It took less than 48 hours for Ruth Harvey to fall in love with AS220, a non-profit community arts organisation in the United States.
"I was just so blown away by the work they were doing there."
Five years later she and her husband packed their bags and headed for Providence, Rhode Island, the plan being for Harvey to get work there.
Five years after that, she was co-leading the organisation as Covid-19 hit, losing more than 40% of its budget overnight.
Then, having decided to stay - and as she and her co-leaders navigated the effects of the pandemic, of having to lay off staff, find different ways for artists to connect with each other and their audiences and ways to continue to support at risk youth - Harvey’s work visa came due.
It became mired in Covid bureaucracy, leaving Harvey in limbo, and then her husband lost his job, voiding their work visas.
"The Trump administration and a deadly pandemic were not a good mix when it came to immigration. It definitely took a toll."
They had to pack up and prepare to leave the United States, becoming part of the thousands enduring New Zealand’s Covid MIQ lottery and failing.
They had to take Plan B and head to the United Kingdom to stay with friends. Thankfully, Harvey had a British passport and her husband is Australian and had the right to stay there for six months.
"It was deeply stressful not knowing how long it would be until we could get home."
Luckily, a friend tried the MIQ lottery for them while they were flying to the United Kingdom and got a spot two and a-half months later.
While supportive of the reasons for MIQ, Harvey says the process of allocating rooms was cruel and had a huge impact on people’s wellbeing and finances.
"The way you make peace with being so far from home is by knowing you can jump on a plane anytime and come back. The experience of not being able to come home was difficult to get your head around as at that point it had been five years since I’d been home."
Recently back in Dunedin and having moved into a new home in St Kilda, Harvey reflects on her time away with fondness.
She still talks, with a slight American twang, about AS220 as "we" as she explains how she discovered the organisation in the first place.
It all began with Harvey, then a curator and public programmes manager at Puke Ariki in New Plymouth, being encouraged by her boss to apply for a Winston Churchill Memorial Fellowship.
Keen to learn more about how to engage young people in cultural institutions, she applied and was accepted.
So, in 2010, she headed to the United States, spending five weeks travelling around 30 museums and art galleries including AS220.
AS220 is based on the principle that freedom of expression is crucial for the development of strong communities and individual spirits. It owns three buildings that offer artists affordable access to six rotating gallery spaces, a performance stage, a black box theatre, a print shop, dark room and media arts laboratory, a fabrication and electronics lab, a dance studio and a large youth programme.
It also has 47 residential spaces and seven work studios for artists, a restaurant and bar.
"It’s a model unlike anything I’d ever seen in New Zealand. It’s a little ecosystem of things people need to really thrive and be supported."
Pre-pandemic it had more than 50 staff, served more than 600 artists a year and raised nearly 70% of its budget through earned income.
"I was blown away ... with the youth programme for incarcerated youth and those in state care. I fell in love with it and we were only there for two days."
After she left she knew the one place she would go back to if she had the chance would be AS220.
She sought more funding to return for a month and this time her husband went with her. They lived in the AS220 founder’s basement and had a "wonderful time".
"We decided ‘let’s move to Providence’. It wasn’t that easy. It took a couple of years to get all our ducks in a row."
In 2015, they moved to the United States. Harvey did not have a job with AS220 but she was "optimistic" one would come her way and it did, just as her work permit came through.
"They were really brave to employ me in fundraising when conventional wisdom says it is all about having amazing connections with donors and foundations. [The] New Zealand philanthropic environment is completely different. They took a chance on me."
With good mentoring, she learnt pretty quickly it did not matter who she was; just that she could link them with the leaders of the organisation.
"Fundraising is about relationships. You need to be able to speak passionately about your work - and I was very passionate - and be willing and skilled at listening. Actually asking for money is a teeny tiny portion of what fundraising is."
She does admit asking for money never became easy, but believing in the work it funded, she would do anything to achieve success for the people that worked there.
Harvey was also asked to run a $5million campaign to fund improvements to a building and their programmes.
"It was terrifying, but one step at a time as they say, and we were most of the way there when the pandemic hit. I learnt a lot."
Then she was asked to join the leadership team - something that was even more terrifying - and at first she said no.
But co-leader Shauna Duffy essentially told her to get over herself, as she actually did most of the work already. It started out as a co-leadership with three others, but one left.
"When you care about something so much there is a pressure that comes with that level of responsibility."
Harvey found the deeply collaborative leadership approach enabled them to balance out each other’s strengths and weaknesses.
"You have to be open and transparent about what those are and graciously accept others’ support and you do yourself and others a huge service.
"We really needed each other through the pandemic. Nobody knew what we should be doing, we had to figure it out as we went while you are working with a community that is deeply stressed and worried in different ways."
The biggest worry was people losing their jobs as in the United States, if you lose your job, you lose your access to healthcare. So they redefined what was full-time work and gave part-time staff access to healthcare.
Harvey admits it took her a few months to realise that things would never be the same again. The organisation’s mixed income model had until then been very sustainable, but they started to struggle.
With artists losing their income, they began to have trouble paying rent on their units and of course the cafe and restaurant had to close.
"So we raised $100,000 for rent relief to help keep everyone safely housed, which was pretty awesome."
With the eateries closed they had to let those staff go, but kept on the majority of their non-profit staff.
"Those decisions were tough, they were not only valuable employees but friends as well. It was very hard."
Like arts organisations around the world, they had to adapt as the pandemic progressed and as restrictions changed from being totally closed down to partial openings.
The galleries showed by appointment, they organised for musicians to be able to make high-quality broadcasts of their music and stream it free and took their youth programmes first virtual and then outside with the help of another organisation which had a large garden.
They also still found ways to laugh, create new opportunities and come together, she says. The organisation also experimented with consensus-based decision-making, ensuring staff and community members were are the heart of decisions.
"When the everyday safety of your staff and community is at risk in a whole new way, leadership was just not willing to insist people do things they didn't feel comfortable with."
Having to leave as they were continuing to work out the way forward was tough, but Harvey says she was already feeling the tug of home.
"We always intended to come back to New Zealand as all my family is here. I love Dunedin."
She is now looking forward to getting involved in her home community and discovering what part she can play in Dunedin’s arts community.
"I’m excited to have the opportunity to contribute to the community where I’m from."
Harvey is aware of some of the challenges facing Dunedin’s creative communities, from the lack of the right-sized theatre spaces to live music venues, but knows recreating an AS220-type organisation here is not the answer.
"AS220 was born out of the conditions in Providence at the time. You can’t replicate AS220 as it is now.
"For me it’s about listening to what people are saying about what they need and want and build from there."
But there could be lessons to learn from her experience - AS220’s black box theatre is a flexible space and along with a main stage (200 seats), hosted 450 live events every year. The black box space, which could hold 80 seated and 120 standing, proved popular, having diverse events from "wildly popular" wrestling matches to dance and spoken word.
"It worked for us. The youth programmes used it during the day. It was ultra useful."
The whole experience in the US left Harvey even more convinced the arts are critical to communities.
"People need to embrace their creatives. Artists are critical to building a vision for the future."
