We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Dannie Snyder. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Dannie below.
Dannie, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?
I think many artists would define “meaningful work” as a project that ultimately reinforces their personal values, so the creative process probably stems from a need for self-expression. My work is meaningful when it’s impacting society, when it’s either expressing and reinforcing a community’s value or, better, when it’s opening the minds of many to reconsider their values and inspiring collective transformation. So when I ask myself, “HOW meaningful is this work? Like to what degree?” I’m therefore asking myself, “HOW effective is this work? Like how can its goals for social impact be tracked and measured?”
While I try to support corners of society that I identify with, I have worked on some projects for communities that I did not consider myself a member of. For example, many of my recent projects fit into the realm of Prison Abolition, which I have never been incarcerated, but I have worked as a Teaching Artist and Tutor in juvenile detention centers. I view the prison industrial complex as the backdrop to America, all facets of our lives weaving into it, I think a great deal of incarceration is the result of the school-to-prison pipeline, meaning the result of an oppressive public school system. So there are other reasons, particularly as an educator, for me to comfortably feel like I can be a leader in the movement, but I do have to check myself on the daily for how I’m showing up as a white ally to other Black and Brown leaders.
In fact, during August, I’ll be teaching a free workshop with the Artist Relief Project exploring the ethical questions that come up in this work, particularly in “serving” groups across the wheel of power and privilege. I mention this workshop because, of all the meaningful projects I’ve collaborated on, I find that I’ve been making the most impact through the Artist Relief Project (ARP). ARP supports artists and creatives facing professional challenges as a result of our current economic climate and the COVID-19 crisis. I have been teaching with ARP since the start of the pandemic, providing an array of classes aimed at empowering artists with skills that ultimately give them more control and ownerships over their business as well as aimed at shifting their mindsets from struggling, suffering artists to growing artpreneurs. Outside of marketing and grant writing classes, many of the workshops I’ve provided relate to artivism, community building and healing, and collaboration/collectivizing. Through ARP, I’ve been able to offer free consulting to artists around the world, even musicians in Ukraine, assisting them in maximizing the effect of their work.
Dannie, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I am an interdisciplinary artivist.
How did I get here? I just recently turned 35, so let me try to give the spark notes summary for each 5-year chapter of my journey. Age five, I’m experimenting on our family’s piano and banging on our pots and pans. Age ten, I have a piano teacher, a drum set, and my very own book that I wrote all by myself – golly – and that my librarian was swell enough to put on the shelf. Age 15, I’m competing in percussion every weekend, having anxiety attacks every weekend, arguing with my band director to allow me to also do theatre (particularly playwriting). Age 20, I’m changing from a music major to a music minor in order to focus more on theatre (kind of ridiculous after spending 20 years convincing my dad to let me be a professional musician). Oh and I decided to add a second film major because, at this point, what the hell. Age 25, I’m making and teaching a lot of music, theatre, film, and now poetry, focusing on how to use art for social change, like REAL, tangible, physical change. Age 30, I am hiking the tallest point in Indochina and suddenly deciding to move to Germany to write another book, but like a REAL book on artivism (probably THE thing I’m most proud of accomplishing in my career)! Age 35, I am moving from Mexico back to the U.S., looking to expand my work in prison abolition, access to medicine, public school education reform, sustainable funding for the arts, and more.
So, all in all, I’m a filmmaker, theatre practitioner, spoken word artist, percussionist, activist, educator, outreach coordinator, and co-host of a podcast. As I mentioned, I am currently providing free online workshops and consulting for artists through the Artist Relief Project. I am also the Outreach Coordinator for Cell Dreamer and the inspiring coach Michy E. Morillo, an interactive educational program aimed at dismantling the school-to-prison pipeline and ending recidivism. And the name of my podcast on artivism is RE – FLECT / CALIBRATE, co-hosting with the talented janet e. dandrige.
Outside of all that, I offer a variety of services for projects that align with my mission to foster dialogues and communities, to humbly serve as an artist matchmaker, leading devised experimental collaborations between artists of different backgrounds, ultimately uplifting the voices of BIPOC and LGBTQ2+ artists, decentering whiteness and straight/cisgender stories. Services include project management and administration, creative fundraising and marketing, research and writing/editing, public relations, pitching, occasionally shooting and editing for video (I love producing music videos), drumming, and speaking/performing at conferences.
From press to testimonies, I think most people know me as like the conference speaker type, even though I am more comfortable behind a drum set, behind other musicians, in the dark, listening to them, vibing off their energies… In my mission to be an ally, my instinct is to give the microphone and spotlight to others, but sometimes I have to accept the call to the stage. While I was living in Europe, I was “called” to two different conferences in Lisbon, Portugal and Venice, Italy; opportunities of a lifetime, right? I am so proud of myself for not only earning these opportunities but mostly for facing my fears of presenting alone for a whole friggin’ hour for a whole lecture hall of friggin’ scholarly academic types! I ultimately fashioned two different one-woman shows that were FUN and interactive, that broke conference norms and audience’s expectations. I was so proud of myself for being MYSELF and now my secret goal is to one day lead a TED Talk!
The reason why I love platforms like my podcast and TED Talks is because I’m all about openly sharing resources with others! That’s another thing that certainly sets me apart from other artists. I don’t hoard my networks or funding opportunities or whatever. I ain’t competitive like that or suffer from a scarcity mindset. For example, I like working with musicians who not only encourage me to also play for other bands, but even recommend me to other bands. That being said, I’m also incredibly loyal, like arguably over-committed to commitment at times. I won’t flake out on a project to go pursue another higher paying gig. Just as I want to uplift others, I know that those who uplift me to the top will be the same folks ready to catch me if I ever fall. I want to support thriving artists who support thriving communities that in return give back to artists and recognize the crucial role we play in society.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
DO NOT SAY YES TO EVERYTHING, golly. My family and my university accidentally raised me within a scarcity mindset, even to the point of believing that I should feel so lucky to have a husband, even if he treats me like crap. They accidentally raised me in this old industrial and post-WWII mentalities of living to work, not working to live, as well as modeled to me how to be the “rock of the family,” meaning how to NOT be vulnerable. Like if someone asks me how am I doing, I’m not supposed to actually answer honestly. I’m supposed to just say “I’m good” and get back to fucking work. I never heard the word “burnout” until much later in life, and it was the result of taking on too many projects for too little money. As a result, I didn’t have time to sleep and was still feeling broke and unsuccessful and super guilty because I was missing deadlines. I’ll never forget my friend saying “You work harder than anyone I know and you have no money. How is that?”
Part of the issue is that a lot of society expects art for free or cheap, like music for instance or show tickets, and a lot of folks take for granted the value of art in community building. In my book, I argue that art was once a defining element of civilization, but now it has been replaced with technology, which folks are not hesitant to invest in technology like they are in art. Perhaps this is because your internet is now linked to your survival whereas the painting on your wall is just decoration. What’s crazy to me is not so much the fact that people expect art to be a free or a cheap commodity, but that even artists don’t want to pay much for collaborators’ products and services! Because artists are “broke” and “can’t afford” to pay collaborators a decent wage. If anyone should recognize the value in an artist’s work, it should be another artist, right?!
First of all, we have to eliminate this whole “I’m broke” talk. It’s not positive self-talk, it’s not coming from a growth or abundance mindset, it can also be insensitive and misleading to others. I was always saying yes to too many projects for pennies because “I was broke” and desperate and generally scared of losing a possible networking opportunity. What ended up usually happening was: One, I failed to uphold the expectations of myself and my client because I was struggling to keep up with the work, thus ruining the professional relationship and any possibility of future gigs with them that could have potentially paid more or somehow moved me up in my career. Two, I was being taking advantage of by an artist who, because they were taking advantage of lots of other artists, was ultimately not going to go anywhere in their own career and so there was never the possibility of them uplifting me in any way.
For many years, I was also investing money into my own art projects. The amount of stress to produce those projects as well as my clients’ projects ultimately outweighed the joy I once found in artmaking. I had to start saying no to projects, including my own, and I had to start asking for more money in order to enjoy making art again. I had to unlearn the “strong work ethics” that my parents instilled in me and determine a new set of personal values. I wanted to invest money into TRAVELING, not in making art. I needed other people to appropriately invest in my art so I could have a real vacation as well as a retirement plan, an emergency savings account, and health insurance. And NONE of these realizations would not have come about if I hadn’t left my husband and gone to therapy and learned about anxiety and positive self-talk and, from there, became an educator trained in not only growth mindset and trauma-informed care but even just the basic social and emotional learning stuff that was absent from my public school education.
What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?
This is a tough question that I’m constantly asking. I don’t have a lot of answers for right now or for what I predict ten years from now, but I do have ideas… I believe we are in our own Roaring 20s of the 21st Century and this period could be really exciting for the arts. As we look back to the Harlem Renaissance and Modernism, what new art forms, genres, and styles might emerge over the next decade? I’m all about how to make art more accessible to folks. Like it’s crazy that I can’t afford to go to the opera! Also, I see a great deal of art as education (as well as activism). And since I think quality education should be free, then what’s to say art shouldn’t be free..? But at the same time, I want society to recognize the value of artists’ contributions, particularly in community building, so I want to see artists being paid more, duh.
As I mentioned before, when artists thrive, communities thrive, and then communities can give back to artists. This circular thinking comes from Artist Thrive, an organization aiming to change the narrative in the field and raise the value of artists in every community. In conducting research to this question, I definitely look to organizations like Artist Thrive for ideas. Another great org I look to is Working Artists and the Greater Economy (W.A.G.E.), which aims to establish sustainable economic relationships between artists and the institutions that contract artists’ labor, and to introduce mechanisms for self-regulation into the art field that collectively bring about a more equitable distribution of its economy. Recently I became a member of Teaching Artists of the Mid-Atlantic and Teaching Artist Guild, which the latter has this nifty calculator tool on their website for determining your pay rate. There are lots more resources out there, like all the online articles analyzing why immersive art exhibitions/spaces are on the rise. But there is still obviously so much more research to do, like I would love to take from Thomas McMullan’s short article on what theatre can learn from video games and run with it and write a whole book.
I mentioned before how artists need to model the kind of respect that artists deserve to the rest of society. We can’t necessarily expect society to suddenly start supporting artists. We need to think like activists and reimagine what sustainable funding for the arts looks like and fight for that. For instance, I could argue that we need to increase grant opportunities, but I believe we also should change our general processes for applying to grants, such as the oppressively long applications and the ineligibility of previous winners. We need to shift society’s perception that artists are meant to be penniless and to suffer, especially in regards to substance abuse. To positively shift society’s perception, we should look at grassroots initiatives that are effectively fulfilling the specific needs of communities and its artists. For instance, Health Alliance for Austin Musicians provides healthcare to Austin’s musicians, focusing on prevention and wellness, and thus hugely contributes to a thriving music scene that attracts tourists and new residents. Austin would not be Austin without music.
I can’t fit all of the ideas into one interview, but I will say to anyone reading this who is NOT an artist and is a member of society looking to support artists in some way TODAY… Do not buy that wall art from Walmart. If there’s a band you listen to on the daily on Spotify, go to one of their live shows or donate to them on their website. (All artists need to have donate buttons on their websites.) And just imagine if all the wall art in the world came from a Target or all the music you listened to was produced by a robot… Then go watch a play that’s not based off of a Disney movie.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://danniesnyder.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/danniesnyder/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/danniesnyder/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dannie-snyder-a776b7bb/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/DannieSnyder
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXmAFJNJSuzipTsj2lLSnwg