PluralArts International

From 2015 to 2021, I progressed from Administrative Director to Managing Director of PluralArts International, an arts and education nonprofit founded and artistically led by Todd Fletcher.

PluralArts began as a sequence of individual projects. My work was to build the institution around them: budgets and fundraising, staff and contracts, systems and compliance, partnerships and press, production and reporting. Over time, project-based work became a repeat, year-round operation capable of carrying overlapping programs and returning partners.

Todd led the artistic work and composed the music. I ran the company around it, turning commissions and ideas into funded, staffed, produced, communicated, and completed programs. Depending on the project, I also contributed to story, lyrics, dramaturgy, direction, and design.

The work ranged from touring musical theatre and international music programs to holiday schools, public events, and inclusive productions. Hoch Hinaus brought more than 100 refugee and local young people together across Berlin and Hamburg before performances in Berlin, Hamburg, and Leipzig. 25 Next took a youth-created micro-musical about the future to Schloss Bellevue. On the Prinzeninsel, a one-week arts and language residency gave 16 young people the space to create more than 50 poems.

Some relationships lasted for years. By 2021, our work with the Prinzessin Kira von Preussen Foundation had reached its fifteenth project. The real accomplishment was not any single production, but the operation that made ambitious work repeatable without making it ordinary.