Suggestions to present to Nightlife Advisory Board

Works for me. Will be on bike. I know we mentioned noon but I might not be able to arrive closer to 1.

1pm for all then?

1pm at Alba's works for me (coming through Queens so no L train needed). Thanks!

Thanks for the lovely brunch and hosting Alba and thanks to everyone for hammering out a more refined statement and vision!

Sorry I had to cut out early. What are our next steps?

For real - thanks everyone for putting your energy, vision and skills into this, and thanks Alba for letting us use your sunny abode today. I think what we've got here is really comprehensive and I'm excited to present it.

I plan on continuing to refine some of the wording for the spoken statement over the next week (without deleting anything in the current doc). I think some spots could use a little personal touch, but I will run everything by you guys. I've forwarded to KP who I am hoping will also chime in with some contributions / critiques.

We should work on compiling the supporting documentation and footnotes to back up the challenges and solutions we are presenting. Things like existing government programs, studies, and anything else we are referencing in our bullet points.

And it might be a good idea to prepare a one sheeter for SMC to give them as well

Hey y'all - Chris sent me the statement y'all wrote. WOW! Y'all killed it. I plan to do another close read this afternoon and send my edits. I think what y'all have done is a super strong statement and positions SMC well as a real advocate for artists in NYC. Chris - what do you have in mind for a one-sheet? Like a fact sheet type situation with visuals? That is definitely something I can make happen as well. LMK

I guess I was thinking a fact sheet with our logo, mission statement and accomplishments for the advisory board to reference. They haven't asked me for anything so maybe it's not necessary. What do you guys think?

I think if we have the time, it'd be good to risk overpreparing while this presentation is looming. Maybe the fact sheet won't come in handy during the actual presentation, but could be a sorta "business card" for anyone yall speak to afterwards, and I'm sure it will have a use later on if we still like the angle we've arrived at.

I started on a document, attached below-- attempted to spruce it up with the SMC logo, but quickly realized that wasn't gonna be my forte-- that will hopefully be a good one sheet for the people.

I can make this look nice! Once the text is finalized I can put it on a letter head situation and format it in Illustrator

I added some wording to the statement: One more MOME quote that illuminates a different aspect of the wage issue, and some depth to the personal paragraph. Let me know if it is too much or could be worded better!

Will start refining the fact sheet in the a.m.

Thanks,

-C

I timed reading this down and it was over 7 minutes. I think we should trim this to 2 pages (with a longer written version), and as the invite says, "focus your speaking time on actionable solutions to those issues."

I'll get to work on my ideas for that and the fact sheet in the a.m.

Thanks guys!

I've created a new 3rd version to read aloud. See here:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qocraKDQtbe9wRrOftIcQ25bft8idoaB1NIoRon0JcQ/edit?usp=sharing

I had the feeling that there would be an atmosphere of "get to the point already" especially that late in the day, so I trimmed down a lot in the interest of brevity. I thought we could save the SMC background and longer quotes for the fact sheet / supporting documentation which I will print and submit for their reference, and keep the statement focused on issues and actionable solutions. Let me know what you think...

Great - I will look at this first thing tomorrow morning and can also format the fact sheet before noon.

I think this is really strong in its shortened, spoken form. Very punchy and I wish I could be there to gauge the reaction.

Any additional feedback for the fact sheet? I took a second look and after a couple of tweaks, all the current text seems to be saying what it needs to be saying. I dunno how necessary it is to provide further evidence on this fact sheet if we are also submitting written copies of the statement.

And yeah, I think the statement is terrific Chris.

I am reconsidering the need for this one sheet... As I go through this, I'm thinking we can submit the longer statement with supporting documents and just add the "More about the Sound Mind Collective" paragraph at the bottom. Do we really need anything else?

Like this: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wXnk2sn-3UIXfIjqXRHjO1HLDJKse8D1WxLMAhjwxCg/edit?usp=sharing

-C

By the way all versions are filed in the Office of Nightlife Working Group folder in case anyone loses track... Nothing has been deleted!

Yeah Chris I agree, the fact sheet was feeling redundant to me as well. As long as people have paper with our ideas and contact info that’ll be 👌🏽

its beautiful

Cool. Will let you know how it goes.

Hey Nightlife Working Group,

I wanted to report back here and say that overall this was a very positive experience.

The Advisory Board was extremely impressed with our preparation, our comprehensiveness, and our awareness of the many sides of these issues. I got the impression most presenters did not put as much time or thought into their statement, and I felt a sense of relief and gratitude from the Advisory Board both while I was reading the statement and in the responses. (They loved The New School / NYU research bit). Alvester gave me + SMC a nice intro and also chimed in with some pointed questions that allowed me to unpack some of the issues. He’s our guy!

They were very receptive to the specific challenges we brought forward and seemed generally to agree with our perspective re: music workers and performers being the backbone of the nightlife industry and needing better protections, benefits, and guarantees as laborers. Many of the board members were also surprised to hear some of these points and wanted to know more -- I think we did our part to educate them.

Some highlights:

• They were particularly intrigued by the restrictive radius clause issue, which they had me go into detail about. "We will definitely be looking into that" / "This is definitely an area we can help in" were some responses
• The chairman brought up a good point about how to classify musician labor (W2 vs. 1099) - particularly how and when that difference would affect the burden of protections able to be put on the employers / venues
• One member asked for a “top 3 issues”, and I said Contracts, Wages, and Small Venue Closures
• One Board member suggested partnering with performers in other areas such as the Drag community and asked whether our proposals were intended to cover them. I made it pretty clear our mission was in solidarity with all performers and nightlife workers and we were in favor of that kind of coalition, but that our perspective and area of expertise was in music
• Similarly, I was able to expand on how we empathize with the struggle of small venues and recognize that in many areas our challenges overlap. They were psyched with this, of course!

Maybe the best takeaway was that they recognized our mission to have an ongoing dialogue with them and other stakeholders to find solutions. That changed the nature of the interaction, so that it was not so nit-picky and point-for-point, but more “how can we work together moving forward to face these challenges”.

I'd say we made an impression as an organization and also made it clear that the City can no longer afford to ignore the issues we brought to light.

Thank you all for contributing your time and energy to making a really strong, comprehensive statement for SMC - and a badass Government program to boot!! It felt really good to deliver that statement and see their confused/impressed/relieved faces light up. I felt really supported by everyone's input and as a result went in with confidence which made a difference.

Also received this message from Alvester: “Thanks so much for presenting today! It was very compelling and was very illuminating to the board members who don’t work in our field. Bravo.” And also from the Chair, Andrew Rigie, "Chris – Thank you so much! The information you provided was very helpful. And, thanks for the offer to help further. We may be in touch."

Looking forward to recapping at the general meet-up.

Kudos y’all.
-Chris

This is great! Thanks for bringing this home and being the face of SMC Chris, and kudos to all of us for getting this material together, putting real thought into it and getting a coherent vision together. For me it's been a very good way to fine tune what it is we can really do to help the situation we're in as musicians in NYC.

Dialogue and development of trust with folks in power is probably step one and it seems like we're getting there with this board.

Also, I love the idea of partnering with another sector of nightlife, with a focus on marginalized folks. That could create the numbers/people power for us to have more influence.

Excited to talk about this on Friday! And I wanna hear more about the other speakers and more about the event as well. Nice!! SMC!!!