Kendra Whitlock Ingram on Building Arts-Fueled Cities

Monica Holt: Welcome back to CI to Eye. I’m Monica Holt. My guest today is Kendra Whitlock Ingram, President and CEO of the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust. Kendra is running one of the country’s most complex performing arts organizations, and at the same time, she’s building the future of downtown Pittsburgh with many different stakeholders. That future is Arts Landing, an extraordinary project transforming four and a half acres of the city into civic space and a cultural campus. There will be performance spaces, a playground, pickleball courts, rotating public art… It’s going to have it all, and the timeline for getting this project to ribbon cutting — it’s beyond ambitious and I can’t wait for you to hear more about it. Kendra covers everything from her leadership journey to her approach to urban transformation, and she has some serious insights to share about the future of arts organizations and the performances that are bringing her joy today. It was fabulous to spend some time together and I hope you enjoy. Let’s dive in. Kendra, hello! Welcome to CI to Eye. Thank you so much for being here this season.

Kendra Whitlock Ingram: Thank you so much for asking me. This is going to be fun.

Monica Holt: So just diving right in, I would love to maybe hear a little bit about what your start with the industry is because one thing that I’ve spoken about before and I think we’ve even shared our thoughts on is that I’m not sure that I knew Arts Administration was a field to get into, right? I grew up around the arts, I grew up around theater, but it never occurred to me that there was kind of this behind-the-curtain, behind-the-curtain experience. So going all the way back to Duquesne, tell me a little bit about when you first got a glimpse of this world and what really pulled you in.

Kendra Whitlock Ingram: Like you, a similar situation. There really weren’t arts management programs, particularly at the undergraduate level, when I was in school. So I didn’t know that there were options for this. So I came to Duquesne, I was like, I’m going to be a high school music teacher. That was basically the plan.

Monica Holt: Oh, I didn’t know that.

Kendra Whitlock Ingram: Yep, from the very beginning. And somewhere, I don’t know, maybe in my second year at Duquesne, I was kind of always this kid that was getting involved in a lot of different things —

Monica Holt: Not very surprising.

Kendra Whitlock Ingram: So I was kind of always that kid and I had gotten involved in trying to market the student orchestra because not a lot of people came to the concerts, and so I started a little campaign to promote the orchestra and got some people to come. And our dean of the School of Music at the time, he said, you might want to look at doing something in arts administration. And I’m like, what does that mean exactly? And he’s like, you should get an internship somewhere in the cultural district. So I got an internship at the Pittsburgh Opera and got to work on a lot of different things and started to realize, I see this as something I could do. And by the time I was a senior in college, I knew that I liked teaching, I really enjoyed it, and I could definitely see myself doing that too, but I wanted to explore where this would go, this arts administration thing, and someone had told me about what is now called the League of American Orchestras, and they had a fellowship for people who wanted to be in executive roles with orchestras, and I thought, wow, that’s a real perfect mix of my interest in classical music and arts administration, and I just think I would really enjoy that.

So it’s kind of how I got into the business. I did that fellowship and then I spent the next 13 years working for professional orchestras before I shifted to performing arts centers.

Monica Holt: Yeah, I mean I love that the kind of arts entrepreneur became a more sophisticated path into arts administration. You were just saying you spent over a decade with orchestras. You have since then also evolved that into performing arts centers at large. You’re hugely involved with Broadway and touring Broadway. I guess that journey from moving out of the orchestras world, because you worked with a few different companies, and then moving into the PAC life of it all…

Kendra Whitlock Ingram: Right.

Monica Holt: What was that career journey like? And particularly from an artistic perspective that moved into an executive perspective. How did you take that path and were you making conscious decisions about where you wanted to go or was it evolving organically over time?

Kendra Whitlock Ingram: Yeah, so I love the orchestra world. I love classical music, but I was always a bit of a square peg in a round hole in that industry, for a number of reasons. One, I just have a lot of interests. I was that close to being a theater major, always loved musical theater. I was the kid who was Mama Rose in Gypsy in high school. Totally age appropriate for high schools to do that.

