While the museums, performance venues, and arts organizations of Western Massachusetts and Upstate New York are the pride of the region and the backbone of its tourism economy, life in the industry can be unglamorous.
“I've been working in the arts for 27 years, and, there's this sounds terrible, but there's not a lot to show for it, in terms of- We're very precarious, we have no savings, we have zero retirement, I'm approaching 50,” Lauren Levato Coyne told WAMC. “That's a really scary place to be. And there are a lot of folks that are that are like me in that same situation, and we've done this out of dedication for so, so long, but at some point, that dedication isn't enough. At some point that dedication is going to maybe be hurtful or harmful.”
Levato Coyne is the resident visual arts faculty artist at Great Barrington-based Community Access To The Arts, or CATA, which is a member of the pay equity coalition working regionally to improve wages in the field. Her husband also works in the arts.
“We don't have children,” she continued. “We chose not to have children because we knew that we were going to be working in a precarious industry. And so, you know, there's a lot that you give up. Some people haven't given up children, but there's a lot that you decide not to do because you just can't. There's no vacations, things like that. So, the quote, unquote normal life, a quote, unquote normal structure to life, is really not something that anybody working in the arts knows. You choose if you're going to make your art or if you're going to pay your rent. You choose if you're going to pay your rent, or if you're going to have food. There's just a lot of icky kinds of decisions that have to happen all the time, and it always feels very, very, very scary.”
The Berkshires/Columbia Counties Pay Equity Coalition is a regional effort from the arts institutions that employ people like Levato Coyne to prioritize making life in the field less terrifying.
It released its first report last June detailing the challenges inherent to the arts and nonprofit sector lifestyle.
“The biggest surprise for me was hearing from employees in a lot of open-ended questions, just how much a lack of compensation was affecting them, physically, emotionally in their relationships. We knew that it was hard to make ends meet, and you think of that in very concrete ways often, but this had very human implications, and that shouldn't have been a surprise, but the depth of it was," said Janis Martinson, Executive Director of the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, which is hosting tonight’s summit. “And we heard it loud and clear, and that's a big motivation in doing this work, is to make sure that we're respecting the human beings who create so much joy for everyone else. The cultural richness of this region is something that so many of us feel ownership of and gratitude for, and that gratitude should extend to the people who make it happen and be reflected in how they're compensated.”
The project dates back to 2021, when Lee-based racial equity nonprofit Multicultural BRIDGE gathered cultural institutions in the Berkshires and Columbia County to explore systemic issues in the sector.
“And as a capstone project, a few of us came together and said, let's look specifically at how pay equity from our culture organizations is either helping to ameliorate the problem or contributing to the problem,” Martinson explained.
The undertaking has grown from the eight institutions that took part in last year’s report.
“We have 18 cultural organizations from both Berkshire and Columbia counties,” said Martinson. “So, this is truly a regional effort.”
Another of those organizations is Pittsfield’s Berkshire Music School. Executive Director Luis Granda says the field must provide the workers who power it with sustainable lives.
“We're dealing with a lot of expenses, buying groceries, rent everything, and I want to make sure that I can pay my staff and pay my faculty at a level that allows them to live life, allows them to enjoy life, and allows them to do the work that they want to do," he told WAMC. "All these organizations are doing a lot of very important work, and so I really believe that paying the people doing that hard work is incredibly important.”
Martinson says that while she and other leaders in the region’s cultural sector have taken some immediate steps, the work requires constant vigilance to keep workers above water.
“There is a certain amount of low hanging fruit, and a lot of us have been ticking those off- Expanding paid time off, or extending benefits to part time employees, or simply raising the minimum that you pay within your organization. Those are things that can be done that don't break the bank necessarily," she said. "And then there are other things that are more complicated and harder and take a little bit more time. So, we have at the Mahaiwe committed to trying to keep up with the minimum livable wages as calculated by the MIT Living Wage Calculator, and that's a moving target. We were there when we set our compensation last year, and this year, we're going to have to make some real changes to keep up.”
Levato Coyne says the Berkshires are at risk of losing a key part of its identity as a cultural hotspot if it can’t provide entry and mid-level arts employees wages that allow them to not just survive but flourish.
“Really everything is at stake,” she told WAMC. “And that sounds maybe hyperbolic, maybe dramatic, but if folks who are running the concession stands and helping people make their work, or only have seasonal work at you know, if they're musicians, things like, there's all kinds of different scenarios where everything feels very, very shaky, like the ground will fall away from you under your feet at any moment. So that instability for the for the majority of us, for the arts workers who are out there doing the work and opening the box offices and hanging the stuff on the walls and making sure the exhibitions. Get made if we can't stay in the sector, if we can't afford to feed and clothe and house ourselves because the sector is not compensating us, we're going to leave and then, and then, where's the arts going to be?”
The Berkshires/Columbia Counties Pay Equity Coalition will present its second report at 5 in Great Barrington.
