Business as Usual: City of Asylum Director Andrés Franco

Transcription: 

So good afternoon, everyone. Happy week after Thanksgiving. I know that we took last Wednesday and Monday off. And we are back. And we have great programs ahead. And just to remind you that today that who do we have tomorrow, Jonathan,

tomorrow is our kickoff of FEM printer without liftoff, which is very exciting.

Right? Right. So

that's great. So I'm Audrey president and CEO, the Pittsburgh Technology Council and have a nonprofit called 40 by 80. Jonathan kersting, is here with us. And he's vice president of all things marketing and storytelling at the tech Council. And we want to give a big shout out to Huntington bank, too, because they believed in us right from the beginning. If you don't know them, get to know them. They are very civic minded. They have been pivotal in terms of what's happened since the pandemic, but they're always pivotal. And they're very, very passionate about making sure that technology innovation thrives in our region. So we always thank them for our belief in all of our work in our experiments, as well. So we've muted your microphones. And today we're in for a lot of fun. And I hopefully a lot of appreciation for what is exists inside of Pittsburgh. That is something that is world renowned and very, very important. So important in terms of speech in terms of populism, as well as music, and we're going to hear a little bit about about it, because there's so much to talk about. I am going to just pass the baton in two seconds. remind everyone that we've muted your microphones and that Jonathan is looking at the chat. So we have some time to talk to Andres and then lucky city of asylum, because today is Giving Tuesday. So there will be some links that inside the chat as well. I know many of us have been bombarded and reminded that Giving Tuesday is an important part of our regional ecosystem to build and support nonprofits. So city of asylum is no different. So now I'm very thrilled to welcome Andres Franco who has been with City of Asylum, I think, is it five weeks is today the mark of five weeks

days, exactly the two month mark. So I started on October 1,

okay, to two month mark. Okay, so welcome, welcome. And let's just jump in, let's jump in and just say, who is Andres who is Andres? What has been his journey? How did he get to the work that he's doing right now, because it's definitely not a traditional route, which I love. And I love the fact that he has reinvented himself. And there are many pieces and parts that I want him to explain. So Andres, tell us a little bit about yourself just sort of shaped the conversation. When you came to the United States, you know, Pittsburgh, and some of your other work.

Yeah. So I'm originally from Columbia, South America, and I moved to the US 20 years ago in August. I am a US citizen. Now I celebrated my fifth anniversary as a US citizen exactly a week ago, and very happy to be here. I am conductor and pianist by training. And that's why I moved to the United States to study music and eventually became the resident conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. Five years ago, and along the way, I picked up many different skills. I'll tell you the fun ones. First, I became a certified various thundering during the pandemic. I love everything, copy. But I also work with nonprofits, not only orchestra, I was the executive director of a project called caminos. The Inca, which is just to explain it in a nutshell is like Yo, yo Ma's, the Silk Road project, but for South America and Central America. So I was the executive director of that organization 10 years ago, and I started learning about so many different things. I love literature, I love the art. I love music, obviously, I love a building community. I'm also an immigrant here in the United States. So when I moved to Pittsburgh, I read this article in The New York Times for those 36 hours in Pittsburgh. And the first thought was one of the household vacations of city of asylum. So I was really intrigued by the organization like an organization that defends freedom of expression, and at the same time, builds community and advances redevelopment and economic development here in the north side. I was very intrigued. And, you know, started coming to programs started actually hosting programs because of a partnership with the Pittsburgh Symphony, and became more and more familiar with the with the family here with the syllabus, having family. So that's how I got where I am right now the story is actually really good because I was emailing with the co founders day. And Samuels, and Henry's, about different things, this is like, the middle of the pandemic, and one of the emails they write me. And that is, do you have a clone, we have been looking for an executive director. And if you had a clone, that person would be great to run city of asylum. And I don't have a clone. But I but I love the organization so much that I said, you know, that's, that's neat, this talk about and we may be able to find creative ways for me to get more involved. And we started talking, and the other you know, the organization is so excited to be here at sea, it was having a conversation continue that I made with the board members, and staff members. And the conversation never ended. We are in the middle of it. I became executive director, and very happy to be here.

And so tell us a little bit about city of asylum. And I don't know if you want to show a little clip of a video while you talk about the mission. And yeah, there you go.

Yeah, so let me let me show CD of asylum started 16 years ago, and our co founders, this is one of the properties are you seeing the house right now just want to make sure. So these are property on some Sonia way on here in the north side. And they decided to bring a writer who had been incarcerated and tortured in China, and they decided to give this home does make this home available for these writers to come and live there. And this was part of an organization that is called icorn, the International series of breakage network that is now based in Norway and has around 70 cities worldwide, where writers who are persecuted can find a safe house a safe place to live in sanctuary. So it started just by bringing that one writer from China to this house. And the experience grew from that. Because what happened was, this was a very an is still a one young, very engaging artist. And one of the first things he said was I want to carve my points on the side of Mount Washington, which should work was a great idea. But they ended he said, that's that's a great idea. Why don't we start with a more manageable project? How about you paint your poems on the facade of your house. And that's where we're looking at right now. One Chang actually painted with Chinese calligraphy, his own poems. And this is just a beautiful place. This was the first stop, by the way, in the New York Times article, who was this particular house was the first stop and the first place I visited when I decided to follow that route. But many things happen when he arrived. I mean, first of all, he started creating this beautiful public art, but also as people walk by the street, and they saw these these top and wanted to learn more about him. And he spoke and I think still speaks very little English. But he would recite these points to anyone who would listen to them in Chinese. And then people realize that sometimes even though you don't understand the language, just by listening to them, and by being connected with an artist, your life changes. And people started writing their own poems, I'm talking about neighbors, not poets, with neighbors who just decided this guy is writing poetry at his house, I can believe I can do is right upon. And then we started sliding them under door or through the mail slot. And it became a very special, a very special moment for the community when they started interacting with wine. And then we started presenting concerts here right in front of his house. And then little by little, we realized that by bringing those writers we changed as a community. And we were the ones who gained the most of course, you know, we are providing sanctuary to these writers, but we as a community are the ones who gain the most we become stronger and you're also standing up to defend to protect a creative freedom. You know that the mission statement for the city of asylum is to build community by protecting and celebrating creative free expression. So that's in a nutshell what we do we build immunity we protect it freedom of expression, but we also celebrate it in many different ways. So this was the first house publication which was another side of the organization disease, economic development is where is there any homes in the north side, and then little by little they were transformed into these beautiful alio Susan work pictures. You can see here, some Sonia way. This is the jazz house. This one you can see the size of the Burma house. And further down the road. You see the house point one in Chinese and the wing house over here. So it really transformed the city and the neighborhood in a very physical, palpable way. This is the outward reading garden and this is our headlines. waters. This is a former Masonic building that was redeveloped into authority. Just to give you an idea of the scope of our programs, this project they added to the project was a $10.7 million redevelopment of a block in the city that had been vacant for a number of years, their garden theory, you can see it, but he's right next to us. And because of this, this has become an anchor point of the video element of the north side journal, I just by mere coincidence having to live in the north side just on some Sony away just a lot of love from a city and another two blocks from the house publications. So

that I didn't say that this was like one of those folk tales where they go looking for a treasure or you know, somebody will around the world and then behind writes in between front of your house. So that's sort of what happened with me, I had been a neighbor and friend of supersonic for a number of years. And when the moment came, then we decided to so I have definitely experienced firsthand with CD was having has done for the North side for Pittsburgh, and for me as a citizen of the world, also very important for the United States and the world.

So that's a beautiful story. And I know you have a very long commute. Going to work right?

Yesterday was very painful. I had to work for one minute and a half under treacherous conditions I did have boots on.

So you mentioned one thing, and I think it's important for people to understand the importance of this organization to the world as well, because there's really not, I mean, are there organizations like city of asylum around the world and sort of talk about what that means in terms of Pittsburgh, because this is a very fascinating and important economic development piece. That is not something that's typically written about in terms of practice. But what they've done is been able to apply this. So where do we sit in the world in terms of putting of asylum,

so we sit at the very top when it comes to cities of refuge. As I mentioned, we are part of this network icorn. We are the US headquarters for icorn. And we had our 15 year gala just about two months ago, and I had two very important literary figures, Salman Rushdie, which I'm sure you remember he he wrote to the Satanic Verses, and there was a fatwa and assassination rule written against him, and he had to go into hiding. And there was another one of the North American writer Russell banks, and they were part of the gala. And they both said that Pittsburgh is the model for the world in terms of today's Cities of Refuge. And that is because even though we are the only grassroots organization in the whole network, and every sending CDs, plus many of them in your in Europe, some of them in the United States, some of them Mexico, and we are the only one who that is not government supported, or connected to university, most of the other ones just work with a university or city government in Europe in particular. But even though we are doing grassroots organizations in their whole network, we are now the largest in danger writer and artist century in the world right here in right here. And we are now hosting five writers and artists concurrently. Just to give you an idea, no other see in the whole networks, it hosts more than two. So we are more than double larger than dealer Cities of Refuge. So for me, it was reaffirming and a little bit daunting when you when you hear someone rush and say, This is the model for the world. This is the way that it should be done. But it's also very exciting and inspiring to be leading the organization now. So in terms of numbers, we have had a nine exiled writers throughout the years, as I said, we have right now five excelled writers and artists concurrently. We have built now for household occasions. There's one more one more coming in the spring. And we are very happy to be here. I now make the distinction writers and artists because we welcome for the first time in the history of city of asylum. We welcomed on Election Day, our very first exiled musician in residence through a partnership with the University of Pittsburgh. Her name is Miko, and she comes from Vietnam. And we're very interested because we have always had literary writers in the houses, but now behind a musician. The dynamics change a little bit in the ecosystem. She's very interested in working with the writers and the writers and we're working with her and of course we have a raised musical tradition here. Pittsburg both a classical music, folk music and jazz. And we definitely want to make sure that she gets to work with many of the Pittsburgh musicians as well as our writers.

No, it is it is really exciting. And I know that you have a little excerpt, which we are going to share in a second. But I want to to do an inquiry about the pivot. And I know that happened before you came. But you had to make a dramatic pivot as an organization during a time of COVID. And what it what happened, what changed what talk about the impact that you've had across the community.

So this is something that happened before before I came on board. And one of the reasons why I really wanted to work with the organization. I remember when you know, March 12, March 13, when the country started shutting down, everyone was really worried about what was going to happen. I worked for the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and I was the music director of an orchestra in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And we were all worried about how how long this is going to go. And what we're going to do, and see if I was worried. But they adapted very quickly. I remember a Henry Reid sent me an email very couple of weeks after everything started shutting down saying we are working on this virtual platform that we want to create an offer to any arts organization in Pittsburgh. So they can continue to deliver admission they can continue to present performances, because you know, we'd love to be know, in opera, the ballet, any performing arts organization, any presenting arts organization was in deep trouble because nobody could go out. So very quickly, CDF asylum was able to turn outward CDs really facade of the building. There's a cultural center inside has a restaurant, a bookstore, which we can talk about later. And in the middle, there's a performance space where we have presented in no more than 600 concerts in the last four years, concerts, lectures, films. So basically, what they did was adapted to space, they already had cameras and lights, the technology was almost there. So they very quickly shifted, and were able to move all the programming completely online. And this happened very quickly. By May 4, series, seven was already presenting programs. And they made it a platform that was available to anyone in Pittsburgh, who wanted to be part of the project. So there was called The show must go on line in brackets. And there were 79 performances that were presented as part of that program. And we partnered with 20 organizations, many of those organizations were very small. We are one of the most diverse, presenting organizations in Pittsburgh, actually, the second one, the second most diverse one after the cultural trust. And just to tell you in numbers is over 50% of our programs feature black or minority artists, and over 60% of the program's feature woman artists during the time. So it was really a community building project. We presented some programs that were specifically seeking asylum, but we presented many more with other organizations just because we know it was a difficult time. And that's continued all the way through September. Now we have switched through our regular programming. So yesterday nights, we presented our program number 120. Since the epidemic started, this year alone, we have presented 155 programs. By the end of the year, we will have presented 165. So if you think about it, we are a 30 new organization and very small budget wises of around $1.5 million. We are presenting programs every other day of the year, give or take. So that is the story of suicide.

Yeah, that's such a great pivot. So do you want to share with us right now? A little excerpt from the new musician?

Absolutely. So just yeah, just the chief speaks a little bit about herself until you understand the first clip you're going to hear. She is a musician and activists from Vietnam. And she was known as the Lady Gaga of Vietnam, until she decided to run for office. And the government did not like it very much because she was running on a pro democracy, anti censorship platform. And very quickly after she started her political campaign, she started being harassed by the police. And, you know, she was doing a concert believes would show up asking for a venue for permits and all kinds of different things. She met with President Obama when he went to Vietnam to visit and wanted to be with activists so she was one of them. You can look at there's a great YouTube video clip, where you can see Obama talking to the activists and Mike coy is sitting right next to him apparently Obama told her to be patient. And she wrote this song, which starts, you will see is a very cool guitar. She's playing with strings. And then she started getting more and more impatient. I will tell you more, just watch. The clip is really cool. So here is my clip.

Do you know what I wrote this song? After I met with a very powerful, handsome, President Obama, this song's called just be patient. That's what he told me in the meeting. Your power to make wrong

for you?

Hi, everyone. My name is my boy. I'm a Vietnamese artist, activist. I fight for freedom of expression. And artists freedom. Because in Vietnam, we don't have freedom of expression. And there is a censorship system that control artist. I don't agree with that. All of us need to submit the content of our work to the government censor. Before we can do anything like organizing exhibition, concerts, charity show, or releasing books, or music. I think art don't need to be censor. The censorship system needs to be repealed. That's why I fight. Even I am a bad activist. But I still need to become an activist to fight for this right. Because of my activism. I have been threatened all the time by the bullies. I have been under surveillance. The police was teasing me around Hanoi. I was kicked out of my house. Yeah, I was evicted from my house. Two times. The police rate my concert two times. I cannot stay in my country. The longer I stay there. The sooner they would catch me. So I left my country one years ago. At that time, that documentary about me had a premiered in dap, NYC, Miko and the dissident, the name of the documentary. So I've moved to New York. And I had the residency in New York for one year. And then now I'm having the fellowship. am now artists for take some fun Fellow at Pittsburg State University. And CT a Cylon.

Wow. Wow. That's, that's great. My hat's off. Um, people are asking about the YouTube link because they're linked to this. So Andres, you have a link, you can put that out. If not, is it somewhere on city of asylum site?

I'll look for it. If you just say the the link I mentioned with one with Obama. This one is not out yet. So this is a really a preview for everyone here in this group of people your watch this. Okay,

well, just so you can see people are interested. So that's fine. So there is um, there is one question that I would like to be asked. So Jonathan, someone's asking Brent rondon is asking a question and I'd like that to be read. So Andreas, maybe can answer it or not?

Definitely. So um, it's a book author in Pittsburgh, who is from Ghana needs assistance with editing publishing rates in the US does your organization should help with that type of request.