Monica Holt: You really had the life experience at that point.

Kendra Whitlock Ingram: So I could live Mama Rose.

Monica Holt: For sure.

Kendra Whitlock Ingram: But I just love experimenting with different things. So the orchestra world, classical music industry in general, it’s gotten a lot better, but it’s not the easiest place to be for someone who has a variety of interests. The structure of the organization, kind of the mission around preserving that 19th century style ensemble. So kind of shortly after I got in the business, I was thinking about where could this lead me that’s maybe not with an orchestra. Particularly, I had been doing programming pretty much in every job I had held, so whether I was orchestra manager, general manager, or director of pops and special programming, I always had a talent buyer component of my job. And then I had a very specific job with the Detroit Symphony where I did all the non-classical programming for the orchestra, but I also programmed a lot of non orchestra presentations, whether it be chamber music or comedy or global music.

Monica Holt: So already expanding. Yeah.

Kendra Whitlock Ingram: Yeah. So by the time I got to Baltimore Symphony, which was my last job in the field, I had a lot of different responsibilities there, which included a lot of the presentations at the Meyerhoff as well as education, community engagement… By the time I got to that, I was like, my next job will not be with an orchestra. I really want to do more than just stay in this genre. And really, I think it wasn’t until I made the switch to a performing arts center organization that I’m like, oh, this is what I’m going to do now for my career.

Monica Holt: Feeling more settled. Yeah, I think what you’re saying rings so true. It’s funny, we were just talking to Clive Chang, who at Young Arts is also someone who has a multihyphenate background as an artist and also as a business person and what you’re expressing, a love for composing or classical music, but at the same time being drawn in by your Gypsies and your Broadway loves. I think it’s so interesting, particularly to hear the two of you talk about how that tug was always in you and you’ve used that as motivation to continue to move through the field and maybe make choices that ultimately will expand everyone’s experience, whether they are at a symphony or at a performing arts center. I do think we’re beginning to see some of those silos start to slowly expand or break themselves, and I think it’s because of the leadership that we’re seeing right now that really went through a system and a process that they were pushing on a little bit.

Kendra Whitlock Ingram: But I do wish there was a little more flexibility for students to explore a little more. I might’ve gotten to this place a little sooner if I had an opportunity to really figure out what are the things that are appealing to me and what are even the options. I think we know the conservatory model is really pretty challenging to translate into a salaried with benefits type position. There are so many ways I actually think we do need more artists in these administrative roles for that perspective, who also have the skills of running a business and keeping the arts sustainable, balancing the commercial and the artistic, and if there’s a way that academia can figure this out, that would be awesome.

Monica Holt: Did you have a plan for how you managed each transition personally, how you adapted to the organization, but also got to know each organization without losing the perspective and experience that you were bringing into each new company?

Kendra Whitlock Ingram: Yeah. I think my thought process in each transition was always something that was going to take me to a kind of a destination job, and each of those roles, I still use a lot of the knowledge and skills that I learned, conflict resolution, negotiations… Each one of those jobs really did inform experience that I knew I was going to need for the destination, which for me, the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust really is the destination job.

Monica Holt: And is a homecoming for you as well.

Kendra Whitlock Ingram: Oh, it totally is. I never in a million years would’ve expected that I would be the CEO of this organization 30 years later. That just would never have even crossed my mind. Or the CEO of any organization for that matter.

Monica Holt: It is an incredible story, and there’s a little bit of kismet in this pairing of leadership and institution that I think is powerful in and of itself.

