Innovator Insights: Sharayna Christmas, Founder and Executive Director of Muse 360 Arts
Sharayna Christmas is a dancer, writer, and educator. She has been dancing for more than 25 years. Her ballet training began at the Dance Theater of Harlem (DTH) at the age of three. She has performed the works of many choreographers including Ulysses Dove, Robert Garland, and Geoffrey Holder. At 16, she participated in the Marie Brook Pan Caribbean Dance Company to perform in the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta. Sharayna credits her passion for the community to her mother, who has been a community activist in New York and New Jersey for more than 35 years. In 1998, Sharayna moved to Baltimore to attend Morgan State University where she received her B. S. in Finance. In 2011, she was the recipient of the Rising Star Award from the Living Classroom Foundation for her work in the community. Sharayna also received the “Leading Women” Award presented by the Daily Record in 2013.
Sharayna Christmas never meant to stay in Baltimore. And her parents never meant for dance to define her life. Yet here she is, engaging youth, families, and whole communities through literary, visual, and performing arts. As Founder and Director of Muse 360 Arts, Sharayna has her eyes to the future and her goals set high. Muse 360 Art’s mission is to provide Baltimore youth of diverse backgrounds with high quality artistic training and experiences that inspire them to reach their full potential.
Their three signature programs, Rayn Fall Dance Studio™, Spark of Genius: Youth Entrepreneur Project™, and New Generation Scholars: Youth Leadership Program™ each address differing aspects of personhood. The dance studio works to build strength, grace and discipline; Spark of Genius teaches business preparation, financial literacy and nutrition; New Generation Scholars travels domestically and internationally to study the African Diaspora, introducing youth to the arts and cultures that shape our world and connecting current and historical events to develop the critical thinking skills needed to make the impacts they choose to have.
II: How did you arrive where you are today?
SC: I’ve always been a dreamer. I’d always have a vision and think: Oh, we can do this and that! No one could tell me we couldn’t do something at that time. Muse 360 didn’t happen right away, I started teaching dance first and met another artist who was older than me and she said you should start a nonprofit.
Now, I didn’t know anything about the nonprofit world.
We did it together and she actually left me; she left the program and Muse 360 happened in about 2004. It was a lot because I was still working as a finance professional. I quit that in 2007 and wanted to get more experience in the nonprofit world, so I started working at a small nonprofit so I could financially support myself.
That’s how I landed here, but my experience, and I’m able to say this now because I’ve evolved over the last 12 years, my experience has helped my day-to-day work from when I was younger. Knowing what it’s like to grow up and not be noticed. Knowing what it’s like to grow up and have skills and talents. Saying, “hey I can do that too.” That’s what informs my day to day work. Wanting to be treated like a human being. Me connecting to people. I relate to people on a basic level, I don’t look at people based on what they look like.
The human experience of love is how I inform my work, it’s cliché but it works; at the end of the day the human experience is all we have. I just know what it was like to be overlooked so that’s how I work with my people, with my young people, their parents.
II: What is your North Star/guiding vision?
SC: Now that I’m a mother, wanting a better life for my son. A better life not just in terms of Baltimore City, but a healthy life where he can be who he is and not be judged. And I think that a lot of times those are the thoughts that come into my mind when I’m working and out there doing the work that I’m doing. I’m so passionate because I know what it’s like to be overlooked and not have access to experiences that make you a whole person; make you a spiritually healthy person. I am very spiritual in the sense that I really try to center myself on being faithful and thinking about the unseen. That’s what guides me: I try to think that every day something good is going to happen.
II: Who are your heroes?
SC: My mother is my hero. She was a community activist in Harlem. She lives in New Jersey now, but growing up there was not a night during the week that we were just home. We’d be in the community. These things I hated when I was younger, I wanted to go out with my friends! When I became an adult, I understood why she cared so much. My mother really modeled for me what it was like to put yourself aside and serve people. My other heroes include James Baldwin. James Baldwin to me was an individual who just spoke his mind, knew how talented he was, knew that the experience of being Black in America at that time was tough. But he was going to speak on it regardless. Another hero is Pearl Primus. She was a dancer and anthropologist and extremely accomplished, traveled the world and brought the experiences of the African diaspora back to her people. She moved as a dancer very differently from most dancers and I just really idolized her. I bought everything, every book you could find. I went to the NYC public library for performing arts to look at her. She was very private so she didn’t publish a lot of her work. Katherine Dunham, because she went back to her hometown of St. Louis–she was also a dancer an anthropologist –and she opened up a creative center in her community.
