Courage and Curiosity: What Our Field Needs Most Right Now
When I stood on stage at Boot Camp this year, I couldn’t help but think back to the first one—just 50 people at Baryshnikov Arts Center, no reputation, no certainty, just Capacity founder Erik Gensler’s conviction that the arts needed a professional development space to accelerate digital adoption and evolve into content creators.
Fifteen years later, that “digital transformation” we were all trying to understand has long since moved to the rearview mirror. We’re now navigating something darker—fear.
The world feels heavy. The headlines are horrific. Many of us wake up wondering how our work fits into the chaos of the moment. Yet, gathering with hundreds of arts leaders this year reminded me: the work still matters. Perhaps more than ever.
Naming the darkness
There’s a temptation, especially at conferences, to gloss over the difficult parts, to put on a bright face, and talk strategy while the world burns around us. But at Boot Camp, I wanted to name what’s real: that fear, fatigue, and uncertainty are shaping our professional and personal lives in profound ways. Pretending otherwise doesn’t serve us. But neither does despair.
When we gather as a community and tell the truth about where we are, something powerful happens. The act of naming the darkness allows us to see one another again, and to remember that we’re not alone in facing it.
THE CONTAGION OF COURAGE
Fear spreads quickly. We can feel it everywhere: on our teams, in our cities, across our feeds. But so does courage.
I often think about that. Courage is not always loud. Sometimes it looks like joy—like the bright, unstoppable grin of New York Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani, whose advocacy work right now is electrifying. Sometimes it looks like determination—like Kat Abughazaleh, running for office in Illinois, meeting hard resistance with persistence.
Courage doesn’t have one shape. Each of us has to find our own way to express it. What matters is that we keep choosing it. Because courage, like fear, is contagious.
If we are to face what’s coming in 2026, 2027, and 2028, courage must become part of how we lead, how we collaborate, and how we show up for one another in the arts.
Why Curiosity Belongs Beside CouragE
In the same breath, I’ve found myself thinking about curiosity. The two are inseparable.
Courage without curiosity can calcify; it becomes defiance. But when courage is paired with curiosity, it becomes possibility.
Curiosity keeps us learning when the world feels fixed. It helps us ask better questions about how we serve audiences, nurture artists, and lead teams. It keeps us from being insular, because our field can be, at times, deeply insular.
Boot Camp has always been about looking beyond our own walls. Learning from other industries. Borrowing ideas from sports, film, technology, and activism. Curiosity reminds us that we don’t have to know it all, we just have to stay open enough to discover what’s next.
EMBRACING THE “AND”
As I reflect on this milestone year, I keep coming back to one truth: we can hold multiple things to be true at once. The world can be frightening and still full of beauty. The work can feel small and still be essential. We can feel exhausted and still be brave.
Art helps us hold both. It always has.
So as we step into another year of change—political, cultural, technological—I hope we reach for courage when fear creeps in, and for curiosity when certainty tempts us. Together, they are how we find our way forward.
Staying Courageous, Staying Curious
At Capacity, we believe the most resilient organizations are the ones that keep asking questions and stay brave enough to experiment, especially in uncertain times.
Let’s shape what’s next, together.