Kendra Whitlock Ingram: I like to think that too. But each transition, it’s really easy to get into, ‘When I was in Detroit, we did it this way.’ ‘When I was in Baltimore, we did it this way.’ And because I’ve been in so many places, what I tend to say now is, this is a really good practice that I’ve experienced in other places, while still — when in Rome, you’ve kind of got to adapt to what’s different about Pittsburgh that you don’t have in a Detroit or an Omaha or a Denver or Milwaukee. You’re hired because you come with these diverse experiences and this knowledge, but it’s also you got to balance not throwing out the baby with the bath water, as they say, and really kind of understanding the culture and the way things happen when you enter those new organizations.

Monica Holt: I mean, that all makes complete sense. I guess I want to talk about Pittsburgh, but before I do this, I am curious, when you entered your first role as CEO, what kind of mental shift did you have to make moving into that space as a leader? Again, bringing with you all of this amazing experience, but I have to imagine that’s quite a shift to make in the moment, and then the responsibility of it. Of course, someone as thoughtful as you are, I would just be so curious about how you approached that the first time.

Kendra Whitlock Ingram: For me, there was a moment probably about 15 years into my career where I was like, if I were in charge, I’d probably do it a little bit differently or I had these thoughts about how it could happen, and when that moment came, I really knew, I think it’s time for me to take this leap. I think this is what I’m meant to be doing, to be in the number one seat and drive the strategy for an organization and represent the organization in the way that I would want, as someone who’s been often in the number two or in the senior leadership team role. I think the biggest thing I learned is the power of my words in this role versus pretty much every other job I had that wasn’t executive director or CEO. Sometimes I’m just thinking out loud, but when I’m thinking out loud, someone’s like, ‘Kendra told me to do that thing.’ I’m like, no, no, no, I didn’t tell you to do that thing. Or ‘Kendra’s going to be mad if this doesn’t happen.’ I’m like, no, no, no. Kendra’s not mad. Kendra’s just thinking, Kendra’s just expressing a thing, but Kendra can’t just express the thing.

Monica Holt: Completely, because your word is law at a certain point.

Kendra Whitlock Ingram: Yes, Kendra is not Kendra, Kendra is the CEO. I still struggle with that a little bit. I’m much more conscientious about it now. I even catch myself saying, I’m not saying to do this. I’m not saying you should do this. I’m just kind of thinking. Or, this is just an idea. It might not work for this situation. Maybe you want to go in a different direction. I feel like that’s the biggest lesson in that shift, that you are not just, you are kind of a symbol both internally and externally. This role is a more civic role than I’ve seen my peers have. I feel sometimes like an unelected public official, not only with the work that we do in the cultural district and using arts and culture as an economic driver, as an activator of downtown activity, as a major real estate and landowner… When you say things, you’re representing something that’s bigger than just an arts organization. I literally just had this conversation with the staff. It’s like, I was you at one point, and I don’t even disagree with what you’re — like, I feel you, but I have a larger obligation now and there’s a lot more accountability. My words have a lot more accountability.

Monica Holt: I mean, the tying of words and accountability is really, I’d say for anyone who’s taking on a managerial or leadership role for the first time that I think you start to have a sense of that. But as you said, in a role like yours, not just internally for the organization, but externally for the city, it’s quite a substantial shift. In case folks aren’t as familiar with the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, would you just give a little primer for listeners on all that it encompasses, because I’m not sure everyone knows the totality of the remit.

Kendra Whitlock Ingram: Absolutely. So by definition, we define ourselves as a performing arts center organization. So we benchmark against Cleveland Playhouse Square, New Jersey Performing Arts Center, Tennessee Performing Arts Center in Nashville… So we are in essence that. That’s probably our primary role, an arts presenter. We’re a steward of a number of performing arts venues in a 14 block cultural district, which includes seven theaters and a number of other smaller spaces. So we present Broadway, we present more artistic mission-driven programs like contemporary dance, jazz, family programming, and then like many other performing arts center, we have one night commercial contemporary acts. Everything from Bob Dylan to Nikki Glaser to Paw Patrol.

Monica Holt: The big three, as they say.

