The Confluence Cast

The Confluence Cast

By Tim FultonSociety & CultureNewsPlaces & Travel
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The Confluence Cast episodes

  • Poet Maggie Smith

    Everyone has the opportunity to document their lives in their own ways. On the eve of the release of her latest collection of work, I spoke with Columbus-based poet Maggie Smith. We discussed how she writes, how the publishing industry works, the inspirations for her work, and why she chooses to stay in Columbus.

    Shownotes

    • Maggie Smith
    • Goldenrod
    • Good Bones (book)
    • “Good Bones” (poem)
    • Simon and Schuster
    • Tupelo Press
    • Red Hen Press
    • Old 97s
    • Nada Surf
    • Ohio Art League
    • Greater Columbus Arts Council
    • Columbus Crew
    • Metro Parks

      • This Confluence Cast episode is sponsored by Art Makes Columbus, Columbus Makes Art, featuring stories about our city’s incredible artists — stories full of inspiration, challenge, passion, and success. For videos, articles, an up-to-the-minute calendar of events, and an artist directory visit ColumbusMakesArt.com, the resource for all things arts and culture in the capital city.

      Full transcript on page 2.

      Tim Fulton 0:11

      Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the confluence cast presented by Columbus underground. We are a weekly Columbus centric podcast focusing on the civics, lifestyle, entertainment, and people of our city. I’m your host Tim Fulton. This week on the eve of the release of her latest collection of work, I spoke with Columbus based poet Maggie Smith. We discussed how she writes how the publishing industry works, the inspiration for her work, why she chooses to stay in Columbus, and how everyone has the opportunity to document their lives in their own ways. You can get more information on what we discussed today in the show notes for this episode at the confluence cast comm also the confluence cast is on Patreon. Find out how to support this podcast on our website the confluence cast calm [email protected] slash Confluence. The Confluence cast is sponsored this week by art makes Columbus Columbus makes art featuring stories about our city’s incredible artists. Stories full of inspiration, challenge, passion, and success. For videos, articles, an up to the minute calendar of events and an artist directory visit Columbus makes art.com the resource for all things arts and culture in the capital city. Enjoy the interview. Sitting down here virtually with poet Maggie Smith Mikey, how are you? Hi,

      Maggie Smith 1:46

      I’m good. Thanks for having me.

      Tim Fulton 1:47

      Absolutely. We’re speaking on the eve the week before your next book of poetry comes out golden rod wanted to start off by for those that aren’t aware of you. What’s your background? And where do you come from? Yeah, so

      Maggie Smith 2:04

      I live in Bexley, Ohio now but I was born in Columbus and raised in Westerville. So I basically lived within you know, 15 or 20 minute drive of my childhood home for my entire life so I I sort of like issue most labels like Oh, she’s a woman poet, or she’s a this poet or she’s a mom, poet, but I will claim Ohio poet. I feel like that is like sort of me through and through. And frankly, place comes up a lot in my work. So I’m, yeah, merrily a poet. I have one book of prose that came out last year, but for the past, I don’t know. 15 years, I’ve been mostly publishing books of poems.

      Tim Fulton 2:55

      Well, and there is work in Golden rod that is Ohio specific. You even pull from some other Ohio based poets? Correct?

      Maggie Smith 3:04

      Yeah, there’s a series of poems in this book that all have the same title, not out of laziness. When I tell you about what the poems are, you’ll be like, actually, she is lazy. So the title of each of these poems is Ohio, sento, and acento. Or if you’re being sort of fussy in Italian, and the chuck dough, okay. If you were the kind of person who ordered a croissant at a bakery, you might say cetto, but I’m not. So I say Santo got it. It’s a form of poetry where you actually don’t do any original writing, hence, the laziness. Okay, um, you assemble the poem from lines from other people’s poems. So it’s, it’s collage, it’s like literal, okay, collage. So, that series of poems I did not write I assembled. So I would pull a line from one Ohio poet. And then I think, okay, that line ends on a preposition, what line from another Ohio poet could follow it. So that’s what these poems all have in common. They’re all assembled from other Ohio poets words.

      Tim Fulton 4:15

      That’s great. And that’s the title of the type of construction it is right. The center.

      Maggie Smith 4:21

      Yeah. acento is, is that form. So I think it’s, it’s actually a great form for if you have some writer’s block, or if you’re not feeling particularly inspired at the time you just go to your bookshelf, pull off some books that you like, and start seeing what you can build from the lines that other people have already written.

      Tim Fulton 4:41

      So talk to me about your process in writing a book bit from First of all, like how, how do you prefer to write Do you need to block out time do you how do you come to it with an intent of I’m going to write this many pieces this day this week.

      Maggie Smith 4:59

      Oh, No, I don’t write every day, I was just reassuring. A recent MFA grad of this, like, I know, there are some people who are like, you need to write X number of words every day, or you need to write for this number of minutes or hours every day. And I, I don’t do that. And part of me thinks like, well, maybe it’s because I’m a single parent and trying to find time, in the midst of every everything else. It just doesn’t allow for that kind of headspace that I need to be in to write a poem. But if I’m honest, I was never a write everyday kind of person, even before I had the excuse of children. So I think, you know, I, I sit down to write when I have an idea. And often, I always write longhand first. And that is mostly because I don’t know how to type, okay, which I realize is kind of stupid for a professional writer. I never learned how to type. So I typed with my two index fingers, okay, fairly quickly. Given that, that’s all that I use. But it what it means is that I can think a lot faster than I can type. And so I write in a notebook or on a legal pad. Just a little idea here and there whenever I have it. And sometimes that kind of picks up speed and momentum. And one idea leads to the next, which leads to the next and I may draft something and then afternoon fairly quickly, okay. Or I might write down one line and not know what to do with it for 10 years, and then stumble upon it in a notebook and be like, Oh, I never did anything with that guy from 2004. Maybe, actually, that kind of gives me another idea. Now based on every experience I’ve had, since I wrote that down, maybe I should try to build something from that. So it’s it’s Yeah, process of accruing things. And it doesn’t happen in any sort of sensible way.

      Tim Fulton 7:01

      Is there any sort of like documentation of that, like, you know, that that happened back in, you know, 2004, that you wrote that one line down? Or like, keep maybe keeping like a series of notebooks? I’m just super curious about the thing about Warhol a little bit how he had his time kept, yeah, that you could trace back to the all that and some of it was garbage. Let’s, let’s be clear, all of

      Maggie Smith 7:30

      I mean, we all make a lot. There’s like, maybe 10% of what we end up actually doing is worth saving, but you have to write the bag ID to get to the good 10.

      Tim Fulton 7:41

      Right. And then are you able, as the writer of it to sort of objectively look at it, I guess?

      Maggie Smith 7:50

      Well, I mean, to answer your first question, it’s funny, I was looking for something this morning in my office, which is a disaster area. Don’t be fooled by the like, neat corner you can see behind me right now. Yeah. And in looking for this thing I was looking for I found a tiny notebook, that is obviously one of the ones that I would carry, like in my purse, and flipping through it, I found dated in like 2017. Because when I write in a notebook, I write the date. Okay. And that way, when I go back, I always know where the genesis of the thing came from, at least like the initial idea. Yeah, so I found the first ideas for one of the poems and golden rod in this little notebook, from 2017. And I know where I was sitting in a car, like I was on a road trip. And I remember sitting in the passenger seat of the car, scribbling this stuff down in this tiny little, you know, pack of, you know, basically this a notebook the size of a deck of cards. And so over five or six pages, I scrawled out some basic ideas that then grew into one of the poems in the book. So oftentimes, I can kind of find something and be like, Oh, this is where that poem started. Okay, it started there, because eventually it ends up in a Word document. Okay, and I might lose the sort of Genesis moment that happened in my messy handwriting. But if I date my notebooks, I can find it. Now my problem is, I don’t actually keep like a notebook, fill it front to back and then move on to another notebook and catalog them. I pick up a notebook that I find lying around, I flipped until I find a blank page. And then I use that blank page, but I dated so I have lots of notebooks with lots of different dates, sometimes spanning years, because there just happened to be a blank page in the middle and it happened to be the one within arm’s reach. So God help the person who ever tries to organize my papers after I die because they’re gonna be like, Oh, actually, this makes a lot of sense, like,

      Tim Fulton 9:55

      right. She was kind of an odd bird and was not very often Well, how would they want to present it? Right? Would they want to present it in a in a chronological way? Or? I hope not.

      Maggie Smith 10:09

      They could be, they could just let it be organic, and people could see how it how the sausage was actually made. Right? Which is not as neat. And to answer your second question, How do I know when? How do I know what’s good? Or when it’s done?

      Tim Fulton 10:24

      Or? Like, how do you know? Yeah, maybe this is one of the 90 that isn’t good. And yeah, what, what you should carry forward?

      Maggie Smith 10:34

      I mean, I feel like when I start writing something, I always am excited about whatever that idea was, or I wouldn’t have written it down in the first place. It’s just a matter of like, will my excitement remain? Or will I sort of like, will it lose its shine? Like, is it a novelty, excitement, or is there like real staying power to that idea, and so really, the only the only thing I can do is give it time. So I try not to write something quickly, and then send it out to a magazine, for example, because I might be in the honeymoon phase with that piece of writing. And it’s like, you know, going home with someone from the bar, like the first guy meet them, like maybe not a great idea. Like maybe you should wait and have a coffee date and the light of day the week following and see if they’re still as interesting as when it’s not dark. And there isn’t like this great song playing on the jukebox.

      Tim Fulton 11:26

      That’s a fantastic analogy for so and so then. So in the composition of a book as a whole. How do you get to I noticed that a lot of the work in Golden rod was published prior in would you call them literary journals? I don’t know, journals. Okay. How do you come to a point where you say, I’ve got enough at this point? That the and it makes up a? Let’s call it a cohesive composition? in total? How do you guide that process?

      Maggie Smith 12:04

      Yeah, I mean, it’s funny because writing a book of poems is different from writing, I think any other kind of book. And it’s called a collection of poems for a reason, right? Like, it’s a collected body of work over, usually a period of time. And so I, I haven’t really ever sat down to write a book of poems, I just write a poem at a time. And then I get to a certain point where maybe it’s been a couple years, or I realize in my folder of stuff on my computer that I’ve got, you know, over 100 poems that haven’t appeared in book form. And so then I have the process of basically printing everything out that I’ve written, since my last collection of poems, okay, it was published, this is just the process like, so for golden rod, I printed out everything that I had written, since good bones, my last book of poems was published. And it was like 120 poems, okay. Which is way more than a book. So I just packed them in a suitcase and took them with me on a writing residency to Tucson, Arizona and opened up the suitcase and just started going through the poems on my bed, just sorting them into like, no, maybe, yes, actually, I’m a little wishy washy on this one. But it seems to want to travel with this other guy that I really likes. Okay, I’m going to give that one a pass. Yeah. Because it wants to be in conversation. And so, at the end of that kind of calling, process, I think I had maybe 60 poems. But then I had I actually wrote the book for two more years after that. Okay, so I added more and then took some out to make room for the new because there are some poems in this book, for example, that I wrote during the pandemic. So fairly late in 2020, you know, like, right before I turned it in to my editor, so it the earliest poems, I finished and, you know, say 2015, but the, a lot of the work is, is quite new. Gotcha.

      Tim Fulton 14:15

      And can you talk about, just for those that don’t know, I’m pretty interested in just process of like, how does this industry function, that process that you talked about where most of these are published ahead of time in journals and then put together that’s pretty standard, right? Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

      Maggie Smith 14:32

      Because you’re writing a I mean, I’m writing poem, a poem at a time and I have no idea when they’re going to land in a book or how many years that might take right. And so it’s pretty standard to be the same with short stories or essays in an essay collection. It’s pretty standard. To write something, get a few send them off to a journal or a magazine or a newspaper and place them individually, little by little,

      Tim Fulton 14:56

      and then how does that placement process work?

      Maggie Smith 14:59

      It means submitting to journals. Yeah, you know, it’s, it can happen cold, like, I don’t know anybody at this journal, but I’d really like them to feature my work because I’m a subscriber or you know, whatever the case may be. So I go to their website, and I see what their submission guidelines are. And I pick four or five poems say that I think, travel well together. Yeah, they seem to like have some variety. But also they feel cohesive enough that maybe if I’m lucky, if they want one, maybe they take more than one because they do really seem to group well, and then I write a little cover letter that says, hey, I’m so and so I’d love for you to consider these poems for your journal. And you know, back in the day, this used to all happen via postal mail, right, and you would, you would fold up a little self addressed stamped envelope, and put it in with your poems, okay. And then, if it was a rejection, you’d know, because your self addressed stamped envelope would come back to you in the mail, and you could hold it up to the light and see a single slip of paper inside because they would form like a basic form rejection from one of these journals, they would print like 15, on like an eight and a half by 11 size, and then just slice them into basically like fortune ranky sized fortune site, and it

      Tim Fulton 16:21

      was lips. Thank you for your submission.

      Maggie Smith 16:24

      Thank you for your submission, this does not meet our current needs. Yeah, the editors, you know, like nothing personal, you are lucky if you’ve got a rejection that was on a whole sheet of paper and maybe had like a real ink signature from a human being. And you were super lucky if your SAIC came back, and it was kind of thick, because then you’d think, oh, there’s a contract in here. But sometimes they just sent you your poems back. So you would feel the thickness, and you would get your hopes up, and you would open it up and it’d be like a slip of paper sandwiched in with your own

      Tim Fulton 16:55

      poems. Well, nice of them to return. No.

      Maggie Smith 16:59

      So these days, most of this happens online. Yeah, it was, you know, websites like submittable. So you just upload your stuff, and then you just get like an email saying Yay, or nay. And that’s, that’s how it works.

      Tim Fulton 17:12

      And you are compensated for that.

      Maggie Smith 17:15

      I’m not usually I mean, oh, okay, if you’re a poet, you’re very lucky, if you get an honorarium of 50, or 100, or 200, or, you know, up to $700, or something for, for publishing poems in journals. It is not unusual for your payment to be two copies of said print journal ship. Okay, dress. So, this is why, you know, people don’t really make living, become living as poets, because it’s not particularly lucrative to do so.

      Tim Fulton 17:51

      And so that’s why then you still basically own the poem that you can then publish it in a book. Yeah, you

      Maggie Smith 18:00

      usually negotiate for them first, cereal rights, like for first North American cereal rights, and so they have the right to publish it first. And then the agreement is that you give them credit, when you publish it later in some other shape, or form, like in an anthology or in a book. And so the acknowledgments page in the back or the credits page in the back of golden rod lists all the journals where the poems first appeared as a thank you, because those are the editors who took a chance on to who took a chance on the poems and gave them their first homes. Yeah. Oh, that’s, that’s really, I’m always so grateful for people who are who are willing to do that.

      Tim Fulton 18:44

      So when you went to Tucson, did you know that basically, you had the ability to do a book? Or did you have to sell it to your publisher at that point?

      Maggie Smith 18:55

      Yeah, I would have I mean, I didn’t. I was just trying to see if I had a manuscript that I could take out, you know, that point. And I didn’t yet I mean, technically, I had enough poems, but it didn’t feel done. Like I knew when I left, I had technically enough poems to make a book of poems, but it wasn’t. It wasn’t what I wanted yet. And hence, the two more years of writing. Okay, get to a place where I felt like, oh, okay, yeah, this is the thing. This is it.

      Tim Fulton 19:24

      And so there’s no agreement at this point, even after those two years that like, yes, this book is gonna get published. Nope, there’s no guarantee. Yeah. Then it goes to your editor. Then it goes to my editor, and you just hope that they say yes. Okay. And so it’s the editor. So it’s not like, yes, it’s being quote, unquote, edited. But really what they’re doing is making a decision about like, yes, this is gonna move forward.

      Maggie Smith 19:49

      Yeah, I mean, I think it depends on the editor. And it depends on the press. You know, I think, you know, some editors are more hands on and would get into a book and be like, I don’t know about These sections are I don’t know if this poem belongs, or I don’t think this is the right order, or maybe we need to make this slimmer, or maybe we need to add to it. So I’ve had different experiences with different editors over the course of my career. In the case of golden rod, the only thing we had to work on was the title. And other than that it is in the same order and to everything that I sent it in as,

      Tim Fulton 20:29

      and then what is the timeline for? Can you just talk about because you’re now with Simon and Schuster, is that right? Yeah, yeah. And sort of what the difference is from a very large publisher to an indie press.

      Maggie Smith 20:46

      Yeah, I mean, I, my first three books of poems were all with small, independent presses, I, my first book was with Red Hat. And in my firt, my second two books, were with Tupelo. And so usually the lead time for a book, I mean, it’s a year or two typically. So if they take a manuscript in, you know, I think, I think good bones, I turned in to my editor there in 2015. Before the poem itself went viral, and it was published in 2017. So it takes, it takes time. Yeah, because they have, they have things slated, right. So you have to like, you have to wait your turn, they’ve already rolled these other 10 authors that their books are coming out. So you don’t get to ditch, you know, you wait until it’s your turn. And this the really the same thing, you know, my experience at a larger publisher has been the same, which is that they are really strategic about their lists and what they have room for and what they can promote. And there are more resources, obviously, at a larger publisher, but it’s still, you can only do so many books a year. Yeah, that’s the way that it goes. And so I feel really lucky that golden rod was able to come out this summer, because we call it a crash. There was there’s not there wasn’t a lot of time between submission of the book and publication of the book. Okay, like, you know, seven months, which is the fastest I’ve ever I’ve ever done. I’ve ever done it, but but the book was done when it was done. So, so I feel okay about that. But But planning, you know, often they plan lists to three years out.

      Tim Fulton 22:43

      Gotcha. And now you are embarking I think next week because the book comes out on a virtual speaking tour. Yeah. What does that look like? Is it the the publisher putting that together for you? And you’re just sort of saying, yep, I’m available for that. And you’re giving them your availability,

      Maggie Smith 23:02

      kind of I mean, they. So the publisher two works on the book, Joanna is terrific. And so she basically finds the bookstores, lines up the dates asks me if the dates okay. I say yes. And then she says, Who do you want to be with? Okay, and I have opinions about that. So I feel really lucky. I was able to, for all of the events say I want to talk to so and so I want to be partnered with so and so I want to reach out to the lead singer of this band I really admire and see if he’ll let me pick his brain about songwriting and play a couple songs while I talk about poems and so, so I was really hands on as far as what the events would be because of who I’m partnered with for them. But they are the sort of liaison with the bookstore to line up sort of where exactly who’d be hosting?

      Tim Fulton 23:57

      Yeah. And so you I imagine, given this tie in, that we’re able to do things virtually, and it’s sort of accepted. Like, that’s just how we do it now. At least at this time. You’re able to even be a little bit pickier about here’s who I want to be in conversation with.

      Maggie Smith 24:14

      Yeah, I mean, it’s it’s so funny. I got to pre record an event a couple weeks ago with Rhett Miller of the old 97, who’s one of my favorite favorites. And actually, my son is named after him. So, yeah, no, no big deal. Not like a super fan or anything. It’s

      Tim Fulton 24:32

      Yeah, no, I

      Maggie Smith 24:33

      under so he’s, you know, in Yeah, he’s in New York. I’m in Ohio. The bookstore is in Houston, Texas, which of course is like, you know, they’re, they’re a Texas band. The old 90 sevens are a Texas band. So I was like, Oh, I wonder if I could pre record something with Rhett for this because he’s not available the night of the event. Because I asked him and he was, so I’m like, well How about we pre record it and, you know, Matthew cause of the band nada, surf again, one of my favorites, we have done some events together in the past. And I was like, I’d love to pick your brain about writing, but he’s in Cambridge, England, right, I’m in Ohio, and the bookstore that we want to partner with is in San Francisco. So we’re on three completely different time. I mean, it’s, it’s bonkers, like how this works, so we’re just gonna pre record it and and then they’ll play it the night of the event. So having a virtual tour is, you know, it’s a pain in is kind of disappointing for some, for some reasons that I think are obvious. Like, I really like the community aspect of being in a bookstore, and looking at people in the face and feeling the energy in a room or you can see that a poem is like landing with someone and getting to like, give a hug and sign a book and, and have that shared experience is something that I think we’re all craving at this point, not with screens, right. But it’s more accessible, frankly, and people can look at my tour schedule, and depending on the time zone, and the day of the week, they could come to one, or I’ve had some people say I’m coming to more than one because I know all of these conversations are going to be one offs,

      Tim Fulton 26:17

      because they’re unique.

      Maggie Smith 26:19

      They’re unique. They’ll be led and sort of driven by whoever, whoever’s asking me the questions, and some of them are going to play songs, and some of them aren’t. And I will certainly not be singing. But I think so there are some there are some perks to being able to do it this way too. And my kids, frankly, just get to go read a book or do Legos, right? Or, you know, listen to Spotify on headphones, and draw or whatever, for an hour while I log on, do the talk, read some poems, answer some questions, and then shut my laptop, and then I get to be right back within three minutes, I can call all clear. And we’re all back together again in the living room. Whereas if I were on a book tour, doing 14 events, I’d be on planes and in hotel rooms, and I’d need childcare, and I wouldn’t be seeing them and we’d be facetiming. And, and so you know, particularly from that from the, hey, I’m a single mom, this is a lot. It’s logistically a lot easier for me.

      Tim Fulton 27:21

      Absolutely. Just to pivot a little bit. Can you talk about what inspires you to write? What are sort of the things that you keep going back to there’s been a lot of discussion about, you’re very honest about your personal life, in your writing, you’re inspired by that? How do you get there? Yeah,

      Maggie Smith 27:39

      I mean, I think I went through a period of time where I thought there was sort of like writing, and writing material. And then there was life, like daily life. And I thought, like, those two things had to be separate. Because who really wants to hear about you, like emptying your dishwasher, overhearing your kids talking about something in the next room. And I, it made me feel, frankly, really stuck. Because if you have to go outside of your experience, to find material, you’re not going to write very often. Because you’re, you’re you’re living your life, you know, that’s the air you’re breathing, that’s the water you’re swimming in. And so it’s been really freeing to kind of just be like, you know, what, no, forget that. Like, this is the material like this, it’s my life. Therefore, it’s my material. And I’m just going to write as honestly, from my experience as I can, and it’s, it’s kind of surprising, but but also, in some ways not. I think that’s part of what draws people to the work is that they’re like, they can see pieces of their own lives in that too. And to think that your sort of regular life could be the stuff of you know, quote, unquote, literature, I think that’s powerful. So I don’t know, I mean, I, I get inspiration from things, I see out the windows of my office from things I think about or hear or see, when I’m taking a walk in my neighborhood from questions my kids asked me from, from really, you know, being in my head and being in the world, often at the same time. And I think of in some ways, like my body of work is kind of like a continued conversation I’m having with readers and kind of the continued internal conversation I’m having with myself. So while my first book, you know, the poems I wrote when I was 23, and 24, and 25 are, you know, in some ways different from the poems I was writing at 42 and 43 and 44. They have a lot of things in common because I’m me, like, you don’t really outgrow you yourself, you change, but you’re still the same person. And so, you know, I’m still thinking a lot about like, Who am I? And how do I know what I know? And what is this life? And how am I supposed to help these people figure stuff out when I still have so many questions myself? And how do we have so much room? in our minds for more stuff? Like, how does memory work? How are how am I holding all of this? in myself, when I don’t have the ability to like, upload it to a cloud? I’m just carrying it all. I mean, this is sort of my interior thought process. So I’m really just writing from that, like, questions, I would say, that’s my main inspiration, or like, the questions I have about myself and my life and the world, and how things work and how things don’t work at all. And what happened and what could have happened. I’m just like, an endlessly curious person who’s probably made me a difficult child to raise. But it’s probably also why I became a writer.

      Tim Fulton 31:11

      Absolutely. Well, because you’re documenting it right? And you’re right.

