Clive Chang on Innovation and the Rise of the Multi‑Hyphenate Artist

Monica Holt: Welcome to CI to Eye with Monica Holt. It is my absolute joy to be bringing episodes to you weekly this fall. This season will feature some of my favorite people, inspiring leaders, artists, and friends from across industries. I couldn’t think of anyone better to kick off our first episode than Clive Chang, President and CEO of YoungArts, an organization that provides artists with a lifetime of support. Clive has a pretty incredible background spanning artistry, business acumen, and leadership with a powerful approach to creating change and pushing the status quo. In 2022, Clive was appointed as president of YoungArts and has been a driving force in championing their mission to identify, amplify, and supercharge the potential of artists at every stage of their careers. Without further ado, here’s Clive.

Clive Chang, welcome to CI to Eye! Thank you so much for being here.

Clive Chang: Oh, thank you for having me. What a delight.

Monica Holt: I’m so thrilled. As you know, I’ve long been an admirer of the way you do, your work, but also the journey that you’ve taken throughout your career. So I’m really excited to talk a little bit about you and how you became Clive, President of YoungArts, but also a little bit about your thoughts on the field because I think whenever we’ve had those conversations, I always leave feeling a little more inspired, a little more hopeful, and basically ready to follow wherever you might lead.

Clive Chang: You are too kind.

Monica Holt: Please. I am so grateful that you’re joining and really kicking off this season of CI to Eye together. One of the things about you that I think is so integral to everything you do, you actually talk about yourself as being a hundred percent artist and a hundred percent business person, and I’m just curious, when did you realize that you didn’t have to choose between those two identities?

Clive Chang: I think pretty early on, to be honest. Part of it was just a slight rebellious nature that I’ve always had, but the moment that I can sort of think back to in vivid detail is when I first enrolled in university and I went to the management faculty counselor’s office, and I said, I would like to simultaneously do a music degree, and the answer I got was, well, that’s impossible. And I think that was the first moment I was like, well, is it actually impossible or has no one ever done it before, which is a different thing, right? The two aren’t exactly the same, so then I marched back to my dorm room. I took out the curriculum listings for both degrees, and I just made a spreadsheet and I said, okay, here are all the credit requirements for a Bachelor of Commerce. Here are all the credit requirements for a Bachelor of Music. How could these fit together? So about two weeks later, I went back to her office and I had put together the spreadsheet.

Monica Holt: Of course.

Clive Chang: It totals 236 credits, but here is exactly how I can do all these 236 credits in five years. And of course, it was like eight courses a semester, three to five courses every summer. And it was one of those things. And she looked and she was like, oh, well, I guess there is a way, and off I went. And that’s how I did these two bachelor’s degrees that apparently had zero overlap with each other and did it in five years. And I think that is an anecdote that is somewhat illustrative of how I’ve pursued the rest of my life and the rest of my career. And later on doing both an MFA and an MBA. And part of it was, I myself wanted to give myself the gift, which I think I was also very privileged to be able to give myself that gift, of pursuing both paths in full force. I didn’t want to half either of them. And so I wanted to go and explore who I was as an artist, and I wanted to go explore who I was as a business person, and was luckily able to carve a path to do both.

Monica Holt: It’s so impressive. And also it makes total sense that you said, I’m going to come up with a plan and then I’m going to do it because I shall not be defined by any boxes that are set forth in front of me. And as you say, I think that it really does continue to characterize the work you do and the values that you’ve brought throughout your career. Will you just talk me through the sequencing order of, school? Okay, so we did school, MFA, MBA…

Clive Chang: Yeah. Okay. So let’s see. Clive was born.

Monica Holt: Clive was born. An important date. Well, and also, and was a classical musician from a very young age.

