Recess Board:

Recess formed 15 years ago (2009) to build a more equitable arts community. In 2020, staff and board compiled a framework of Care & Accountability toward Abolition, centering values of fairness and justice not only in our external programming, but also attempting the same in our internal operations. This led to major shifts in pay equity, shared executive and board leadership, and an ideological framework for our work within and beyond systems of oppression. Over the last 4 years, we’ve experienced and learned a lot—through conflict, failure, opportunity, and success. We have also experienced significant leadership transitions–from the implementation of a Board co-chair model alongside the arrival and departure of many board members, to the expansion of Shaun Leonardo’s role to Co-Director in 2020, the departure of Founder and Co-Director Allison Freedman Weisberg in 2022, and the arrival of Lindsay C. Harris as Co-Director in 2023. As a creative practice, then, we must embrace constant and intentional change, in all its difficulty, as we reconfigure and reimagine our structures and inner-workings. Through the lens of this practice, we must also bring understanding and acceptance to the complexity and messiness of relationships, particularly during necessary shifts in power.

It is from these learnings that in spring 2023 Recess began conversations with consultancy Sadao Ghosh to guide the organization through a reimagining of a new board structure—one which builds upon our framework of care and accountability and operationalizes an ethos of power-sharing. We aimed to learn from Recess’ past and other leaders in the field to reorient closer to our mission and stretch the boundaries of a nonprofit board model operating within capitalism, while creating a culture where board and staff work in exchange.

The project to develop a new board culture incorporated a process of research through a ‘Discovery Phase’ of confidential interviews with colleagues at nonprofits, both in the arts and social justice spaces, that have implemented experimental distribution of power across board and staff, as well as colleagues who bring fieldwide knowledge and philanthropic experience.

Sadao Ghosh and Recess Co-Directors convened an Advisory Circle including American Artist, Keonna Hendrick, Tiffany Lenoi Jones, KT Kennedy, Salvador Muñoz, Christopher Udemezue, and Sarah Workneh for a series of facilitated workshops to review and add onto high-level recommendations from the Discovery Report. Collectively we determined a value set for a reimagined board, considered roles that would support Recess’s abolitionist framework, and developed ideas on how to untangle governance from fundraising while prioritizing mutual learning:

With these ideals, Recess moved through Board recruitment over the spring and summer of 2024. After an initial open call and nomination process, Recess received 28 applications, moving forward with interviews with 14 candidates based on criteria that prioritized alignment with the recently formed board roles and the organization's mission and vision. The 4 individuals invited were identified as those who bring a wealth of lived and professional experience and a deep alignment with Recess’ core values. Together, in August of 2024, they joined Recess as its first ever consensus-based, compensated Board, built as a trust-based support network for staff, and for accountability to the widest configuration of the Recess community.

Along with our new Board, we welcomed six new Advisory Circle members who represent Session and Assembly alums, community partners, and thought leaders. This reconfigured group of advisors will support the organization in project-based non-decision making capacity during this year of transition. The Advisory Circle was formed as an initial group of 6-7 individuals who have been in close proximity with Recess and who agreed to both support and be in close community during the Board and co-directorship transition through distinct projects and open engagements.

We thank our community of staff members, young people, artists, writers, supporters, board members, advisors, and partners, both past and present, for giving us the respect and trust needed to be an ecosystem committed to the difficulty of relational work.