Kendra Whitlock Ingram: Yeah, right. And then Broadway is our biggest presenting arm. We have a little over 15,000 subscribers for Broadway, so it is a big driver of our budget. Like other performing arts centers, we’re about 80% earned revenue to 20% contributed. But the thing that makes us a little different is we oversee more of a district than a center where all the theaters are housed in one space. The other thing is, we have a fairly substantial visual arts arm that was kind of early in our history with public art. We have three galleries within the district that we program regularly. We’re making a big investment in public art now, and we’ll talk about why in a second. And we also own a lot of real estate. So in addition to those seven theaters, we have essentially about 28 parcels of land, about 1.2 million square feet of real estate. That includes everything from a 2,900 seat theater to a 12 story office building to a 46,000 square foot Bali Total Fitness gym that sits in the middle of the district.

Monica Holt: And did you imagine as you were a leader of a performing arts center for the first time and throughout your career, working with all these wonderful artists, like, and then in my next role I really want to be a real estate manager?

Kendra Whitlock Ingram: I definitely didn’t. And to kind of go back to the history of the district, so we started in 1984 really with a goal of turning a red light district — this was all 42nd street in 1984. It was like triple X movie theaters, porn shops, massage parlors, all kinds of nefarious and sundry things. And the late Jack Heinz, he had a vision for really cleaning up downtown and using the arts as kind of a catalyst for growth, and also to make it just a better place for Pittsburgh. He hired the founding CEO and they started buying up property. So it was a big part of our initial mission. So the trust was founded at a time when the city was going through a renaissance, and here we are 41 years later and downtown revitalization in 2025 is really another renaissance for Pittsburgh.

Monica Holt: So speak a little more about that because I know the impact of COVID hit Pittsburgh hard.

Kendra Whitlock Ingram: Yeah, yeah. So 2020, we all had that awful thing. Pittsburgh was impacted in a very different way than a lot of cities. Pittsburgh had an outsized amount of office space in downtown. It’s like 20th in the nation for largest cities, but it was fifth in the nation for the percentage of square footage of the downtown that was office space. So when the pandemic hit and we all changed how we worked, it really significantly impacted activation in downtown Pittsburgh because we had so much office space. So even with employees now, a lot of the major employers in downtown have brought their employees back. A lot of companies just didn’t bring anybody back. There was really a drive from Pittsburgh civic leaders — both the corporate community, foundation community, and elected officials — to how do we re-envision what downtown looks like for Pittsburgh?

Monica Holt: Okay. And so we’re here talking about Arts Landing. So can you tell us a little bit about the project and how you’re once again using the arts as a catalyst for growth in this new Renaissance moment for Pittsburgh?

Kendra Whitlock Ingram: So Arts Landing is a four and a half acre civic space. There was a drive by this group of leaders under this organization called the Allegheny Conference, which is essentially kind of like a chamber of commerce in most cities, but more than that, it’s more of like regional civic leaders — of, how do we envision downtown? They hired Field Operations, who’s a renowned landscape architect famous for, in recent time, the Highline, and they also designed the Seattle Waterfront, which was a huge, huge project. They’ve done Fisherman’s Wharf, they’ve done a number of other public space projects around the country. So they hired them to create an aspirational view of Pittsburgh. What could Pittsburgh look like? And when they came and did their tour of the city and they saw our four and a half acre parking lots right on the river, they’re like, God, this is just screaming to be a green space.

You might be able to develop this as a mixed use property at some point, but right now that’s not going to happen for a number of reasons. Cost, inflation, labor costs, price of materials, now potentially tariffs… But what you could do is have this in-the-meantime space that is adding green space that’s solving problems for you around your own programming. We run an arts festival in Pittsburgh that serves — about a hundred thousand people come over 10 days. So we were basically nomadic with this festival after the pandemic, like putting it in the middle of streets and downtown, and it just didn’t make for a great concert experience. So we had a need too from an arts and culture perspective. And all of these things kind of came together with a sense of urgency around the possibility that Pittsburgh was going to get the NFL draft in 2026.

So this was what was driving this. It’s like we have an opportunity to use this marquee event that draws several hundred thousand people to cities. That’s kind of a once in a blue moon thing where we can really, as we say in Pittsburgh, red up. That’s a term meaning clean up, fix up. We have an opportunity to red up Pittsburgh before this kind of milestone event, and everybody just kind of came together. The governor came in and said, I’m going to do a major investment, the state of Pennsylvania, Governor Shapiro’s $600 million revitalization plan, which included 125 million in actual cash to do projects like Arts Landing.

Monica Holt: You have the location, you get the funding. I’m going to make you talk a little bit about the timeline because when you first told me, my eyes popped bigger than they have in a long time.

Kendra Whitlock Ingram: So let’s see, the conference, the Allegheny Conference, this organization I told you about, they announced the plan June 5th, 2024. The day after, the Cultural Trust met with Field Operations who had done this aspirational design and said, we need from schematic to ribbon cutting in 20 months. Can we do that?

Monica Holt: I mean, come on. If this isn’t the case study for all arts and culture organizations to just look at how you get the investment, get the stakeholders at the table, have a goal, and go get it.

Kendra Whitlock Ingram: I have to tell you, I’ve never seen anything like it myself. By April of 25, we did the groundbreaking and we were on such a tight schedule. The lease with the Goodyear building was up, and so we’re doing the groundbreaking, I think it was April 25th or 24th, and literally they’re like demolishing the Goodyear behind us and I’m like, we can only stop for 30 minutes just to do this groundbreaking. Get the shovels, get the photo, get the dirt, let’s go. Let’s go. You hear beep beep beep right up until the microphone goes hot. And then, okay, everybody hold on. People are waiting there in the demolition truck.

Monica Holt: I mean, this is the performing arts reality show of our dreams. Okay. So tell us a little bit about the design and features of Arts Landing.

Kendra Whitlock Ingram: So the design will have a one acre lawn, a permanent stage and stage canopy, so more of a piece of civic furniture than a band shell. It will also have a little recreation zone with three pickleball courts and a small walking track. It will have a 30,000 square foot hardscape plaza with seating and cafe tables and chairs. It will have downtown’s first ever playground. So downtown does not have a playground. That’s one of the things we had heard as we were putting the design together that there was no public playground for families. Public restrooms, of course, was another big thing we heard. And then we have a whole children’s play area that’s a little bit more artistic. As well as the first phase of rotating public art. And we will be cutting those ribbons a week before the NFL draft in April of 2026.

Monica Holt: Listen, you’re less than a year out. I mean, if that doesn’t prove what having a clear goal in mind can do for a project, even when all the right intentionality might’ve been there to begin with, it’s so impressive. Okay, so you get to the ribbon cutting. A week later, you have the draft. Then obviously the arts festival will continue using that space. How else do you envision the space being used throughout the year and over many, many years to come?

Kendra Whitlock Ingram: So what we’ve heard from other spaces that operate like this around the country is that programming doesn’t just mean events. It means activations on the site. So a lot of times spaces like this will program the space 300 days a year, but that might be like a food truck pops up or there’s a pop-up hot cocoa station in the winter, or there’s a holiday light display. We certainly plan on a lot of performing arts programming in this space, both with existing partners — some of the programming we already do indoors that we’ve always wanted an outdoor home for in the nice weather months. But visual arts is going to have a big role in this space too. I mean, public art is such a great way to drive people to a space without a timed event, and really the goal of Arts Landing is to extend people’s time in downtown.

So you come to Arts Landing before or after, or you come to Arts Landing just to hang out. It doesn’t have to be for a performance. It doesn’t have to be for a specific thing. And I think that’s the thing that performing arts centers, we’re great at timed events. We have the space for it and it’s kind of part of our DNA, but if you’re trying to activate a city that’s lost population through office occupancy, like getting people to stay in downtown longer or extend time in downtown, you’re going to need things that are not timed events. You’re going to need hangout space. You’re going to need space for play, for recreation, for just looking at a piece of art or walking through a public art park.