      Maggie Smith 31:14

      I mean, I’m not a great picture taker. Like, I don’t take that many pictures of my kids. I don’t often remember to do that. But I think I keep telling them, I’m documenting your childhood in words, like that’s how I’m documenting it. They may not have a ton of photos of themselves past the baby toddler years when I could kind of like, catch them. But they have like snippets of their dialogue and things that they were thinking and saying, because that’s the stuff I’m really interested in and holding on to.

      Tim Fulton 31:48

      Yeah. Obviously, there’s probably a family factor. But can you talk about why you decided to stay in Central Ohio?

      Maggie Smith 31:57

      That’s it. That’s it. Okay. Hi. Yeah, I mean, I, I was telling you earlier, I was born at Riverside hospital, my mom was born at Riverside hospital, my two kids were born at Riverside hospital. My parents still live in the house I grew up in and I have Sunday dinner there pretty much every Sunday with my sisters and their husbands and their kids. And if I have them, my kids were just really rooted. And so it, I can’t quite imagine what it would feel like to be away from them. You know, it’s been a really difficult few years for me for all of us. And I don’t know what I would have done. Honestly, if I had been living thanks to like an academic job or something else. I’d been living far from my family because even with a pandemic, I was able to drive to Westerville. And even if we couldn’t be in the house together, yeah, the pandemic, I could stand outside at a distance and talk to my parents, and I could take my kids out there. So they didn’t miss their grandkids. And they could watch them play in the backyard Creek where I played when I was that age. And I don’t, I realized that sounds super Mayberry. I do realize I don’t think so. But you get it. Yeah. I mean, it’s funny when I tell people that I still live basically in my hometown, and I see my aunts and uncles. I mean, I had coffee with my aunt this morning, I saw most of my extended family over the weekend at a cookout. Like if I tell people that their reaction is usually one of two things. It’s oh my gosh, that’s amazing. I am so jealous that I would love to be closer to my family. You’re so lucky. And the other reaction is, oh my god, I can’t imagine having being so close to so many people and and, you know, living in the same place for so long and running into friends from high school or your you know, your elementary school library and at the grocery store or whatever. These things happen. I mean, yeah, particularly now because now I live in Bexley. That’s, you know, a really small community. And if you live in a place this small for 1011 years, you know, they know your coffee order. Yeah. When you walk in the door and pee in your, you know, it’s just, I like it. Like, I like that. I like that sense of familiarity, and it makes me feel safe and comfortable. And I like to travel but I just I’m always so happy to come home.

      Tim Fulton 34:42

      Yeah, well, I think that, you know, you talk about those two responses because there’s two types of people. There’s people who like that, that familiarity and there’s people that like that anonymity. Yeah, and there’s nothing wrong with either of them, but it’s just different.

      Maggie Smith 34:57

      Yeah, and I think it’s, it also comes down to like the real lationship you have with your family, and some people just don’t aren’t that close with their family and they like the to twice a year visit. And that is enough. And I, you know, I like to see them every week. And I like to talk to them several times a day, and I love our ridiculous family group texts where my dad sends, you know, like weird bitmojis of like hot dogs doing things. And I’m like, right? I don’t even know if he knows how this functions, but I love it.

      Tim Fulton 35:29

      Was this a mistake?

      Maggie Smith 35:30

      Is this Did you mean to send the talking hot dog bitmoji for like a congratulations. Like, I don’t even know what this is. I love it, though. I love it. I

      Tim Fulton 35:39

      normally wrap this up by asking sort of what is Columbus doing? Well, and what is Columbus maybe not doing so well. You can put that in the context of your work, you can just put that in the context of your life that you’re living here in the context of your kids. So yeah, what is Columbus doing? Well,

      Maggie Smith 36:02

      I mean, I feel like I should stay in Columbus, his good graces and maybe not say the things that I don’t think.

      Tim Fulton 36:10

      I think we make Columbus a better place by identifying the improvements that it can make.

      Maggie Smith 36:16

      Yeah, I mean, I think we should be funding the arts more. So I’m here to say that I mean, I think we’re doing it, but we could be doing it more. Like we could, maybe we could take some of that money that we’re sending to the CPD. And instead, we could divert it to like the O AC, or the GC AC.

      Tim Fulton 36:39

      Um, and all of these acronyms will be linked in the show notes. Oh, I don’t want to get myself in trouble. But you’re not safe and baxley. Okay. Yeah, I’m

      Maggie Smith 36:51

      in the bubble. You know, I think, obviously, I think Columbus is doing more things well than then not because I’m still here. And if my family had chosen to live in a place I hated, I probably wouldn’t have stayed. So I really do love. I really do love the city. I think people are always surprised when they’ve never been here and they visit and they’re like, Oh my gosh, there’s so much to do. And oh my gosh, there’s so many great restaurants, there’s so much green space. And you know, Oh, wow. Like all these different sort of cool diverse neighborhoods. I mean, there are there are so many things I love about this place, not just that my family’s here, although, of course, that’s number one. But I hope, you know, I don’t know if my kids will always live here. I don’t know if they’ll be like me, and, and they’ll drive the hospital curve with their kids and say kids, that’s where I was born and where you were born to add your mother and your grandmother. Right, um, the way that I do but, um, but i think I think that they will grow up with an appreciation of this place. They like it too. I mean, they’re excited to go to accrue game at the new stadium next month. Because I i ponied up for tickets, and they’re always excited to like, go explore the metro parks and, and they have, you know, certain bakeries that they love and certain, you know, restaurants that they’re always begging to be taken to so I don’t think they only love this place because their families here too. I think they genuinely like it for what it is so so we’re doing something right here.

      Tim Fulton 38:30

      I think so too. Yeah, Maggie. Thank you so much for your time.

      Maggie Smith 38:34

      No, this was such a pleasure. Thank you.

      Tim Fulton 38:50

      Thank you for listening to Confluence Cast presented by Columbus underground. Again, you can get more information on what we discussed today in the show notes for this episode at the confluence cast calm. Please Rate, Subscribe, share this episode of the confluence cast with your friends, family, contacts, enemies, your favorite poet. If you’re interested in sponsoring the confluence cast get in touch with us. We can be reached by email at info at the confluence cast calm. Our theme music was composed by Benji Robinson. Our producer is Philip Cogley. I’m your host, Tim Fulton. Have a great week.

      The post Poet Maggie Smith appeared first on The Confluence Cast.

      40 min
    • Futurist Rebecca Ryan

      As we navigate change, how can we create actionable plans for the future? Futurist Rebecca Ryan has a few ideas. Based in Madison, Wisconson, her past work in Columbus led to the advent of the city’s young professional initiatives. We discussed the work of a futurist, the tangible things that can be done to improve the social fabric of communities, and if it’s important to be back in the office.

      Shownotes

      • Rebecca Ryan
      • Create Columbus Commission
      • Live First, Work Second
      • Richard Florida
      • Alliance for Innovation

        • The Confluence Cast is sponsored by The Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission featuring stories about local and regional partners that envision and embrace innovative directions in economic prosperity, transportation, sustainability and an inclusive Central Ohio. MORPC’s transformative programming, innovative services and public policy initiatives are designed to promote and support the vitality and growth in the region.

        Full transcript

        Tim Fulton 0:12

        Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the confluence cast presented by Columbus underground. We are a weekly Columbus centric podcast focusing on the civics, lifestyle, entertainment, and people of our city. I’m your host, Tim Fulton. This week, I had the opportunity to speak with Rebecca Ryan, a futurist based in Madison, Wisconsin. As you’ll hear her work in Columbus led to the advent of the city’s young professional initiatives. We discussed the work of a futurist, the tangible things that can be done to improve the social fabric of communities. The challenge with thinking about creating actionable plans for the future, defining when it’s important to be back in the office and defining the value of it, what other changes are coming, and the questions we should be asking ourselves about that. You can get more information on what we discussed today in the show notes for this episode at the confluence cast comm also, the confluence cast is on Patreon. Find out how to support this podcast on our website the confluence cast comm [email protected] slash Confluence. The Confluence cast is sponsored this week by the Mid Ohio Regional Planning Commission, or more proceed featuring stories about local and regional partners that envision and embrace innovative directions in economic prosperity, transportation, sustainability, and an inclusive central Ohio Morrissey’s transformative programming innovative services and public policy initiatives are designed to promote and support the vitality and growth in the region. For more information, please visit more pepsi.org enjoy the interview. Sitting down here virtually with economist futurist entrepreneur and self described badass Rebecca Ryan. Rebecca, how are you would have been nicer if you would have just called me a badass and I’m sorry, let’s do it. You know what? Do it again. Leave it in and I’m leaving. I’m leaving the first one in. I want to give you credit, sitting down here virtually with economist, futurist entrepreneur and badass. Rebecca Ryan coming to us from Madison, Wisconsin. Rebecca, how are you?

        Rebecca Ryan 2:35

        I’m well from one university town to another in the Midwest, a virtual High Five Tim Fulton.

        Tim Fulton 2:40

        Indeed, as some guests come I got a pitch for you to be on the podcast, talking about sort of the the current environment we’re in in terms of return to work. I did some googling very quickly because I was like I know who Rebecca Ryan is Rebecca Ryan basically encouraged Columbus to create the young professional commission that we’re known as they create Columbus commission, which we’ve talked to former chairs, I am actually a former chair of the Commission. So first of all, Rebecca, just give us the elevator pitch on who you are and where you come from.

        Rebecca Ryan 3:19

        Yeah, so I’m a I’m an economist. And I come from I was born in West Bend, Wisconsin, a small very conservative town in Wisconsin. And I it was after I did the engagement with Columbus that I went back to school and get my degree in foresight. So now the futurist moniker has been added to my bio. But yeah, that’s it. I mean, I’m a futurist. I’m an economist, I love my work. I’m a wife, I’m a dog mom. And I really enjoy mowing my lawn.

        Tim Fulton 3:52

        Okay. So would you refer to those, those gigs with individual governments or some government adjacent is what you’ve referred to them as those entities? Is that an economic development that you primarily worked in? Or what was the pitch when you were getting those engagements?

        Rebecca Ryan 4:11

        Yeah, I mean, at the time, when I was working with Columbus, the brain drain was on everybody’s mind Ohio was talking to everybody in the Midwest was talking about where our number one export is talented young professionals whom we educate, and then they either go back home or they leave for brighter shores. So I was in the mix. During all of that I had written a book called Live first work second, and it was all about how young professionals first pick a place to live and then find a job. That was about the same time that Richard Florida’s book, The rise of the creative class came out and you know, he was just a darling among the economic development and chamber world. Really smart guy, I like rich a lot. So I rode that wave and we developed some tools to index communities as far as how attractive They were to young professionals, we looked at seven different factors that seemed to matter in communities that young professionals were migrating to. And we tried to help communities like yours, figure out how to attract and keep. And so one of the really cool things and by the way, I just want to say congratulations to the wipey. commission and how that has morphed over time. But it makes a difference if somebody is waking up every day thinking about whether young professionals are plugged in engaged and care about a community. And that was one of the top recommendations that came out of our work there.

        Tim Fulton 5:38

        And how do you come to that? What does that engagement look like once you’ve sort of set it up? I’m very interested a lot of times and like, how does this happen? And how does it work? Like, are you individually indexing? Are you doing background census research? Like how does that look? What does that look like?

        Rebecca Ryan 5:57

        So our business today looks nothing like our business did when we were with you guys. And okay, there’s a part of me that like, feels a little embarrassed to say that, but then there’s another part of me that’s like, No, I mean, that’s evolution, baby. That’s what happens. So, so we had been doing this indexing these seven community indexes for communities going into the census data, like you said, Every publicly available data source that we could find, where we could truly compare apples to apples for communities across the United States and Canada. And then the recession happened. And we just, we made two decisions. Decision number one was to make that indexing tool free and available online. So you can now index yourself, you know, using under the Creative Commons license, okay. But the second decision I made was, the name of my business is next generation consulting. And for almost 18 years at that point, I had been focusing on generations, especially the future generations helping become great places to live and work for young professionals. And it was during the recession that I decided, people are really going to be freaked out about all the things that are coming next, not just generations. So I remember sitting in my bathtub, I went through a period of depression there. I remember sitting in my bathtub, thinking, Oh, what needs to happen is I have to take the emphasis off generation in next generation consulting and put the emphasis on next. And that’s when I decided to go back to school, I went to the University of Houston and got my professional certificate in strategic foresight, and started thinking much more broadly about the future of communities beyond just demographics. But thinking about the future of how we’re gonna live, think about the future of how technology is going to change our communities, how economies are going to change in our communities. So I have basically, I went from the eight Box of Crayons to the 48 baccata hands.

        Tim Fulton 7:55

        And so you’re, I imagine primarily your work was Yes, around that indexing, but it was around attract and retain initiatives. Absolutely. And so what do those engagements look like for you now?

        Rebecca Ryan 8:10

        Yeah, so now we get called when a community like there are some states that require every municipality to update their comprehensive plan every 10 years. Okay. So they’re working in 2020 on their 2030 plan, and they want to know, like, what should we be thinking about? So we do a bunch of projections for them. Another constant call that we get are people who are going through visioning work. They know that their platform is burning, that the things they’re doing aren’t relevant anymore, but they don’t know what to jump to next. Okay, so another very common call we get and the third call we’ve gotten a little more frequently since the recession is, Oh, my God, we have a really good plan. We thought, well, we thought we had a really good plan before Coronavirus. Is this still valid? So we’re stress testing current plans against emerging realities? And are you expanding to not just municipalities, but also to businesses and enterprise? I’m not opposed to that. But somebody told me once that the definition of a market is that they’re self referencing, you know, so if if Mayor Mike Coleman and Columbus, Ohio talks to another mayor, that’s a self referencing market. So although I have done some work for corporations, we tend to do most of our work in the public sector or in the near public sector, do gooders who want to do community development, economic development, workforce development.

        Tim Fulton 9:39

        Can you give examples of and you don’t have to tie it to municipality or maybe you want to examples of what are the actionable what’s coming out of it and what is specific to the municipality?

        Rebecca Ryan 9:53

        Right. So one of the great things that cities can do, cities can afford to take the long view because they can do Things like pass bonds. And you know, when you’re working on transportation it takes for ever to get a road widened or changed or you know, to add another lane of traffic, if that’s the direction that you’re going. So many of our recommendations are around the built environment, like what’s gonna need to happen around the built environment, Asheville and buncombe. County, North Carolina is a recent client. And they have very clear geographic limits, because they’re mountainous, so they can’t just clear and like build, so they have to build up, they can’t build out there are true limits to their growth, at the same time that North Carolina is moving from the 12th to the eighth most populous state in the country, so they’re having incredible growth. And so there are policy changes that need to be made within the city. So those are some of the the sort of hardscape. But then there’s also the, the soft scape, you know, the social fabric of a community. So this might sound like a really small thing. But if you continue to build porches, on the backs of homes instead of the front of homes, you really decrease social connection within communities. So these are small things that are about the social fabric of communities. And this has become so much more important. Because, you know, social media amplifies, you know, the algorithms of social media around amplification. And what gets amplified, the easiest is anger. And that tends to divide us not unite us. And so I, you know, my open ended question for America in the next decade is how are we going to learn to live together? And this is where some of those questions about who is your community becoming? And how are you creating opportunities for citizens to engage with each other think it’s becoming more important than ever?

        Tim Fulton 11:54

        And do you prefer to work on in those engagements? Do you prefer to work on projects where they sort of say, just tell us everything we need to do? So that you can get to those granular and actionable things that say, when you’re approving housing plans, you should have you know, everybody shouldn’t be going into one door? Everybody should have their own door, but everybody’s got their own porch. Yeah. And you’re interacting with each other. And you’re not creating a monolith of a housing community that never interacts with the whole rest of the world? Do you prefer those kinds of engagements where it’s basically brought in for planning in general, and you’re like, here’s eight things you may want to be thinking about?

        Rebecca Ryan 12:38

        This is I’m enjoying this question, because I haven’t been asked it before what I what I can share is that when I think back on over 20 years of doing this now, the plans that I have loved the most have been the ones that have taken sort of a, like a best of approach. Okay, so an example would be, you know, everyone’s struggling with affordable housing and homelessness right now. So it’s important to be able to set some vision around what that can look like. And then I want to expose people to a broad diaspora of what’s possible from around the world. And one of the best compliments I ever got was from a young professional in Lafayette, Indiana, who said, It emailed me and she said, Oh, my God, I just came across our good to great plan. And I can’t believe how many ideas that are actionable are in this plan. And I think that’s the tension, you know, the tension is we’re trying to build something that is 10 years or 20 years in the future things that some people can’t even imagine. It’s not difficult for me, that’s how my brain works. But you’ve got a back at right into, okay, what does the City Council have to start talking about next week? Or what are the things we could start to put into our next year’s budget? And I love that tension of what can we do tomorrow? That’s going to leave this community better for a kid who’s going to be 2520 years from now?

        Tim Fulton 14:07

        Absolutely. Absolutely. Talk about what you’re seeing as a futurist Now regarding return to work, and basically the future of the workforce in general, high level?

        Rebecca Ryan 14:20

        Yeah, well, I’m gonna just tell you that I think most of what the media is talking about right now is nonsense, and

        Tim Fulton 14:28

        what’s not what what is not?

        Rebecca Ryan 14:30

        Yeah, so what I mean is I’m, as I’m answering a lot of questions, like, you know, are we going to have more remote work or hybrid work? Or is everybody going to return to work? And what I mean, is that the questions are these 01 questions, you know, it’s either or questions, and they’re getting at the very surface level of things. And I understand that in the media, you know, you’re on a news cycle. You’re going to be doing another show tomorrow. Yeah, it is hard. to dive deep, but from my perspective as a futurist, you know, the future is in these long undulating curves. It is not in these nanosecond discussions. So I have an uneasy time answering questions like this, like, from my perspective, the questions that we really should be asking about return to work are if I’m if I’m a boss, or a leader who’s or an HR person who’s trying to help decide what our return to work policy is going to be. The first thing I’m going to ask is, how well do our employees understand our mission? And what their role is like? Do people have clarity about how we do our work and how we add value? Or are they unclear? Because if they’re unclear, being together is going to be more helpful. Getting is easier to pass tacit knowledge, in spontaneous conversations going to and from the bathroom, or the, you know, the coffee pot, whatever. So but if you if you have a lot of clarity in your organization, or if your team has worked together for a long time, you coming back to the office seems more optional to me. And frankly, I think some people would rather be left alone, you know, like, you do their work either me Yes, exactly, to do their work. So, you know, I think one of the questions is for your own organization, how clear is the work to everybody? The second question is, is, you know, what kind of structure is needed for people to perform their work, because in some organizations, interaction is needed when you’re whiteboarding. Even though I love the online tools, and I use them, but there’s There is something about whiteboarding together and having everybody grab a pen and a race and move things around. Or if you’re trying to design anything that’s actually three dimensional, you know, you want to be around that 3d printer and getting things put in place. And also, you know, it is sometimes really helpful to be face to face for, for critical conversations with your teammates, and that includes onboarding people, it includes those first 90 days, I think those are some really critical times when it makes sense to be together. So you have to think about the structure of your work as well. And then the final thing I would say is, this is an opportunity to really step back and say, What is the value that we provide, that people pay us for, because if you don’t understand your value chain, it’s hard for you to really understand the right structure that you need to get there An example would be a friend of my running partners and attorney. And they might have 40 people in their office. And she talked about how they’re going to go to three days a week back at work. And I said, How did you decide that? And she said, Well, the truth is, our clients aren’t demanding it. Our clients are happy with zoom. In fact, they’re happier with doing things over the phone or via zoom, because there’s no friction for them of having to drive downtown, find parking, you know, especially if you’re not familiar with the city, it’s stressful, come into a city. So she’s like, it’s not for our clients. It’s for our staff, you know, so I thought she did a nice job there of saying, we understand that we’re going to continue to do remote for our clients, we’re not going to require in person meeting was with clients, it’s gonna be up to them. But we are going to expect our staff to be together for these very, you know, there’s a lot of tricky issues in a law office that kind of have to be decided just in time and being together is a little more real time than even telepresence. So I get it, I get it. And I’m like, behind her, and they’re still they’re still allowing people to work from home, which gives people I think, a nice amount of flexibility.

        Tim Fulton 18:44

        Yeah, and this and I think we’re leaving the safety conversation to the side here. It’s sort of what has the pandemic, exposed in terms of everything, you know, things shut down, but work didn’t stop over the course of the last year. And would you say if you don’t have to expect people to come back into work, that you shouldn’t expect people to come back into work? Because there’s not it’s not adding value? It’s not creating a better environment, if that’s not needed.

        Rebecca Ryan 19:19

        I mean, what I would do first is talk to people, I would just, I would ask my people, where are you at? What do you want? Because you’ve heard about the way that women have, you know, dropped out of the workforce to deal with family issues. And so we’ve got to be really responsive to our parents, you know, our working parents, so I would start by asking people what they want. Overall what I’m hearing, like if I had to put my you know, my marble on a number on that wheel and in Vegas, I would put it on three days a week in the office for those that are going to come back to the office. I think we’re gonna we’re gonna net out at three days a week and now this is interesting for the commercial, real Real Estate Market thinking about Columbus because if people come back three days a week, three out of five days a week, it’s estimated that they’re going to need, you know, 10%, less office space, less footage, possibly. And then when you look at the financials, as I understand this is the national average office leases go up about 1.3% per year. Okay, so if there’s a 10% decrease in the amount of office space rented, and we work under the reality under the assumption that increases in rent only go up 1.3% per year, we’re looking at what is that like seven years before commercial real estate is back at parity to 2019 in terms of return on return on value for for real estate companies?

        Tim Fulton 20:52

        So and you’re talking about parity in terms of hard numbers, not real? Yes. Like, you’re literally saying like $10, now is going to equal $10. And in seven years, reminder, inflation still exists.

        Rebecca Ryan 21:07

        Exactly, exactly. So it may be longer. And that’s something that I feel like the commercial real estate market is a little bit like in denial about this, you know, and and I also wonder, like, when I hear like mayor, the mayor of New York City, saying everybody needs to get back to work and demanding it of his own municipal employees. I wonder how much of that is really an economic development argument, like, we can’t just let our downtown economies stall out, like we all need to do our part and getting people back and circulating downtown is is important.

        Tim Fulton 21:41

        Do you have any additional insights into the inflexibility of the current labor market, folks don’t want to return to I’m sorry, I apologize. I’m making assumptions here. Some people don’t want to return to some jobs or some types of jobs, and are taking advantage of the time that they had in order to migrate to a new one. And it’s or it’s creating new conflicts in that space of the labor market?

        Rebecca Ryan 22:14

        Yes, what you’re referring to is the quits factor, the people who have quit their jobs and are like going completely somewhere to a different thing. I’m going from engineering to being an outdoor guide, you know, just taking out hard left into something else. And there are many people who are doing that. And I think it’s this is an interesting thing, because you know, there’s I haven’t seen any good reports on this yet. And by reports, I mean, like NBR, National Bureau of Economic Research or something like that, because there are little sentiment surveys that are done all the time. But I’m thinking about something more substantial, more toothsome in the research area. But the number of people who have had the real existential questions, I don’t know, I mean, have you have you used this time to think about what is it that I really want?

        Tim Fulton 23:03

        How can I just enrolled in graduate school, I mean, that’s where it’s going, right?

        Rebecca Ryan 23:10

        So you’re a living example, Tim of this, and I’m a living example, too. I mean, I’ve, I’ve made a deal with myself that I’m going to try to be on the road a lot less, I am an older woman, now, I can’t just that, you know, being consulting in the way that I was as a young person’s game. And so that means I’m mentoring up a lot of folks, you know, and increasing our, our labor pool somewhat. But it’s, it’s created in me a recognition of what my unique gifts are, how I can really add value. And I think it’s done the same thing for other people. I mean, when it’s like, you know, everything came to a screeching halt. And you had to sit on your couch for a while, you turn a lot of people turned inward. And so I think this quits rate is one thing to measure in the short term, but I do feel like, remember, when I was little, my parents would play this card game with me called 50 to pick up 52 cards in a deck, and they would just throw all the cards in the air and be like, here’s the game pick up the cards.

        Tim Fulton 24:14

        It’s the same game. I mean, it is. What’s that? It the quiet game? What is that? Oh, it’s when you tell your four year old Hey, we’re just gonna play the quiet game, and we’re gonna see who can be quiet the longest.

        Rebecca Ryan 24:29

        That was the race to nap game in my house. A parent would lay down and say, who can fall asleep first?

        Tim Fulton 24:36

        Oh, that’s a good one. I’m gonna try that. Definitely. In addition to here’s what back to work looks like. And in addition to that quits factor that you were talking about, and I’ll link to everything I can find in the show notes for this episode. But what are the other aspects of work in general that you see change? In the near or medium term,

        Rebecca Ryan 25:03

        this is an anecdotal signal. Okay. But when I think about the future of meetings, I heard a global executives say that the way they’re not and they’re not domiciled in the United States, they’re domiciled in the EU. So this might be a slight difference in perspective. But he said in the future, before we have a meeting, before we schedule a meeting that people are expected to travel in for we will be asking ourselves three questions. Question one, does this require us to meet in person? Question two? Is it worth tearing people? His word, not mine tearing people away from their families? Hmm. To attend the meeting? Question three, is it worth the carbon cost of what it’s going to the planetary cost of flying people in? That is an incredible, like, reset to what I think hat I think most of us, most organizations, just have a meet in person first default, like, yeah, we’re gonna do our annual conference, then we’re gonna do our biannual conference, and we’re gonna do our management team off site, and then we’re gonna do this, and then we’re gonna do that. And we have whole departments of events, coordinators, who who work on setting these things up. And those three questions are a fundamental reshift. So business travel, I think there’s going to be a long tail on the change in business travel.

        Tim Fulton 26:26

        Mm hmm.

        Rebecca Ryan 26:27

        And that in that in packs, the meetings industry that impacts the keynote speakers industry. And I think there’s always going to be a place for people who can now be ambidextrous, who can work remotely? Or do it live in person, you know, can you facilitate an amazing workshop remotely? And can you also do an amazing workshop in person, and I think the future spoils will go to those who can be ambidextrous in that way. And the the new, the new need for meeting planners is going to be how to really design for all kinds of environments as well.

        Tim Fulton 27:06

        And how do you build for it? Yeah, for technology, like I was, super side project had their annual conference just like two weeks ago, and it was hybrid, and it was totally hybrid. And this is for a very physical industry that I can’t talk about. And I was like, How do you do? How, how do you do that, and it’s a whole bunch of tech guys, you know, and a whole and making sure that that conference center is, has the best internet that it can. And I’m curious for as somebody who does keynotes, I do price that then differently, I don’t have to go anywhere, I don’t have to travel, you’re not, you know, I don’t need a per diem to sit in my office. That’s interesting.

        Rebecca Ryan 27:54

        We do have two different rates. So we have the in person rate, which is the same as it was pre pandemic, and we have the remote rate, which is steeply discounted, and has and has a few other, you know, features. So it’s but it’s it’s the Wild West, because I don’t know if that’s gonna I don’t know if it’s gonna last because if, if the US meetings industry, which is where I do most of my keynoting, if they say Nope, we’re going all back to in person. I don’t know that I’m going to do that. Okay, because of my own carbon footprint. So now I’m thinking for myself, like, Okay, how big is the audience? And how many? How much spin off potential? Is there in this audience? can I build this in such a way so that I’m not just on the platform, and then off the platform? But can I design some sort of a doodle poll or something so that anybody who really wants to have coffee with me, like I can just set up at those Starbucks and we can just every 15 minutes, I can be meeting, you know, five or six people who are really interested in having the next conversation, so it feels less transactional? Yeah, flying in and doing a thing. And then the final thing is how we’ll charge for the carbon offsets, because that’s important to me, too.

        Tim Fulton 29:08

        Yeah. Well, I’m wondering if, and I realized that there’s a little bit of novelty to this. But if you can call it that, if you can say, and here’s your carbon offset price for me to be in person. It’s just interesting to me. I want to wrap up today, just but normally, I would ask what’s Columbus doing well, and what’s Columbus not doing so? Well. From your perspective, I just want to hear what are in general, what are cities doing well, and what are cities not doing so well?

        Rebecca Ryan 29:39

        In the 20 or so years that I’ve been working in communities I’ve seen something that I’m so happy to see and this has been within the last maybe five to eight years, there’s been we’ve moved from everyone trying to be like Austin, Texas, to because even Austin has a little Sick of itself right now to everyone trying to figure out what their actual DNA is. What is the actual DNA of our community? And I’ve seen it happen in two communities of note. There are others as well. Well, I guess three I heard so Lexington, Kentucky has said we’re about basketball, bluegrass and bourbon. Okay. And you know, you can’t get bluegrass anywhere else. I mean, it’s really true. It’s Yeah, it’s a special kind of, of grass that they have there. So that’s, you know, that’s memorable with the three B’s but the two communities I was thinking of are Chattanooga, Tennessee, which has recognized that their accessibility to the mountains and the natural places the wild places, is not only what attracts talent, and keeps talent, but it like helps keep them healthy and connected. And, you know, in Japan, for example, where there are such high suicide rates, you know, there are doctors now who prescribe nature Bad’s that being outdoors in nature is good for your soul. I remember when Nashville the mayor of Nashville about 20 years ago said I want every resident to be within a 10 minute walk of a public park trailer recreation area. I don’t know if that’s held Nashville seems like it’s going bananas. But so so Chattanooga, Tennessee has recognized part of what makes us naturally unique are these things and then Asheville, the greater Asheville Area Chamber of Commerce and their economic development council, they have taken a values first approach to economic development. And their three values are the triple bottom line. So as people, you know, site selectors are looking at Asheville or as people are trying to expand in the area. They’re asking, how is this good for our people? Like this needs to raise the minimum wage? This can’t be you know, they’re thinking about living wages? How is this good for the planet? So are you going to remediate a brownfield? Are you going to how are you going to preserve green space? And it’s got to be good for the bottom line. Good. So people planet profit. And I have never in my career, seen an economic development entity come with a values first approach to trying to attract employers or help employers grow and that those things make me think, okay,

        Tim Fulton 32:31

        things have changed. I think those are pretty good philosophies. What could they do better? Is it simply more of them adopting things like that of like, know, your true character? Don’t try to be the Austin of the Midwest, and take some time and identify that, right? Because maybe not every city is going to be people planet profit. But at least they can spend a little time and saying what are our values?

        Rebecca Ryan 32:58

        That’s right, that, you know, when you said cities, I mean, I literally went to the municipality, I was thinking about, like Parks and Rec, and, you know, sewers and streets. And I was thinking about the municipal staff. And I do think that it’s there’s this tool I’ve come across, it’s an old tool, but I think it’s a new time for it. Okay, well, priority based budgeting it was, it was launched by a guy named john Johnson, who’s now the Chief Financial Officer for the Alliance for innovation. But priority based budgeting starts with the question, what are the values of our community? And then what they do at the city level is they pull basically, have you ever had a closet that like, you had to literally like, jam the doors closed? Because there was so much stuff in right? Yeah, we’ve all had that. So priority based budgeting first, you ask, what do we really care about? Then you sort of open the closet doors of all the programs that you do? And you take each one out? And you say, which value does this one align with? And is there anybody else in the community who could do it better? Because if you’ve got businesses in your community, for example, who are also doing this to you, as a city really want to be in competition with businesses in your own community? Or is there redundancy? Is the police department also doing a project kind of like this? And where should it really live? So by taking everything out of the closet and asking how does it fit with our values, is it doesn’t even work anymore? Because you know, a lot of stuff when you actually clean a closet, you donate a lot of it and throw a lot of it out because you’re like, this

        Tim Fulton 34:29

        stuff’s bro Surprise, surprise. Right?

        Rebecca Ryan 34:32

        Exactly, exactly. So anyway, at the end of it, what you have is a budget based on your priorities that is leaner, and meaner and more forward looking and has less redundancy and waste the kinds of things that taxpayers like to complain about all the time. And it’s, it’s, it’s it is a big lift for a community to do that, but it helps clarify your values. It helps you streamline your budget, and I I also think it teaches, you know, financial management. These are resources that we’re trying to steward for the whole community. So I love pbb. And everybody should check it out. JOHN Johnson

        Tim Fulton 35:10

        well, and it is super similar, you know, that happens not for Nouriel space all the time, the first thing that a startup does when they have an idea is do a competitive landscape and say, Is somebody else already doing this? And could I do it better? You know, first to market is the first to market. That’s it. If you’re not doing it better than your your second. And I don’t know how high level these conversations happen, but it happens in the nonprofit space a lot to have. We’re gonna go in and provide service to the homeless families. And it’s like somebody already does that. Like, please don’t be duplicative, because what you’re doing then is drawing funds away and creating bad competition to do it well. So yes, I totally agree with that approach. And

        Rebecca Ryan 35:57

        I, I love knowing that that happens in the nonprofit space as well, because there has been just like a rangy, proliferation of nonprofits. And yeah, if you did a similar process and said who are all what are all the organizations that serve in this space? Who it’s a huge drain on resources, funding 3000 nonprofits who do mediocre work is probably less impactful than funding 1200 that do amazing work?

        Tim Fulton 36:23

        Absolutely. And it’s all about standards and practices in that space. Right. And people, frankly, so Rebecca, thank you so much for your time.

        Rebecca Ryan 36:33

        You’re the best Tim. Congratulations on the podcast and keep going Columbus keep going.

        Tim Fulton 36:51

        Thank you for listening to Confluence cast presented by Columbus underground. Again, you can get more information on what we discussed today in the show notes for this episode at the confluence cast comm please rate subscribe, share this episode of the confluence cast with your friends, family, contacts, enemies, your favorite futurist. If you’re interested in sponsoring the confluence cast get in touch with us. We can be reached by email at info at the confluence cast calm. Our theme music was composed by Benji Robinson. Our producer is Philip Cogley. I’m your host, Tim Fulton. Have a great week.

        The post Futurist Rebecca Ryan appeared first on The Confluence Cast.

        38 min
      • Architecture & Design Firm JBAD

        The work of architects has an impact on our lives every day. But how does that work get done? This week, we’re talking architecture and development with the principal of architecture and design firm JBAD, Jonathan Barnes. We discussed how architecture firms work, the importance of relationships, the issues that should be kept in mind as Columbus continues to grow, and whether we’re doing a good job of addressing those issues.

        Shownotes

        • JBAD
        • Bridge Park
        • Columbus Area Commissions
        • Rapid Five
        • Urban Land Institute
        • Franklinton
        • Scioto Mile
        • Downtown Columbus

          • The Confluence Cast is sponsored by The Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission featuring stories about local and regional partners that envision and embrace innovative directions in economic prosperity, transportation, sustainability and an inclusive Central Ohio. MORPC’s transformative programming, innovative services and public policy initiatives are designed to promote and support the vitality and growth in the region.

          Full transcript:

          Tim Fulton  00:13

          Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the confluence cast presented by Columbus underground. We are a weekly Columbus centric podcast focusing on the civics, lifestyle, entertainment, and people of our city. I’m your host, Tim Fulton. This week we are talking architecture and development in Columbus with the principle of architecture and design firm j bad. Jonathan Barnes. We discussed how architecture firms work, how projects come into fruition, the importance of relationships and a diversity of experience choosing who to work with the unique aspects of the Columbus real estate market, the issues that should be kept in mind as Columbus continues to grow, and whether we’re doing a good job of addressing those issues. You can get more information on what we discussed today in the show notes for this episode at the confluence cast comm also, the confluence cast is on Patreon. Find out how to support this podcast on our website the confluence cast calm [email protected] slash Confluence. The Confluence cast is sponsored this week by the Mid Ohio Regional Planning Commission, or more, Percy, featuring stories about local and regional partners that envision and embrace the innovative directions in economic prosperity, transportation, sustainability, and an inclusive central Ohio. Morrissey’s transformative programming innovative services and public policy initiatives are designed to promote and support the vitality and growth in the region. For more information, please visit more pcy.org. Enjoy the interview. Sitting down here virtually with Jonathan Barnes, the owner of JBA D architecture and design firm in downtown Columbus, Ohio. Mr. Barnes, how are you sir? I’m good. Thank you. First of all, tell me about j bad and yourself and your work?

          Jonathan Barnes  02:17

          Well, there’s a lot to say there. But we’ve been here in Columbus for you know, the years just keep racking up 20 I think eight now. So I started the firm. When I returned to Columbus, where I’m from. In the early 90s, I was coming back from working in Italy for about three years. Move back to Columbus decided to do that as opposed to Chicago where I came from on my way out of the country and taught for a little bit and then started the sort of the firm sort of the practice. back then.

          Tim Fulton  02:59

          Where’d you grow up?

          Jonathan Barnes  03:00

          I grew up here in Columbus, where your high school, Upper Arlington, Arlington, a very cozy suburb, your Golden Bear. That’s right.

          Tim Fulton  03:10

          That’s good. I you know, we just want the context. Yep, that’s it. And tell me about sort of the specialty of the firm and what what you guys do?

          Jonathan Barnes  03:20

          Well, you know, we’ve done a lot over the years. And we’ve specialized in sort of different areas at different times, sort of depending on our interest, our expertise and the market. The you know, real estate market, I suppose, I would say really for a good part of the history of the firm we’ve specialized in, I would say mixed use residential, as a short term. So to most people, that means apartments, but it also means office, it also means retail, and all sorts of things, but mostly it’s urban urban infill projects, a lot of apartments and condos, but a pretty broad base beyond that, too. So you know, banks in schools and office and art galleries and all sorts of things. Got it, but but they all have something in common, I would say for the most part, to a large degree, their urban in one way or another.

          Tim Fulton  04:27

          And I am familiar with a couple of different business models of things. I am not very familiar with architecture firms and sort of how that I know that you design buildings. I don’t have a familiarity with Do you tend to work with other firms, other architecture firms on individual projects, or how, how the acquisition of a project happens if you could walk me through basically First of all, how do you get on a project? Like what from from the get go? A piece of land becomes available? Someone owns it? What happens? Like, do they have an idea of what they want there and you are sought out?

          Jonathan Barnes  05:14

          One answer to that is it works in all different ways, which is one of the reasons why I’m an architect. Okay, and it’s never the same. Any particular day or week is things come come up in all different ways for all different reasons. And you have to be pretty nimble about sort of how you how you sort of manage that. Right? So the first part of your question, mate, which maybe I’ll come back to is about working with other firms. Yes, we do partner. And that’s a smart thing to do, when it’s when it’s a good fit. We’re working on a project, it’s a partnership right now with the Boston firm. But I would say the answer to that question really, is, has to do with the project type. Because like, so, there’s public sector and private sector, for instance, you know, public sector, as you imagine universities, you know, libraries, government, etc. Private sector is kind of everything else. It’s private developers, its property owners, people who don’t have experience that want to do a project of some sort. But it’s, they they happen in all sorts of different ways. So sometimes they, they, they are generated by the purchase of a property and somebody has a property. And now what do I do with it? Sometimes they, somebody might have an idea for a project, or even sort of a track record, let’s do this again. But they don’t have a property. Okay. So they’re looking for a place for it?

          Tim Fulton  06:49

          And when did you get assist in that process? Like the acquisition of the property?

          Jonathan Barnes  06:54

          Yes, we assist in, let’s say, analyzing and assessing properties, sites or projects. We do that all the time. But I think something that’s somewhat unique about us is that we often initiate that process. So you know, we’ve been I’ve been around enough that, you know, in this context, right in this environment, that I’m pretty familiar with the neighborhoods, and the potential properties, whether they’re on the market or market, or more likely not on the real estate market, or off market. And the kind of potential for development, right, given one one property versus another. So I all the time, I see opportunity. And I tried to, let’s say, put a team together. So I’ll say, Well, here’s an opportunity for this kind of a project on this site. And this is, let’s say, a developer that I think would be well suited for that. So I reach out to them and or several of them and say, hey, look, I think this, this is a good project, this could go this could work here. You know, are you are you interested, that happens in this place, pretty pretty often.

          Tim Fulton  08:07

          And so let’s walk through as we continue, because there’s like, you could talk about somebody wanting to build a house, you could talk about a university wanting to build a new center. But let’s let’s walk through that process from a, you drive by or hear about a property becoming available. And you are sort of building the team and bringing them together from this point forward in the conversation, just so that we are sort of remain on the same page. Right? So how would you hear about it? First of all, would it be just driving by or see or hearing about, oh, this property is becoming available?

          Jonathan Barnes  08:48

          Yes. And that’s gonna be interesting to a lot of my questions. It’s like, it’s, it’s everything. So okay. I want to own qualify this part of the conversation, to say that, you know, it had that happens sometimes, but very often developers who are experienced and have property know exactly that what they want, you know, okay, we have established relationships. And we know we work together on multiple projects. I don’t want to sound like like, no,

          Tim Fulton  09:12

          yeah, absolutely. I’m not a puppeteer. I’m an opportunist. So they know what they want. They basically say we’ve got this property, we’re going to extend Bridge Park or something like that. And they say, We want a mixed use development. How do you how do they pick you? Well,

          Jonathan Barnes  09:35

          that’s really, in our experience that’s really about relationships, right? And relationships and, you know, reputation and all that. So, you know, we’ve been doing this long enough that people that do this sort of thing, I guess, this sort of thing being let’s say this kind of mixed use residential type of project, although look, we’ve done a lot of other things that that people have come to us for

          Tim Fulton  10:00

          I totally understand you’re trying not to pigeonhole yourself here, like,

          Jonathan Barnes  10:04

          Well, I mean, it’s, I would also say that that is that sort of thing, having a broader for a project base and experience, benefits all of our projects. So, you know, we, we did a bag for the first time. And, you know, we brought all of our experience for all of our projects to that. And it turned out I think, really, really well. So we know we’d look for first time projects, but it’s, it’s more about the opportunity, and not about the sort of specifics or project type. But you’re asking about sort of how we are selected for, let’s say, the, you know, certain projects. And I would say it’s not even just one type, but it’s, it’s, it’s about reputation and relationships. So I, you know, I know a lot of people a lot of people know me and or know of me, and they know our work. I like to think that in our practice, it took from my perspective, it took us about 10 years to sort of get to the place where we had enough work that people knew about us, and were coming to us, okay, and that changed the equation quite a bit. I mean, and now that happens quite often, people know us or find out about us, whether it’s me, or the practice, or just the work. And they come to us looking for either the same a similar kind of project type, or let’s say, modern architecture, because that’s something that we do really well. And that’s what we’re kind of known for. So we people show up because they know us, or they know me in one way or another often so. So that way in that in that in that way to where we are for pre selected because Okay, they know we can do this. And so let’s talk about it, you know, we take a few steps, and then we put a proposal together and it works or doesn’t work. And you know, it happens or doesn’t.

          Tim Fulton  11:49

          Okay, it feels very similar to an agency model, right? Like you’re only there for it’s one it’s per project, and you are a piece of the pie to get it done. The funny thing is, is you’re literally the I don’t think this is a metaphor, the architect of the whole thing.

          Jonathan Barnes  12:09

          Right? Big a little late, right? Well, yeah, I mean, I mean, that depends a bit on your perspective, too. I mean, you know, again, if it’s a project that, you know, that, you know, I’m trying to put together, then I guess, you know, that’s, that’s more accurate. But I mean, look, we are part of a team, and you know, you need a team, and you need a lot of people to make these things work. So, you know, I would say certainly, we’re an important part, but you know, look, buildings get built without architects all the time. Different kinds of buildings. But that’s, that’s, that’s true. But certainly, we are, I would say, an important part of this sort of greater team, you know, developer, there’s a contractor, you know, there are lawyers, you know, zoning attorneys, etc. There are lots of consultants. And then there are, you know, agencies because we’re in Columbus, so everything that’s reviewed, right, and building departments and utility companies, and it’s a pretty crowded room.

          Tim Fulton  13:09

          Yeah. And so let’s say the person with the money and the property there, I assume the ultimate decision maker, but then you guys are there from the get go and saying, here’s our proposal for what we think something should look like. And I want you to step in and say that’s wrong. If I am at any point, and you send the proposal includes maybe a rough sketch of here’s what we think this is going to look like, here’s the square footage that we think this is going to end up being this is obviously all contingent on, you know, the the zoning issues that you talked about, and whether utility lines can get there. And the cost of materials, I think is something interesting right now. And here’s the dream, you deliver the dream, and you say, this is what we think it’s going to cost. In total. Are you able to estimate that from the get go?

          Jonathan Barnes  14:04

          Yeah, to some degree. So these projects? Well, certainly our projects tend to be pretty complicated. So okay, it’s a very kind of incremental process. Meaning when you start, and by start, I mean, I have a call or I have a conversation with somebody about a project, right? Very kind of it’s, it’s very much kind of in its infancy, it’s an idea and a and a piece of property, right? There is so much that we don’t know, even though we’ve, we think we might know, okay, it could look like this, or it could be this big or it could look you know, it can be configured in a certain way. There’s so much that we don’t know. So you tend to sort of go at that incrementally, right? It’s not like you start it’s not like a start and a finish and you sort of like, know the direction you’re going you start initially with concepts, and no what we often call like fit diagrams, for instance. It’s like okay, you Here’s a site it wants, they’re looking for some sort of an apartment project, okay? What, what’s, what’s appropriate? What’s going to fit on this site? And then come is all the things that you start that you bring in to that. So it’s about, it’s about what it’s so many things that you have to consider the market, you think about the market and what what what’s a, what are unit types that work are working well in a particular area. Right. So a unit type, let’s say, downtown near the river front is going to be way different than a unit in, you know, Milo Grogan, Marion village, franklinton, wherever. So you, you know, we think about the market, we consider to the site, what can fit. So we start, we have an idea about like, okay, here are the kind of apartments that can work on in this neighborhood. And on this site, now, let’s see how what fits on this site. And then that has to do with all sorts of things, zoning, for sure. It has to do with certain building standards, like we have ideas about a particular kind of unit and the size of it, and how they, how you can multiply them how they fit on a site has a lot. It was this is Columbus, so it still has a lot to do with parking. Okay, that that drives, a lot of it drives that

          Tim Fulton  16:20

          approval issue. Right.

          Jonathan Barnes  16:23

          can be can be okay, in most places, except for downtown.

          Tim Fulton  16:27

          Okay. Why is that?

          Jonathan Barnes  16:29

          Well, because downtown has no parking requirements. Guy everywhere else pretty much does. Columbus city wide, except for downtown has a way of in that world has a I would say for the most part still has a requirement for 1.5 cards per unit as an apartment,

          Tim Fulton  16:50

          a person that’s going to like the area commission meetings to sort of like make the argument for here’s why we need this variance or, hey, we actually don’t need a variance. But here’s the plan and we need your approval.

          Jonathan Barnes  17:03

          Yeah, it’s usually us, and oftentimes a zoning attorney. And by the way, there are exceptions, there are what are called overlays for the zoning code where there there are other standards, the short North has an overlay where it’s a one per one space per unit requirement. So the little bit lower. And but then it’s even different than that, because you can go below that if you pay the city certain amount of money, per missing space, right. So all that is it’s about appropriate zoning rules in certain areas to encourage appropriate development. And including the the sort of right sized parking solution, right from one particular neighborhood or another.

          Tim Fulton  17:51

          And I want to do my best to sort of keep it as surface level as possible, because I imagine this could be an entire series and I yeah, there’s our game for having having you back. We’ll have the parking episode.

          Jonathan Barnes  18:05

          That will be a whole like Netflix series.

          Tim Fulton  18:09

          Walk me through. So let’s say you get it approved. You’ve gotten that was really quick, by the way, but go ahead. Okay, that’s fair. That’s I got approved in about three minutes. That was awesome. So you’ve got it approved from let’s say, the area commission, then when are you putting the team together? That’s actually building it.

          Jonathan Barnes  18:32

          So good question. So the trick there is to get far enough. So we were you know, we work with, in that case, mostly private clients. So we want to be careful about how we spend their money, their redevelopment, money, right, all that sort of extra money they’re spending before they get any kind of return, or even know that they have a project.

          Tim Fulton  18:51

          So I actually skipped over the entire design phase, because that’s ahead of bringing it to the permitting process to talk about sort of pre build contract with the person with the money in the property. I’m not necessarily concerned about the scale of the money but concerned about like, how do you bill? Is it do you come to them with a proposal and you say, I think it’s gonna cost this amount of money. And this gets you this amount of hours of design work, for example, is the attorney hired by you? And basically that money filters through you? How much does your accountant have to do?

          Jonathan Barnes  19:31

          Generally, no, no, the you know, there are consultants that we carried that we are, they kind of come to us typically zoning attorneys or forbid direct hire by the owner. Oftentimes, or rather, maybe sometimes depending on civil engineer is another one that the owner may hire directly. Also, like a geotechnical person that sort of figures out, you know, you know, what’s below ground. You know, they’re hired by the The owner, but to get to your real question, again, it’s very incremental because we, you know, we understand that developers have only a certain amount of cash that they want to spend on a project before they have a project, right? And really are often before they even own a property. Right. So we’ll take the design, what we would call it a conceptual design, to a point far enough ahead, or schematic design, those are some terms that are so cut somewhat overlapping, or enough that we know enough about the building to do a few things to inform the owners pro forma. And that’s the sort of financial analysis. So they know like, does this work, I’m going to spend this much this is my return this works, it doesn’t work. So that we haven’t, we take it far enough, also, so that we can present it to a commission. So we know, they know, they know what it’s what it’s conceptually going to look like. So they can sort of given an initial thumbs up or down, and so that we can get an understanding of the sort of size and complexity of the project. So we can, we can get a quick a first read on the potential cost. Okay. Right. So it’s about approvals, and cost. And really just like a description of this project and an initial stage, that’s kind of the first step, right, we do enough to get those kind of things answered.

          Tim Fulton  21:23

          So let’s say from your perspective, the project ends there. Yes, you got approval, but the the money turns out wasn’t there, or they couldn’t get financing or something like that happens, which I imagine happens a lot. How much? If it had continued? How much of your total contract would have been fulfilled? Like, is that half? Is that a third? Is that 80%?

          Jonathan Barnes  21:47

          No, I mean, that first step is very limited. Okay, intentionally. So it’s a first pass kind of concept, again, enough to kind of understand those kind of those kind of things and get get certain questions and answered, at least initially, so that you can figure out if it’s a go or no, go, and then your point was, was was accurate, that, you know, with that information, including an initial sort of cost estimate, the owner and the developer, right is going to is going to start to look for financing. So that’s, that’s debt and equity. Right? It’s a lender, and it’s an investor. And, you know, if that looks promising, okay, we’ll and you know, approvals look like they’re gonna happen, etc, then, you know, we’re off to like the rest of the project. But that first piece is a very, very small percentage of the whole project.

          Tim Fulton  22:41

          Okay. And both in terms of you getting paid and the work that you’re doing, correct. Okay, right. So let’s say it does move forward, what’s next,

          Jonathan Barnes  22:50

          then, if we haven’t already, we get the proposal together for the remaining services, and in which everything else and all the consultants and then, you know, we’re often running and it’s, again, it’s more sort of incremental work, you know, we do a certain amount of work, and then we’ll go back to a commission for another meeting, etc, we’ll go go to maybe a contractor or several contractors that we’re considering for updated pricing. Right,

          Tim Fulton  23:18

          and Are you hiring them?

          Jonathan Barnes  23:20

          No, typically, the the contractor is hired by the owner. Okay. But, you know, we’ll we’re usually asked to make suggestions about, you know, contractors that are good fit, right, so, you know, three to 234, contractors, you know, show up into a bar in the running, and we’re kind of working with them at this preliminary stage, and they are doing cost estimates, or possibly, they’ve already been selected. I mean, I’m a big fan of bringing a team on early, and identifying that team, including the contractor, because, you know, if they’re a good contractor, you want to be concerned more about the relationship than the numbers, okay? Okay. Because if you select a contractor based just based on numbers, that may not work out the way you want to. Because you just you just want somebody that knows what they’re doing can do a good job, you can, you can control the owner can control the numbers going forward. I always like to tell all of our clients, like they’re in control of that, you know, we’ll tell them what, and the contractor will tell them, okay, what you’re looking at doing, what you want to do is likely going to cost this much. But if you want to call on it once cost less or more, you’re in control of that. I mean, it’s, it makes a difference, right? If you want to cost less then it’s got to be either smaller in size or lower in quality or different in some way. But we’re in control.

          Tim Fulton  24:48

          And are we at construction at this point in terms of the process?

          Jonathan Barnes  24:52

          No, not at all. So again, very, very commendable. I mean, we have different phases leading up to a construction start, but you know, basically Look at it, like we’re just adding layers of information. So as we move through the design process, where, you know, we’re considering other things, you know, construction details, and, you know, code interpretation, but the big thing,

          Tim Fulton  25:17

          I like the way you phrase that,

          Jonathan Barnes  25:19

          yeah. And as we go through, you know, we’re just adding more, more information on our drawings, getting more accurate pricing, etc, etc, all that includes the owner, and there’s a dialogue going on all the time. Oh, AC is what we call our meetings owner, architect, contractor. That’s happening that’s happening all the time. So lots of lots of communication and lots of development, lots of decisions. And we get to the point where, okay, the drawings are far enough along that we will submit for a building permit off, it goes to city, typically in our schedules for most of our projects, other than maybe really small ones in the city of Columbus, we have on our spreadsheet for our schedules a two month bar, it’s this long, and it’s on every schedule, because that’s generally what we a lot for a building plan review to get a permit. Okay. Right. So, you know, after that when we get the permit, then again, now we’re really off and running contractor mobilizes on site, and things start happening. Got it

          Tim Fulton  26:29

          for real. And then you I imagine remain involved in the process, even though you’ve handed over the the design and basically the instruction manual for how to put this building that you’ve designed together, you’ve already made choices about the materials and and the costs associated for the owner. You remain involved through that construction process?

          Jonathan Barnes  26:52

          Yes, yes, for a number of reasons. I mean, essentially, we’re representing the owner, throughout the construction process. So things always change to some degree. In some ways, things always change,

          Tim Fulton  27:05

          and ample of that.

          Jonathan Barnes  27:07

          I can give you 400 examples, but give me a farming one. Well, they fall into different categories, by the way, that shows up in the construction cost estimate. Okay, there’s like there’s an owner’s contingency. So contingency is like a pot of money that you set aside to use if you can, when you need to owners contingency is like I decided I want another I want a bigger fitness room or we want to add this or that or change material. Okay, so that comes out of the owners contingency contractors contingency is if they might have missed something in the in their estimating, like they missed something on the design contingency is if the for design changes somewhat. So anyway, changes happened during construction. And we’re involved throughout construction to help manage that. We’re also there to help answer questions for the contractor. So I mean, go really technical with all that there’s something called an RFI request for information. We get those all the time. It’s like, Did you mean this or that? So we answer those kinds of questions. Basically, they

          Tim Fulton  28:14

          say the these instructions aren’t clear to me, or I don’t think these instructions are right. And I just want further clarity.

          Jonathan Barnes  28:23

          Yeah, click confirmation, that sort of thing. Right. Okay, that quick. And then there’s the two bad words in construction change order. Sometimes that happens. Okay, well, we won’t avoid that. That’s like, oops, that’s a miss. So that has to be added to the construction cost. Right. So we try to avoid that. But anyway, we’re involved in the process to help sort of manage all those things.

          Tim Fulton  28:49

          Okay. And then any sort of incremental steps after sort of, you know, all the door handles are getting put on the windows are done, the utility hookups happening, when do you walk away?

          Jonathan Barnes  29:04

          Well, kind of in a place called, we called steps, substantial completion. Okay. Right. That’s kind of when the contractors released, you know, liens or lease and everything. It’s like, okay, we’re pretty much there. We just have some sort of touch up some punch list items, sense of the call on etc. And so we’re, you know, we’re there till pretty much the end, I mean, let’s say occupancy, for apartment project. And then, you know, there’s project close out and things need to be addressed afterwards. And, you know, look, we’re also always available after our projects for finishes, quote, and there are things that come up later, you know, a tenant says, Hey, what about this or something gets kind of, you know, something doesn’t work out the way it’s planned in terms of how it functions. You know, we end up visiting, you know, we work for the, we’ll work with an owner to revisit things as needed. setosa there was a lot in here. I mean, it’s just,

          Tim Fulton  29:58

          I mean, we’ve done 30 minutes. Just now and I were in my head a third of the way through. And I if we have time, I do want to schedule another conversation with you. exhausting just talking about it, isn’t it? Well, I imagine for you, it’s a little bit you’re, you’re talking about your day to day. And so it’s like, this is not that exciting. Can’t be you do work in

          Jonathan Barnes  30:21

          primarily Columbus, is that right? fair to say? No, not just Columbus. But but but primarily. Yeah. Got it.

          Tim Fulton  30:27

          Got it. Talk about what you see as unique in terms of housing and development in Columbus. What should people know? If you’re in Indianapolis, and somebody knows, and there’s an architect there? And they’re like, so what’s Columbus? Like? How do you describe that housing development market here?

          Jonathan Barnes  30:49

          Yeah, and that would be another hour conversation, probably. And I think, you know, there’s a lot about Columbus that people don’t know, okay, who aren’t familiar, but you know, you, you know, gosh, I follow a lot of news outlets, and online, this or that, and, you know, you see these things all the time, it’s like the top 10 this or that, you know, Columbus is appearing and more and more on those kind of lists as an active housing market in a lot of ways, if, you know, you know, that the price is it could be availability, it could be construction, you know, all those things, there’s a lot happening here. And people are paying attention across the country, or even in the world. I mean, we had somebody from South Africa, sort of take an interest in Columbus, about a year and a half ago. So it’s a, it’s a pretty robust market for a number of reasons. So I would tell people that, you know, it’s worth paying attention to, because there’s a lot of activity, and therefore a lot of opportunity, if you care, to participate. And there’s a lot of really interesting development. I mean, this isn’t the sort of, you know, 90s, where, you know, a lot of the development was single family houses, you know, in far flung suburbs. It’s a very different market now. And it comes and with that, comes a lot of complexities and sort of challenges. When things are more about, you know, infill development, look, doing an apartment project, and maybe Grandview, people would necessarily think of that as Reuben because they think it has to be downtown. But a lot of those projects are pretty urban in their nature. So there’s a lot of interesting development and housing market happening here right now. And also, I would say, a lot of, I think, interesting thinking and approaches to housing in terms of how do you create, I would say responsible density. How do you create affordability? A big, big issue? How do you? How do you promote, sort of, you know, healthy neighborhoods, and robust transportation, and all those sort of things, because these projects aren’t sort of done in a, in a vacuum, they deal with so much more than the build the building and the property. And, you know, you really need to be aware of that. And so it’s either intentional or unintentional, those sort of connections and effects, right, better to be intentional about it, and do things that support more development that helps neighborhoods, right, right, that tries to avoid gentrification that tries to avoid displacement that tries to avoid, you know, inappropriate development, although that’s a very much of a subjective term. But you know, you have to be aware of the context really. Yeah, doing that. Yeah, that’s a big word context is has to do with a lot of things.

          Tim Fulton  33:49

          From a philosophical standpoint, I imagine from what I’m hearing, you agree that density is important and good. And that there’s a responsibility to make sure that the context for a project fits everything around it.

          Jonathan Barnes  34:06

          Correct? Yes. Both of those.

          Tim Fulton  34:08

          Okay. Are we doing a good job?

          Jonathan Barnes  34:12

          We’re trying, not yet at all. Not good enough at all. I mean, I kind of follow it like this. Look, it’s evident to me and, you know, people have lots of opinions about this sort of thing. But, you know, the fact is, and it is a fact Columbus is growing, that’s not something that’s on a handle, you can turn on or off. I mean, there are things that affect that, but, you know, most of it has to do with you know, a lot of things that are out of anybody’s control. I mean, zoning has tries to control it, you know, job market, you know, has a lot to do with it, but anyway, it is happening. So my point is Columbus is growing. And by that I mean, you know, people are moving here, a lot of people are moving here, businesses are forming, etc. So the city has to accommodate that it does come That in one way or another, right? It’s just a matter of how and how well, part of accommodating that well is to plan for it and recognize that that growth is happening more in urban environments. Why? Because that’s, that’s a preference. Right? Right.

          Tim Fulton  35:18

          It’s weird that I want to live,

          Jonathan Barnes  35:20

          right in the 90s, it was different. I mean, you know, you can’t really change that, you can create more or less opportunity. And there’s an effect to that. But that’s, that’s where people are looking to move and to open offices and things like that. So it’s growing, it’s Columbus is growing, and it’s growing in a way that has a focus in urban areas, then the only way to really accommodate that well is to understand that you need to accept a certain amount of density, right. And the only the only the real sort of problem with that, for a lot of people is just simply that it’s different. It’s changed, right? So I’m in this neighborhood, I’m using my neighborhood looking like this. Right? It’s different. So let’s stop it. You know, that’s, I mean, I don’t want to oversimplify, but it’s the change

          Tim Fulton  36:09

          the development. Speaking of Arlington, specifically, I think about that apartment develop, I think it’s apartments, just north of the shops on lane. And how, you know, I’m a member of that Facebook group, even though I’ve never lived in that neighborhood. And there was a lot of pushback. And it wasn’t about lowering property values or anything like that. It was really just this is different. And this is an Arlington, and this is what we want. But what what it was doing was adding density.

          Jonathan Barnes  36:43

          Yeah, yeah, that was one of the things but it’s also creating a more, let’s say, vibrant, mixed use area, which is a good thing. I mean, so now, you know, people will have more restaurants to go to, they’ll have a place for somebody to stay in a hotel. Right? etc, etc, instead of going somewhere else, right. So there certainly benefits from that. But yes, it’s about change in and of itself. But the fact is, I think what’s lost every neighborhood, every city changes, it’s just the way it happens, right? I mean, sometimes, sometimes cities will be come less dense. And that’s typically a bad thing that Detroit went through that for a long period. But for the most part, I mean, you know, a lot of cities, you’ll see growth, you know, it either in, you know, in a steep curb or not so steep curb, and you know, Arlington, for instance, lane Avenue, I mean, I don’t think anyone’s complaining that, you know, you know, back in the 40s, this was just a neighborhood with some like, you know, horse farms, because it was

          Tim Fulton  37:42

          right, I know, when the moaning that right, was just adjustment to that change.

          Jonathan Barnes  37:48

          Right. And that, you know, maybe some people would think that’s an unfair sort of perspective or criticism. But the reality is that he changed all the time they have and they will, and it’s, rather than sort of fight it and say, you know, well, we just don’t want that change, I think the smarter way is to, is to accept it and, and be more in control of how it happens. I, you know, and to get a little bit more kind of further into that sort of that whole argument, I think the groups that spend a lot of time and effort, and sometimes money fighting, these developments would be better off. If they tried to control them more, I think they don’t undertake. Now, they may say, Well, that’s what we’re trying to do. But the fact is, I mean, if they say, Look, you’re a developer, you’re going to do a project. And it has to happen in certain ways. You’re not going to do it for free, because, you know, most houses we live in and offices we work in, made some made money for somebody. That’s right. Sorry, sorry. But if you work with a developer in a realistic way, then it can really be a win win. If you’re unrealistic in your expectations, you know, it may be a win lose, or even a lose lose. But I think groups can have more control over how their neighborhoods develop, if they take more realistic approach. And ask for things in exchange, like, okay, we’ll let that be five storeys, but we want at least a little bit of a park that’s public.

          Tim Fulton  39:31

          Okay. Like we want to green space,

          Jonathan Barnes  39:33

          right, or whatever that is, right. I mean, I think there’s much more sort of potential for a constructive dialogue. And I kind of give and take if you approach it that way. But if it’s just like, you know, we say no, and that’s all we have to say. Then you either gonna win or lose. Well, let

          Tim Fulton  39:55

          me challenge you a little bit from the perspective of anonymous developer but a city and community interested person, it has to be a two way dialogue. Right. And if there is a known group that is going to be vocal in opposition, isn’t there some onus on the developer to give outreach from from the get go?

          Jonathan Barnes  40:21

          To engage? Absolutely. We Okay, we we encourage that all the time, you know, it usually never worked. It’s just for, like, try to get a project through without any kind of, you know, Outreach at all right. Okay, have to listen, you have to at least listen. Now, what you do what you do with that dialogue? You know, it depends a lot on what that dialogue is. And that’s, and that’s why I’m encouraging for neighborhood groups to really have an open dialogue. And not just sort of a, you know, you know, a one word No,

          Tim Fulton  40:55

          I mean, nimbyism is the term like, you just don’t, you can’t just say no, I don’t want that in my backyard.

          Jonathan Barnes  41:04

          Well, you can’t I just don’t think in the end, you’re gonna get the best outcome.

          Tim Fulton  41:07

          Right? What does Columbus need more of?

          Jonathan Barnes  41:13

          Well, in no particular order, but it is we need more affordable housing. And I don’t think people realize, you know, affordable housing effects, or the lack thereof affects everybody. You know, it’s not like, Look, my neighbors just fine. So put that over there. You know, it affects everybody, because it makes more businesses more viable, which makes the economy more viable, which makes a lot of people happier. And, you know, you can go into, like, what’s the value of equity? And, you know, that’s another several our discussion, but right, affordable housing is more important to more people than most people think. So we definitely need to find ways to do that. We need more mixed use environments, okay, are associated with I’ll say, sort of a more of a nerdy term transit corridors. So we need more, we need more dense development and more mixed use development in places where people move around town, right? Because you want to concentrate those on, on access, places that have access to transportation, and I don’t mean just cars, right? That’s a healthy city, a healthy city has more sort of variety of uses and buildings, in places that are accessible to transportation, because that’s a smarter way for a lot of people to live, there’s a lot of ways to do it, you can still live in the suburb in your big house perfectly fine. But I think we need to accommodate more people and more, you know, retail, and offices and entertainment, and whatever it is, in places that are accessible to transit options. That’s really

          Tim Fulton  43:04

          what are the things that are standing in the way of, first of all, affordable housing, and then the follow up is going to be better transit corridors? Well, and maybe that’s the conversations that aren’t happening, or the funding, or I don’t want to place blame, obviously, but what’s not what’s not happening that to get us what we need?

          Jonathan Barnes  43:28

          Well, it’s I mean, it’s, I mean, you have to say it kind of includes or even starts with planning, because that’s what that’s what sort of initiate change, but that’s starting to happen to me, I’ll make a plug for rapid five, which is a initiative that you ally, and others are sponsoring, that will start to change things and a lot of neighborhoods that really need to be changed in some really good ways. Those are the kinds of niches initiatives and that’s the kind of thinking that we need to make these things really happen. So it has to do with with kind of zoning ordinances in the end, and that comes from good planning, but it’s also a lot of it is just sort of, I don’t want to seem pedantic, but, you know, like, educating people. Just like, here’s what you could have, right? If you support these kinds of things, this is what you get, you can have, you know, your kids, when they graduate from OSU, they can live in a place like this, and they can walk a block and a half to a park bikeway that’s on a park that’s along a river and they can bike downtown for a concert or whatever. I mean, it literally comes down to creating changes that people actually can value and, and, and really take advantage of, if you embrace that kind of thinking in those kind of changes. Certainly doesn’t happen overnight. But you know, you have to start somewhere. And you know, the more that kind of thinking and the more that acceptance and understanding and that kind of development in that kind of way, in another, you know, five 810 20 years is gonna make a lot of a big difference.

          Tim Fulton  45:08

          And I normally ask these questions in the reverse order. But what is Columbus doing a good job at?

          Jonathan Barnes  45:15

          Well, a lot of things. I mean, I’m always very, I used to be surprised, I’m not surprised anymore, I’m just happy that there are a lot of, there are a lot of sort of, you know, I’ll just say kind of younger generations, right, that are, you know, moving here and there getting jobs, and they’re living here. And they’re, you know, buying and going to places that, you know, that, that, that make kind of cool neighborhoods and all that, that are more of those people doing really cool things. I mean, you know, startups and restaurants and people that make stuff and all that. And it’s happening in a really, and it has been in a really kind of important way. Now, for some time, I mean, people that move here now, like, you know, somebody in their 30s moved here for their job, they would say short north, that’s cool, you know, each fragment, and that’s cool. But they don’t know, like what it took for us to get here. Right? So kudos to all those people that just like, they didn’t wait to, you know, to get financing to get a bank loan to open up a shop to do this. They just did it. Right. That has happened in you know, hundreds, if not 1000s of ways in Columbus that have made this a better city. So we’re doing the kind of grassroots stuff really well, I think, and you can see how that’s happening. So that’s, uh, it’s because of that, that places like, East franklinton is what it is, right? Uh huh. You know, it’s the people, you know, at the, at the 400, you know, building over there. And all those were businesses that are in development, now. It’s coming, that came from sort of a grassroots kind of interest and toward development. And in that way, anyway, we’re doing that that stuff really, really well. And the other things we’re doing well is we are finally, thank you to Columbus, rewriting our, like, 1959 zoning code that served Columbus Well, for a couple of decades, and then not. So that’s, that’s big. That’s a big deal. And you know, zoning code, like, you know, a lot of people yawn about that. But in the end, that’s going to make things, I think, better for us. So

          Tim Fulton  47:27

          well, it’s what allows things to happen.

          Jonathan Barnes  47:30

          In an easier in a more, I would say, easier way. But in a better way to write, you can make sort of projects happen, that don’t fit the zoning code with a lot, a lot of effort. And we’ve been doing that for a long time. But it slows everything down. And I will tell you, that people that come here from other cities, where things are happening at a, at a pace that’s more suitable for a growing city like Columbus, right? They sort of just shake their heads, like, Are you kidding me? It’s like, you people have a variance for everything. That’s not the way to do it.

          Tim Fulton  48:05

          Right? One, and it allows for things to get stopped up.

          Jonathan Barnes  48:10

          Sure, exactly. So it’s not about you know, it’s not about getting around anything. It’s just about accepting what things how things really should happen, and making it that process just less cumbersome. People still have a voice and they need a voice in, in these developments in these projects in their own neighborhoods. They need a voice and they will have a voice. But there’s just a lot of the noise, I think needs to and should sort of come out of it.

          Tim Fulton  48:37

          Yeah. Well, and hopefully it makes things easier and more equitable as well. Exactly. It should. It should. Mr. Barnes, thank you so much for your time today. Thank you very much. It was fun. Thank you for listening to Confluence cast presented by Columbus underground. Again, you can get more information on what we discussed today in the show notes for this episode at the confluence cast comm please Rate, Subscribe, share this episode of the confluence cast with your friends, family, contacts, enemies, your favorite architect. If you’re interested in sponsoring the confluence cast get in touch with us. We can be reached by email at info at the confluence cast calm. Our theme music was composed by Benji Robinson. Our producer is Philip Cogley. I’m your host, Tim Fulton. Have a great week.

          The post Architecture & Design Firm JBAD appeared first on The Confluence Cast.

