Leading The Way: Megan Wygant

What I’m most excited about is that instead of charging $10 a child, we can charge 25 cents per child and offer thousands of kids a deep dive into the arts. They can learn about why the arts have value and feel less like outsiders when they’re able to return to the theater and see a live show …

When earliest rumblings of COVID-19 began, Megan Wygant, executive director of the CLARA Studios for the Performing Arts, focused on instilling faith about the safety of the building so CLARA’s tenants could continue to hold classes and run their arts organizations without panicking. As those tenants began canceling events and classes, Megan realized CLARA was going to have shut down ...

When did you realize that you were going to have to start operating differently?

CLARA is a creative reuse project that provides space eight different performing arts and cultural organizations, offering them discounted space in return for delivering free arts education programming to Sacramento County Unified School District (SCUSD). CLARA also offers its own arts education programming to Sacramento youth through collaborative community partnerships.

When we decided to shut down the building for two weeks on March 12th, I focused on packing up what I’d need to work at home for two weeks. The next morning, I woke up at 5:00 am, as the magnitude of this decision and what might be coming hit me. Eighty-five percent of CLARA’s revenue comes from tenant rent. Two of our arts organizations had recently canceled galas, and two had canceled performances. I got up and started sending emails to our tenants asking each of them “What are your losses for the next two weeks?” The combined lost revenue for a two week closure totalled $500,000. Having this data allowed us to speak with a collective voice instead of focusing solely on CLARA’s lost revenue.

What was your initial response to COVID-19?

My first thought was, “How in the world are our tenants going to pay rent?” I immediately began thinking about other ways to use the property. We have a whole city block — 46,000 square feet — that’s beautifully located. By then, I knew we were going to be shutdown for at least a month. How could I get other people to help pay for the cost of the building so that our arts organizations could get a rent break? I called everyone I could think of to ask, “How can we use the building?” “Do you need this area for drive-through testing? How about using our parking lot for food services?” I even offered some of our studios as storage space for furniture before realizing I needed to get tenant buy-in first. That prompted me to gather CLARA’s tenants to brainstorm ways to monetize the building. On that Zoom call, I realized that CLARA’s value was in those organizations and that we needed to work together to empower our tenants to pay their rent.

One idea we considered was CLARA Vision or CLARA TV where every morning one of our tenants would teach a half an hour class. Several of them said, “Look, Megan. Let’s be honest. We just laid off half of our staff, and the rest of us are taking pay cuts. This costs money. It takes time. We can’t do this even though it gets us out in front of the community.” So we agreed to put a pin in the idea until we get to recovery mode, and people are bringing staff back and are ready to generate energy around their return. So we have ideas about how we’re going to reopen, but first I have to figure out how we’re going to survive in the interim.

What did you do next?

I went back to grant writing, applying for emergency loan funding and trying to remove costs from our tenants because if the rents aren’t being paid, that puts CLARA in a very difficult situation. How do we backstop against that uncertainty? We have to find a way to stand on our own. That was my goal.

When we got to the end of June, I realized that the cavalry wasn’t going to come. We did have a few tenants who needed to take advantage of the city’s rent forbearance program, but the majority have paid their rent. As one tenant told me, “We made it clear to our board that we have to prioritize rent to be sure CLARA is here when we’re ready to come back. We’re in this together, and if we don’t pay rent, we’re screwing over seven creative organizations.” When we receive those rent checks every month, I feel incredibly touched and grateful to work with the community of artists we do.

We were supposed to start a new series of arts education programs for SCUSD the week after spring break. Emili Danz, CLARA’s Director Education Outreach, began thinking about how we could keep that contract given that the kids weren’t returning to school. Emili came up with the idea of creating an evergreen product of 50 hours of sequence-based, standards-aligned arts curriculum. The teachers could use the program when kids are learning at home, and when schools eventually reopen, we can provide the product to schools that don’t have the money to bring teaching artists into the classrooms. Our standards-aligned videos and teaching guides will enable the teachers to teach the arts in their classroom and provide a new revenue stream for CLARA.

How did you handle CLARA's summer camps?

Around the same time, we started talking about how to hold our summer camps online. We got the idea of reaching out to Broadway actors all over the nation because we’re not limited by needing them to be in Sacramento any more. That allowed us to bring the best artists to our kids. Of course, what we ran into is that teens were tired of sitting in front of a screen all day doing online learning. Those that did participate in our camps loved them, and so did their parents.

There is a very real burnout right now about digital learning which leaves me wondering how that’s going to translate during the school year, both for the schools and for our new arts curriculum. But if teachers have an hour a day of digital arts learning, that can become their prep period. We see our new curriculum as a way of supporting teachers by giving them a break while providing their students with some high quality learning. But we know that some students might not watch the videos.

Have you been collaborating with or learning from other arts organizations?

I’ve had lots of conversations with Ian Hadley at 916 Ink, for example, on how to launch our programs online. We cross-promoted and cross-marketed our summer camps. Mackenzie Wieser from Sacramento Splash wasn’t doing camp because their programs, at the time, required kids to be outside. So she promoted ours. We were clear about supporting each other because we’re a community, and we want to get through this together.

Tell me more about CLARA Classroom.

Our education director, Emili, originally conceived the idea as a way of meeting our obligations to some of our contracted clients by delivering an online curriculum by the end of June. Our clients told us if we did that, they would pay us the rest of the contract.