Monica Holt: Yeah, I think you’re hitting the nail on the head there because as we’ve talked about this, it’s kind of how cultural districts can continue to drive transformation, some of which because of COVID is still recovery transformation, but some of which is really looking ahead. How do you think other folks around the country can take lessons learned from the work that you’ve been doing and from what you’re hoping to see in the future locally? What impact might we be able to take away from that on a more national scale?

Kendra Whitlock Ingram: Well, we have benefited from learning from a lot of other spaces that are already doing this super, super well. And again, what we’ve learned is keeping it clean, safe, and activated. It just gives you more opportunity to engage community. And as performing arts centers, I guess what we can learn about — how can we activate the property around the performing arts centers to create this extension of engagement in our arts districts or activation around our own theaters.

Monica Holt: Yeah, it feels like there’s this moment happening and I think as folks are figuring out their continuously evolving relationship with their phones and with their digital entertainment, I also think we’re approaching this moment of community and the act of gathering and the act of being together still in its resurgence era from a time where all of us were very much staying away from large crowds. And I think projects like Arts Landing and some of the great colleagues that you mentioned, I think we’re all in a really interesting moment to see what’s happening and how is that going to impact the value proposition and the brand positioning of the arts and culture and humanities work in America. Because as institutions can take on that mantle to be of service to the community in greater or different ways, we can really start to see how the conversation might shift from the more traditional dialogues or debates that we’ve seen in years past. I think it’s absolutely fascinating and a great time to be looking at it.

Kendra Whitlock Ingram: And necessary for our sustainability.

Monica Holt: Absolutely. I mean, that’s tied together so closely when we talk about the future of the field. What I was going to say is as you’re describing this, it’s a lot of stakeholder management. It is a lot of diverse stakeholders both within the community and the artists and the administration of a typical performing arts center. But as you alluded to a little bit earlier, also, all that comes with the civic governance, the economics of the work you’re doing. How do you manage your day as you are both stewarding and leading this incredible arts organization, but also immersed in this transformation work and in this real construction, literally, work that requires so much input and collaboration.

Kendra Whitlock Ingram: When I talk to people about this role, not just the cultural trust, but the CEO role, it is… work-life balance, we all need it. There’s a lot of discussion these days about finding rest, and that’s still I think a controversial thing for someone in this kind of role. Rest is like… you’re never really off. You’re never really, you are always on. Let’s put it that the job clock is always ticking, but I am trying to figure out how to make sure I don’t burn out.

Monica Holt: I was going to ask because even just knowing a little bit of who you are and your history, you have a mentality of let’s go, let’s get the job done, let’s keep moving, and when a job is this demanding of not just your time or your brain, but also I would imagine there’s quite a bit of emotional labor that you’re doing on any given day with so many different people…

Kendra Whitlock Ingram: Very much so. Really I kind of have all the toolbox of, I talk to a therapist, I have my exercise time, I have quality time with my husband, I have a cat, I love to read. So I really kind of make sure I can do those things to balance my mental health, my physical health. But I will say, this is a hard job. And yes, try to take care of yourself, but also recognize the expectation of accountability and responsibility is great, and if you need a lot of downtime, this is probably not going to be a good role for you. And I also think this is why — I’ve been thinking a lot about, what is the longevity in these kinds of roles? What is a good runway of time? We need leaders in these roles for a long time to make change and progress and change takes a long time, particularly at a part of the organization’s evolution like where the cultural trust is right now.

