chautauqua Institution.