          51 min
        • Creative & Marketing Agency treetree

          How will businesses pivot when things get “back to normal?” Becca Apfelstadt, the co-founder of creative and marketing agency treetree, has a couple of ideas. In this episode, we discuss how the firm got started at a time of change, how they are pivoting in this time of change, and the importance of culture and the role of the office in the impending new normal.

          Shownotes

          • treetree
          • North Market
          • Northstar Cafe
          • Short North Arts District
          • Shannon Ginther
          • Columbus Women’s Commission
          • Cardinal Health

            • Full transcript:

            Tim Fulton  00:13

            Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the confluence cast presented by Columbus underground. We are a weekly Columbus centric podcast focusing on the civics, lifestyle, entertainment, and people of our city. I’m your host, Tim Fulton. This week, I spoke with Becca Apfel stat, the co founder of Columbus based creative and marketing agency tree tree. We discussed how they got started at a time of change, how they are pivoting in this time of change, where marketing agency models are going, the importance of culture and the role of the office when things go back to normal. Her passion for empowering women through mentorship, closing the pay gap, and parental leave policies, and why we need to take the karma off of Columbus. You can get more information on what we discussed today in the show notes for this episode at the confluence cast calm. Also, the confluence cast is on Patreon. Find out how to support this podcast on our website, the confluence cast calm [email protected] slash Confluence. Enjoy the interview. Sitting down here virtually talking with Becca Apple stat, the co founder and CEO of Columbus based agency tree tree. Becca, how are you?

            Becca Apfelstadt  01:39

            I’m doing well. Thanks, Tim, for having me.

            Tim Fulton  01:42

            No, absolutely. So first of all, tell us what tree tree is how to tree tree get started? Well, we

            Becca Apfelstadt  01:49

            got started in the middle of the recession. So we’re an agency that helps support what we call b2b giants, when they need creative firepower. And it wasn’t always that we started as a small dining room duo. It was myself and a co founder. And we really took an opportunity to leave a situation where the agency we were at before where we met didn’t make it through the recession, unfortunately, and debate just for context. This is the recession of 2008. Yes, yeah. Yeah, we started in March of 2009. When no one was, no one was hiring marketing folks. And so we just looked at each other and said, Well, if we’re not going to go get a job, most likely, let’s try this on our own. Let’s see if we can take all the great things, we learned that the place that we worked before, and carry those forward into a new culture and see if we can make it and I was 27 and had no clue what I was doing. And it was really scary. And she had two young kids and her husband had just started his own business and bought into a business about a year prior. So, you know, financially, it was scary, but we looked at each other and made the leap. And tree tree has has grown wonderfully and beautifully over the last 12 years. And we just in the last six months through COVID had the opportunity to kind of pause and take a look at where do we go next? And what where agency headed, and what’s the right next step for us. And so we’re really going all in on the target audience of b2b giants, we have a real knack for serving large, complex organizations where the subject matters complicated, their structure is hard to navigate. And that’s us, you know, excited to be able to go in and help marketing and sales teams shine and the times where it’s what we call go time, they might help with a pitch, they have an opportunity to launch a new product or service, they need to rally the sales team or associates around something and get everybody together for a great experience. And we’re able to put that extra oomph and force behind what those initiatives are and take things off their plate, move them forward and elevate the whole experience and have fun doing it together.

            Tim Fulton  04:18

            And you’re specializing more within the business business space. Prior to COVID. You certainly service business to business, but you also did stuff outside of that, but it tended to be special project space. Yeah. Do you are the UN this may be getting a little bit too into the weeds of agency stuff. But is it still campaign based primarily the work that you’re doing around individual projects and initiatives? Yeah,

            Becca Apfelstadt  04:44

            that’s really where the industry is going. I mean, more clients want to engage on a project basis. It’s not abnormal. The classic AR model is you know, it’s been contested for years that that’s going by the way And, and so fewer and fewer of those contracts are up for grabs. We never lived in that world, we started with that different model from the very beginning. So we’re just we’re focused less on general special projects for anyone and really kind of doing for ourselves what we have always recommended clients do and focusing more. And working as the agency of special projects got us here. And we’re very grateful for that journey, and gave us a lot of varied experience. But we’ve found really our sweet spot and what gets us excited and where we can add the most value and have decided to go all in on that.

            Tim Fulton  05:37

            How many folks work for tree tree, either full time or contract?

            Becca Apfelstadt  05:43

            Right now we have about 15 full time. And then we have anywhere probably about five FTA equivalents at any given time that we’re working on contract basis and got it kind of a bench of extended talent that we can tap into, to flex in and out as needed.

            Tim Fulton  06:02

            What did for agency, this is basically office life, like, what did office life? How’s it looked over the course of the past year? Where is it now? I’m diving right into it. And where does it go? Where is it going to be in three months, six months, at least in terms of your visioning as a business leader? Yeah, this

            Becca Apfelstadt  06:23

            is really interesting, because I was always of the mindset that we’re together we are we are in person, we are all over, we used to call ourselves puppies, we were like on top of each other we had, we just love to be collaborating and in the same room and always around each other. And it was really not we were not set up for remote work. years ago, you know, we had this this beautiful office, and we still do you have a beautiful office, but the office was the center of a lot of things. And we use it as part of our selling process. And it was really a part of our brand. And we had

            Tim Fulton  06:59

            during the battleship building right

            Becca Apfelstadt  07:00

            on the battleship building, first floor right next door to the north market, wonderful base, we were there for just over five years. And then we designed and built out a new space above north star in the short north. And we got through that construction process, which took a whole year to make it exactly how we wanted. And then what happened then, and we got the pictures on the wall, and we got you know, everything situated and everybody organized. And we were there for six weeks, and the governor shut down the state. And we told everybody to go pack up and go home. And we haven’t really been back since in any regular cadence. People have used it, you know, here and there. But we’ll be going back in mid June. And I had to think really hard about the role of the office and let go of some things as as a leader because, you know, you can easily send signals to your team that you trust or don’t trust them at this moment in time based on how you fund in the post COVID kind of situation, and what return to office will look like. So I did a survey with my team and and got information from everybody about how they were feeling, what their ideal state would be, you know, describe even if it’s completely impractical, where would you work? How often would you be at the office? What would your schedule be like? What equipment do we have? What tools software? What would the structure of your day be like, dream with me? and lay it all out? and looked at all of those answers? And what’s best for us? And what’s best for you? And how do you see this impacting clients and work and pros and cons and we went through this whole thing. And I really sat with all that data, I looked at tons of information that’s out there and studies that have been completed and identified that, yes, we spent a ton of money building out this beautiful new office space. And I could just force everybody to go in there and use it because it’s the sunk cost otherwise. But I would have really hurt some team members feeling good about the culture and tree tree. And our culture is so important and having this opportunity to make their favorite place they ever worked. And the client’s favorite agency they ever hired is really my purpose for wanting to be in business for myself. That’s, that’s gets me excited to be able to do that for folks. So I came up instead with an alternative where we’re going to do work in the office two days a week of their choice from 11 to three only because they came up as such an issue that people really just hate the commute and don’t want to do the back and forth that hour a day of going you know through the traffic was just such a stressful point. And I heard so many great stories about what people are doing with that time instead x Or sizing, getting more sleep time with family eating, actually eating breakfast with their kids that they had never been able to before. We had people say that they’re, you know, their lab results, their doctors are telling them, I’m healthier than I’ve been in years. And I should, you know, keep doing whatever I’m doing. And a lot of that came down to making sure that they were using that time appropriately. So it’s like, how do you What’s the benefit of forcing us back in away from that if this is working, because we’ve had productivity and we’ve, we’ve been able to wow clients, and we’ve hung on to our culture. And we’ve gotten through this together, so the reward is, and the bright spot is, we figured out a new way to work that balances and creates this hybrid, and allows people to find that fit between autonomy and accountability. To really have everybody be accountable to their role and their tasks, and work independently, and be relied upon, in order to have that autonomy.

            Tim Fulton  11:05

            Yeah. And when you say, trust, I’m gonna attempt to translate it that if you were to force all 15 of those folks, hey, it’s time to go back, it’s time to go back to 40 hours a week, that may feel to them as though you don’t trust them, right beginning to be getting the work done,

            Becca Apfelstadt  11:24

            because they just did it all from home for over a year. And they got the right. And so while all of a sudden, you know, what’s what, but what is, you know, the the interpretation a few layers down, if they read between the lines, I think it sends that signal. And I mean, I’ve read studies that there’s employees who are I think it’s 41% of the workforce globally, according to something that came out through Microsoft recently, is considering a switch in jobs and looking COVID has forced everybody to rethink their life, and style. And people have found that this hybrid environment works for them. And some people want all remote work. And if their employer that they’re currently with doesn’t offer it, they’re gonna go find it somewhere else.

            Tim Fulton  12:11

            Right. And so does the because the the big at least I found in my work, the detriment has been communication with working fully remote, you have to wait for a stand up or project update meeting to learn what’s happening rather than finding out at the watercooler or, or just being able to like pop down to somebody’s office or somebody doesn’t want to compose a three paragraph slack message about the most recent phone call they had with a client and how things are pivoting and changing. So they just sit on it 48 hours later, it may not be worthwhile, and the people who never knew about it, were still moving forward with a design or copywriting or something didn’t need to be doing that. And if everybody had been in the office at the same time, you would have known and so is that the virtue of those 11 to three days of like this, this is when we will be communicating.

            Becca Apfelstadt  13:10

            Well, we’re still going to have our company stand ups, you know, our status, virtually on Monday morning and Friday morning, which we’ve been doing through COVID. And on Wednesday, we’re going to come together, which could be somebody whose day that they choose to be the office or not, we’re going to try to come together for a team lunch just for that camaraderie and culture. Everybody just having some fun together, getting a chance to chat. But we’ve been in the business of over communicating this entire year. So I don’t feel like we’ve really missed an In fact, I feel that people almost seem to be more informed than they were before when we were all scattered. We’ve used slack we’ve used video updates. We’ve I’ve recorded myself talking through kudos for someone or something that happened and sent out a video to the team for them to watch when they have time. Then in the moment on that day, you know, we maybe we couldn’t find time in the schedule to get everyone rounded up and do it live. So a video at least they get my my face and the expressions and the enthusiasm, communicate in the way that they would have live. So we’ve found other methods it’s forced us to have to be more creative and and to think through who needs this information now and we’ve really encouraged people to not like if there’s something that you need to say stop on this project. Call them on slack. Right. Don’t wait for their green lights. Come on. We’ve got cell phones, we all know how to reach each other. Get much of them, raise your hand get the flagwaving

            Tim Fulton  14:50

            right. Some agency work is set up through billable hours. And you guys are you transitioning away from tracking those hours. Most Agencies

            Becca Apfelstadt  15:00

            track what they call timesheets, where you know, every hour, whether it’s a project fee, or it’s a time and materials or a bank of ours retainer, whatever you want to call it. And that’s all being tracked, we were in that same camp, and we had utilization targets for each person. And then we were sending this communication to everybody to say, you know, design your day, however, works best for you and do the things you need to do get out for a walk, don’t sit on zoom all day. And they’re like, but I got this utilization target. And so it was this competing message of go out, and, you know, design it however you want, and get your stuff done. As long as you get it done. We don’t care, but that we didn’t take away the target. And so there was this pushback and feeling of I don’t, I don’t know, which is true, like, wish they knew I care about here more, right. So I thought about that, and realize that in order for the return to work to work the way that we want, we had to lift the timesheet handcuffs, and people to just do their work and have that accountability. And trust that they’re getting it done. And they’re being mindful. And then we have really smart people. My old boss used to say, we hired adults, and now we’re going to treat them like adults. And so this is one of the only thing we still track is if we are charging the client on an hourly basis. So I have a handful of clients that work with us in that kind of manner. And so we still track that. But it’s been really freeing for the team. I mean, the the feedback has been incredible. People feel like it’s a big lift in their day, a huge lift to not have to do that and go back. And the other thing with timesheets is often it’s, it’s inaccurate. I’ve read people who’ve actually tried to study this and break it down. And it’s like you’re you’re reconstructing your day, often after the fact. And our stories are very fallible.

            Tim Fulton  17:06

            We know and we have a an incentive to fluff it a bit.

            Becca Apfelstadt  17:12

            Yeah, right. Yeah. And if there isn’t enough work for them to do to hit that target. That’s my problem. And they’re not in development and sales most likely,

            Tim Fulton  17:25

            right? As you sort of come into your own and tree tree, I’m thinking specifically about how you’ve placed an importance around mentoring other women entrepreneurs, if you could talk about your passion there and what and why that’s important to you.

            Becca Apfelstadt  17:41

            Yeah, I really feel like there are so many females who have great ideas and passions and interests, and they talk themselves out of it. And don’t consider how it could get done instead of why you know what the roadblocks are. And I’ve heard too many of those stories and too many of the regrets. And I love the opportunity to help inspire someone to think you know, differently, it doesn’t mean that you have to have funding, and you have to go give up your life savings, I started to retreat with my co founder, we each put $500 into a bank account, and we each brought a laptop. And later, this place is flourishing, you know, and it’s sustained my family for that entire year, and lots of other families. So it’s possible, you know, and just helping people think through, not how, how this can’t happen, but what needs to happen in order for it to happen and getting them connected to resources. That might be helpful. Just, we got to support each other. And it’s not that I don’t, that I don’t support or try to mentor wouldn’t be open to, you know, male co founders or founders who are looking at that, as well. But particularly for women and young women who look at my story and want to pick my brain, I try to make myself available as often as possible, because people did that. For me. It was really cool and meaningful. And, and I can in hindsight, look back at what I wish I would have known and give them some watch outs and some things to consider. And they’ll make maybe different mistakes, because the struggles really do help as well, like somebody ran on LinkedIn the other day, when I mentioned that I was I just spent an hour doing a walk and talk with somebody who was going through considering getting something off the ground. And I said I shared some of the stuff I wish I would have known and she said but would you have done anything different? And I said, question, probably not probably wouldn’t have done anything different. But maybe she can make different mistakes. And maybe that’s helpful, because you know that you at least don’t have to do the same ones I did.

            Tim Fulton  19:58

            Well it’s additive, right. Like Did those mistakes got made? Yeah. So now I get to make brand new mistakes and solve for that.

            Becca Apfelstadt  20:06

            still making them every day? Don’t worry, it never ends.

            Tim Fulton  20:09

            Yeah. And is it is your passion for mentoring other women? Simply? Well, I imagine it’s I don’t certainly don’t want to put words in your mouth here. But it’s multifaceted in that you want people who are like you to succeed. One and two, you there is a, let’s call it a dearth of women in the space of entrepreneurs that like, met, men have been groomed to think I should be successful, and I should I can go and do whatever I want. And it’s maybe, and that’s the gendered part of it.

            Becca Apfelstadt  20:47

            Yes. Yes. I that fires me up. And it makes me It does. It makes me kind of angry that there’s not more done to inspire and empower women to feel just as competent and capable, because they are. And I said, from the beginning, I mean, one of the big things for me and getting this going, was not, it’s like, yeah, we have some naysayers. And we want to go prove them wrong. But I started tree tree, because I could, and just because, you know, when when you can do something you should. And and I think there’s so many more women out there who have ideas that can do it. And so they should go do that and try it. Because you can always go get another job. You can’t always take that time in that moment to try it. So if it’s in you, and you have this idea, and you have this passion, I mean, what’s to lose, maybe there’s risks, there’s financial risks, there’s but there’s risk of regret to if you don’t?

            Tim Fulton  21:51

            Well, and just to draw that line, the mentorship that you’re providing is hopefully demonstrating that they can,

            Becca Apfelstadt  21:58

            yeah, I try to help them identify all their superpowers, and the things that they are not giving themselves enough credit for as to why they can and should do this. Because they’ll come with plenty of reasons why they shouldn’t, and plenty of things that are the barriers and the obstacles. And I try to turn all that on its head and go Okay, well, the house sell for that, or but but over here, look at this. And and what what the what is the world missing, if you don’t do this,

            Tim Fulton  22:30

            that’s an excellent point. I want to pivot back to as a business leader, you’ve you’ve done your best to demonstrate that treating people well as employees is important. And that’s reflected in how you research that you’re going back to work strategy, and how you did outreach to your current employees to figure that out. You’ve talked in the past also about your passion surrounding closing the pay gap, and also parental leave policies. And I’m just wondering if you could talk about those.

            Becca Apfelstadt  23:04

            Yeah, I think the parental leave policy is a really good example where I actually mean, I had two children during the time that tree tree was growing at the pace. So it was a real life example. And I we had a maternity leave policy. And it was considered generous, you know, at the time, six weeks at 60%, it was something you know, this is this is years ago. And so I when I had my, my son, I gave myself the opportunity to experience our maternity leave policy as it was in place. And I experimented and did it myself, I paid myself 60% of my salary through our short term disability, and came back to work after six weeks, and realized our policy sucked. And it was. And so I changed it because that’s one of the great things you can do when you are, are at the helm of your own small business, you can make changes and make decisions that make policy better for other people. So I ran it through the filter of how would I want this to be for my family, because I I think of tree tree as a team and you know, as a family are people I really really care about and they’re at a moment where they’re welcoming people in and and it’s exhausting, and it’s a lot of recovery. And it’s a lot of adjustment, and you’re nowhere near ready. I don’t think after six weeks to let go of the little one. You’re ready to come back and have yourself fully engaged in business discussions and putting on regular pants and all those things.

            Tim Fulton  24:55

            Yeah,

            Becca Apfelstadt  24:55

            basically, it’s your kind of a wreck for a while you need a little more time. Yeah. And so I did 100% for 12 weeks for moms, dads birth and adoption. And we had so far five saplings join us on this policy.

            Tim Fulton  25:15

            My like, Well, you did there.

            Becca Apfelstadt  25:17

            Yeah. My niece. And we have a couple people currently expecting as well, which is really exciting. And I’m just so glad and they’ve come back and not missed a beat. And it’s been an investment in our culture, and in showcasing what a small business can do, that maybe seems like a stretch to others. And I know from anecdotal stories that have come back, that me doing that has caused at least three other businesses to reevaluate their own policy, and make positive change in our local community. And that made me feel really good,

            Tim Fulton  26:01

            then that’s great. I mean, that positive impact is great, not just for your employees, but the, the diffusion effect, if you will. Yeah, there more work you want to do in advocacy in that space?

            Becca Apfelstadt  26:14

            Yeah, I mean, I think it’s sharing sharing my story and continuing to other business owners, a couple of the ones that I’ve impacted so far have been led by males, who never about including dads or, or thought that dads should get less. And I pushed back on that and said, if you don’t give equal leave for the father, you’re sending a signal perhaps that gender norms should exist. And it’s up to the woman to be, you know, fully caretaking, you know, in those other moments. So, yeah, why do you as a leader want to make that statement? And what what if your statement instead was take the time and support? You know, maybe she needs to go back to work sooner? And he’s saying, right. I mean, why? Why are we making that assumption? So it was like, Whoa, I never thought about that. Yeah, I don’t, I don’t want to send that signal and times are changing.

            Tim Fulton  27:17

            Mm hmm. Certainly.

            Becca Apfelstadt  27:19

            And for adoption, you know, I heard stories, my husband was adopted. And I have had people at tree tree that we’ve employed in the past to have adopted at other companies. And they told me stories about having to essentially, like being forced almost to lie about how their time off work, like working with their class, to come up with a way to cover up the fact that they were taking extra time in this giant corporation. That wouldn’t give time, but the baby wasn’t legally old enough to put in childcare yet. are legally responsible for it. Yeah, for the child, you know, and so you’ve adopted this baby, just because you don’t have any physical recovery. They weren’t giving any paid time off. And I’m like, That’s terrible.

            Tim Fulton  28:10

            Yeah, from an adoption standpoint, just because you’re not physically recovering doesn’t mean that you aren’t, even if the baby is like to like, they don’t have time to transition. And nest for this person, is also the life change that you’re experiencing, and going through, and you need time to do that, and

            Becca Apfelstadt  28:32

            agree that you can get from people to come back, feeling connected to the culture and taken care of. It’s just incredible. And it’s, it’s money well spent, and our team, even the folks that had already had their children or who were or who were who had decided they weren’t gonna have children. When we announced this policy, it was one of my happiest moments. This company ever just to see the team’s response and reaction, there were tears, there was high kicks, it was lots of hugging lots of just pride, that they worked at a place that cared about families like this. And so business owners out there who have considered this and want to talk more about the ins and outs of it and how it works. I’m an open book, I’ll share our policy and how it’s worked for us how we’ve structured it, the benefits we’ve seen, but truly believe it’s an incredible asset and something that we need.

            Tim Fulton  29:34

            That’s great. Well, I recognize that you’re passionate about it. I’m curious if there’s much to say about the the pay gap issue. That’s a passion of yours.

            Becca Apfelstadt  29:42

            Yeah, I mean, I just I think that there’s more work to do. We’ve made progress locally here in Columbus, what Shannon Cantor’s initiative that that she worked on through the Columbus women’s Commission has us get somewhere I was in a room where I got to watch some local leaders really, who had not been exposed to how the numbers, how disparate the numbers were, and go back and make positive change in their organizations, we employ almost all women, not by not by choice kind of by chance that just just so happens. So we don’t really have the issue inside our own company. But I am very sensitive to it and aware of it and advocate for that not being the case, you know, anymore. And, and I’ve really marveled at how some of our local male leaders have have stood up for that. And like what Mike Coffman at Cardinals done their client of ours, to call attention to it and make changes based on the knowledge like once you have that knowledge, you can’t ignore it, you got to go do something about it. And the companies that are are paving that path, and I think that’s commendable.

            Tim Fulton  30:58

            Absolutely. I want to thank you for your time today. But before I let you go, I want to ask a question that I tend to ask in a lot of episodes is one What do you think Columbus is doing really well? And then the second question will be the reverse of that.

            Becca Apfelstadt  31:13

            I think Columbus is doing a really great job at attracting talent. That is, we’ve come a long way and being able to get people to come here and have the location be such a deterrent, or such a hurdle to overcome, you know, coming in from for the retail brands, top talent coming in the tech top talent coming in from universities. Just the stories I hear and what I see, it does not feel like it’s such a hard sell. They might, you know, have have come in for the interview. But then they they needed a lot more massaging to get comfortable with the idea of leaving their family or coming here. And all of the the restaurants and the culture and how the landscape has changed. The parks, the you know, just all the recreation, access for from the airport, you know what they’ve done to make it travel? I feel like there’s just been a lot of positive enhancements to the lifestyle here that have made it easier for people from other markets to consider making that move. And that’s really, for our business community.

            Tim Fulton  32:30

            And what could Columbus do better?

            Becca Apfelstadt  32:32

            I think Columbus could do better at collectively having more confidence in that. I think we as a community, we’re still, you know, I’ve been in the business community here, close to 20 years. And it’s still like, you talk to someone from outside of the market. It’s like, Oh, I’m, I’m from Columbus, Ohio, almost like it’s got to be.

            Tim Fulton  33:01

            You have to qualify it right. You’re a subscriber to the mike Coleman swagger, like, yeah.

            Becca Apfelstadt  33:10

            Yeah, we got to have some more swagger. Right, we got to have some more. I’m from Columbus. And if you don’t know where that is, what’s your problem? You know, right. What? Why, you

            Tim Fulton  33:22

            know, I’m not talking about a medium sized town in Georgia.

            Becca Apfelstadt  33:25

            Yes. Or Indiana or wherever. Right? So I think we have a ways to go with the confidence. And someone that I admire used to call it like, let’s just take the comma off of Columbus. Because it’s always like that, comma, Ohio, how can we take the comma off of Columbus and our industry? You know, we deal with that to it, you know, the the big ad shops aren’t there in San Francisco and New York City and LA and all of the big markets and there’s, there’s it’s hard to get attention sometimes. But we’ve been able to work with a lot of brands that are headquartered here and, and make great headway with those fortune 500. And as we expand with our new positioning, we’re really looking at, you know, going outside of the market to so we’re gonna have to keep that in mind as as a company, you know, it’s

            Tim Fulton  34:23

            absolutely

            Becca Apfelstadt  34:24

            let that be something that gets in our way.