I don’t know if I should stay in this job for 20 years. I definitely want to stay until I retire, which is still a ways off, but I think it is good for… both for leadership and for the organization to kind of have some fresh thinking. And when you feel like you can’t do that anymore, then you have to really kind of self-regulate to go, you know what? Maybe I’m not, this isn’t the right gig for me. I do feel like, what is the right tenure length to ensure that you stay fresh and that you’re really thinking in new ways? We just had an all staff meeting today and our organization is equally divided in quarters between Gen Z, Millennial, Gen X, Boomer. But man, I learned a lot from those Gen Zs. I got to say, I think a lot of the things that they bring to the workforce around self-care and avoiding burnout and work-life balance are really good. I think they’ve actually advanced the workforce in a lot of ways. And then how do we balance that with, we have a really hard job to do.

Monica Holt: Well, and I’m so glad that you said this because something that I’ve struggled with when I talk to folks who are… career journey questions, that type of thing, it is this — I believe in what you are saying and particularly what younger generations are looking for in terms of boundaries, in terms of how one centers themself in an experience versus always putting the job first. But the other truth that you’re alluding to is sometimes that means that you can’t get to the place you want to be as quickly as possible if you are also holding firm to some of the work-life boundaries that are there and you’re going to have to make sacrifices and choices along the way, and as long as you are making the choice, great, then that is the choice that you are making. And so for jobs, the last job that I had, I was very happy for that job to be very centered in my life and lifestyle. It brought me a lot of joy regardless of the hours. But that’s not for everyone. And that’s okay.

Kendra Whitlock Ingram: That is exactly it. And I think people think, oh, well, I’ve been a director for a certain period of time, so now I need to be vice president. And I’ve been a vice president for, so maybe I should run a place. It’s like the difference between running a place and being in even a senior staff role, it’s very different. My day-to-day is really the business of the arts, making sure there’s sustainability financially, raising money, interacting with all our diverse constituents, from elected officials to corporate leaders to real estate developers to all kinds of officials. It’s the farthest away I’ve ever been from touching the art, but it’s in some ways the most meaningful work I’ve done in my career. I feel like I’ve jokingly said to people, my legacy — when they say, what do you want your legacy to be? And I’m like, I want my future self or my successor to go, ‘She really made good decisions to get us to this point.’ I don’t need my name on a building or anything like that.

Monica Holt: You want the work to be good.

Kendra Whitlock Ingram: Yes, I want someone to go, God, thank goodness they did this thing. I’m really glad she did this thing. I say that about my predecessor. I told him directly, I’m like, this one thing you did, it made such an important impact on the organization.

Monica Holt: But I love that clarity, that sense of clarity of goal of purpose as we slowly start to come to a close. What right now is giving you hope for arts and culture in a time where there are a lot more questions than answers about our country? Specifically and the role of arts, culture, and humanities in everyday society.

Kendra Whitlock Ingram: Man, every time I go to a show — I just went to a show off Broadway last weekend, a little hundred seat space in Greenwich Village. Everything from that to the performances we’re doing in Pittsburgh, whether it be the cultural trust or frankly any of my arts colleagues that are successfully bringing audiences back, people want this. This is not going away. Someone asked me today in our staff meeting about, are we worried about AI or some of these technologies replacing humans in our work? And I’m like, I feel like there’s a place for growing efficiency through these technologies, but it will not replace what is happening on the stages. I don’t even think it’s going to replace the fixed seat theater experience. There’s still something that’s just so absolutely extraordinary. People, they just want it. They crave it. They want to keep coming back. I mean, we have people coming to shows they’ve seen multiple times before because they like how it made them feel. I have no fear that that desire is going to go away, but it doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be vigilant about ensuring we run sustainable business, that we also adapt to the taste and changing needs of our audiences. We have to do that too. But I do feel very positive about the future of our industry.

Monica Holt: I love to hear that. I couldn’t agree more. Alright, we are at that moment for a couple quick fire culture questions. The first of which, what is one piece of culture, be it a song, a show, a book, a TikTok video, one piece of culture that you are currently obsessed with?

Kendra Whitlock Ingram: I’m going to go with the thing that I most recently saw…

Monica Holt: Okay, great.

Kendra Whitlock Ingram: …that I just was delighted by. And it was that show that I was telling you about, the Off Broadway, it’s called Ta-Da. One man show by Josh Sharp, directed by Sam Pinkleton, who famously just won the Tony for directing Oh, Mary! It’s off-Broadway in the Village, and it’s him storytelling a little bit. It’s a little standup comedy, but he uses 2000 PowerPoint slides. It is absolutely hilarious. It is brilliant. I don’t know if we can transfer outside of that kind of setting because it is —

Monica Holt: Or if you’d want it to even, right?

Kendra Whitlock Ingram: Right. Exactly. But God, I want more people to see it, so I’ve been telling everybody I know, go see that show!

Monica Holt: I have a lifelong aversion to overwrought PowerPoint presentations, so maybe this will be the way to kind of break me out of that.

Kendra Whitlock Ingram: Again, a little recency bias.

Monica Holt: I love it. Struck by inspiration. That’s what counts. If you could go back in time either to a show you were able to see and you want to see it again or to a concert or experience that you were not around for, what is the one show that you would time travel? It could be an exhibit, a show, a concert.

Kendra Whitlock Ingram: So I know exactly this one, and it’s long enough ago. It was probably 10 years ago. It was a production of John Adams’ opera, A Flowering Tree, that was produced by Omaha Opera. It was so incredibly moving and powerful, and just the stagecraft of it was also really, really interesting. I love John Adams’ music. It’s like that dish that’s served at a restaurant that you’re like, God, I wish I got the recipe for that. That’s the way I feel about the production. That’s very special.

Monica Holt: Okay. What is one free resource that you wish more people knew about or that you think everyone should be checking out?

Kendra Whitlock Ingram: Controversial one. This is going to be controversial, Monica.

Monica Holt: Hot takes. Let’s do a hot take!

Kendra Whitlock Ingram: ChatGPT, baby. Okay, listen, if I take three pages of notes and say, ChatGPT or Copilot, turn this into a one page outline that summarizes — and then it’s just like magic. Why did I not start using this sooner? I mean, if this could free up time for us to use our brains to do the creative stuff, I’m all for it and we are using it more in our workplace here, particularly for that kind of summarizing, encapsulating an idea… We have kind of strict rules around the content generation that we can’t use it directly.

Monica Holt: You know, everything — there has to be the human touch at the beginning and the human touch at the end.

Kendra Whitlock Ingram: That’s right.

Monica Holt: But there is an efficiency, particularly for folks who have days that are well beyond their eight to 10 hours already.

Kendra Whitlock Ingram: Absolutely.

Monica Holt: What a wonderful tool. The next episode will be talking to Jen Taylor, who has a lot of great advice on how folks can get into using these tools for the first time, and also how they can do it in a very thoughtful way that helps balance some of those concerns that you’re alluding to in the space.

Kendra Whitlock Ingram: I’ll be tuning in.

Monica Holt: Great! Couldn’t plan that promo better. And then we are at time. So the last question I have for you is your CI to Eye moment. 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?

Kendra Whitlock Ingram: Also a little more of a pragmatic message, but it’s something that’s been top of mind for me, and that’s nonprofit is a tax status. It is not a business model, and we really need to start thinking about these organizations really as businesses and how we’re going to keep them sustainable so we can do the mission aligned programming and do the work that doesn’t just cover itself with ticket sales. And that’s something I’ve been really thinking about here to protect the investment that has been made in the cultural district and cultural trust specifically. We really kind of have to have that mindset — particularly as an organization like many performing arts center organizations that are 80% on earned revenue — to figure out how to balance the business. So that’s my support to the industry. I know a lot of people are thinking this way already. I’m going to validate that.

Monica Holt: Validation received. Kendra, thank you so much for your time. I love hearing you talk about your story. I love hearing about the work that is happening in Pittsburgh, and I cannot wait until that ribbon cutting ceremony.

Kendra Whitlock Ingram: Listen, thank you so much and I’m honored to be asked to do this and always love chatting with you too.

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.