To create CLARA Classroom, we spent time reviewing the arts education program at the Alley Theater in Texas and the New Victory Theatre in New York to learn best practices and identify where the gaps are. Our new offerings fill those gaps. For example, our improv and theater games class is the only online option out there right now. Our dance classes are aligned to PE standards so teachers and school districts can check multiple boxes at once. We did this in recognition of the fact that a lot of districts laid off their PE teachers this year because they knew they weren’t going to be in person. We can fill that gap.

I want to give a big shout-out to Emili who has been a rock this entire time. She came up with the idea of CLARA Classroom, created the curriculum, turned in the last video and started summer camp the next day. Now that summer camps are over, Emili is creating the teacher guide and a bunch of supporting materials. She’s also documenting the standards that we’re providing. The classes are aligned to California state standards but we can make the argument for how they fit into other state standards as well. Because of her work, we have an opportunity to sell CLARA Classroom anywhere in the country.

What other pivots have you made?

In the spring before the pandemic happened, we applied for a tremendous number of grants through the California Arts Council. It was CLARA’s first year of eligibility. We got all of the grants we applied for – $100,000 in total. The awards came in April, which meant our entire education budget was funded by these grants. But it also meant we had to pivot those programs, too. For example, we had to redesign our school matinee series.

Normally, a teaching artist goes to the classroom three times and then the kids watch a live performance. For example, the kids might meet with a costume designer, a dancer and the director, each of whom would give the students key things to look for in the performance. But since it’s now online, there’s no limit to how many people we can bring into the Zoom classroom. We can hold a panel discussion with the lighting designer, the lighting tech and the lighting intern, each talking about how they contribute to the performance the kids will watch at the end of the series. The kids get to learn about three different career paths. Because both Capitol Stage and the Sacramento Ballet professionally filmed last seasons’ shows, the kids can end the matinee series by watching a video of one of those live shows.

What I’m most excited about is instead of costing $10 a child, we can charge 25 cents per child and offer thousands of kids this deep dive into the arts. They can learn about why the arts have value and feel less like an outsiders when they’re able to return to the theater and see a live show. Our student matinee series is all about making kids feel confident in their ability to experience this art form. Many of these kids have never been to a theater before. I’m excited about reaching so many more kids and talking more deeply about what it means to have a career in the arts.

Do you have any regrets about your choices during this time?

There were conversations we had as a staff when we were all in a heightened emotional state because of the pandemic, working at home, the racial issues happening throughout the country. I wish I had done a better job leading our team during this time instead of trusting that everyone could find their own way during this international crisis. Instead, I thought “I’m doing my thing. I trust my staff is doing their thing. We’re all just paddling as hard as we can to stay afloat.” In hindsight, I wish I’d been more sensitive to the fact that many of my staff needed my support. They needed a leader leading the way.

I also wish I had done a better job understanding how much was on Emili’s plate during the two months before summer camp. I should have probed deeper about what it was going to take to create 50 hours of learning for CLARA Classroom – 150 hours of filming, 40 hours of editing, etc. I didn’t ask enough questions early on to understand what that investment involved. She was really burned out by the end of that. She’s my absolute right hand, and my partner in every aspect of this organization. I feel like I fell down by not speaking up and saying, “Your commitment to the mission is admirable, but you need to take care of you, and I don’t think you can do both of these things up to your standards. So you need to pick one.” That’s my biggest regret. There were all these exciting opportunities to get more arts to more students in impactful and exciting ways, and we just did them all. And we didn’t talk about what the cost was especially since we’re both working from home with small children.

What have you learned so far?

More than anything, COVID has taught me that my role as the leader has to be taking a long-term approach towards any crisis of the day.

Working at a mission-based organization, you’re in the habit of thinking that the mission is paramount: what’s the greatest good we can do and how do we make that happen? Dig into reserves to give our resident arts groups a rent holiday? Work ‘round-the-clock hours to create distance learning arts programs? Great. Let’s go. Get it done. Early on, I felt like we needed to throw every resource at our disposal on the table to respond to the enormity of the crisis before us.

But those were short-term solutions to what we now know is a long-term crisis, and there’s a reason flight attendants tell you to put on your own mask before assisting others: our goal as a mission-based company is to do the greatest good possible … for as long as possible. We can’t do that if we’d followed through on my first impulses, which were to literally exhaust every physical and emotional reserve available to us.

I hope we never see another crisis of this scope again, but I can tell that my experience with COVID has forever altered how I approach problem-solving in a crisis, and I am far more likely to prioritize the long-view going forward.

What's next for CLARA?

• Keep rents low for as long as the closure is in effect which means continuing to pursue emergency grants and disaster relief funding from the city, state and federal government

• Work to get CLARA Classroom into as many school districts as possible next year

• Create an architectural plan of the building. We need a master use plan that allow us to activate our outdoor space because that’s where we can gather right now. A few weeks ago, the McKeever School of Irish Dance had class outdoors in the parking lot. It was the first time the kids had been able to dance together since March. They decorated their cars, put them in a circle and danced with a car in between each child.

What I love about CLARA is the incredible imagination of each arts organization. All of our tenants are pivoting and thinking about how to they can use and leverage the rest of CLARA’s property during the time when we’re closed.

Megan Wygant joined CLARA as its executive director in February 2016 and is proud to have led the organization through its operational launch in April 2016 to today. Previously, Megan served as the Assistant General Manager of the Emerson Stage in Boston and the Company Manager of the Tony award-winning Berkeley Repertory Theatre. She has a BA from USC in American Studies and English and an MBA from Boston University with an emphasis in finance and nonprofit management.