Clive Chang: Yes. Clive also has a twin sister who also is a musician and she’s actually, she’s a professor of neuroscience, but she too is a musician. So one day the two of us saw a piano at our aunt’s house. We were three, and we started banging on it, and then we started bugging our parents for piano lessons, and then no teacher would take us. We were too young. And eventually at five we started taking piano lessons. But yes, then I started playing the competition circuit and all of that. But early on developed a love of composition. And I credit this to my theory teacher, Mrs. Kaplan, who one day, I think I was like nine, and she was like, go try and compose a piece. Pretend you’re Bach and compose a prelude or something. I was like, okay,

Monica Holt: As nine year olds are want to do. Understood.

Clive Chang: And I think that’s what sort of spurred my love of composition from a young age. And then of course, cultural pressures of, you can’t really be an artist and make a living, so go pick something practical. Anyway, in a sense, I had originally chosen this degree in finance for my parents, but luckily very early through that experience, it was like, oh, this is kind of fun. And there’s kind of like this, a bit of art in business.

Monica Holt: Yeah, totally. I would imagine that kind of the music and math, it all must play together to a certain degree in your education.

Clive Chang: A million percent. I mean, music is just so inherently analytical. I always think about the sheer analytical horsepower of a musician in so many contexts, even a player processing a really complex score in real time, and how that translates into physical manifestation. I think it’s such an underappreciated and underrated quality of musicians, just how inherently analytical they must be to get to that level of proficiency. Where it really came to a head for me was when I was doing the music degree and the finance degree in parallel, and I would go to corporate finance class and we’d have to build, okay, so in corporate finance, you have to build these things called discounted cashflow models, and they’re these unwieldy large Excel sheets and models, a bunch of things in them. Everyone freaks out about how hard it is. Literally, I got there and I was like, okay, you people, if you think this is hard, try and score an entire orchestral piece in Finale for the different instruments. This is nothing compared to how analytical the notation of music really gets. And so I always joke that I got all of my quantitative analytical abilities from my music education.

Monica Holt: This is the message that all kids need to tell their parents as they’re composing and playing music at a young age.

Clive Chang: Exactly.

Monica Holt: Yeah. I love thinking that way, and I love the idea that it was that piece of your brain that ultimately led you to success in a much more business oriented setting. And we always talk about that pairing. Okay, so you’ve gotten your MFA, you go to business school, and then…

Clive Chang: The dual degrees in undergrad, and then right after that, MFA, right after that, MBA, during MBA that summer, I interned at City Ballet. After that, I graduated and came to Lincoln Center, Linc Inc. I went to Disney. And then six years later, that’s when Henry Tims called and I was like, yes. I’ve got to go back and be head of innovation for Lincoln Center. Like, hello. Got to go do that.

Monica Holt: A dream.

Clive Chang: And then three years into that came the young arts opportunity, and here I am.

Monica Holt: I mean, let’s just take a beat. Very impressive, sir. But I guess as you left school, you, you were working in nonprofit arts a bit, and then one of the first pivots was then moving into Disney theatrical, which is a commercial Broadway entity among other things. And I guess I’m curious what surprised you the most about that transition, given that you were still in the arts world, you were still surrounded by creativity, but it’s a different lens. It’s a shift. Absolutely.

Clive Chang: Yeah, absolutely. The biggest surprise was probably how similar the dynamics were, because both settings were creative organizations that wrestled with the same tension. Like, Disney being a for-profit publicly traded company didn’t negate the fact that it also on a day-to-day basis had to wrestle with this artistic merit versus commercial viability. It’s exactly the same things that we grapple with in the nonprofit arts. It very much was a natural pivot. It also, I think, allowed me to use the skills I developed in my MBA in just a different context. Not harder, per se. Different. In fact, I will throw out a hot take, which is that I actually think the work is probably harder on the nonprofit side than it is on the commercial side.

Monica Holt: We love a hot take, and I love that hot take.

Clive Chang: In the for-profit world, there’s a certain, is straightforwardness the right term? Is it good for the brand? Is it more or less aligned with creative strategy? Like check, check, check. Okay, go. In nonprofit land, it’s like, how is everyone feeling about this? And it’s a whole 17 other layers.

Monica Holt: I don’t know what you mean, Clive. I’ve never experienced that once.

Clive Chang: And which donors will get mad about what and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right? So that’s my hot take, but that could probably be a full episode unto itself. Right?

Monica Holt: Well, listen, don’t tempt me with a good time on the Hot Take episode. In addition to having a very multihyphenate, I would say, background in and of yourself, you are no stranger to innovation, even in a legacy space like Lincoln Center. But one program that’s particularly on my mind that I believe you started was this kind of research and development program, the Collider program.

Clive Chang: The Collider.

Monica Holt: The Collider. So the reason I love this is because this notion that artists can come together and there is no absolute definition of what they are meant to create through Collider. And that sounds very exciting and thrilling, but I have to imagine a little different than maybe what the institution was accustomed to with their programming. And so I’m curious, one, just what was the kind of inspiration, how were you thinking about the program, but also how did you then take that vision through the organization to a place where it could really be embraced and supported and promoted?

Clive Chang: Yes, this is such a good moment to go back down memory lane. When I was first hired to go back to Lincoln Center, Henry needed a chief of staff, and he needed a chief innovation officer. And when he met me, he was like, do you think you could do both for a period of time? And I was like, okay. And the advantage of that, it came with, of course, lots of challenges, especially bandwidth challenges, but what it did come with was a dual mandate of, be the person who dreams up the new thing and be the person who is the mobilizer who was supposed to work across the whole organization to mobilize strategy and new things. And so I think because the role ended up having both in it, it provided, I don’t know, a permission of sorts to go and actually build the thing.

Monica Holt: That idea of permission when you are building new, that feels so important and such an unlock for what you then have a runway to create.

Clive Chang: Yeah. Yeah. So the Collider is an R and D lab for the performing arts. And so literally the initial white paper was just as vague as that. It was like, what could an R and D lab for the performing arts look like? And off we go, and as usual, the answer is, let’s look to the artists. So the model of the Collider was really bringing together a group of artists, practitioners, thinkers, educators, builders, technologists, community organizers. It was kind of like, let’s bring in as much interdisciplinarity and cross-sectoral thinking as possible, and let’s not prescribe an outcome and let’s see what happens. And it’s let’s let the planned serendipity kind of ensue and figure out what we learn from that.

Monica Holt: We can create a safe space to let, well, in Kennedy’s words, to set the artist free. Right?

Clive Chang: Exactly.

Monica Holt: I think that’s so brilliant. And even the way you describe it, again ties back to this notion that’s kind of been this thread throughout your career and also your vision for these organizations. What drew you to YoungArts, and how did you know it was time to move on to a step like this?

Clive Chang: It honestly feels so much like coming home and being in community with artists all the time. And that is the greatest gift of this role is that I get to spend the majority of my time with artists. If I were to point to my biggest FOMO while at the larger institutions like Lincoln Center and Disney, it was so close yet so far.

Monica Holt: Oh, sure. Absolutely. Yeah.

Clive Chang: I think it allows me to reconnect with my artist roots in a way that was harder in a different context. And going back to how we started this conversation, being a hundred percent artist and a hundred percent business person, I can finally actually activate both in in this job, which is such a gift. I think you get to the point in your career where you’re finally like, I think I’m ready to run a thing. I think I’m ready. And you just know it. It’s not some level of preparedness that came with a checklist or whatever. It’s like in your gut, you’re like, yeah, no, I think I’m ready. And then the last piece of it, which I believe more and more as time goes on, is it’s as much what you’re doing as it is who you get to do it with.

Monica Holt: Preach on that. Preach on that. Yeah.

Clive Chang: When you just are like, you are my people, right?

Monica Holt: Yeah, I do.

Clive Chang: And so it just really made total sense. When I think about impact as well, there’s a unique vantage point from which we operate because we deal with the common denominator that unites all arts organizations, which is the artist.

Monica Holt: And I think most listeners probably know YoungArts by its kind of sterling reputation. But would you just talk a little bit about a kind of full picture of the organization’s scope and how it supports artists kind of throughout their entire career trajectory?

Clive Chang: Yes. YoungArts was founded in 1981, and since then it has identified exceptional young artists between the ages of 15 to 18. So every year we launch this massive nationwide call for any young artist, 15 to 18, to apply to our national competition. What most people don’t know is that once you enter our community, and that is winning any YoungArts award at any level, each year we award between seven to 800 winners. Once a part of that community, you have lifetime access to everything that we offer, whether it’s the monthly 40,000 in micro grants that we disperse every month, our multitude of residency opportunities and fellowship opportunities, professional development, mentorship opportunities, all of this, sort of the suite of resources that we continue to invest in and grow over time. And over the decades, we now have over 23,000 past award winners.

Monica Holt: That’s incredible.

Clive Chang: And to my knowledge, we are still the only organization in this country that supports artists across the entire breadth of performing visual and literary arts, which as you can imagine, is no small feat.

Monica Holt: No, none. And I’m curious, when you’re thinking about what we were talking about in terms of the interdisciplinary nature of collaboration and artists’ future, how do you balance those pieces? What’s the breadth there?

Clive Chang: Yeah, I think this is sort of — we’re already branching into what does the future of the ecosystem look like? Rarely will you see a young artist today at a high level of artistry embody only one artistic discipline. So the fact that our ecosystem still compels them to choose one and go pursue it relentlessly is actually our fault. So every day I ask myself the question, are we doing a service or a disservice to a young artist if we’re asking them to choose one lane and apply? And so this is one of the big, big questions we’re asking. Do these 10 discipline lanes that we currently run, are they the right 10 lanes? Are they the right division? Do they accommodate not only artists practicing at the intersection of these disciplines, but also are they fully encompassing of every genre that falls under, say, dance? And the answer right now is no. Right? So we’re gradually trying to evolve and we’re trying to do it very thoughtfully. For the first time this year, any applicant in dance will self-identify their genre.

Monica Holt: Very interesting.

Clive Chang: Any applicant in voice will self-identify their genre, and now it’s going to be incumbent on us to make sure that we find the right adjudicators and reviewers to properly judge these applications.

Monica Holt: Oh, that’s so fascinating because I truly wasn’t even thinking about that side of the adjudication. You are then truly breaking down these silos in every possible way.

Clive Chang: I can’t tell you how we’re going to do it yet, but is there a version of the world one day where a young person is applying simply as an artist. Now, how we ensure equitable adjudication…? It’s a big, big question to answer, but we’re doing as much field listening and conversations with partners as possible to really figure out how best to do it. And can I just name, it’s not enough for us to do that at YoungArts because where do these young artists go after us?

Monica Holt: Well, exactly.

Clive Chang: They go to Parsons, Julliard, Central Saint Martins, whatever. They go off to art schools, conservatories, et cetera. So how must those institutions also evolve?

Monica Holt: And do you now, or are you imagining a pipeline from which you can be having those conversations, leveraging YoungArts with these different organizations that do then hold the kind of next wave of education and future for these young artists?

Clive Chang: Absolutely. More and more we’re leaning into investing and building these partnerships far and wide across the country. We realize that we are a part of the ecosystem and we can’t do it alone. So this is the hard work that we’re investing in over time.

Monica Holt: Well, and I think you also stopped short of saying the other places — at performing arts centers, at all of the different arts and cultural organizations throughout the states. Putting my marketing hat on for a second, we still send a dance brochure and a classical brochure and a pops brochure and a theater brochure. And I think there’s been a lot of conversation about how we start breaking that down even further to say, we know that audiences in the future are selecting into events that they think are going to make them feel something, whether that’s nostalgia or joy, or challenging their perspective, we should hope, too. But I think the thread that you’re talking about carries through all the way to, an artist at the pinnacle of their career is probably in a brochure somewhere being defined.

Clive Chang: Exactly.

Monica Holt: And so we have to break this down across the board, and I think a lot of what you are doing becomes foundational for that thinking, even when we get into the nitty gritty of ticketing and subscription packages and what the right message or photo is to convey the art that folks will be interacting with.

Clive Chang: Absolutely. And it goes to the very institutional structures and the need to evolve those to even get to the point where you’re then figuring out how to tell the story on a brochure. You can only do so much if the system was set up to have a curator for dance, a curator for classical music, a curator for… and by definition, they’re already selecting the work in a way that’s boxed.

Monica Holt: Exactly. Well, and you know how the Kennedy Center was structured in that exact format, and I think we were trying over the past few years to really have a sense of creative collectivity, but the structure was still there, and there’s only so much work you can do in culture when it’s still bound by some pretty tight and rigid frameworks. One thing that you’ve talked about before is the unintentional inertia of legacy organizations. And it already sounds like at an organization like YoungArts approaching a 45th anniversary, that you are already taking your perspective and how we push against that inertia and evolve meaningfully. What other ways are you working to keep YoungArts responsive to how the environment around it is changing?

Clive Chang: Yeah, one thing that I feel like we’ve always stumbled over is our lack of good data. There’s no quick fix for it. And so we are just undertaking a sweeping 18 month long data architecture revamp completely. And as painful as it is right now, I just know that our future selves are going to be like, thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you for doing this. So that’s something that depending on who you ask, they may find it sexy or unsexy. I wouldn’t rate it as one of the sexier things.

Monica Holt: Sure. But they’re good vegetables.

Clive Chang: Very good.

Monica Holt: You need the vegetables too.

Clive Chang: And I think it’s more, if I were to boil it down to what is it that we’re actually trying to change, it’s, it is a sort of setting of a behavior to just always ask the question, does it have to be done this way just because it has been done this way? And I think it’s something that if you don’t discipline yourself to ask the question, you will naturally default to doing it the way it was because there’s a process in place for how it was, and it’s easier. So I’m a big fitness fanatic too, and one of my favorite sayings, I forget which fitness influencer kept saying it, but it’s like, if nothing changes, nothing changes. And I’m like, oh my God, mind blown. If nothing changes, nothing changes!

Monica Holt: But I love what you’re saying, the discipline around questioning. What a succinct way of saying that, because that can be really hard, and particularly when maybe folks who are listening, not everyone is already leading an organization. And so how can you meaningfully from within an organization have that discipline to ask the question, even when those around you are also still developing that muscle. I think it’s great to have leaders like you out in the field talking and encouraging that type of behavior and thought process. One thing that I really wanted to make sure that we talked about was that YoungArts has recently started the Artist Resource Collective and really talking about financial wellness paired with art. How do you think about prioritizing a program like that, and what are you hoping that that financial literacy piece contributes to artist sustainability and the journey that YoungArts supports throughout their career?

Clive Chang: Yeah, such a great question and such an important initiative that we’re putting more and more and more resources behind. When you think about an artist’s journey and the critical inflection points that they face, one of the greatest inhibitors is financial sustainability. And unfortunately, none of us in the ecosystem do a particularly good job of preparing artists for this eventuality that slams ’em in the face when they’re out in the world. And there are resources out there in the field that speak to this and help artists develop financial literacy and dah, dah, dah. But these resources are actually completely scattered all about. They’re not created and dispersed in a particularly friendly way to artists. So we saw a real gap here that we could help to fill, and being the only organization that really supports all artists across all disciplines in this way, we really saw this as a responsibility for us to grow into.

So I have two brilliant colleagues, Emily Waters and David Thompson, who dreamt up this wonderful thing that has become Artist Resource Collective, and it continues to grow, and the need is really salient. Honestly, it boils down to as simple as when young artists come into the world, they don’t even know what bank accounts they have to open. There is also this eventuality of the insurance cliff that every artist hits because they’re often independent contractors, gig workers, and they can be on their parents’ insurance until 25, and then it falls off, and then all of a sudden they can’t even afford health insurance. So it’s a real human-centered and artist-centered approach to building financial empowerment. So this is what we’ve landed on in terms of a label for it. We now call it a financial empowerment initiative.

Monica Holt: Oh, I love that.

Clive Chang: It’s not like, yes, it’s — part of it is about literacy, part of it is about knowledge, but ultimately it’s about giving agency to the artists to build a sustainable career in the way that makes the most sense for them. So for the first time, we’re actually requiring, this coming cycle, any YoungArts winner before their prize money is dispersed, they will have to take this introductory curriculum. And I think that’s a really, really important first step to helping a young person build financial empowerment. Not even just young artists, young people. You know what I mean?

Monica Holt: Yeah, that’s fantastic. And I love the idea of marrying it from the start with the mission and purpose of the work that you’re doing. I think so many folks would’ve benefited from this and have talked about exactly what you’re saying, particularly in the gig work economy that so many artists find themselves in for an indefinite period of time. This is brilliant.

Clive Chang: Thank you. Thank you. We’re so excited about it. I think anyone who is close to an artist of any age understands the challenge that artists face in building a financially empowered life. And so I think it’s deeply resonant to our community at least.

Monica Holt: Yeah, it’s fantastic. When I think about some friends who, younger designers or that type of life where they’re just trying to figure out how even they negotiate a contract or start any of this work, I think in the financial space, in the legal space and just administration, having this type of support system there will only help sustain the field as a whole. So we’ve talked a lot about many different initiatives that YoungArts is taking on and evolving for the organization. If YoungArts succeeds in its mission and the vision that you and your team are acting on, how do you think the broader arts ecosystem will start to look different?

Clive Chang: Gosh, I think when you boil it down to fundamentals, if we continue to grow and evolve our work at the pace that we aspire to, more and more young people will raise their hands to say, I want to be an artist, or I am an artist. Even just that critical first validation alters the path of so many young people’s lives, and of course, we’re talking about societal structures that will need to change and evolve as well. Parents need to stop being so worried that their kids will starve if they pursue a life as an artist.

Monica Holt: You know that one personally and look at you now.

Clive Chang: So I think that’s first and foremost. To me, one of our key impact metrics is the more young people who raise their hands to self-identify as an artist, the better, right? We truly believe that artists are vital to our humanity, and we truly believe that artists make the world better. So the more people who will identify as an artist, the better. I do think we hopefully will have opened up more and more entry points, more and more pathways, more and more opportunities for artists, not only at this young critical juncture, but especially at this young critical juncture, to train and develop all of the artistic identities that they really feel to be a part of them. One anecdote I’ll give is two cycles ago, the top winner in dance — he’s a top winning tap dancer. I asked him, where are you going next year? He said, I’m going to New England Conservatory for classical guitar.

And I was like, oh. And I said, well, why’d you apply in dance? And the answer was, well, that’s where I thought I had the highest chance of winning. So here I am going through a multitude of emotions and questions of like, wait, so did we do this young man a service or a disservice? We’ve given him this platform, but then we’ve forced him to choose one thing when clearly he wanted to do the other thing, and… right? And so when can we work toward a day when this young artist can come as both? I really think that will take a lot of work, not only on our part, but in the socialization across the ecosystem, in the work that we develop with our partner organizations across the country. And it will take time. It’ll take a long time, I think, for that to manifest and then for every conservatory or art school to also follow suit and have a much more imaginative way of structuring their schools and curricula, et cetera.

Monica Holt: You so clearly have such a sense for the future and what could be possible and how we grow to serve the need of our community. And I guess one question that I just really want to know from you is, what is exciting you most about the future of the arts field, and what is giving you hope, given that you’re working with all of these exceptional young artists right now?

Clive Chang: I think what gives me the most hope and optimism is knowing that the future that we’re building for artists will give them more and more agency. The more agency artists have, the more societally transformative work can ensue and be created artists. They’re the ones who ultimately tell the historical narrative of our human experience, and I think there was no better group of humans to do that than artists, and so that gives me hope.

