On Tuesday, Nov. 19, Ragged Wing Ensemble announced that it won’t renew its current lease on the Flight Deck, the company’s 99-seat venue on Broadway. The lease ends in March, and the nonprofit says it can’t renew because being in that location isn’t financially stable.
3 comments:
It’s sad to see a performance space close due to lack of funding. The article points out something that I feel has been a disservice to the performing arts, that foundations are looking to fund individual projects instead of things like overhead. I get that. But I also wonder why someone hasn’t started a foundation that allows for these small artist driven spaces to thrive with help towards things like rent, heat, water, electricity and all that. It deeply affects the creative process when a performer or company has to spend a majority of time on the costs associated with overhead instead of creating art. When you are the only black box theatre in a community, it speaks volumes about views of that community when that venue has to close. When these spaces, be it a theatre, community center or other anchor organization close, people go away, they leave and don’t return and they take with them all that makes a community a family. I hope this space can be saved.
There are several important factors in this news to be considered. The first one drew my attention is that this venue is not all that old. The place is only set up and ran for a little over 3 years since 2016. This fact led my thoughts towards how the company started the very first push of the operation, and what is the reason that caused the lost of momentum in the organization both financially and mentally. The second point that worth putting thoughts in is that the executive director of Ragged Wing Ensemble indicated the company has reached the maximum amount of donations from local individuals. However the resource is still too little for a small size black box theater to be self-sustainable. It sounds really worrisome to me that a company would need more than just patrons to survive in city area. The last part of the story is that as article mentioned, supporters are more willing to donate to projects than putting money into operational costs for the company. I totally understand that, but also I can think of many methods to work around that.
When a beneficial non-profit closes it is always a shame. An organization dedicated to providing a space for artists that have no other venue to perform at and who raise thousands of dollars every year. However, it's good to see their foresight and concern for the future. Oftentimes, a problem like this wouldn't be addressed until there was no time to not address it and it is urgent and pressing. Recognizing that the foundation of your organization is unstable early is the best way to be able to tackle the problem and restrategize for a hopefully more stable future. They made points about donations that I had not considered before. Much like school fundraising, once you've dipped into a certain person or organization's pockets it's hard to, again and again, ask them to fund you. It's much more fulfilling for the other party to see the results of their money rather than creating a long term money dependency.
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