Language learning app startup Duolingo made headlines last week when it unveiled a new public mural and $150,000 in grants focused on “creating public artwork in Pittsburgh and supporting local artists and arts organizations.”
Today, we welcome John Tronsor, Facilities Manager at Duolingo, to give us more insight on the "To Be Human" mural and Duolingo's commitment to art in Pittsburgh.
Detroit-based artist Ann Lewis created the mural with students at the Barack Obama Academy of International Studies in East Liberty. A press release said the “mural’s colors and message are inspired by the student body’s ethos, creative collage making, and discussions centered on their perspective of community.”
Transcription:
So good afternoon, everyone to beautiful day. Hopefully all of you voted if not you plan to vote today. But what I would ask is, we have a chat session, this is Audrey Russo president and CEO, we have a chat session. And I just sort of wanted to get this out of the way that that this is not a time for us to sell your wares, nor share any of your political postures. So we'd really appreciate that. We're just going to indulge ourselves for 30 minutes and having a great conversation with john transer. Do a lingo. So I want to thank Huntington bank. And Huntington bank has been our sponsor, right from the onset, and many things that we do, particularly in our storytelling, and our radio, as well as some of our podcasts. Jonathan Kersting is with us. He is vice president of all things, media, and marketing at the Tech Council, and he's gonna make sure that we make enough, we create enough time so that we have time for questions. And he'll be monitoring the chat. So I think I've set the table, we've muted all of you. So but that doesn't mean that we're not going to have some fun. So I'm pretty thrilled today at having Duolingo join us, meaning John Tronsor. He has the job of facility manager, I think is the title of Duolingo. That sounds like that sounds like a wide range of things. So I'm going to bring John on. And welcome him on a beautiful sunny day here in Pittsburgh. So we can see it shining right on him because he told us that he's actually in the office. So as a facilities guy, I imagine you're in the office a lot. So hi, john, welcome. Thank you for being here today.
Yeah, hi. And thank you for having me.
Oh, absolutely. tons of fun. And we're gonna talk about a great topic. But first, we want to know more about you who is john the man? What's your
Yeah, I mean, I'm, you know, I'm an artist by like training. So I studied art and philosophy at Pitt. Got a Bachelor's there. 2008 study got a bad postback degree at Brandeis University. And then I got my MFA at the University of California and Davis, on 2013. On a study basically focused on sculpture, video and installation art, and doing lingo I wear many hats as as it can be, as you can tell, as a facilities manager, talking about an arts program. I mean, I oversee our construction projects, I manage our security, I provide it support and some management. I also manage. I manage our mural project. I'm now I'm leading this arts community Arts Initiative.
Wait a second, you're an artist. You oversee tech support? Yeah. See facilities? So are you a practicing artist right now? Are you?
Yeah, um, it's the time that I can scrape fine to work in my studio. I do. I mean, I split my time in my studio, making art and building furniture.
Wow. Okay, this isn't a time for selling your wares. But you might want to sneak some of that info in.
We got to know more about this furniture. Hang on. This is sounds pretty rad.
That's interesting. Okay, so you're having a lot of fun. And did you paint the murals outside?
Oh, absolutely. Not.
Absolutely not. All right.
So, so how did you wind up to Atlanta? How did that happen?
I was brought on part time to help them build out some like, there it basically the conference rooms and some computer support when they were expanding their office about two and a half, almost three years ago. And they just kind of kept me around. They
Okay, well, that's that's a good story. They kept you around, they brought you in, and you're bringing a whole lot of varying perspective to the work. So we're gonna get to the program and the project and the initiative in a minute. Yeah, everyone, just a quick elevator pitch. Just we all know what the lingo is, but it's good to just
tell us about all the good work.
Yeah, so Duolingo provides free language education. You know, it's easy, it's fun to use. All you really have to do is sign up log in, start learning a new language. were the most popular way to learn a language and the most downloaded education app worldwide. We've always been a very mission driven company. Our mission has developed the best education in the world and make it universally accessible. So keeping it free is really important to our mission.
Okay, so I asked you about that mural. And I think what we really want to do is jump in First, let's talk about that mural. Yeah. What is that and exactly where it's located in East liberty.
Yeah, so the the mural is on our headquarters, and these liberties are on the corner of Penn and South Beatty Street. It covers about, let's say, like roughly two thirds of the building's facade. It's, it's titled to be human. And it's an artwork that was created by an artist named ann lewis. The work was inspired by a residency and had participated in at the Obama Academy, which is a K through 12. School, you know, right around the corner, from our office in East liberty. She spent time there discussing, you know, community, what it meant to the students and some of their language and visual arts classes. You know, it was something that they shared with her, like, how they lift one another up, and how they support their communities and make them stronger and wiser and healthier. And this mural reflects a lot of that sentiment, and why she chose to have the words we rise together on our building. She really wanted, you know, that message to reflect an honor their commitment to building a brighter future for themselves in their East Liberty community. Wow, that's great.