Monica Holt: That’s beautiful. That gives me hope too. I’m glad you said that. Okay, so we’re at the end, which means it’s time for our quickfire culture questions. The first question is largely based on the fact that for the past six weeks, no one can get me to shut up about Evita on the West End. So in order to diversify my own interests, I’m looking to ask everyone what is one piece of culture right now — that can be a show, a song, a comic, a TikTok, a performance — what is one piece of culture that you are obsessed with right now?

Clive Chang: Gosh, you know who keeps popping up on my Instagram who I cannot get enough of is Atsuko Okatsuka. Have you seen this comic? Oh my goodness.

Monica Holt: I love that you said this.

Clive Chang: I’m rolling on the floor all the time. Will you go to one of the shows with me?

Monica Holt: Yes.

Clive Chang: We need to go. The other thing is, right now I’m way late to the game and watching Building the Band. Is that what it’s called?

Monica Holt: Oh, is that the one on Netflix with Nicole Scherzinger?

Clive Chang: Yes!

Monica Holt: No, I desperately want to watch it.

Clive Chang: It is so good.

Monica Holt: Okay. Question two. If you could go back in time and either witness a live experience, a performance, a show that you have already seen, or go back to a time where there was a show that you didn’t get to see, what experience would that be?

Clive Chang: This might be because of the composer in me, right? So the rooms that I desperately wanted to be in, if I could go back in time, were in the rehearsal studio when the melody for Defying Gravity was first conceived. What was that moment? Or when Julie Taymor had her first fully built and realized puppet prototype made in the workshop, what was that moment like? Who was there? What was the, you know what I mean?

Monica Holt: Yeah. The theater geek in me is totally cheesing about these ideas because you’re right, I think. I am thinking of the famous Godspell in Toronto, right? That is something that I would’ve loved to have seen, but you’re right, it’s the intimate moments. It’s the…

Clive Chang: Or like the first Hamilton Mixtape show or whatever, right before the thing became the iconic thing.

Monica Holt: Okay. Practical question, what’s one free resource that you wish more people knew about?

Clive Chang: Oh, the Library for the Performing Arts. It’s one of the organizations on the Lincoln Center campus, and it has the richest sort of archive of video and audio material. So if you were like, I wish I could have seen the original cast of blah, go there and you can see it. You know what I mean? Not in real life. Maybe one day they’ll make the hologram versions.

Monica Holt: Totally. We need to get a partnership going ASAP, just immersive archival. Okay. And then this is your CI to Eye moment. So if you could broadcast one message to executive directors, leadership teams, staffs, and boards of thousands of arts and culture organizations, what would that message be?

Clive Chang: Yeah, I think I would implore everybody to always ask the question, how does this impact the artist community? No matter where you sit in the arts ecosystem, the artist really ought to be at the center of it, right? Because without the artist, there is no art. So when presiding over a decision or debating A versus B versus C, does this decision we’re making enable artists to do their work, or does it detract? Even if the answer is neutral, at least you’ve asked the question. So that would be my message.

Monica Holt: That is a fantastic message, and I love that message.

Clive Chang: Thank you.

Monica Holt: Clive, thank you for the time. Thank you for sharing your story and so much incredible advice. It is just always so good to see you and to talk to you.

Clive Chang: Likewise.

Monica Holt: Thank you for listening to CI to Eye with Monica Holt. If you enjoyed today’s conversation, please take a moment to rate us or leave a review. A nice comment goes a long way in helping other people discover the show and hear from leaders in the arts and beyond. If you haven’t already, please click the subscribe button wherever you get your podcasts. We’ve got some pretty incredible episodes coming your way, and I wouldn’t want you to miss them. This episode was edited and produced by Karen McConarty and co-written by Karen McConarty and myself, Monica Holt. Stephanie Medina and Jess Berube are our incredible designers and video editors. Our music is by whoisuzo. Don’t forget to follow CI on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, and TikTok for regular content to help you market smarter. You can also sign up for CI’s newsletter at capacityinteractive.com, and you’ll never miss an update. And you can always reach out to let us know who you’d like to hear next from on CI to Eye.