            Tim Fulton  34:26

            Absolutely. Becca, thank you so much for your time today.

            Becca Apfelstadt  34:29

            Thank you, Tim. It was a pleasure.

            Tim Fulton  34:44

            Thank you for listening to the confluence cast presented by Columbus underground. Again, you can get more information on what we discussed today in the show notes for this episode at the confluence cast calm. Please Rate, Subscribe, share this episode of the confluence cast. with your friends, family, contacts, enemies, your favorite co founder. If you’re interested in sponsoring the confluence cast get in touch with us. We can be reached by email at info at the confluence cast calm. Our theme music was composed by Benji Robinson. Our producer is Philip Cogley. I’m your host, Tim Fulton. Have a great week.

            The post Creative & Marketing Agency treetree appeared first on The Confluence Cast.

            36 min
          • Wexner Center for the Arts

            Contemporary art and the presentation of it has traditionally been a class-based endeavor. The Wexner Center for the Arts is trying to change that through its programs and the type of work that they present. I spoke with Johanna Burton, the Center’s Executive Director about what the Wexner Center is and how you should view it, how to convince people to expose themselves to the arts, the importance of being a multi-disciplinary laboratory, and how they are pivoting in this time.

            Shownotes

            • Wexner Center for the Arts
            • Johanna Burton
            • New Museum
            • Keith Haring
            • Bebe Miller episode
            • Wex WOSU collaboration
            • Dionne Custer Edwards
            • Ann Hamilton
            • Counterfeit Madison episode
            • Mark Lomax episode
            • 15th & High
            • Climate Changing exhibition
            • Free Sundays

              • This Confluence Cast episode is sponsored by Art Makes Columbus, Columbus Makes Art, featuring stories about our city’s incredible artists — stories full of inspiration, challenge, passion, and success. For videos, articles, an up-to-the-minute calendar of events, and an artist directory visit ColumbusMakesArt.com, the resource for all things arts and culture in the capital city.

              Full transcript:

              Tim Fulton  00:11

              Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the confluence cast presented by Columbus underground. We are a weekly Columbus centric podcast focusing on the civics, lifestyle, entertainment, and people of our city. I’m your host, Tim Fulton. This week, contemporary art and the presentation of it has traditionally been a class based endeavor. The Wexner Center for the Arts is trying to change that through their programs and the type of work that they present. I spoke with Johanna Burton, the center’s executive director about what the Wexner Center is and how you should view it, how to convince people to expose themselves to the arts, the importance of being a multidisciplinary laboratory, and how they’re pivoting in this time. You can get more information on what we discussed today in the show notes for this episode at the confluence cast calm. Also, the confluence cast is on Patreon. Find out how to support this podcast on our website the confluence cast calm [email protected] slash Confluence. The Confluence cast is sponsored this week by art makes Columbus Columbus makes art, featuring stories about our city’s incredible artists, stories full of inspiration, challenge, passion and success. For videos, articles, an up to the minute calendar of events and an artist directory visit Columbus makes art.com the resource for all things arts and culture in the capital city. Enjoy the interview. Sitting down here virtually with Johanna Burton, the executive director of the Wexner Center for the Arts at The Ohio State University. Joanna How are you?

              Johanna Burton  01:54

              I’m great, Tim, how are you? Thank you so much for having me today.

              Tim Fulton  01:57

              No, absolutely. First of all, for those that don’t know, who had been sitting under a rock for the past 30 years, give sort of the the elevator pitch of what is the Wexner Center for the Arts?

              Johanna Burton  02:09

              Well, everyone should know. But now, just now, the Wexner Center for the Arts is a multidisciplinary Art Center. It is a non collecting institution that’s been around for 32 years, we were we opened our doors in 1989. Something that I often forget to say but I want to make sure I say here is well other institutions, I think over that time have really become more multidisciplinary have thought more about the the kind of intersection between and even transposition between disciplines, think ours remains one of the few at least in America that still thinks about these disciplines as equal and, and also really kind of tries very hard to, to bring them together and in discussions around the disciplines, but also between the disciplines. And we are the only such entity on a university campus, which I find really interesting. Because we are a laboratory and follow that mandate.

              Tim Fulton  03:09

              And just to give context for the audience, when you say the multiple disciplines, you are talking about visual art, you’re talking about performing arts, you’re talking about film and video, you’re talking about public programs even

              Johanna Burton  03:22

              less. It’s great, you say that. So I think we’ve always talked about ourselves as three arms, the ones that are performing arts exhibitions and film video, we have changed. Not surprisingly, given my background, what had been the education department is now learning and public practice and it is considered a fourth and equal programming arm. For the reasons that you started to slide into I think it education I think more and more is being understood as not the thing that explains what else is happening in a museum but as an equal partner in producing ideas and, and really being able to animate audiences in ways that I think are increasingly important. So yes, so now we are a forearmed. Beast.

              Tim Fulton  04:03

              Excellent. And talk about your background and what brought you to the Wex.

              Johanna Burton  04:06

              Sure. So I was trained as an art historian and sort of assumed I would teach and write which I have done, but quickly realized that as much as I enjoyed thinking historically and in the in the present, I also more than anything, wanted to work with living artists, living artists are paving the way always and following their lead enables you to think about ideas before they even become fully codified, I think in the culture. So I found my way into some sort of hybrid positions. In the last that I was in prior to coming to the West was at the new Museum in New York, which is an institution that has a lot of affinities with the West. So similar history. It’s a little bit older, but was also really dedicated to living artists, to the social kind of impact made by an artist and and there I was the catering director of education and public engagement. and I both curated and did all the community outreach and public engagement. So I knew from that platform, which I was able to really kind of choreograph in certain ways over the seven years, I was there that I would love to do the same for a larger institution. And so when the job at the West came up, I jumped at the chance to come and lead the institution into the next era. Can you

              Tim Fulton  05:25

              talk through sort of what priorities you bring into your your bio on the website makes it very clear that you’re interested in talking about issues of diversity interested in? I’m gonna go ahead and say leaning on art in order to facilitate discussions, and you talked about that, in terms of what I think of from my past there, as public programs. Talk about sort of the the conversations that you’re interested in having and the priorities that you have around that?

              Johanna Burton  05:54

              Absolutely. So my priorities are as somebody who again comes at, at artistic practice and and artists, as spaces for conversation, to really think about the wax, maybe less as a I mean, it is it’s a presenting institution, right? You come and you see a film and you come and you see a performance, you come to exhibitions. But what’s special about a place like the wax, which is a non collecting institution, the resources are really much more, I think, for me, at least, kind of interestingly, put towards the artist in real time. So what does it mean to commission somebody to, to make something without knowing exactly what it is before you, you commit to saying it’s gonna go on your walls? So I’m thinking, you know, we’ve used the word laboratory for many years to describe the wax? And how do you take that to its full conclusion and think about it through a kind of lens of ethics and equity, transparency, and really think about the museum as a place that that goes, sort of that changes its audience and is changed by its audience. So in the next few years, I think what we’re aiming for is to really honor this idea of both education, we’re on a college campus, but also laboratory in the sense that we’re inviting artists in at various stages in their career to do things that maybe they wouldn’t have the agency to do elsewhere. And it’s not so much about giving them license to fail, but more licensed to not have to know exactly what something will look like. So the aim, I think, and one of the reasons that I loved the wax, when I first heard about it, is to go back to a model where you invite an artist and and you commit to each other for six months, or nine months or two years, or whatever it takes. And you invite the audience into that space. A lot of people find contemporary art to be really kind of challenging, and and in many cases, I think, feel that it’s not for them, when in fact, I think contemporary art is the most poised of any sort of era, to be in discussion with, with everybody. I mean, it really is about reflecting on on what’s happening in the world. But to make that really clear, I think you have to pull the veils off and really ask people to join in. So my priorities have a lot to do with really thinking about contemporary art as a space that generative and generous and welcoming. At the same time as difficult. I’m not saying that you can’t find yourself in a situation where you’re uncomfortable. I think a lot of times people will be but that there’s a space for that and that it is really about learning and growing in in a kind of joined and communal space.

              Tim Fulton  08:37

              Yeah, I think a little bit here about in times that I’ve interviewed artists from the Wexner Center specifically I’m thinking about BB Miller. Yeah. And the the conversation for me, not with no dance background, other than having written press releases about it, trying to have a conversation about how should somebody who has not viewed contemporary dance before view it. And I’ll link the conversation in the show notes. It’s a it’s a wonderful conversation. The other thing I think about is sort of coming down off the pedestal a little bit. While it the art world can be viewed from the outside as like, that’s not for me, because I am, I am just a person, I am just a person here functioning within my life. And if you come down and sort of offer up this is how to take this in or this is what it’s related to or this is what it’s speaking to. You can grow those audiences

              Johanna Burton  09:33

              right. No, BB is a great example. And I watched some of your your discussion with her and I had lunch with her not long ago with Ann Hamilton on a on a similar podcast that we’ve been doing and, and it’s a great it’s, I think what you’re pointing to is really important, which is there are very specific technical ways that one can look at, say dance, and that is an audience that I think we also want to you know, it’s not like everybody should have the same skill set or vocabulary or language. But somebody like BB what’s so amazing about her and she’s a great person to point to is she can speak that language of having gone through, you know, training she’s very well steeped in and the kind of language and history of modernist and postmodernist dance at the same time that she’s talking about embodiment, and, and feeling and into relationality. And you can, and sometimes actually, what’s so wonderful is maybe that’s where you enter, and you think, Oh, my God, this is the thing I’ve been waiting for. And then you go further, and you can access these other layers. So it’s something that I’m always really hoping is clear when I’m talking about accessibility is, that doesn’t mean everyone has the same experience it that you can meet multiple experiences, through practices that understand the world through a kind of multifocal lens. And I think that’s where the multidisciplinarity is interesting. We shouldn’t have four separate audiences, we can have audiences who may be really devoted to film video. But what if they then walk through the gallery while they’re waiting for the film to start, and that’s, I think, a really extraordinary and interesting way that we can become more accessible. But again, I think we have work to do to convince people that that we want, they want, we want them to come through our doors, and we want them to, to have a moment of an unknowing that we can meet them, meet them there.

              Tim Fulton  11:27

              And this is the point in the episode where I say full disclosure, I used to work at the Wexner Center, because I think I’m obligated to do that. Talk about how do you foster that right as the director, how do you foster these frankly, silos? Yeah. From a curatorial standpoint, how do you foster sort of that interdisciplinary work between those mediums?

              Johanna Burton  11:55

              It’s interesting. So we’re starting to I can’t I don’t have an answer. And we’re working. I think what’s interesting is, I think it’s more of a structural approach than anything that has to do with the content. So, for instance, this will seem like I’m not answering your question, but but I am, when I began, the institution, like many had, had, and still has a hierarchy. But I, but I changed that from being a director and Deputy Director to more of a C suite model, where there’s a cabinet of both head, the top administrators and the and the department heads from each programmatic area. And the hope, right is that we’re all in these rooms talking about the institution as a whole. And then that also becomes the way a way of working across departments. So interestingly, again, what we now call LPP, which was education now as learning and public practice, headed by Dan Custer, Edwards, was naturally a kind of, you know, one of those programs that did move between the other programs, which is why ironically, it’s often sidelined and not thought about as its own program is it’s an intentional inter Weaver. Well, we’re trying to have more and more of those spaces, where people are talking about their ideas and Mattox arise, it’s really challenging because people have been trained, and I don’t mean at the West, I just mean in culture and in the world, to be really proprietary to want to author things to protect their resources. So siloing happens where even in an institution that’s as porous and flexible as the lexx. You know, people worry, I think more about what they’re going to lose and what they gain. And I think we’re shifting some of that through things like the change in how the leadership ships, C suite works, but also things like, we were talking about this before the episode, we’re now doing trainings for all staff on how a budget is made, how philanthropy works, what an endowment is, how we pick our how budgets are built, and and we have to start doing that out of necessity when we had major budget cuts over the last year, as many museums have. So that there was, while there was bad news, there was also an understanding across the center. And I think that that translates or I hope it translates to things like programming also, when we’re thinking about how to work maybe in different ways, and of course, capitalism has figured this out, you just read about the Zappos. Zappos works, right? Everybody cross trains, and everybody you know, you can change. By the way, I say to some somewhat ironically, but I also think it’s interesting that we are the spaces of creative, we’re supposed to be the spaces that model this behavior. And I think we’re what we’re very behind infrastructurally.

              Tim Fulton  14:32

              Yeah, well, and I think about sort of, you know, we are recording this virtually, primarily because of the time that we’re living in. And I think about how important it is to empower your people with information. Right. Like you said, there’s bad news. Yeah, but here’s why. It feels like folks who are in higher up positions, want to guard information. Rather than democratize it, and let people know, here’s why the decisions that have been made have been made. And I just want to give you a little bit of kudos for doing that. So,

               

              Johanna Burton  15:15

              think what it is, is it’s about, you know, asking for, and again, I think this is what’s so interesting about this moment is we have to build a different kind of institution. I mean, if you look around the nation, right now, museums are not faring well. And I mean, that both in terms of they’re shutting people are very quickly realizing that the the structures of funding are really precarious. But also, you know, staffs and institutional, you know, the kind of paradigms of how they’re run are being questioned in really profound ways. And, and, you know, part of the reason that we again started to roll out this, this model of engaging staff was because there was bad news, but also because there was good news, which is that cultural spaces can shift and transfigure and transform. And it’s not just through the programming, it’s through the way that you structure, you structure a staff and, and make sure that people feel like they are part of a mission and part of part of an institutional mandate. Another part of that that’s very big, and we are hardly alone, is we’re really hoping to think through dei diversity, equity inclusion, you know, all of the all of the questions accessibility around, not only who comes to your museum and who you serve, but what is the cultural space that you create, in order to make that possible. And so I’ve been working very closely, you know, across staff, but really, with, again, I’ll name Dionne Custer, Edwards has been doing a lot of this work for the 15 years that she’s been at the works in a different position. And we’re starting to assemble, we have begun to assemble a small Working Group, at the Wex of staff, a community thought partner group, and then we’re working with, with both sort of local and international partners who do this work, because it feels like everything’s an equity question question down to, you know, how you interview people to, you know, of course pay and, and the kind of work that’s done. So, I think there will be growing pains. I mean, I feel that myself, I’ve been dedicated to this work for my entire life, but I still feel like I’m, you know, daily reminded of my blind spots. But we’ve we’ve decided that this will be an institutional mandate. And that hopefully, again, as we’re moving forward, that will enable a platform that feels that feels like it’s a good place to work from, and also last for artists maybe to work, even with even more support.

              Tim Fulton  17:53

              And so being welcoming not just to a hate this term, non traditional audiences, but being also open to non traditional artists, let’s stop saying non traditional, let’s say, let’s say, a more diverse audience, a more diverse group of artists, and a more diverse staff, in order to bring in that, frankly, diversity of ideas,

              Johanna Burton  18:17

              right. And it’s hard work. Because I think, especially with a place like the WebEx I want to give credit where credit is due to the the years that preceded me, the programming has actually been exemplary and really kind of showing, and centering voices from many different, you know, global globally, in terms of gender, in terms of race, in terms of sexuality, and these issues that are really pressing ones coming forward through the voices of artists, but it also means that a lot of a lot of the kind of pressure and the labor is placed on those artists instead of the institution and and the work often. I think we’re seeing this more and more with the debates that are going on right now. It’s like, well, if you just point to the artists that that you’re that you’ve asked, or that you’ve allowed or that you’ve asked that, you know, brought in to do the work, you aren’t you may not be doing the work yourself. And so I think that’s an that’s come up. It’s, and I’m not saying that there’s been a terrible history of this at the works. But I think that all museums are realizing, you know, it’s a it’s a class based, so very class based profession that we’re in, and we have to be thinking about what that means. I am not from a wealthy background, I come from a very, very emphasize this very modest background in rural Nevada. And yet I wanted to be part of the arts. And what I realized as I sort of began to make that journey was there was a skill set. And then there was also a lot about navigating class and I think that that is something that we continue and it’s not just class, of course its its intersectional its class, its race, its gender, its age, its its sexuality. It’s all the things that And so to your your question about whether the doors are open, and to whom I think that’s part of what we have to think about

              Tim Fulton  20:07

              all the time. Hmm. Can you had talked about funding just a little bit, and I don’t want to belabor the point, but I think it’s important to note that while the Wexner Center is funded partially by the Ohio State University, well, first of all, the university is under financial strain. But also when you guys can’t let people in the doors and can’t charge tickets and can’t hold a formal gala or anniversary celebration, whatever it’s being called. Now, that hurts the bottom line as well. Right. And so tough decisions need to be made. And that you’re you’re not the city park. It’s, you know, it’s not by default just paid for. Right. While it while I truly do believe it is a public good, it is not funded that way.

              Johanna Burton  20:55

              Right. Well, and I think, you know, it’s, it’s interesting, there’s that we could talk a lot about this, wanting this space, which is on a campus and as part of a higher an institution of higher education, wanting it to actually feel like public space, while to your point, there are these barriers, I don’t think the biggest barriers are costs, although frankly, those are the ones I’d love to erase first. And we’ve been talking about what it would I there’s no, I’m certainly not making promises here about trying to be less cost prohibitive. In an ideal world, we everything would be free. And there are places for which this actually is a good business proposition. I’ve been looking at museums who have gone free and their their membership numbers go up, because people are committed, they don’t feel like this is a transactional space. But but that’s just one access point. But it is true. I think there are presumptions about our funding, which are, you know, again, we are part of, of OSU, which is I think, a really wonderful and, and I’m excited, it’s one of the reasons I wanted to come thing, but but but not all of our not all of our costs are covered, I can say that for sure. And, you know, I learned this in funny way, I worked for a director at another museum. And we were talking about fundraising when I sort of was early on in the game. And she said, you know, drawn to museums are businesses and I got really I was, it made me really upset. I’m not they’re not, they’re not businesses, they’re for the public good, their public spaces, they’re about public discourse. And they are those things, but at the end of the day, you actually do have to have the money to raise them and to pay your people and to get get the work done. And so it’s an interesting proposition to both be a kind of public space, and, and a, and an entity that that has to run on this other model. I talk a lot about how I wish that museums could make the pivot that libraries have made in terms of being these functional spaces that I think at one time, people questioned the longevity of libraries, like, you know, how do we aren’t going to need books, and people go there. And it’s all about this sort of, again, higher idea of knowledge. They’re fully public spaces, people use them for everything they have generated across, I think the entire country, kind of you know, they’re, they’re not all the same, but they operate to welcome people in and people may never read a book, but go there every day. So I think that there’s work to be done on that front.

              Tim Fulton  23:27

              I want to pivot just a little bit into what’s currently happening at the wax. Yeah, I want to talk about the collaboration you guys are doing with WSU specifically about the current exhibition, that’s a climate changing show. So I’ll give it I’ll make that your choice for which path to go down first,

              Johanna Burton  23:47

              look good, I’d be happy to speak about either. So when I came to Columbus, I had, of course, always known about Ann Hamilton, she was an artist who I admired and who I feel great affinity with, we’ve become good friends. And she, we started having conversations about really sort of as the pandemic, you know, dawned and hit and then as all of the the, you know, episodes of, of radical lay racially oppressive violence, we’re, we’re hinting into that, and also making really clear that that history, we decided we just wanted to start talking about how art could still be being made right now and how, for some, it’s very difficult. For some, it’s, it provided a different kind of context and a different kind of urgency. And that in a way, the argument is just that art is more essential than ever, even if, in a sense, it’s more imperiled, at least in terms of financial stability. And so we started inviting people that had a you know, there are various kind of ways in which they’re linked to the wax but some relationship to the Wexner And to this place to Columbus. And so we have talked with Ed Miller, who is this brilliant choreographer who of course has a, an international reputation but chooses to live and work and teach her and she did. And to Anne Bogart who did an amazing project here, which I mean she’s good friends with and and actually and invited Debra Winger who she’s worked with to do, and which is really terrific. We spoke with Dina Magog who runs a very important funding a foundation that funds artists directly. We are speaking this week with Sharon Udo who is a total Columbus we’ve spoken with Mark Lomax

              Tim Fulton  25:43

              and Sharon, by the way for our audience is counterfeit Madison.

              Johanna Burton  25:48

              Yes. And what’s come of those discussions in a way has been it it’s maybe he was a little greedy of us, we just wanted to sit and and talk with people for whom there was a kind of shared desire to think about about art in the midst of what’s happening, and not instead of what’s happening, but as it’s happening. And so this discussions were co produced with WSU, who’s one of my favorite OSU neighbors, and they’re going to be even closer to us. And the hopes there are that we’ll we’ll end up doing more of the vo he’s done collaborations with them. But there’s, they’re just an amazing team. And I think we’re just going to wrap we’re wrapping up that season. And that may be the only one that we do, but but it’s been great. And then I’m very excited about climate changing. It’s a show that just opened up the wax. Earlier, just a few weeks ago, by Lucy Zimmerman, who is an associate curator at the wax, the title of the show is climate changing on artists, institutions and the social environment. And you can imagine how many different titles were thrown around. But what Lucy really wanted to be thinking about, and this was well before any of the events of the last year, what a kind of new modality of institutional critique that artists are, are really engaged in where, you know, they’re taking cues from artists like Chris Burton, who you see that facade is of the wax has been anointed with a piece that he first did at the West 30 years ago is one of the first shows part of one of the first shows of Chris’s Chris Burton is has passed away and is one of the only artists in the show that isn’t working, is the only artist who isn’t working today. But taking up some of those questions from that had sort of percolated in the 60s 70s and beyond, about, you know, really taking institutions to task, but then thinking even more deeply about the kind of empathic, and emotional and embodied parts of those questions. And also, I think making a call for a kind of collective future making and thinking what’s different about this generation of artists is that I think they’re calling for and even demanding something else, rather than maybe just taking apart and dismantling. I love institutional critique. For the record. It’s a sweet spot. markley, but I think that there’s there is something really exhilarating about what these artists are doing. They’re looking at ableism. They’re thinking about, you know, race and gender. And these intertwined in really interesting ways. And they’re, I think, insisting on I’m really thinking about, again, placemaking within the museum is a way to consider the larger world. And so it’s very inspirational, I think, in many ways. And there, there’s a kind of poetics to a lot of what happens. So if you come to the wax, it’s a group show with about 20 artists, three of whom are collectives. And again, it ranges from, you know, artists who are thinking about, you know, how you actually enter the building, if you need a wheelchair, what does it mean to actually, you know, come in and intersect with the architecture in a way that calls attention to both how it, how it, how it holds up, and also how it holds our bodies. And I think what’s also spectacular about it is it’s, it’s very beautiful, and you can spend a lot of hours in it. But it asks hard, interesting questions. And we speaking of accessibility, are really, really thrilled that HP has partnered with us so we have free Sundays now. So you can come for free to the wax every Sunday now, which is the beginning of what I hope will be, you know, again, a bigger, a bigger step in that direction.

              Tim Fulton  29:43

              Absolutely. Can you talk about I would be remiss if I didn’t bring up sort of what it was like to make the decision to reopen that and also what a patron experiences in the line of COVID-19 window there.

              Johanna Burton  30:00

              Yeah, so we it’s a great question because there’s you have to weigh, right? how essential is it to actually have your doors open and with safety and been lucky again to work with staff who came together around a task a reopening, they became a reopening closing Task Force, because we’ve had to do it a few different times. And we’re under the umbrella of OSU. But we’ve also been allowed to think about ourselves as partially public to you know, we’re public facing as well as serving students. So and and so we reopened when we first closed, it was, we were close for quite a long time, then we reopened briefly so that our fall shows which were specifically addressing the election. So it was a suite of those that we had people had to see them as, as the run up to to the election happened. And then we re closed when the numbers went higher. When this show, it’s interesting, it’s it’s less even the decision to reopen them, were we going to install a big show that we could maybe never open the doors for. We all made a decision, Lucy Show had been pushed off actually, for nearly a year, because of the first it was meant to open. And to be clear, this show that is currently open was meant to be in 2019,

              Tim Fulton  31:16

              or 2000 gives me 2020.

              Johanna Burton  31:18

              And, and so, you know, there came a moment where we pushed it off and thought it now’s the time where we have to decide whether we install this show. And we worked with Lucy had worked with many of these artists, almost half of them had new Commission’s and the other the other work was still very, you know, specific to the show. And we felt it was worth actually seeing that through and we started having, you know, discussions about well, if we can open the doors, we can do virtual walkthroughs, we can figure out ways to to engage the work. And the good news was, we haven’t have a very, very good safety protocol within the building for our staff that said, you know, it there, it wasn’t without anxiety, I think, you know, clearly there are again, to talk about equity, you’ve got some folks who don’t have to go in to do anything at all when an institution or when a exhibition is being installed, myself included. And then you’ve got folks on the on the prep team who needed to be there. So there were real discussions about comfort and about how to have small pods working how the front desk the our amazing visitor experience team would feel safest, and we managed to get it done. So when you go there, now, there’s a lot of PRL, there’s your, nobody’s gonna ask you to go beyond the the kind of Plexi screen that is between you and the person who’s giving tickets. And I think, you know, even down we have a, we have a virtual reality headset, that you have to wear for it for one of our pieces. And it’s we’ve got a guard who’s got like this tremendous amount of like pure Allen wipes so that after every time somebody uses that, you know, the virtual reality headset it gets, it gets clean. So people have been extraordinarily grateful to be able to come into the space, and actually be with each other and be with art. That said, we haven’t slowed down at all on the other programming areas. So though it’s a shame not to be able to go to a film together, or to go to a performance together, attend an education workshop together, we have probably been programming as much if not more than before. And the numbers, interestingly, are really good. And also if there’s a silver lining, we’re actually seeing people from all over the world watching our room. We had Ohio shorts, which you’ll remember is normally you know, we have a full house, it’s it’s 300 people in that in the theater. But the numbers of people who watched during the the time that it was actually online, where it was tremendous, it was 1000s of people from from virtually every state in the United States and, and globally as well. So there have been some really kind of silver again, Silver Linings of virtual as well. And we’re learning from that so that when we come back, we can maybe utilize utilize that tool moving forward because nothing’s gonna kind of be the same. We’re not going back to normal.

              Tim Fulton  34:17

              Right? This is the new normal.

              Johanna Burton  34:19

              This is the new normal.

              Tim Fulton  34:21

              When I was my follow up to that, and I think you answered it was, you know, when you get to that new normal, let’s call it the fall. Do you think you’ll still be engaging and investing frankly, in virtual programming?

              Johanna Burton  34:35

              Yes. The answer’s yes. I actually think as amazing as our sort of buckets are with the, you know, film video and performing arts and exhibitions and learning and public practice, something that the West hasn’t really addressed is technology and I think that’s something that is on the horizon for us. It may not be its own bucket, but it certainly needs to be a tool and that tool is One employed by artists employed by audiences in a way that this has jumped started the conversation in particular way. So yeah, and I’m actually very excited because I think technology is something that the West could address very well. So ironically, one, one of our first steps in, in really kind of leaning into technology for the next year it is the Wex has been so focused on the future, that it hasn’t really actually addressed its own past. And so we are, again, ironically, as we as we aim for the future, we’re going to hire an archivist, we’re in the middle of this now, so that we can build a digital archive that actually tells the story of the center, and really kind of gives a history for all of this, this work. So technology in the past coming together in a really interesting way. I think

              Tim Fulton  35:46

              that’s fantastic. I am personally very excited about that. The things that sort of step out to me during this conversation, I think it’s almost a little dangerous to use this word when you think about an institution, but there is an intersectionality there, right? It is, it has multiple characteristics that have to be taken as a whole, in order to understand it. And I also think about the duality between being a public space and being a private institution, and an institution that’s connected to a land grant university. Right. Is there anything else that you would want the audience to know sort of about viewing the Wexner? center holistically?

              Johanna Burton  36:32

              Yeah, I mean, it’s actually I think, a challenge that we’re, we’re trying to figure out right now, which is we do so many things that I think sometimes people aren’t sure exactly what we are. And so I think that articulation of the wax as a space that you were, maybe we’re not defined by these buckets, but we do them very, very well is important, again, institutions, I think globally, caught up with the Wex at a certain point and started talking about multidisciplinarity, in a way that that makes us seem maybe less unique than we are. So I think, in terms of telling our story, it really is about utilizing this space, I’m going to start using the word transdisciplinary rather than multidisciplinary because I think artists themselves are less beholden or interested in holding those buckets apart, when we use those tools to tell stories about about the world and about ourselves. And I do again, think that what’s on the horizon is figuring out how that process piece of what we do really is unique. And it really invites people in and allows it to be a discursive, generative social space, unlike many others. And again, I think telling the story moving forward, we have maybe not been as invested in talking about our place on campus on a space of learning. And I actually really think that that’s something that differentiates us and I want to want to continue to talk about so I’m not sure if that answers your question.

              Tim Fulton  38:03

              Absolutely, it does. I just want to wrap up by asking sort of what are your now that you’ve, you’re a Columbus site now. What do you think?

              Johanna Burton  38:13

              I love it. I’m really happy here. I, as you know, I spent, you know, my entire professional life in New York City. But I came from a place that’s very different from Columbus, but I think has an affinity and a we there’s a there’s a kind of fierce loyalty to the city that I find really interesting. And I kind of civic engagement around, at least around the arts that I have found really moving. You know, often I think that kind of pride has to do with I don’t know, it’s a big enough city, to to have kind of texture, but it’s also small enough to have real community. I’m Reno which is the biggest little city in the world. And sometimes I think there’s something similar about it. I’ve also felt really fortunate to meet and just incredible people in a short time who want me in the west to succeed. And that has felt very humbling, but also, like I like I landed in the right place, and then ironically, that we found a house that chose us. So when we moved here, I’m a real Nester and I said, you know, where are the modernist houses and we ended up living in this iconic Roundhouse in rush Creek where, you know, I don’t know if you folks know rush Creek, but it is a very unusual it’s one of the only existing Usonian architecture communities in the United States built by an acolyte of Frank Lloyd Wright. And so we ended up in this this crazy house that I’m just I feel really lucky to wake up in every day. That’s round.

              Tim Fulton  39:49

              Fantastic. Joanna, thank you so much for your time today.

              Johanna Burton  39:52

              Thank you, Tim. I really enjoyed it. I hope we’ll chat again one of these days.

              Tim Fulton  40:08

              Thank you for listening to the confluence cast presented by Columbus underground. Again you can get more information on what we discussed today in the show notes for this episode at the confluence cast Comm. Please Rate, Subscribe, share this episode of the confluence cast with your friends, family, contacts, enemies, your favorite contemporary artists. If you’re interested in sponsoring the confluence cast get in touch with us. We can be reached by email at info at the confluence cast calm. Our theme music was composed by Benji Robinson, our producers Philip Cogley, I’m your host, Tim Fulton. Have a great week.

              The post Wexner Center for the Arts appeared first on The Confluence Cast.

              42 min
            • Nina West

              Take your broken heart and turn it into art. This week, I sat down with Andrew Levitt, AKA Nina West, Columbus’s predominant drag queen and champion. It’s been 20 years since Andrew became Nina; high time to take stock in his career and what’s next. We discussed how he got started, the cultural phenomena of drag, the importance of being resourceful and scrappy, what’s it’s like being on Drag Race, and how he manages his career.

              Shownotes

              • Nina West
              • Virginia West
              • Union Cafe
              • Axis Nightclub
              • National Entertainer of the Year
              • The Moving Dress
              • Rupaul’s Drag Race
              • DragCast
              • Greater Columbus Arts Council
              • Columbus Zoo

                • This Confluence Cast episode is sponsored by Art Makes Columbus, Columbus Makes Art, featuring stories about our city’s incredible artists — stories full of inspiration, challenge, passion, and success. For videos, articles, an up-to-the-minute calendar of events and an artist directory visit ColumbusMakesArt.com, the resource for all things arts and culture in the capital city.

                Full transcript:

                Tim Fulton  00:12

                Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the confluence cast presented by Columbus underground. We are a weekly Columbus-centric podcast focusing on the civics, lifestyle, entertainment, and people of our city. I’m your host Tim Fulton. This week, I sat down with Andrew Lovett, aka Nina West Columbus is predominant drag queen and champion. It’s been 20 years since Andrew became Nina high time to take stock in his career. And what’s next? We discussed how we got started. The cultural phenomena of drag and how it relates to the black and queer experience, the importance of being resourceful and scrappy. What it’s like getting on and being on drag race, how he manages his career, and why you should take your broken heart and turn it into art. You can get more information on what we discussed today in the show notes for this episode at the confluence cast calm. Also, the confluence cast is on Patreon. Find out how to support this podcast on our website the confluence cast calm [email protected] slash Confluence. The Confluence cast is sponsored this week by art makes Columbus Columbus makes art featuring stories about our city’s incredible artists. Stories full of inspiration, challenge, passion and success. For videos, articles, and up to the minute calendar of events and an artists directory visit Columbus makes art calm. The resource for all things arts and culture in the capital city. Enjoy the interview. Sitting down here with Andrew Lovett, also known as Nita West. Andrew, how

                Andrew Levitt  01:57

                are you? I’m well, Tim, how are you?

                Tim Fulton  01:59

                I’m good. It’s good to see you. It’s been at least since the before times, probably a little bit longer than that.

                Andrew Levitt  02:07

                Yeah.

                Tim Fulton  02:08

                So you are best known as Nina West and you’ve been on drag race. You’ve been sort of a Columbus icon for years now. How did you get into drag?

                Andrew Levitt  02:20

                Well, first, thanks for having me today. I’m excited to be here. I’m excited to see you again. It’s been way too long. We haven’t Good to see you. It’s been really long. So it’s really nice. Virtually it’s really nice to be here with you. How can I get started is back. Um, I was I was going to Denison University. I was a theater major. I was also the president of our LGBT q student organization, which is still called outlook and and so I think what happened was we had the organ of the university and this organization specifically had brought drag queens in from Columbus for years. And so it’s one of the law, it’s probably one of the longest drunk like running drag shows at a university in the country, maybe overlay overlay, maybe the longest. Denison’s right up there, which both, incidentally, are Ohio schools, which just kind of crazy, right? So, so when I was a freshman, I remember going to my first major drag show at Denison in the Student Union and it was drag queens from Columbus. And it was like Marianne Brandt, and Janet garrison and Dominique LaRue. And Maria garrison, were the first drag queens that I saw. And then I ran for a brand new organization, which meant in my sophomore year, it meant that I would bring drag queens in to the university, I’d have to book the show at the end of the year for for the, for the organization. So I started to meet drag queens, and I was like, wow, you know, this is, you know, it’s not anything like I thought it was. And these people are really actually really wonderful and incredible. And so then by the time my senior year came around, the senior show our last my last time running the Dennison drag show, my friend Justin garrison, and I thought we should do drag and so just kind of as a joke, I was gonna do drag that one time, and leave it there. And that was like in March of 2001. And then here we are, all these years later, I moved to Columbus after I graduated college for a short interim period, I was gonna move to New York City, which is part of my story, and then 911 happened and I stayed in Columbus. And by that point, I’d tried drag once with Virginia, Virginia West who’s my drag mother. And, like, again, I thought it was gonna like I entered this drag contest that I thought was just gonna be a one off like it was called who wants to be a drag queen and it was like, competing. Like Who Wants to Be a Millionaire was a really big game show at the time. In 2001, right?

                Tim Fulton  05:02

                I remember

                Andrew Levitt  05:03

                Yeah. So, so they did, he wants to be a drag queen. And so like, it was like a contest, you could win $150 cash prize, which to me being like, I was trying, I was trying to get work in Columbus, I like went to work for catco. They told me no. So I want a creative outlet. And so it’s like, well, I’ll try drag, um, again, like, and I won the contest. And then I kind of was like, Oh, that’s 150 bucks. That’s awesome. And I kind of left it there again. And then Virginia came back in July, and was like, hey, I’ve got this show, you should do the show. And so that’s really where it started. And I started to, like, surround myself with a circle of friends that were primarily all drag queens and, or drag entertainers or boyfriends or partners of drag queens, like my world became deeply immersed in Columbus drag. Okay, how it started.

                Tim Fulton  05:52

                And so from the outset, there are so many sort of cultural touchstones within that, let’s call it a world, like having a drag family, for those that have not watched drag race, what are sort of what’s a drag family,

                Andrew Levitt  06:07

                so a drag family. So it’s really, it’s really interesting, like the way this all kind of works, right? For many people, and like, drag family, I think really, this concept of family and ball culture like these, and this idea of belonging to a house or a group of people. Blood is really deeply kind of related to like a black queer experience. And so we like it’s, you know, week, as it kind of has evolved in its like growth, as queer communities have evolved and grown and drag communities have evolved and grown. And so, you know, drag family is kind of, it’s like, the are the people that when you it’s just like a blood family. But these, this is your chosen family, the people that watch out for you, they, they, if you don’t have food, they feed you, they clothe you, they teach you the ropes, they provide opportunity and access where when doors are being shut in your face. I mean, it’s like, it is like, it is a kind of a mother hen, and her Chang is very protective of those. And she, you know, is, you know, teaches teaches sometimes with love. It’s sometimes with like, Hard Knocks, like, you know, it’s just like it’s just like a family or relationship, but it’s with a chosen family. And so, when I became Virginia’s drag daughter, Virginia had taken me under her wing, I think I was like her first, her first kid. And okay, Wragge daughter, in a sense, but you know, she gave me her last name. So I was Nina West. Nina Nina comes from Nina Simone. Because I was deeply in love with Nina Simone when I was in college. So I’m still am but that’s where the name comes from. And then West Virginia’s last name. So a long story short, basically, Virginia, really took me under her wing, she gave me a lot of opportunities. She put me in shows. And she really watched out for me, and she advocated for me and protected me from a lot of different things. And that relationship to this day is very invaluable to me, even though we’ve like grown and things of you know, like, we’ve gone to COVID and things have changed. And she’s still very dear to me. And like, I would not be where I’m at without her.

                Tim Fulton  08:21

                Yeah. And so when did you You know, I’ve worked with you on your podcasts and stuff. And so I before drag race, you sort of had you basically had two jobs, right? It was Yang sort of bar, social media event management kind of stuff. And then being Nino West, that was your other job.

                Andrew Levitt  08:40

                Yeah. So what happened? So the kind of the, the my history is that Yeah, I was working at Union cafe and access nightclub while I was doing drugs simultaneously when I first started so I was a server. And I would you know, in that, like, really benefited me and like I was always on the present and around when opportunities were there and coming from I would be in Virginia would be bartending, I’d be serving, she’d get a call from the owner, and he’d be like, Hey, we’re gonna we would like we want to get a show. She called him from the office, down to the barn back, hey, we’re gonna do a show. Can you book a show? And I’d be running around on the floor serving food, and she’s like, hey, do I do the show with me tomorrow night? I’m like, sure. Like, so that’s really kind of how it started. And then for years drag pageantry is a big part of the queer drag experience or pageantry was a big deal and still is a big deal. And you know, it was, and those were before drag race drag. pageant title holders were the celebrities of the frake. Like, oh, that’s Miss gay Ohio America, or that’s Miss gay, Ohio, USA Bay, which, you know, Virginia was a former Miss Gail, how America and a former scare. Oh, hell yes. I mean, like they were.

                Tim Fulton  10:22

                So when you and when you win those pageants that’s, again before drag race, that was your ticket to like, book a tour. And

                Andrew Levitt  10:31

                yeah, you had this idea of like, Oh, I can like so if you win an Ohio pageant, you have the ability to go around to different Ohio cities into their gay bars and perform and entertain, which was a way to get out there. If you couldn’t get it if you didn’t want to have an opportunity, say in your city. And then. So there was a lot of pressure for me to do pageantry. And I didn’t see myself as a pageant Queen, necessarily, because it’s like a it’s like a really clean, proper, really straightforward about illusion, for the most part, right. I didn’t write it and I was really defining myself as a comedy Queen and the camp Queen and like how, like, I’m a big linebacker, so like, let’s, let’s dress it up, rather than try to hide it. So okay, um, so I really was trying to, like shy away from drag pageantry.

                Tim Fulton  11:17

                And, and but Virginia was sort of a pageantry that was her background.

                Andrew Levitt  11:22

                She had her she had a strong foot and pageantry, she had a strong foot with a theatrical background, and she was show director, and the bar that I was running through that, I mean, so she was, so she was able to influence me in a lot of different areas, you know, pagiging, he never pushed me to do drag pageantry shoot, it’s cabinetry is right for it is not right for everyone. And I think she recognized that me and then, in 2008, I went, I decided, I was like, Alright, I’m gonna, I’m gonna try it once and get it done. And it was a really successful run. And I went and competed for national Entertainer of the Year in 2008. And I won, which change why I bring that up is because it changed my entire trajectory of my drag career. So I Okay, oh, I thought it was like, I’m not gonna be a serious drag queen. Like, I’m gonna just do it as a hobby. I’d love to do it. I’d love to perform. Eventually, I’ll go audition for something. Eventually, I’ll

                Tim Fulton  12:18

                go do theater or something. Go do more traditional theater, I still hadn’t,

                Andrew Levitt  12:21

                like I still hadn’t reconciled in my mind that this was a legitimate form of entertainment. I still like I was, like, 24 years old. Okay. And then by the time I was 30, which was entertainment. 2008. I was like, I got this like, this is what I do. I’m really good. Okay, we do this very well. I love my city. My city means the world to me. They’re giving me this platform. And so I was really sad. And then drag pageantry entered my life. And I was it changed everything. I wouldn’t did Entertainer of the Year, I won national Entertainer of the Year, I did this very epic evening gown. That is, it’s called the moving dress. And it’s it’s on my YouTube channel. If anyone wants to stand up at the moving dresses, see us copy the moving dress Elvira has copied the moving dress. It has it’s rooted in many people want to say, Oh, you got that from where you got that? From my inspiration from it when I created obviously all art is like it. I mean, they’ve not derived from something else. Yeah, hard to create something original. So in my mind, I thought I was but it comes like I my inspiration for it was though, I was like these, I think it’s like French operetta where the dress would lift up in a small smaller version of the of the singer would come out from underneath the dress and being exact same thing. Because that was like my initial idea for the gown. And so it kind of came from this and the dresses, actually people and it moves and it peels away and reveals an evening gown. And then the dancers come behind it creates a train like very epic, very like mum and chance if you’re receiving mountain chance on like the mother. Yeah. So that began to solidify my name and a national.

                Tim Fulton  14:03

                So you did that. Sorry. I’ve seen it. But you did that at the Entertainer of the Year competition. That was that’s when you sort of debuted that.

                Andrew Levitt  14:11

                That’s right. Yeah, that’s where I wore it was it was for that contest and got it. I won that pageant and it changed everything legitimize me in a much bigger way I toured the country promoting the pageantry system. I met a made contacts that lasted forever, including many people that went on to do drag race long before I did. And so like I began to form these relationships that were would absolutely come back to me on my journey. And so that changed everything. And I remember coming home from winning Entertainer of the Year and calling my boss and saying hey, I need to I think I’m going to need to work part time. And so I can focus on drag. Right? Well that chain that also was like a nail that for me. It was that decision haunted me for many years because They never would bring me back full time. And I was like struggling

                Tim Fulton  15:04

                to be you’re worried about that.

                Andrew Levitt  15:05

                Oh my god, I was really okay. I was financially struggling to pull together my personal life to do the drag, be able to work and I was had time to work. And I was like, please bring me back full time. Like, Oh, yeah. And it’s, of course, it was like a thriving business, right. It’s like, still a huge business. And so that was like one of those things that but in the long term of the story benefited me because I learned how to really focus on being resourceful, being scrappy, really like, figuring out how to make my ends meet without that income, and really pouring myself into drag. Okay, drag became everything. So by the time I would say, I drag I went off to film drag race in 2018, I would say by 2014. So 2008 I went Entertainer of the Year, I gave it up in 2009. I toured around through 2010. So I toured for a good solid two years, came back to the gig was always working in Columbus, in the meantime, you know, doing my business goes and doing bar appearances, but like, I was really trying to schedule in these moments to get out of Columbus to meet make connections to to be seen. And I’m very similar to what an actor does. Yeah. I

                Tim Fulton  16:26

                mean, it’s, it’s, it’s exactly the same thing. Like saying, Hey, I got to go out and do pilot season, or, hey, it’s really important for me to be around for this event. Like it, you can think people are familiar with that. It’s very similar.

                Andrew Levitt  16:39

                Yeah, you there is, um, there is something about the world of performance art that requires you to have a deeper understanding of other things. It’s you have to leave to come back. Like you can’t, it’s really hard to do that. Right. So, um, so I was just really at this point in my life. By 2014 15. I was comfortable enough that I could have quit my job, but I didn’t for fear of the other shoe falling, right. So I was like, right, okay. Like, I know, that was ingrained in me by my parents, like, hey, like, you can’t, just like theater might not work out. You have a backup plan. And that’s something I’m really envious of, like my younger, like, young, the, this next generation, like, they’re like, I don’t need a backup plan. This is what I’m doing. If this doesn’t work, I’ll figure it out. Like, wait, but it’s gonna but they’re very resilient. And that this, like, they’re just like, it’s just gonna work. And like, I wasn’t raised like that.

                Tim Fulton  17:37

                So yeah, but is that I am very much of that philosophy is, at least financially, you can’t have all your eggs in one basket, you need a little bit of whether that’s money in the bank, or just another skill you have of, hey, if this passion doesn’t work out, I can always go and do copywriting or I can always go and spin up a website for somebody.

                Andrew Levitt  18:01

                Yeah, yeah. I would agree with that. I think the lesson I learned that I am grateful for and that maybe you have as well, is that I am a very again, like I said resourceful. I know how to do a lot of things. Some of them I do really well. Some of them I do okay,

                Tim Fulton  18:18

                right. I still

                Andrew Levitt  18:18

                can do it. And so like if it didn’t, if this didn’t work out, I would have the ability and talent to segue to something else.

                Tim Fulton  18:27

                And so what changed in 2014 15, that you just, you had enough,

                Andrew Levitt  18:33

                I was 10 I was I was I’m a workhorse I was working nonstop. So from the time of really 20 I would say 2012, I was doing shows five or six nights, six nights a week up until really basically, I left for drag race. I mean, I was like, event if there was something to do I want it to do it. Because I can Yeah, I had this very innate fear that I wasn’t like, I wasn’t going to be able to do it. Like, I can’t like I got it. And I was really feeling like I had to figure it out.

                Tim Fulton  19:06

                Were you concerned that, hey, I don’t want to waste this opportunity. Because I might be past my prime or, oh, you weren’t gonna literally going to physically be able to perform? What was the worry?

