We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Keith Marks a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Keith, appreciate you joining us today. Are you happy as a creative professional? Do you sometimes wonder what it would be like to work for someone else?

Like many artists, our formative years are the ones that propel us into our current reality. Attending concerts as a teenager changed my life, and I set a course to be involved in my music scene. While I was never the guy holding the guitar, I found myself in support roles to the arts – hanging posters, organizing concerts, writing press releases. Over the years, my creativity got funneled into launching and managing projects. The role of administrator can sometimes be lumped into the business world, but I consider myself (and have known many) creative arts presenters who view their work as their creativity.

Working within the nonprofit context has its benefits, but it also has its issues. The nonprofit sector can sometimes feel like the holding tank of problems that society doesn’t want to deal with. The funding choices of where our government, corporations, and funders put their priorities has an impact. The joy of the work I do comes when I’m at the events, family and friends are dancing and smiling, and we’ve contributed to a greater feeling of community. All of the work that happens between those moments is a real struggle – grant proposals, facilities management, dealing with any negative community feedback, and the constant grind of getting people to pay attention through the clutter of everything vying for everyone’s attention.

There are days when I think to myself that I’m living the life a teenager chose for myself, and I might make a better board member or even donor to an arts org if I went out and got a “regular job.” And then I come back to the community I serve, the opportunities it provides me and my family to run an arts organization, and the impact we make by exposing people to a range of diversity they wouldn’t otherwise get to know. I do think our society could do a better job of funding ways for both artists and the organizations that work to promote them, but going to get a “regular job” seems like more of a grind than the hustle it takes to keep my corner of the arts community moving forward.

Keith, 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?

Growing up, I’d watch artist friends dedicate months of their time to an artistic endeavor and give little to no thought about how they plan to market and promote their finished creation. More out of frustration with their approach, I stepped in to help book events, market them, and support their projects. This slowly led into a long history of booking and presenting concerts which then grew into arts events of various formats. I had the opportunity to live abroad, calling Europe, Asia, and the Middle East home for a decade. While traveling, I became a performer and presenter. When I returned to the U.S., I put all of those skills into play by creating an arts nonprofit focused on creating unique arts experiences that merged performance, visual, location, and community.

That nonprofit planted the seeds for nonprofit arts management – in 2019, I was selected to the National Arts Strategies’ Executive Program in Arts & Culture Strategy. That program opened the door for me to complete my MS in Nonprofit Leadership from the University of Pennsylvania’s School for Social Policy.

Currently, I’m the executive director for Next Stage Arts – an arts nonprofit based in southeastern Vermont. The venue sits in a converted historical church building. The organization presents over 100 events a year in our 200-seat theater, art shows in our gallery, community-focused events in our community space, and we host dinners and food-related experiences in our commercial kitchen.

The role of executive director allows me to flex creative muscles, guiding the programming, while also keeping an eye on the nuts and bolts of running the business side of the nonprofit. Through grants, philanthropic support, and earned revenue, the organization is an anchor for cultivating community and presenting ethnic, racial and cultural diversity that wouldn’t normally make its way to Vermont.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

Prior to taking my current role, a mentor and friend handed me the book “Building Communities, Not Audiences: The Future of the Arts in the United States” by Doug Borwick. This book shifted my perspective from thinking individual performance marketing to building a brand that is meaningful and touches lives. I want my organization to have deep relevance to people’s day-to-day lives. I want them to feel that the work we’re doing is enhancing their lives, creating meaning and value for the community, and I want there to be a sense of heartfelt connection between the people who cross the threshold into our arts spaces.

This sense of providing deeper meaning is what I feel that many relationships between arts organizations and communities are missing. The arts only thrive if they are relevant to people’s lives. We make sure that ever outdoor show we do, children 12 and under are free. Watching children’s faces glow at seeing something new, something that touches them – this is how we create meaning for the next generation of value-seeking arts lovers. If the arts are not something we practice within communities, we will continue to see the decline of the arts patron, donor, and, ultimately, fewer arts venues trying to support artists.

The arts ecosystems, from the rural to the urban, the independent to the global ecosystem should be striving to find more meaning in people’s day-to-day lives. This has been a particular mission during my creative journey.

Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?

Two major schools of thought have drastically impacted my trajectory while studying at the University of Pennsylvania. One came out of a class with Wharton’s Dr. Meredith Myers’ class “Empowering Nonprofit Leaders to Thrive.” The course laid out a number of frameworks for taking organizations from merely running well to taking them to places where they can thrive. One of the major pieces of thought that shook me was this organizational process called Appreciative Inquiry (AI). AI grew alongside Positive Psychology, which grew out of a shift away from dysfunction to normal, to asking why we couldn’t move into thinking from normal to thriving. Within AI, the framework looks at what is working well within organizations and builds from there.

The second meaningful shift was learning more about Design Thinking – a process for understanding a potential opportunity that needs to be solved. The process focuses on deep research and prototyping to learn to get to the best possible solution for whatever the design team is studying.

These are the two major resources that have come to my mind that have shed a renewed perspective on the work I’m doing within the arts.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/keithpix/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/keith.marks.16/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/keithallanmarks/