Yeah. Great. And that is in alignment with the mission that Louise always had. Yeah.
That's awesome.
So now what now there's this commitment to the art, so can you you talk about that?
Yeah, absolutely. Um, so right now, it's called the the only go Community Arts commitment. And it's dedicated to creating public artwork in Pittsburgh and supporting local artists and arts organizations. We established it this year, and with the initial endowment of $150,000, that will be distributed over the course of the next three years to fund several public art projects.
Anything any preconceived expectations on that? Any, any advice, any guidance to artists? I mean, because we artists is, you know, obviously, we can talk about art for a long time. But it is a critical component of the success of Pittsburgh with the with just the wide range of art that actually exists here, but the museum and performance
tell us, you know, talk about that.
I think what we're looking for, for artists applying really is we're looking for project proposals. And we'd really like to see project proposals have a commitment to the community in which they'll be installed and created. I think, you know, one of our big learns from this whole process was, how important it was how important it is to establish a dialogue with our local community.
Just ensuring that
you're working with them will create a better outcome in the project itself.
So how are you doing that through this work? How are you engaging them?
Um, we haven't quite settled that on on our side for the grants project. But what we did for our existing girl was one one component was Anne's work with the Obama Academy, but we also began engaging in talks with some artists and local activists. And it was through those conversations, that we got a better perspective of the community, the history of the building itself, the old mural that existed on our building prior to us moving.
Talk about that. I know I know about it, but I bet your listeners don't.
Sure. So, you know, our building had one of the largest, if not the largest community based murals in Pittsburgh it was it was put up in 2004 funded by the sprout Fund, which was responsible for a great deal of community murals in Pittsburgh. That mural was up until about 2015 when the building was purchased by our current landlord and he you know, to develop it for the for office and retail space, he needed to install Windows and in that process he painted over the system here. And then mural was really reflective of the celebrity community and featured some of the kids in the neighborhood and then a lot and had a lot of power for a lot of members in the neighborhood and outside. So
is that mural now?
It doesn't exist. I mean, it was, it was digitally captured. But it's, it's no longer extant, it's Yeah.
Okay. So that that in and of itself, that experience that created the or that preempted this fund, and that created your commitment to the community.
We we began speaking with one of the artists who, one of the artists who was an assistant on that project initially, her name is Alison sampada. And she's a she's a local painter and muralist and public artists. And, you know, it was kind of learning from her perspective. And, you know, a proposed mural that came that came about some time, shortly after the mural was the original mural was taken down, that we felt that it was really important to have that project realized. And that's where kind of this initial drive came to support her and her partner artists, the teacher, and also to, you know, establish this ongoing funding to support local arts.
And so when you say local, are you thinking only about East liberty and Larimer in that neighborhood? there? What What is local mean?
Yeah, that's, it's tricky, right? Um, you know, we we don't want to just say Pittsburgh, because all of a sudden excludes a lot of the areas just immediately outside of us. I think right now, what we're thinking about is Allegheny. Allegheny County. Okay. And that's one of the bounds that we're giving ourselves, especially when we're looking for artists and arts organizations to apply for this, this initiative.
And so this is actually going to be real art. It's not performance art, right? This is,
or it could, it could certainly be performance art, we're looking for, like public art in you know, visual art was kind of where we had in mind, but we don't want to limit it to any sort of like, media, or medium. It could be painted murals, it could be sculpture, the performative it could be temporal, it could be any number of different practices, we want to make sure that we're able to capture all of them.
Okay, and so if, um, are you running this as though there might be some match?
Um, that's a good question that I don't know if I can answer right now. But
okay, that's fine.
I'm certain it's, we, I'd have to come back to.
I mean, I don't mean to put you on the spot. I'm just trying to the kinds of ways that can be, you know, additive. Mm hmm. And so who, what kinds of people have reached out to you so far, in regards to this? What kind of inquiries have you had?
Um,
right now, it's been a lot of kind of pressing fireese about the Bureau and the commitment. Since we haven't really gone public with what the guidelines look like in the application process. We haven't received a strong, you know, strong outreach from artists or organizations, but we've, you know, been talking to several of them we're close with and
so why is supporting the local art scene? I mean, obviously, there's history with the particular digital signage that, you know, preempted your time there, but had been, you know, part of the history of Duolingo in terms of the neighborhood, why, why is it so important to support this? This work?
Um, so I think it's a couple things, you know, one, one is a Duolingo is proudly founded and based in Pittsburgh, you know, we've created this program as part of our commitment to being a good neighbor. We live here and work here, and we want to get back.