So those are my heroes, I would say, that I think about often and I go to their quotes. Ella Baker was another hero and Zora Neale Hurston. I love the complexity of people and mostly of artists. They have these really wild personal experiences, but also make a lot of impact on the world. That’s when you realize that nobody’s perfect, it is what it is.
II: What is entrepreneurship to you? To your students? Their families and community? How does entrepreneurship support financial well-being in marginalized communities?
SC: Entrepreneurship is not a term I ever really heard when I was younger. Even when I was in college, I learned to get a job. I didn’t know anybody who owned their own businesses. As I got older, I started to experience and work through Muse 360 because even though it’s a nonprofit, I became a social entrepreneur. Rayn Fall Dance Studio™ is fee for service. I created a business first and then I became a nonprofit.
What people don’t know is that in Baltimore, the largest growing population of entrepreneurs is Black women.
For me, entrepreneurship is just hustling, it’s making sure and making ends meet. It’s making sure you can do what you can for yourself: cross all the t’s, dot all the i’s. That’s what entrepreneurship is in my life. I didn’t have a pocket of money and say, “Oh, I’m going to be an entrepreneur” and that’s the kind of background my students come from.
My students learn about entrepreneurship more so in learning the skillset of what it takes to be an entrepreneur. You cannot be a lazy entrepreneur, you cannot be someone who makes excuses. You have to understand that the world isn’t going to be handed to you on a silver platter.
In terms of my family and community, again [entrepreneurship] is a foreign concept. It’s a foreign concept, but then again, it’s not, because what people don’t know is that in Baltimore, the largest growing population of entrepreneurs is Black women.
The reason that we started entrepreneurship here–it was not a plan–was that I had read (twice) the Miseducation of the Negro that was written in the 1930s. It is by Dr. Carter G. Woodson, who is the founder of Black History Month. In the preface he talks about when families come into this country, so he’s talking about immigrants, he’s not talking about African Americans–he’s saying that if a Mexican, Latinx, Asian family comes to this country, we laugh and say ‘they’re over there selling oranges’ or wood figures. We laugh at them but they are doing entrepreneurship and that’s the basis of their livelihood. He called that ‘spark of genius’– and that’s why one of our programs is called Spark of Genius™. What I think that it does is, if you are in this country as a person of color, you’re never going to be at the top. This is what the system is. So I’m a major advocate of entrepreneurship. More so now than ever before because we’re looking at times where a degree does not carry you to the top.
II: How was Muse 360 started and what are the milestones that have been defined its evolution? Is there any other organization doing what you’re doing?II: How was Muse 360 started and what are the milestones that have been defined its evolution? Is there any other organization doing what you’re doing?
SC: Muse 360 develops young people creatively. People think it’s just a dance organization and it’s not. We’re high quality, more than arts and crafts. We guide [young people] in the pursuit of excellence. If you’re living an impoverished life where crime is constant, like it’s nothing anymore, you’re not thinking about it. The arts are the center of what holds communities together. If you can revive that, you can save a community. It’s a mixture of experiences I have that, without them I couldn’t be doing what I am.
Having a center smack dab in the middle of the hood where people can see themselves in a positive way, like Katherine Dunham did. And that’s kind of the legacy that I would want to have, a center that not only encompassed the creative arts, but helped people to read and helped people to connect.
II: What does success look like for you, for Muse 360, for Baltimore?
SC: Being completely invested in by not just foundations, but also getting invested in by the city. Being a trusted partner to develop youth more than just 10 kids per year that get the whole experience. Having a center smack dab in the middle of the hood where people can see themselves in a positive way, like Katherine Dunham did. And that’s kind of the legacy that I would want to have, a center that not only encompassed the creative arts, but helped people to read and helped people to connect.
II: Fundraising is obviously a huge part of starting and maintaining a nonprofit social enterprise. What portion of your time is spent raising money? What is/are the most critical challenge(s) you face when it comes to funding? Overall?
SC: The portion of time you can spend fundraising is not a lot. Maybe it’s because I have a fee for service component, maybe it’s because I have nobody to work with me. I am the only employee of Muse 360. I have teachers who come in, they’re contracted employees, but I do everything. I have to constantly execute quality. To write grants and get declined because of one part, it all comes down to the fact that I am not being invested in. I used to say ‘I don’t have any capacity’, really it’s that I don’t have any money.
When I have to go back and beg organizations for money, I need to ask them: What do you want for Baltimore? Are you going to keep investing in outsiders coming in with new programs? Why? That doesn’t work.
I’ve been asked, “you’re one person and look at all the stuff you do. What would happen if you had a staff of two people?” Why do I have to feel like a martyr all the time? I’m going in under-compensated, overworked. I’m stressed out. It’s been a rough summer. No summer funding this or last year from 12 funders. It’s disheartening, it pisses me off… it makes me want to leave Baltimore.
When I have to go back and beg organizations for money, I need to ask them: What do you want for Baltimore? Are you going to keep investing in outsiders coming in with new programs? Why? That doesn’t work.
Do I need to crumble and fall for them to say, ‘oh–we have to save Muse 360’? Do I have to die and come back another life? No. I’m not doing that. I need to understand what funders are looking for. Why didn’t you give me the full grant I asked for? My organization is there, my 990’s, my budget’s nice and balanced. I don’t know what the secret is. I am a Black led organization serving people that look like me. Why do I have to jump through hoops?
A lot of funders, they will deny you in a minute, but they won’t take the time to come in and see who you are, what you do. How do you make a decision without even picking up the phone and thinking, “let me try to get to know this person.” This is the history. Like with People’s Liberty–I understand it’s not a lot of money, but you should bring in people that got denied and ask ‘what do you really need?” You keep going this way and we’re going to constantly be overlooked and we’re going to constantly be struggling. I sit with people that give me advice all the time and I would love to go do this and that, but I have classes to go teach and programs to design.
How many of these institutions are led by people representative of the population? Zero. Zero percent. Maybe one percent. Maybe. Race absolutely plays a big part. I’ve never lived in a more segregated city.
[Funders] don’t know what success looks like, don’t unlock these doors, come in with no salary, work with kids and teach them ballet. Seventy to eighty percent of my budget is from fee for service. If I don’t get outside revenue, I can’t take a salary. I don’t take a salary right now. It’s not realistic. Not to toot my own horn, but this is the kind of magic that we have to create. It’s the same kind of magic that a single mother has to create when she has four kids. Me, I have hundreds of kids.
I have to remind myself that ‘you are doing good work’ because a lot of it is getting denied constantly. After this year, I really have to reevaluate some things because it’s draining me. There’s no more water left in the rag. I am rung out.
II: How many of these institutions are led by people representative of the population you serve? What are the implications of this?
SC: How many of these institutions are led by people representative of the population? Zero. Zero percent. Maybe one percent. Maybe. Race absolutely plays a big part. I’ve never lived in a more segregated city. It saddens me. That’s part of the issue with my son, he goes to a mostly Black school and has hardly any Black teachers. I sent him to a private school because I thought that it was the right thing to do. It wasn’t the right thing to do, so I thought maybe going to public school would be better. It’s not. At least now he has peers that look like him, but he’s not being taught or educated by people who understand who he is as a young Black boy. That’s a problem.
II: What could/would dramatically change this process?
SC: If we work together on a common mission then I do my part and you do your part. It’s not me or any small black or female led organization that needs to change our mindset. It’s the people with the resources that need to change their mindsets. They can’t keep investing in these centers where leaders are living in poverty. Eventually those leaders are just going to have to leave, or the organizations will just fizzle away. I’ve talked to bigger organizations and realized I need to have a conversation with them and funders. I love what I do at Muse, I could do it with my eyes closed. But I need to talk to people and I have something important to say. It’s not about being confrontational, it’s about having an important conversation.