So we focus on helping exiled writers come to the United States. But I would personally personally like to help anyone who is here, you know, as an immigrant, I know it is very hard to try to understand how the system works in different countries. So if this person reached out directly to me, I would be more than happy to look into it, and help them as much as we can. To again, I know it is hard, and it is something that I would like to personally disperse. So

there's two points I want to sneak in here. There's also a bookstore. So can you talk about the bookstore just a little bit, because it's really, you know, another gem in the north side,

it is another gem in the north side, and the bookstore is connected to see them actually, anytime you buy a book from a CD of a southern bookstore, you are supporting our mission, it is basically supporting everything we do, we have a large collection of a translated books. But we also have a large collection of a books that we find interesting, there is a website for the books that I'm going to share that in a second here. And it is all the books that you can find pretty much anywhere where you can buy books these days, you can order from our website. So even though the bookstore itself on the shelves, we have a lot of books in stock, that are translated, we also have books there were originally written in English. And I have to tell you, I have been buying all my books, only from a bookstore already for like two years away with a long time before I even thought about being the executive director of their organization, because I know that every dollar I spent would support a cause I believe in. So by buying here, not only are you buying local, you're also helping nonprofit, you are making a big impact in the world. And again, we are now the model for the world, you're helping us make Pittsburgh the model for the world in terms of CDs of wreckage, here is the link to CDs on bookstore. You can also buy gift certificates there. And Audrey, before we finish the program, you mentioned that today is Giving Tuesday, I'm also going to link here in the chat. So you make a support our organization. I know these are very difficult times for everyone. If you're able to support we really appreciate it, we are making a difference. We're making important work together.

They absolutely are. And I really wanted to make sure so what do you want to say before we wrap up? And then we do a little piece? Again, from the artists that you shared with us from Vietnam. What do you want to say to the tech community and what's in store for 2021?

So to the tech community, first of all, thank you for having me, others have been such a pleasure to share the story of what's happening with all of you. And we would love to collaborate more with the tech community. As they said, the organization was already thinking in terms of the technology to move virtually very quickly. And I think we were the first organization in Pittsburgh was able to do so because we have always thought about what comes next. And we are doing the same right now we're thinking okay, so now we know we can stream live, our gala this year was live. What is next? virtual is augmented reality. Next, how are the ways in which we can harness technology to reach more people, we found out that by moving online, we have now viewers from 37 different countries worldwide. And from 45 states in the United States, people who would love you to watch a concert live Europe program now are able to do so. And we have had more than 20,000 viewers these year is that that's more than last year, and we still have a month to go. So using technology has been very important to us to get rid of endemic but we are never just sitting and saying you know we did a great job. We're always thinking what, what comes next. So I would love to get your suggestions. If you have any any great ideas, crazy ideas, any kind of ideas, put them in the chat or you can find me, you know on our website, City of asylum that org my email is there. We'll be happy to hear from him.

Okay, so I want to thank you but I also want to use this opportunity to hear a little bit more from the woman that we heard from earlier. And I think she's going to be here for how long

she's going to be here if it's until September of 2021. And we will be behind programs with her on our virtual platform so stay tuned. Something else that I should say is that most of the programs we have presented so far again 155 this year. Most of them are available on demand. So if you go to alpha at that word, you know, for snow days like today, and for the holidays, we're going to be inside, you have 155 give or take programs that you that you can watch from your home. And here is the rest of the clip of Mike hoy. She is going to tell you a little bit about the last song she's going to play.

And now I'm gonna play you the song school. Where is Justin? This song I wrote when I joined the Black Lives Matter protest.

Wow. I want to thank everyone. I want to thank Andres, I want to welcome Andres to his new position. And he's been in for two months, city of salem.org. Check out the bookstore, check out their work. And remember, we're all connected. Even though we have this amazing, amazing organization right here on the north side of Pittsburgh. We're we're teaching the world and we're welcoming the world. Andres, my hat's off to you. And of course love to the founders, Henry Reese and Diane Samuels and to all the board and people who work really, really hard to drive our place in the world. So thank you all and we'll see you tomorrow. Thank you

Transcribed by https://otter.ai