And we see with all of our community programs
that we want, you know, the growth of our business to contribute back to Pittsburgh, um, and, you know, art in particular and public art in particular, I think it's, again, through this this mural project that we really saw the unique power that public art has capacity to affect change, repair relationships, promote dialogue, empower those who speak through it, in one way that I've been thinking about it is a dueling mission as a company is to provide language education that's free and accessible to everybody. And we see that same sort of idea, mirrored and public art or art that exists in the public realm where it's free and accessible for everyone. So it's kind of the conjunction of those things, why we're doing what we're doing.
And so, you know, I believe that a vibrant art scene is is pivotal for, you know, a community, both urban rural, it doesn't matter. I think it's important. But do you? Do you believe that it feeds off of the vibrant tech scene? Do you think that there's some symbiotic kind of relationship?
Yeah, I so this one, this is tricky, because but I'll give a couple couple ways in which I think it can be mutually supportive. So there's some examples of like, almost like an experimental lab type approach to this. And that has roots going back to the 60s. There's like, experiments in art and technology, which was in New York and artists like Robert Rauschenberg and Yvonne Rainer were involved in or LACMA, the Los Angeles County Museum of arts, Art and Technology Program, which James corral and Robert Irwin were part of in the 60s. That same spirit of bringing artists and engineers together to share resources, ideas, ways of making that's carried through to places like IBM in New York or even the studio for creative inquiry ever at CMU. I think that's one really powerful way to bring arts and tech together. You know, there's another, another equipment in like, example would be like artisan residency programs. Facebook has a really good example of this. And they just released just maybe a couple years ago released a big tome of a book, documenting five years of there are projects in their, their offices all across the world. So there's that kind of way that they can be supportive. Another two. Apart from that, there are ways that you know, art and tech can meet somewhere in the middle, and it's I think, through public art.
Okay, so Jonathan says there's a couple of questions in here. I didn't see them. So
Jonathan had done mute myself there. Sorry about the delay. A couple of questions. We have one from Carlos trebbiano. Here wants to know, is the mural initiative open to Pittsburgh artists only are you opening to artists to beyond the region?
We're keeping we're keeping the open call to artists and Allegheny County right now.
Okay. Very cool. And then Brent rondon wants to know, do you envision a community participation, meaning non artists that can become part of the creative work, and also any themes that you're considering as you move forward?
So I think there's, there's certainly an opportunity for non artists to participate. However, it's really going to be determined by the proposals and the types of work that the artists who we select or choose, choose make. It's, you know, we would love to see that type of participation, but it's going to really be on the artists, what their practices like.
was the second question, I'm sorry.
And then any themes you're going to be looking for?
I mean, we would, we would probably look for themes that mirror our own company's mission. We want to make sure that these projects really are positioned to have positive impact in the communities. One, one just, yeah, that's just a gotcha.
game. Craig, Craig, Victor wants to know, can an organization Sign up now for a grant application when they become available, or be put on an email list to be notified?
Um,
can apply right now, but you can send us an email. It's our hearts grants@duolingo.com. Okay. I'll post that in the Slack channel. So that everyone has that email address, but excellent. Yeah, well, we're going to be hopefully getting out those applications. I think the middle of December is when one company's largest can actually apply to it.
Very cool. It's right around the corner. And Frederick watts wants to know, how are you participating in the city's public art policies.
We haven't had too much involvement in that yet. We've been in conversations with people from like, the Office of Public Art and we're really moving We're a tech company kind of dipping our toes into this, we have a lot to learn. Don't think we're that far into it.
Very cool. Getting close.
We're excited about this, to say to other companies, I mean, it still lingers a significant size startup, quote, unquote, right. Compared to other companies, but there are companies that have as many employees as you do. And what what's your advice? I mean, what would you tell them? Why should they do this? Why should they consider
funding artwork or funding?
funding community? artwork? Yeah, exactly what you're working on? Yeah. I mean, I mean, would it be so bad to have copycats?
Oh, absolutely not, I would love to see this light start spreading out, ah, you know, like, as an artist, there's some
I think
art has a really transformative power to it. And, you know, what, what we've, again, like, I think, getting involved. So let me back up. My practices as an artist is very studio based, which, you know, it's just like, you go and you make a work, you share it with some public and it's just not the feedback mechanism is just almost gallery based and critique base. So I my, my relation to making wasn't in the same kind of public realm that I experienced with managing this project, I had a lot to learn. And one things I one of the things I really took home was how public art can really draw people in and started building a community. I think companies benefit from that, because we have a tendency to kind of isolate ourselves get mixed up in our own cultures, or buildings and lose kind of a touch with the outside community that art or visual art or performance art or something like that can actually pull us out, get us thinking, that communication is really, really important. You know, we kind of got, we're, you know, we're at ease Liberty, and we're learning what it means to
listen, you know, um, it's really exciting. And it doesn't surprise me having known Louise for many years, it doesn't surprise me that this would be clear to him. He cares about community, he didn't need to build this company, right in Pittsburgh. And he's always open to lots of new ideas. It would be awesome for companies to join you and to gain some wisdom from for how you put this together. And because you're, you know, you're not a Facebook, you're not a Google, etc. The assets that are sitting in this region are tremendous. And I think that you actually have demonstrated some commitment into the Kelly Strayhorn theater, right in the past. And maybe you can just quickly tell us about that. And then then there's one other question before we wrap up that I want to be able to get to at least
Sure. Um,
straight horn.