                Andrew Levitt  19:19

                I think there’s a lot of that. I mean, like we are, there’s a lot of ageism, especially in drag. I mean, I’m 42 now, which is not old, but in the world of drag. It is like I’m on the older side of the scale. Okay, so like there’s a lot of ages of drag, but that, you know, there’s a lot of, I mean, it’s also to be quite honest with you. It’s also super it’s not a very consistent industry. I was lucky enough to be in a position of consistency because I was I privileged I was as a show director, I was like I had the ability to for like, first pick at gigs, like I recognize

                Tim Fulton  19:58

                and are you saying they’re like You would book a touring drag queen axis. And

                Andrew Levitt  20:05

                like, I mean, yeah, but there was like, there was a schedule. So like we would have

                Tim Fulton  20:09

                a you could put yourself on to a show with a touring person. Yeah. Which hence, it’s a Columbus audience. And then you were able to When did you start doing like heels for like the stuff where you produce the whole gang, and it’s actually just Columbus people.

                Andrew Levitt  20:25

                So the big show’s started for me in 2003, I think or 2004. So like it was, those were always been very early on very early on. Yeah, Virginia lasted me with my first mainstage show in 2003. I did Nino s network news. And then on 1004 it was a Yeah, it was like it was like a cabaret review. And then in 2004 was the first kill support. And we came back to like, it was something I laughed. I was like, Oh, no one likes Halloween. It was actually a really terrible show. No one like the show. Okay. It wasn’t really mad show. We did stuff like it was the show was broken up in three sections. And like one section was called misery loves Three’s Company. And go with me on the idea. A bunch of people go to a Three’s Company, fantasy camp where they have to dress up as the characters of Three’s Company. And it falls into the pot of misery. So it was like, like a Christmas now and a jack chipper me it’s like an agenda. It was like real. and Mrs. Roper, it was super dense. It made sense to me. It made sense to nobody else.

                Tim Fulton  21:36

                Okay, so how when you? I was gonna ask about this a little bit later, but since we’re here, how do you put together a show like that?

                Andrew Levitt  21:44

                For me, it’s a lot of time with. I’m very referential, I think in the big shows, like, it’s a bit important to me, I think I’m referential, my drag kind of overall, with the show, like, let’s say, I did a show called ohana. That was a response to President Trump winning his election. And I remember feeling so defeated in that November 2016. And then I was like, we just wrapped heels before the election happened. He wins. I felt like so dejected. So I took that time period. My next shift, my next mainstage show was coming up in April. So from November to January, I was like, I don’t know what the hell I’m gonna do. I don’t feel like I want to produce anything. I don’t know how to do this. And then Carrie Fisher died in December. And that was and then Meryl Streep gets up at the Golden Globes. And she talks about she does, she does a kind of a tribute to Carrie Fisher. And at the end, she says she says that one of Carrie Fisher’s things that she said, and I think she put it in her book, wishful drinking, I don’t know where the quote comes from. But Carrie said, Take your broken heart and make it into art. And I was like, really prevent me moved by that. So for that show, that was the impetus for the rest of what I created. So that I spend time with music, I spend time with visuals. I just kind of poring over things, listening to a lot of things, going back to things that are important to me. Specifically in that show was a lot of political issue and commentary. Like how I could work with it. So I worked from anything with from the Muppets to Disney to political discourse. And Rachel Maddow to classical Brahms, you know, music and it’s trying to whittle down and siphon out and comb through things that are going to tell the story that I want to tell. And it’s okay, we’ll take aeolus. And it’s really, really hard because in the shows that I was producing, it’s all almost pre pre existing content like so. We’re lip synching to, right, and we’re until you’re trying to weave I like in the big shows to tell a story. Even as late or subtle as it may be to have a through line that connects it. That is that resonates with my message and has a desert, a deep understanding of that is hopefully celebratory, or even a moment in the show that might make people take pause and think about what they’re experiencing in their own life, and how it might interact with what they’re witnessing on stage. You know, we’ve done numbers like Handmaid’s Tale numbers, and that’s and that shows specifically that we’re like, if we’re not careful. This is though this could be a reality and here we are now, in 2021. Yeah, we’re looking at things that are big that the very dangerous rhetoric that you would I still say to myself, this I mean, this isn’t real. And it is yeah, reality of it is and so anyway, but the art of it all is I that’s the it’s the most challenging part. It’s the most fun part is the most rewarding part. To lay everything out and vomit it all out on paper or in a Pinterest board or not like on my walls. I mean, like I take note cards and I read every idea to And it’ll be all around the room, and then I’ll try to organize them by what they might mean. Is that a song idea? Is that a production? And then who would be good for that production, I start to think about cast members that I would work with, or I have worked with in the past and the talents that they bring in, where are they? Where can they best be suited to show off the best of themselves in the show, and it’s really a painful and incredible process. Like, you know, it’s like, every a take, and I, it was, every drag was, and is every ounce of my breath every day. Like, I’m thinking, I’m thinking about it, I was thinking about it, like, how do I? How do I conveyed this or that and it’s right is, to me, music is like a script. You know, like in a, in a stage per show, like, so, I’m trying to find the best song that tells me that it gives the character the best ability to express an idea or an emotion or a thought, and it’s proven very successful, you know, and yeah. And that’s how the shows come about. But I tell you, it’s a really, it’s a long process,

                Tim Fulton  26:08

                it doesn’t have How do you because of this is partially the market we’re in? Because you book it a couple months ahead of time, you know, okay, I’ve got two or three weeks, you’re not going to extend it? Do you have any sense of mourning at all about like, you create this thing? And then it’s just done?

                Andrew Levitt  26:27

                Gambit? You know, that’s Yes. 100%. That is the beauty though of, I think, a live experience in life, theater and life. Is that it? It is it lives on with the audience who is there to witness it that day. And of course, it is painful to let it go, because you spend all of this time in this energy in this effort on it. And of course, after it’s all done, I am always like, well, nothing’s guaranteed. So I don’t know, if I’m gonna get to do that again. You know, I want to do that, again, will I get the chance to do that again, and I have always had that kind of in the back of my head saying, you know, like, if this is the last time I get to do this, I better fucking knock it out of the park. You know, I better make, I better make sure that people know where I stand. I better make sure people know where like, we’re, like, what I what my art is about to me. And I think that, that has been the most important part of the big shows, I don’t think I ever once found it, you know, like I don’t, I really, my goal was to let the audience have a night to let their hair down to forget about things to be real. But then to like, kick him in the ass and say, but remember this, this is really important. Like, right, this is something you should care about. make them think for a minute, okay. It’s still we stopped, we still are together, we still get to celebrate.

                Tim Fulton  27:50

                And so you’re writing and you’re performing what other hats are and you’re directing? Right, right. What other hats are you wearing? they’re

                Andrew Levitt  28:00

                producing a finding finding money to do the show. So it’s like it is a it is an all hats kind of situation. The only thing I write like I don’t I don’t choreograph.

                Tim Fulton  28:12

                Okay,

                Andrew Levitt  28:13

                I have in the past. It’s not I know, I know my, my strengths. And maybe

                Tim Fulton  28:18

                it’s not your skill set. So you might have somebody else does.

                Andrew Levitt  28:21

                Does that. You know, in the past, it’s been crystal something something. Aaron Kent, who I think is a brilliant, brilliant performer and choreographer. It’s been Emily Karn, who is just so incredibly smart. And her body just moves in ways that I wish my blood. But it’s Um, so yeah, so it’s a it also should be said, it’s a truly collaborative effort. I work a lot with my best friend Patricia Taylor on everything that I do as Nina and how, you know, like, she’s a really excellent sounding board for me. We went to college together. And so she was there at the kind of the inception of Bina. She knows, she knows what Nina is, and isn’t as well as I do. She is a really a part of the fabric of the character so, and she’s been a part of every mainstage show that I’ve ever done. She’s been up, she was a part of my DIY package, she was a part of everything it took to drag race. So like, she reflected in my work in Virginia, Virginia has been very impactful on like, how like, how things work initially, like I wouldn’t, I didn’t know how to how to make anything happen. And then you grow and you learn and you’re like, Okay, I gotta see if I want to make this bigger. I’ve got to secure some sponsorships. And you know, like, I was

                Tim Fulton  29:32

                going to ask, Is that how you would finance most shows?

                Andrew Levitt  29:36

                No, we know, I should say like, I mean, I should, I think I can say this. I should say that. The drag shows really those big production shows that I was producing. Were costing a considerable amount of money and you would try to negotiate with business partners, liquor brands, like iraps specifically, is you could get them in the spring. There was more required you know, you had to what was you’d have to fill out you know kind of some paperwork and shoot you doing a couple snatch game characters became you have when I auditioned for the season that I got on it was all of the paperwork. Plus you basically many challenges. And okay Connie runway locks, they want to make sure you’ve got a wardrobe to bring to the show. Okay.

                Tim Fulton  35:27

                I’m sorry, one thing I was going to ask about the hat, you do all your own costume creation?

                Andrew Levitt  35:34

                No, I don’t. That’s a good guy. So I might have an idea that I might sketch up. Or I might draw up, but I do not sell my own costume.

                Tim Fulton  35:43

                Okay.

                Andrew Levitt  35:44

                Yeah. So I usually work with Patrick howl at the Lexington, Lexington, Kentucky. Or I write I work with a couple designers in New York and some in Dallas and two in Los Angeles. So it just depends on who’s available and who can. Who can one what specifically,

                Tim Fulton  36:00

                I imagine some of them are better at certain things than others. Yeah.

                Andrew Levitt  36:04

                Who’s more costumey? Who’s more evening like gown fashion? Yeah.

                Tim Fulton  36:09

                Got it.

                Andrew Levitt  36:10

                I actually work with a couple designers here in Columbus, um, that are really great. really talented. And so

                Tim Fulton  36:17

                you finally got it? Mm hmm. Tell me about the process of because I remember you had already started drag cast the podcast. And I think you just said to me, Hey, we’re gonna put this on hold for a little bit.

                Andrew Levitt  36:32

                Yeah, we I started drag cast. And I don’t know if you remember this. I started dry cast in 20 1526. sounds right. Yeah. 2015. I know our first episode, my like the first episode, we were gonna record my dog was very, do you remember this? My dog was already sick. And it was July 3 July. On the fourth of July. I woke up and I had to take her to the vet. And yeah, either put her down. And we were going to record our first episode on July 6. Yeah, I’ll do. And so then that we did record it, but it was. So we’ve started drag cast at that point. And we were doing it really religiously. And yeah. 2018 came around and said, Hey, we’ll take a break for a little bit. And you’re like, Okay, whatever. And I was going to film drag race. Yeah.

                Tim Fulton  37:22

                Yeah. When you knew you couldn’t tell people? No, I was sort of,

                Andrew Levitt  37:27

                you sign away your life. You can’t like, okay, yeah, it’s a big NDA. And it’s an you know, I took it so seriously that I only worked with one designer, which I regret. Now, I wish I would have had more influence on my package when I took it. But the guy I work with is the designer I always work with. So he really did an amazing job. It’s just the judges want to see variety. Right?

                Tim Fulton  37:51

                So right. Well, and so you, they say to you, when they hire you, they’re like, here’s your NDA. And then it’s here’s everything you need to bring notes. You know, okay,

                Andrew Levitt  38:02

                that I mean, like, so you, you get a call. And then about I don’t remember how much time went by not much time goes by maybe like, five days a week. And then you start doing like paperwork of like, okay, you do like you get your NDA really pretty immediately. And they really stress that if they find out that you’ve talked to anyone ever gets back to them, they’ll remove you from the show. That is a common thing. They have, they have removed contestants from the show for Okay, never get to fit, they never even get to the film. And then once you never make it, they probably will never book you. So I don’t know.

                Tim Fulton  38:34

                I can’t imagine they would.

                Andrew Levitt  38:36

                So so people take it very seriously because all the dragons directly the drag community in itself. It’s very small. So everyone talks and so you might hear from somebody in Minneapolis like, Oh, yeah, blah, blah, blah, blah, didn’t get on the show cuz she was running her mouth and you’re like, Oh, I’m not gonna run my mouth like so you already see you’re scared already terrified. And then you get your packet and they kind of give you an outline. I’m not gonna go into too much detail about what’s in that outline, but that’s outline and you have 18 days to prepare. And okay, seven bags at like 50 pounds each to take with you to Los Angeles to film. My friend. My friend Andrew Mason came up from Tampa and helped me pack. Mariah Ward who is a friend of mine and Christiansen Moroni, and Patricia all really helped get me together. Patrick how it was it was like all hands on deck. Still. Yes is making sure the hammer is refinished shoes, shoes, shoes, shoes that match. And all of my bags because I’m a bigger person like this is a true story of my bags of I thought the weight restriction was so serious. It was 50 pounds a bag 77 pounds, seven bags total. So I was trying to figure out how I could get everything there because my garments by my sheer size, way more than right. Someone who’s is five, six and 150 pounds or 120? Yeah, you know, so like. So like the options with what you have to take are go down immensely by sheer size of my body. And so like I was packing my bags like I had, I mean, I can’t even tell you I was getting every bag was over. And so I ended up taking only six pairs of shoes for for a show that has a mini challenge every episode. So that’s 13 Mini challenges 13 main stage challenges. Yeah, it’s pairs of shoes. And for a drag queen. I mean, like, if you go back and you watch my runways, or anyone who’s listening to this, you go back and watch the runways I’m wearing, there was a pair of shoes that I spray painted, probably seven times on the gold, green, white, yellow. I mean, I was because I didn’t. But then there are other contestants who are showing up whose bags weighed like 75 pounds, and they never weighed them. And they were just pulling out all this shit. And I’m like, Well, wait a minute. Just a pack said I’ll take it right. Just say pack some bags. I’ll pack some bags, I’ll get my stuff here. You know, but yeah, so that was like one of those things that was like a little like, kind of like a needle in the side. I was like, you know, I just, it’s not set up for a big girl to bring the things that are gonna allow her to be as successful, which is Yeah, you know, and I registered my complaint. They’ve heard me.

                Tim Fulton  41:31

                Well, and it’s sort of, like, I imagine they said it, because it’s like, well, that’s the standard amount that you’re not going to get charged more at the airport. But you’re like, I would have paid an extra $25.

                Andrew Levitt  41:43

                I mean, I have some more shoe point on drag race. It’s like, I just need to get there. Let me pay I’ll pay whatever to rate, you know. And But yeah, I mean, it was, I’ll never I mean, I remember being taken to the airport. And you know, Virginia and Patricia and Andrew and Tao went with me to the airport. They, it’s just like, it’s really kind of amazing and cool. And it was just a very different experience that, that that changed my whole life.

                Tim Fulton  42:10

                Yeah. And so what fast forwarding, what are you working on now?

                Andrew Levitt  42:17

                Oh, my gosh, um, well, I just did. I mean, I’m working on a lot to be quite honest. I’m also COVID, though, so it’s really difficult to do what I do very well, because I think I’m definitely an in person kind of experience. You know, like, Okay, um, but you know, I’m doing a lot of virtual shows, I’m hosting a lot of events, virtually for, you know, universities and companies and private shows, which has been really good. I’m also doing some exciting new projects that I can’t talk about. Holy, that’s good. Which is really good. Yeah, it means that there’s more NDA, which is lovely. is a good thing, because it means you

                Tim Fulton  43:02

                and is that all by virtue? That kind of stuff? Is that by virtue of having an agent?

                Andrew Levitt  43:08

                No, I mean, um, no, yes. And no, I, I think it’s, like, like I said, at the beginning of the episode, I’m a hustler. And I think anyone who knows me knows that I have soul. So I’m constantly trying to figure out how I can get closer to the things that I really want to do. And like write look like and I don’t really, so I pushed my team a lot. And I’m like, but my team isn’t very big. I actually don’t have I actually don’t have management. So I’m doing a lot of it on my own, which is okay. Which is great. Because I’m but it’s also super difficult, you know? Yeah, like, it’s another hat

                Tim Fulton  43:42

                you have to wear.

                Andrew Levitt  43:44

                You have to manage your own time manage my own schedule a calendar, I you know, like, yeah, so. But I had a management team, and they were great. It was just, I needed. I am so used to because of all my experience in the past. I needed to do it myself. I, I like relying on I do, it feels very luxurious to rely on other people. But I like I like to do it myself. Because I just it feels more comfortable to me and I have a why that is. I don’t know if that is because they come from this background of I’ve got to do this. I have to hustle I I need to I need to make sure they get the Nina West touch. I want them to know that I am involved in it in some way or another.

                Tim Fulton  44:25

                Yeah. Important.

                Andrew Levitt  44:26

                So, but I have a theatrical representation. They have television representation to our agents who kind of shopped me around. Alright, new help, I think put me in front of the right people for the right projects. But that’s been really touching go especially during COVID. So So I mean, I have some exciting things happening this summer. Some stuff that’s going to be announced for this fall and winter, which are big, big dreams come true. And I’m really excited to hopefully make Columbus really proud. That’s the goal.

                Tim Fulton  44:57

                And I want to wrap up by asking so I Ask this to I think most of my guests. Uh huh. You know, what? What do you think Columbus is doing? Really? Well? Um,

                Andrew Levitt  45:09

                what do I think Columbus is doing really well.

                Tim Fulton  45:12

                And that could be even like, this is why I stay or like what’s great about Columbus? And there’s a flip side to this question.

                Andrew Levitt  45:20

                Yeah. I think that what Columbus does really well, in my experience, for me personally, was it really helped cultivate me. I was able to make mistakes here. And I was able to be corrected and embraced. And I think that the spirit of that the spirit of that is, what, in my mind is the spirit of the city, I think that there are a lot of people here who really care about people in this community. And so I think that that has been, I have benefited from that, of course, I think there’s also a downside to that. And like, you know, I, I don’t know, I can’t speak for everyone’s experience. So like, I’m sure that people people might be listening to this. And they may be going, Well, that’s not my experience. And, you know, I don’t know, you know, and so like, I want to make sure, like, I like my experience has been, it’s not been easy. It has not been, it’s not been handed to me, I have really had to, in many ways, sacrifice a lot of myself. So people would feel comfortable with a drag queen being present at a gcac event and really early, or a drag queen being at the zoo really early on, I mean, these were things like I, I was entering spaces that we hadn’t been in, and they right. And like, I had to sacrifice a lot of my own. Like, I had to bite my tongue a lot, just to ensure that like, okay, we were here, you know, like, we’re stepping in this space. Right now. And, and that I think that’s a credit to the people who believed in what I was doing, what Virginia was doing, what the what this queer community represents. There are people in those positions who made those decisions, who said, No, no, this is right. And so when the open I was very quick to say, okay, like, just slam the door open and slim light up and go, alright, we’re gonna, we’re gonna do this

                Tim Fulton  47:18

                because someone else might still be still have a little bit of reverence for I am new here. And you may not be completely comfortable, and I’m gonna do my best to make you comfortable. Yeah,

                Andrew Levitt  47:31

                I don’t think I sacrificed any of my integrity. I don’t think I did that. I think that I think that I was always fully in the moment and very present and knowledgeable about what was occurring, but always, very deferential to this is bigger than me. And I and I am I am lucky enough to step into this. And I have to know what this means. And that I’ve been like, you know, not everything was good. But I think we have progressed up Far, far way from where we were in 2001 when I started.

                Tim Fulton  48:13

                Absolutely. Andrew, thank you so much for your time today. I love you. Thank

                Andrew Levitt  48:17

                you so much for having me.

                Tim Fulton  48:29

                Thank you for listening to the confidence cast presented by Columbus underground. Again, you can get more information on what we discussed today in the show notes for this episode at the confluence cast comm please rate subscribe, share this episode of the confluence cast with your friends, family, contacts, enemies, your favorite drag queen. If you’re interested in sponsoring the confluence cast get in touch with us. We can be reached by email at info at the confluence cast calm. Our theme music was composed by Benji Robinson, our producers Philip Cogley, I’m your host, Tim Fulton. Have a great week.

                The post Nina West appeared first on The Confluence Cast.

                50 min
              • The Beatles Marathon

                The annual Beatles Marathon, now in its eleventh year, has become a holiday tradition in Columbus. Normally gathering thousands of people throughout the day at the Bluestone, the event will be streamed live online this year. On the occasion of the upcoming 11th annual Beatles Marathon, now called Sgt. Peppercorn’s Marathon, I spoke with the event’s creator and frontman, Joe Peppercorn, about how the marathon started, what it will be like this year, and how Joe prepares for the show.

                Shownotes

                • Sgt. Peppercorn’s Marathon
                • The Bluestone
                • Andyman
                • The story behind the Paul McCartney video
                • Little Rock Bar
                • Secret Studio
                • Thom Glick Illustration
                • Nicolas Nocera
                • Marathon Merch

                  • This Confluence Cast episode is sponsored by Art Makes Columbus, Columbus Makes Art, featuring stories about our city’s incredible artists — stories full of inspiration, challenge, passion, and success. For videos, articles, an up-to-the-minute calendar of events and an artist directory visit ColumbusMakesArt.com, the resource for all things arts and culture in the capital city.

                  The post The Beatles Marathon appeared first on The Confluence Cast.

                  38 min
                • The History of 400 Square

                  There’s a rich history in Franklinton. This week, we dive into the origins of 400 West Rich and the larger 400 Square with the curator of their 400 History Show and Mini-Museum, Zach Henkel. We discuss the history of Franklinton, how the building has evolved over time, and what you can experience at the exhibition.

                  To book a visit, please contact Zach Henkel at 614-806-6559 or [email protected].

                   

                  SHOWNOTES

                  • 400 West Rich
                  • Zach Henkel
                  • Vanderelli Room
                  • Strongwater Food and Spirits
                  • Franklinton
                  • Chromedge Studios
                  • Idea Foundry

                    • This episode of The Confluence Cast is sponsored by Gateway Film Center, a nonprofit cinema committed to storytellers and amplifying the impact of their work in our community. A story told by an authentic voice can inspire new ideas and has the power to entertain, push boundaries, spark new levels of empathy, and advance social change.

                    The post The History of 400 Square appeared first on The Confluence Cast.

                    21 min
                  • Development in the City of Worthington

                    When it comes to development, the City of Worthington, like many cities with their size and limitations, has to play a balancing act on navigating varying interests. Reporter Brent Warren sat down with the city’s economic development director and assistant city manager, David McCorkle, and Worthington City Manager Matt Greeson to discuss developments coming to Worthington and how they’ve evolved.

                    Shownotes

                    • The City of Worthington
                    • David McCorkle
                    • Matt Greeson
                    • Jobs Ohio
                    • Ohio Third Frontier
                    • United Methodist Children’s Home

                      • The Confluence Cast is sponsored by The Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission featuring stories about local and regional partners that envision and embrace innovative directions in economic prosperity, transportation, sustainability and an inclusive Central Ohio. MORPC’s transformative programming, innovative services and public policy initiatives are designed to promote and support the vitality and growth in the region.

                      The post Development in the City of Worthington appeared first on The Confluence Cast.

                      43 min
                    • Cleve Ricksecker

                      With the threat of protests and the coronavirus raging, what’s going to happen to Downtown Columbus? On the occasion of his recent retirement, we spoke with the former executive director of the two Downtown special improvement districts, Cleve Ricksecker, about the state of Downtown, why he retired, and why Columbus needs a screamer.

                      SHOWNOTES

                      • Cleve Ricksecker
                      • Previous episode with Cleve
                      • Special Improvement Districts
                      • Capital Crossroads and Discovery District
                      • Downtown C-pass
                      • Short North Business Association
                      • Continental Real Estate
                      • State of Downtown study
                      • The Wood Companies
                      • Smart Columbus
                      • Bill Moss

                        • This episode of The Confluence Cast is sponsored by Gateway Film Center, a nonprofit cinema committed to storytellers and amplifying the impact of their work in our community. A story told by an authentic voice can inspire new ideas and has the power to entertain, push boundaries, spark new levels of empathy, and advance social change.

                        The post Cleve Ricksecker appeared first on The Confluence Cast.

                        51 min

                      About The Confluence Cast

                      From the publisher's feed

                      The Confluence Cast is a Columbus-centered conversation show hosted by Tim Fulton, exploring the people, places, and ideas shaping central Ohio.

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