Yeah, we've had we've had a good partnership with them. Now over the past, I would say like four years, we've sponsored various events Luis's spoken at their annual fundraiser. No, we produced a documentary that was screen there. And we really have had an important connection with them. Part of our work this year is arts. Grant went to them to sponsor one of their events, which was the hotline ring event on, you know, filtered out to support a bunch of arts organizations and in Pittsburgh. Yeah, I mean, they're, they're doing a lot of interesting, good stuff in it's just, it helps drive some of the culture and this kind of narrow stretch long term.
Well, there's a lot of legacy that's in that narrow stretch, and the Kelly straight horn, the tribute to the black community, in terms of art, and jazz is part of their roots. So my hat's off to Louise and tea and team on that. So there's two questions before we're gonna wrap up. So Jonathan, do you want to take those?
We'd love to, we have one from Deb Sal, here. Are you looking to have these as permanent earning Ark installations? Or is there a specific time period that there'll be public? So she loves the initiative?
That's a tough question. I mean, there's some sort of life expectancy to public art, whether it's like a mural where there's things you'd have to do after a certain period of time though the paint starts to fade. Or, you know, there's public sculptures, decades and decades. I mean, the artwork that we're seeking, we don't have a particular timeframe of its existence. in mind, they could be you know, performative works that last an hour, for example, or they could be drawn structure that last 100 years or so. So I think it's something we would love to see them existing for a longer period of time, but we don't want to narrow the scope of what we're looking for at this point.
Sounds cool. Sounds cool. Another question from estores. insky says, this is a wonderful program, weight advice can you offer to more established arts organizations in Pittsburgh, seeking engagement and support from up and coming local tech companies? I mean,
that sounds flippant, but like I just reach out to us. You know, there's, you know, our mural project it sounded like, so when I came in a couple of years ago, I think this idea was being tossed around internally. And it just took someone like me to really grab it and run with it. And I think there are probably people at some of these other tech companies who would just jump on the opportunity to help create art, whether it's public or not.
Well, listen, we let you know, at the tech Council for many years, we had an initiative on arts and tech and trying to engage the community at every intersection, because we know just like what Dirk is talking about that it is about the diversity of perspective that drives innovation. So that's, that's a critical core of the values that we have at the tech Council. That's why we're pretty excited about this. So the Brian put out here that the regional asset district is a great example. We actually traveled with them, they traveled with us, we went to build out. And we looked, we looked at a lot of innovation in terms of what's happening and how to transform a city. So We're no strangers to this ideology. And that's, and my hat's off to Louise, for having this vision and the leadership team there to support this for our community. The and then there's just one last question. Unfortunately, we have to wrap it up. If you want the grants to cover long term maintenance, I think people are getting in the weeds on some of these things, because they're excited that you're doing some interesting things. So they want to make sure they have everything buttoned up. So
I would say that if you are writing a budget up for one of these, having a line item for maintenance would be a good idea. I required because sometimes that comes out of a relationship you establish with the property owner where you know,
but just something to keep in mind is important.
Awesome. Well, I just want to thank you for your time with us, john trongsa, from Duolingo, thank you for your commitment to the city to the region. And you heard it here that it's for Allegheny County, and they really want to make sure that they're being helpful and investing in projects that meet just a wide range of a wide range of topics, but something that's aligned to do a lingo. So the creativity is, you know, the world is your oyster. You're, you are an artist. So thank you, john. Thank you, Duolingo. Thank you, everyone, for joining us today. And I believe Jonathan, today is Tuesday, what's going on the rest of the week.
So Wednesday we have supplier diversity with Highmark health, which is super exciting. You want to plug into their network and a big event coming up coming up on November 12, which they're gonna be talking about. And then of course, we have the Alleghenies investment stopping by I believe, and then Richard general. Yes, on on Thursday, and then of course, the one and only, of course, we have rich Fitzgerald stopping by for his fourth appearance on business as usual to update us on all things COVID in the county. So we love having been stopped by the show. It's a great way to end our week on business as usual.
Right. Okay, well, thank you, everyone. Thanks again to Duolingo and John Tronsor, and all the information is there so that you can access the work that they're leading. Thanks again, everyone. Stay safe. Don't forget to vote. And we'll see you tomorrow. Bye.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai