Episode 64: Michael Bobbitt (Mass Cultural Council)
Meet Michael Bobbitt! He's a Watertown resident and the Executive Director of the Mass Cultural Council along with being a distinguished theater artist in many ways himself (see long bio here). In this conversation we talk about how art saved him in his early years, his early successes from being the "best Hansel" to touring nationally to perform, his time in children's theater and building Adventure Theatre in the DC area from 15,000 patrons to 100,000 patrons, co-writing musicals with Bob Marley and Jim Davis, and eventually making his way to New Repertory Theater in Watertown and his current role at the Mass Cultural Council.
We dig into topics such as the challenges of arts advocacy in Massachusetts, how and why the arts sector needs to change its beliefs, values and behavior, possible policy changes such as STEM to STEAM, how the arts in Massachusetts are saving healthcare money with the first in the nation arts prescribing program, his thoughts on Watertown arts, how the MCC has redesigned their grant programs to make them more accessible for all artists, and what's the day-to-day like for an executive director while also juggling his personal artistic projects.
Released October 2nd, 2025
(Click here to listen on streaming apps) (Full transcript below)
Learn more about the Mass Cultural Council at massculturalcouncil.org
See what's going on with Watertown Arts and Culture at watertownmaculture.com
And listen to Arts and Culture Roundtable and Creative Chats episodes.
(Photo Credit: Kris Studios)
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This program is supported in part by a grant from the Watertown Cultural Council, a local agency which is supported by the Mass Cultural Council, a state agency.
Transcript
Matt: 0:07
Hi there. Welcome to the Little Local Conversations Podcast. I'm your host, Matt Hanna. Every episode I sit down for a conversation with someone in Watertown to discover the people, places, stories, and ideas of Watertown. This time I sat down with Michael Bobbitt, who is a resident in town and is the executive director of the Mass Cultural Council. So I’ll let him introduce himself, then we'll get into our conversation.
Michael: 0:29
Hey Matt, I'm glad to be here with you and having a great conversation in the Watertown Library, and a place I've come to a few times so far since I've lived here. But I'm Michael Bobbitt. I'm the executive director of Mass Cultural Council. Mass Cultural Council is the state legislated agency to support the creative and cultural sector of Massachusetts, funded by legislature, bond money from the governor, and some gaming casino tax dollars, and a little bit of money from the federal government. And we distribute it back out to everyone in the state. And then we also do a lot of advancement work, which includes pushing policy and trying to build relationships across state government. But basically, my job is to wake up every day and see how I can make the state better for the arts sector.
Matt: 1:14
Nice. Love it. We'll get into that, but I always like to go back in time and kind of get, you know, how you got interested in all this stuff to begin with. So where did you grow up? How did you get into the arts? You know, what's your origin story?
Michael: 1:27
Yeah, so born and raised in lower Northwest DC. My family migrated from the South in the 60s when that second sort of wave of black folk moved to sort of the mid-Atlantic area, but also Detroit and Cleveland and those places. And home was filled with a lot of noise. Every single adult in my life dealt with addiction issues and joblessness and incarceration. And so the one thing that gave me solace, that kept me away from the home, that allowed me to express things that were in me, was the arts. And so I just noticed that in our curriculum in DC public schools, it felt like every day, but every day of the week I remembered doing something artistic, whether or not it was getting in line and going to the art class or getting in line and going to music class. There was something there. And those were my favorite classes. I also made sure I participated in after-school programs. They were all artistic. So it was really the DC public school that got me engaged and fell in love with the arts. My first real memory is playing Hansel in the third act of Hansel and Gretel. And I was the best of the three Hansels, as my mother likes to tell me. And I had a line in the act three. I was sort of caged by the witch. And I'd said something, I don't remember what the line was, but the whole audience started laughing. And I thought, oh my gosh, that feels good. I have the power to make a whole audience laugh. And I just needed more and more of that. And so I just kept with it and found after school programs and dance and music were my big things. I picked up trumpet and singing in the third grade, kept doing that through middle school and started doing plays. And then in high school, I got the chance to go to an all-boy Jesuit college prep school. They were recruiting black kids through a sort of evening advancement program where we would learn reading, writing, and vocabulary. But we also had a whole bunch of other activities, camping and things like that. But when I got to this high school, I realized that the academic rigor was so intense that I couldn't keep up all my artistic pursuits. So I mostly stuck with theater and trumpet. I'd gotten really good at playing the trumpet, bought my own trumpet from a summer job that I had. I got into the National Symphony Orchestra's Youth Fellowship Program, which is a great program where I got free private lessons from members of the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center, got to attend rehearsals, got to sit with the players, do master classes. And so that was my love, even though I kept doing theater at the high school, but also at our sister school. Since we were an all-boys school, we had a sister school. And then summer theater programs. And so my two loves were theater and music. When I went to college, I got a pretty sizable scholarship to study trumpet. And I did that for a year and a half and realized I missed theater. So I left college, intending to go back, but got into the theater world and picked up my love of dance again and trained at the Washington Ballet and a little bit at Dance Theater of Harlem. I realized those two things weren't right for me. I didn't really have the body for concert dancing and focused primarily on theater. I went to New York and went to a couple of theater training academies and then hit the road doing national tours and regional theater and summer stock. And in 96, the late 1900s, I found my way back to DC after a national tour and looked around and saw DC had a big bright theater scene. And so I decided to make DC theater my home. And so I started auditioning for shows and getting involved in shows. Then I got pulled into teaching theater and dance at a bunch of universities, Catholic University, Howard University. Did that for many years and then got asked to choreograph stuff at a couple of theaters, and that led to directing a couple of projects. And then someone said to me, and I can't remember who said this, they said, you should start your own theater company. And I was like, okay. Had no idea what that meant, but I also knew that that required me understanding how to run a business. So I started taking my own coursework, self-directed work in governance and business and nonprofit and fundraising and finance. I always knew that if I didn't know something, I was going to study and learn that and become an expert at that. So eventually that led to me getting a part-time job at the Smithsonian as the director of touring productions for what was known as the Discovery Theater, where I really got hands-on experience learning how to manage. And then that led to me running Adventure Theater, which was, which is, the longest-running children's theater in the DC region. And I was asked to come in and transition the theater from a volunteer run model to a professional run model. Massive change management to learn. So I studied a lot about change management, built up my network of friends, got involved more in the community throughout, and took on that job. And transitioning that organization was a great learning experience. We went from about 15,000 patrons to 100,000 patrons. We acquired a school, another big change management practice. And then I, in Maryland, maybe because of our close proximity to the federal government, but the arts sector gets very, very, very involved in advocacy, to the point where it's difficult to be elected to public office without an arts platform. We were very organized. And so I got pulled into a bunch of advocacy work. Whenever there was a legislative meeting or an advocacy meeting, you had to show up. And if you didn't show up, your colleagues were like, where are you? Get here. This is the most important room in Maryland or in our county. So we need you here. We need your voice. We need you to help us put pressure on public officials to build infrastructure and support for the art sector. So again, I'm learning a lot about something I didn't know much about. And then I started studying policy as much as I could. I joined the local arts council board. I joined the state advocacy board. I testified at the state house a lot. I helped senators write bills, helped advocate for them, piloted activities. To the point, actually, there was a big conference here last week of legislators from around the country, and it was great to run into some of my Maryland friends, legislator friends. But all that work was a big foundation for the work that I'm doing now. So.
Matt: 8:04
Yeah. That's a lot. Yeah, yeah. No, no, that's, there's obviously a lot to cover. You've done a lot. So if we go back to like a kind of a mindset thing, what drove you to, I mean, you moved to New York, toured the country, you took on all these changes. What was like the driving force to be able to take on all these challenges and not just settle into one choice when you made it?
Michael: 8:24
I don't know. I don't know. Maybe boredom with the status quo. I think that's probably a theme. Not even boredom, but maybe frustration with the status quo. That's probably a theme that, that infiltrates my life, my whole entire life. Maybe intrigued by the opportunity. I am someone who doesn't shy away from new ideas. I have, I guess, gumption to pick up and move to New York without really any support. So I, it's a hard question to answer, Matt. I kind of go with the flow, and even some of the artistic opportunities I had were things that most probably normal people wouldn't have picked up the phone and inquired about. But why not?
Matt: 9:05
Yeah. Was there any particular moment where you felt like, you know, in the traditional artist, I made it? Was there a particular point in that timeline where, you know what, I consider myself capital A artist or I made it?
Michael: 9:18
I'm not sure. I think probably artists, and I still feel like that, are filled with anxiety. What do we call it? Imposter syndrome? So I don't know if I ever feel like I made it artistically. I feel, from my art perspective, I feel fed. Like I don't feel like I need to make more art. I make art when I want to. It's not that I feel like there's something I have to say and I need everyone to see it. But I will say one of my favorite achievements, this is part gumption again, is I read an article about music teachers in elementary school struggling to get their students to get on the beat. And they tried all different kinds of music.
Matt: 10:02
I have like a jazz teacher in high school plugging his metronome into an amp and just blaring it out at us.
Michael: 10:10
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. But the only thing this teacher talked about, teachers talked about, the only thing that got the whole class to feel the beat was reggae music because of that strong second beat. And so I thought, reggae and children. At the time I was running a children's theater. And I'm always thinking of there were many children's theaters in the areas and adult theaters that were doing family-friendly programming. So I always had to find competitive programming. So I thought, children and reggae, there's something in this. And so, of course, Bob Marley pops up. And so I started researching Bob Marley to find out that his daughter wrote a children's book. So I reached out to the family and said, Hey, can I adapt your daughter's book into a musical and use your father's music as the base of the music? And they said yes. So one of my claims to fame is that I co-wrote a musical with Bob Marley.
Matt: 11:02
That's pretty cool.
Michael: 11:03
Which is cool. So, and certainly people were like, I remember someone asked me, is there going to be drugs in the play? I'm like, no, it's a children's play. It's going to be for children. And so I was really, it was really great. So I got to use 15 of his songs. I made up the whole story, inspired by the book, inspired by Jamaica, inspired by some of the themes of his songs. The show sold out in its run in DC. And then my friend who runs a Off Broadway Theater came to see it and said, What are you doing next February? And so we took the show off Broadway on 42nd Street, sold out there, went on a national tour, and now it's licensed by one of the world's leading publishers and gets produced all over the country. So I co-wrote a musical with Bob Marley, and that show still is bringing me resources, which is good.
Matt: 11:50
That's a good tagline. And yeah, you know, also nice to have. You don't have to continue working on it. It keeps working for you. Nice. Yeah. I mean, we could go into the artistic stuff even some more, but I do want to make sure we work our way back to the Mass Cultural Council, because I'm sure there's plenty to talk about on that. But yeah, that's a, having to say I wrote a play with Barb Marley is a pretty good tagline.
Michael: 12:11
I'll give you a few other things I can brag on. One is that I also co-wrote a musical with Jim Davis, the creator of Garfield, called Garfield, the Musical with Cattitude. I'm currently writing an adaptation of The Monster Mash and all the other monster novelty dance numbers he wrote, which has a Massachusetts story because the person, Bobby Boris Pickett, grew up in Somerville. I've adapted to Chris Van Allsburg’s play, Jumanji and Just a Dream. Chris Van Allsburg lives in Beverly. And then my other Massachusetts story is my musical adaptation of Make Way for Ducklings is now available for licensing, just announced last week. So yeah.
Matt: 12:52
Nice. Yeah. So you found your way in the plays for kids for a while there.
Michael: 12:56
Yeah, with big IP.
Matt: 12:58
Yeah. And just reaching out. What's the secret?
Michael: 13:01
Are the underlying rights available? Yeah. Would you look at a proposal for me to adapt it into a musical? Sure. I like the proposal. Let's move to contract. Contract gets written, play gets written, play gets produced. We want to license it further after the original production. Okay, let's pitch it to licensing houses.
Matt: 13:20
That business training came in handy there.
Michael: 13:22
Totally.
Matt: 13:23
Cool. Nice. So then how did with all that play success going on, how did you shift more into the advocacy and arts administration type stuff?
Michael: 13:34
The last sort of 10 years of being an artistic director, I, and an artist really, I realized that I enjoyed being outside of the rooms, making the rooms available for artists to be artists, rather than being in the room making the art. I felt more fulfilled outside of it. I love artists. I love what they do. And so I just wanted to see that happen. And even when I was sort of producing shows, I never felt, those plays weren't mine, like even though I wasn't writing them or directing them or choreographing them, they still felt like I had an input on that. And so I was spending a lot of time building up the networks that I needed to build up to advance the theaters that I was running. You know, I moved to uh, and my son. The other thing I left out is in the midst of that, I adopted a baby from Vietnam, who's now 24 and in Japan getting his master's in marine biology. But when he was about to graduate from high school, it seemed like my time at the theater in DC should end. Like I'd been there for more than a decade, and there were other artistic pursuits. And so I started answering calls from search firms and putting my resume out there and had a number of interviews. And one of the ones that popped up for me was New Repertory Theater in Watertown. And I talked to my husband about like what region would we be interested in. And New England was one of the places that we thought would be a great place to live and make art. And so we kept talking with New Repertory Theater. We took the job. We had it for about a year and a half, through the beginning of the pandemic. But I brought that sensibility up here, that idea of my time is better spent outside of the room, building a network, advancing the organization, thinking about who I can get support from so that the art could happen. And we had some good successes. We saw a more than 25% increase in audiences at New Rep. We started, you know, knocking out the dead and putting reserves in the bank and starting to get some artistic notice. And then a search firm that I had worked with previously called about Mass Cultural Council. And initially I was like, no, thank you. I just want to make plays for the rest of my life. And I remember the search person said, you know, Michael, I know you. I've known you for a while. I think there's more for you to do, and I'd love you to consider this. And I was like, thank you, but no. And so I talked to my husband and he said, Why are you turning down an interview with the search firm? And I said, Because I just I don't see myself in grant making and government, and I just don't, I wasn't feeling it. And he said, take the interview. And so the guy called me back again, and we talked some more, and I still wasn't convinced. And so he said, Let's meet up for coffee. So we met for coffee. He talked about why he thought I should apply. And I did. And I went through the process. And the more I learned about Mass Cultural Council, the more I saw myself in that role. I was certainly scared because I had never been the head of a agency, a government agency. I didn't know enough about Massachusetts government and Massachusetts politics, so I had some fear about it. But after I got the job, you know what I do.
Matt: 16:40
You went deep.
Michael: 16:41
I went deep. I went studying and took coursework and read everything. And, you know, even now my morning is filled with reading links of articles and combing through State House News and Commonwealth Beacon so I can really understand more and more and more about what's happening in Massachusetts and how the creative sector can help that and how I can link it to work at other government agencies and Mass Cultural Council. And so I feel really strong about it. There's still always more to learn, and I'm still constantly learning. But everything I've experienced, all the change management work, all the pushing against the status quo, all the deep learning is starting to take root in what we're doing at Mass Cultural Council.
Matt: 17:23
Yeah. And so that was 2021 in terms of you.
Michael: 17:27
Yeah. February 2021.
Matt: 17:28
Okay, so it's been about four years. So what have you learned over that time now that you've spent a handful of years in there?
Michael: 17:33
I would say, by and large, everyone loves arts and culture and sees its value. The legislature, sometimes I feel like the pet project of the legislature, like they like us so much because we're putting money and resources and making their towns and communities beautiful. I think the biggest thing I've learned is that there is more that can be done for the creative sector. And I'm not talking about more money. I don't know how much of the sector is getting support from Mass Cultural Council. I do know that the size of our grants based on the budgets is relatively small. I also know that we did a year-long project to get an inventory of all the assets we have in Massachusetts. And there are 15,063 arts organizations in Massachusetts. There are 112,190 full-time generators of art. These are the artists and the culture bearers. But that 112 doesn't account for the people that work for the 15,063 arts organizations. And full-time means you make more than 50% of your income from arts and culture. So it doesn't include the people that are professional artists but are considered part-time, have no idea how much that could be. It also doesn't include the people that work in K-12 and collegiate arts and culture. So the number of people working in arts and culture is beyond what most of us can imagine. And we have, we don't have a way of getting that information. And so when I look at our grants, the 2,500 or so grants we give out a year, and I look at the 15,000 arts organizations in the hundreds of thousands of people working in arts and culture, then I have to think about the impact that money is having. It’s relatively low based on the size of the sector. And people that get the money are getting a great impact. But then what about the people that don't get the money, which is most of the sector? What are we doing for them? What is government doing for them? And then I compare how much support the infrastructure, regulation, programmatic support other sectors are getting from government. And I go, we should be getting some of that stuff. But if we don't ask for it, then we're not going to get it. And so what I'm learning is that there's many more things that government can do. I mean, I have a, I've amassed about a hundred different policy ideas. Many of them won't cost anything, but would yield great results for the sector. So I have to be strategic about working with our advocacy partners and which ones we're going to push forward. But then what I have to do is figure out how to get all these people that work in arts and culture and all these organizations that are arts and culture to organize to help me get those things across the line. Because if our legislators aren't feeling pressure from us, then nothing's going to happen. I always can tell when municipal budgets have been passed, because usually I'll get a bunch of texts and emails from artists saying, oh my God, they cut arts from the education budget. And my response back is usually, well, did you go to the town hall meeting where they had the budget conversation? And usually the answer is no. And I go, well, then what do you expect?
Michael: 20:41
So what I've learned is that there's much more that can be done and should be done. But the only way to get that done, the main way to get that done, is for us to be really organized and think about advocacy as a core function of the work that we do, not only as organizations, but as individuals. Is there someone on staff paying attention? Is it a staff agenda item? Is it a board agenda item? Are board members holding other board members accountable for that work? Are you working board to board? Are you all organizing in your own municipality to think about what the market failures are and maybe how your government can respond? Are you putting policy recommendations together and working with your council members or your legislators to turn those into bills? That's the way we're going to get this infrastructure. Not a big priority for the art sector in Massachusetts. And so it makes my job harder. And it focuses us primarily on grant making, which, as I've said, doesn't really, it's limiting how much we can do. So I've been pontificating about this a lot lately, trying to inspire the sector to turn things around. I think right now, based on what's happening in our federal government, I think it's a critical time for the art sector to really step up its advocacy game. I personally don't think there's anything more important than advocacy for the creative sector. We're seeing divesting from the federal government in arts and culture. We're also now seeing arts and culture being used to perpetuate the agenda of the federal government. I mean, what's this thing with the Smithsonian? Go through and take out the stuff that doesn't adequately interpret my understanding of American history? What is that? So, anyway, those are things I'm learning that there's more that can be done. We need infrastructure. It's not just about funding and financing. And so, how do I get everyone to rethink what we can do? It's also a $30 billion industry in Massachusetts, 29.7 to be exact, which is three times the size of transportation, larger than construction, on par with retail, larger than manufacturing, utilities, agriculture. And when I think about the support that those sectors get from government, it's hard to compare.
Matt: 22:51
Yeah. Yeah. So what are the next steps then? I mean, you have your policy ideas, but for reaching out to all these people and getting them on board, what's the strategy behind that?
Michael: 23:01
It's, I've done a lot of change management work, study, training, practice. What I know is that this is not a technical fix. It's not that we can have build more infrastructure for advocacy and then all of a sudden it's going to be fixed. And every artist and arts organization are going to become fierce advocates. This is a adaptive change. This is going to require the art sector to change its belief and its values and therefore its behavior around advocacy. It's not something that's valued for us. We don't value it. Maybe we don't see the benefit of it, but for some reason we're not as engaged in advocacy when I compare it to, say, environmentalists or housing or healthcare. But we need to. It's critically important. There's a bunch of people that we elect that make laws and make decisions about the economy. And if we don't have a stronger relationship with them, then they're going to focus on the people that are putting that pressure on them. And so it's going to be a big behavior shift. So I can pontificate about it. I can do some technical things that may make people change, but really it's got to be grassroots efforts led by the sector to get the sector to change its behavior. Artists have to say, hey, I'm going to this event where we're talking about some policy work, or we're going to a candidate forum for the next mayor of this town. You're coming. Drop everything and be there because this is important. So that's that's what needs to happen.
Matt: 24:29
Yeah. And do you want to, any of those policy ideas that you have, do you want to throw any of those out to give people some of the taste of what those are?
Michael: 24:38
I mean, one of the thingsI think would be big for us is STEM to STEAM for the state. We do have a bill filed that will change the three places in the general ledger where STEM is mentioned and add the A. It's sort of a nice conversation starter. But when I think about STEM, it's a workforce development program. And it was pushed onto the legislature by the STEM world. They were like, we need a pipeline of talent. And so it's important that government is preparing kids in elementary school, middle school, and high school to go into STEM programs and colleges so they can go into the STEM workforce. And so the state has invested $3 billion in that workforce development program. And when that was happening, the art sector was sort of hanging out on the side talking about the value of arts when they could have joined the STEM advocacy effort and gotten STEAM established from the beginning. So now to go back and correct that, it's going to be harder, right? It's going to be expensive, even though I think the results will yield great returns for the state. It's also going to be emotional because the state rides a strong reputation on being one of the world's leading STEM states. So I've been hearing some people say now STEM and STEAM, which is a big step. So maybe maybe they found a way to be okay with it. But creativity is one of the number one skill sets needed by the workforce. So says the people in the business world, like World Economic Forum. They are saying creativity is much needed by the workforce. So it's a good time for us. So that's one of the things I want to push. And I've got to figure out a way to find the money to fund research that says with these interventions in STEAM, here's how much more money the state can make. So that's one. We did this really cool thing last year where we launched the first in the nation’s statewide solution to arts prescribing. This is a program whereby healthcare providers can prescribe 12 doses of arts and culture to their patients. It comes with a companion ticket and paid for by third-party payers like insurance and Medicare and Medicaid. And we've gotten a couple of municipalities to use opioid settlement money. We're working with the Housing Authority to fund it, working with the Gaming Commission, have a meeting with DOC coming up. But what happens if MassHealth covered arts prescription? What happens if GIC, which is the state insurance program, what happens if they covered. It's a revenue stream for arts organizations, right? And we're already showing that the people that have taken their arts and medicine through this program are showing a 40% less return to their doctors. So it's saving healthcare money. So there might be cool legislation that can come out of that. I'm talking with DOT, DCR, DCAM, all these big agencies where I think we can infuse arts and culture into their work. So some of the stuff may be done not by legislation, but there are all kinds of things that I could think of.
Matt: 27:41
Yeah. It could take you a couple decades to work through them all.
Michael: 27:45
I mean, they're literally, I have a file that has about a hundred different policy recommendations.
Matt: 27:49
Yeah. And that'll take some time, but you're working on it. But yeah. Cool. Well, maybe we should touch on Watertown specific arts and your relationship to it. What's your thoughts on the art scene in Watertown?
Michael: 28:02
I think it's great. I've been to a number of events. The Armenian Museum here, certainly things that are at the Mosessin Center. I'm so glad that we approved a cultural district recently. I want to see more, but if you ask Michael Bobbitt, I always want to see more art everywhere. I also did the art stroll last year.
Matt: 28:23
The sculpture walk.
Michael: 28:24
The sculpture walk, yeah, it's really very cool. You know, there's a lot of data out there that shows that municipalities that prioritize arts as a tool to drive the economy see that growth happen. So what happens if there's this robust Watertown arts agenda where we're talking about space and how to make the roads prettier and how to use it for wayfinding and get more arts and culture to get people out of their houses and get them seeing something and then going to a restaurant. So I'm curious to see, I would love to attend, a big convening of all the arts sector producers in Watertown come together and talk about what they want to see from Watertown.
Matt: 29:11
Yeah, that would be a great idea. Love to see all those people in a room having, talking it out, hashing it out.
Michael: 29:18
I was going to say we're working on trying to expand and reconstitute a busking program. But I know many municipalities have around the state where they allow busking to happen, which I think is a great way to help artists raise money and get some visibility. Would love to see that in Watertown.
Matt: 29:34
Yeah, I mean, so I've run PorchFest the past couple years, and that's been so successful that there's definitely an appetite for more music around town. So, you know, there's been talks about getting more music in restaurants and getting those people on board and all that.
Michael: 29:48
So we're working with the Restaurant Association and the Lodging Association to launch a campaign to put more local artists in their buildings. So performance in both the art, they all have to put up decorations, so don't go to the big box stores, go local. So we'll see.
Matt: 30:04
Yeah. Nice. Maybe we should take a step back with the Mass Cultural Council and explain a little more, like the grants, you said it's limited, but you are doing some impact with that. So what have been like the success stories in your four years there of what you have done with that money and other programs there?
Michael: 30:20
I mean, we don't really get involved in what they program with their grants. Almost all of our grants are general operating in some form. I mean, there are some restrictions. So like our cultural facilities fund can't be used for operations, it has to be used for facilities work. Our gaming mitigation fund has to mitigate the impact of the casinos. But for the most part, the other grants are do what you want with that money. We just want to be here to support you. So we see artists all over town, super grateful by it. I think the biggest impact was the advocacy work we did to get COVID relief money that was $60 million on top of the about 40 I got that year. But so many new artists got money for the first time. And it was validating for a lot of people that don't typically apply to grants. We did a lot of work in redesigning the grant programs so that they're not time consuming because you all are busy, making sure that you don't have to be a professional grant writer to be successful. I don't necessarily care how well you write the grant. And I, in my mind, I don't think we should be expecting artists to write grants well. We expect them to make great art, right? As long as they can communicate clearly from a business perspective what they're doing, then that's what's necessary. So we went back to make sure that you don't have to have a mastery of grant writing, a mastery of the English language. I don't really care about that either. What we want to do is to make sure that the money you use is having impact.
Matt: 31:49
So what are the changes you make to the grants to make that possible?
Michael: 31:52
So we used to, so simplification. So it takes 15, 20 minutes to apply for the grants at the moment. That's one. Now I think they’re either beta testing or they did last year, where you can do an audio or video submission as opposed to a narrative submission. I don't care if people use AI to help them write their narrative section. We got rid of all those sort of additives that sometimes we ask for but aren't really critical to the grant making. We also used to, for the individual artists, we used to award grants by category. So this year it would be poetry and dance and music, and next year it would be theater and visual arts and something else. We got rid of all that because so many of you all exist in the slash world. I'm this slash that slash that. It also, some people didn't see themselves in any of those categories. Artists have a great way of renaming themselves.
Matt: 32:42
Category of one.
Michael: 32:43
Yeah, changing the cat, changing the narrative. And so I was like, where's the drag queen in this? And where's the tattoo artist in this? And where's the curator in this? Where's the backstage tech person in this? So we got rid of all that. So now these grants are open for people that work in creativity. So you could be a backstage person. I mean you as a podcaster can.
Matt: 33:04
I got a Watertown Cultural Council grant for this podcast.
Michael: 33:07
There you go.
Matt: 33:08
That's not any of those traditional categories.
Michael: 33:10
Yeah. Yeah. So those are some things. Actually, I walked into 27 different grant programs and we have pared down to I think nine at the moment. So it's easier to navigate. But big, big changes.
Matt: 33:24
Yeah. Then how about what's the day-to-day life of an executive director of the Mass Cultural Council like? Which you, I know not every day is the same, but what's the typical day look like for you?
Michael: 33:34
Every single day I do everything I know how to do. Literally. There's not a day where I can just focus on this part of my job or this part of my job. I'm navigating from talking to public officials to doing press conversations to reading up on trends happening to attending board meetings to traveling somewhere across the state to meet with constituents to literally on the phone with an artist saying, you know, what can I do to help you? I love that though. I love that.
Matt: 34:05
It keeps it fresh. From your previous stories, it seems like that freshness every day helps.
Michael: 34:09
It keeps it keeps it fresh. And I think maybe because I ran. Some people ask me like, most people assume I'm really, really busy. And I am. Some people ask me, how do you do it all? One, I've hired doppelgangers, so you don't really know who you're getting. So really rigorous, rigorous dance callback. But I just make the time. I think it's important. And I have a lot of help. A lot of help. I have a deputy director, I have a deputy chief of staff who helps with scheduling and some administrative support. I have a great team that can make it all happen. I also think my capacity is high because of working in nonprofit. Putting in 60 hours, 70 hours a week, every week feels normal. Not that I get to 70. Not that I even get to 60. Maybe. But compartmentalizing when I need to. I have a to-do list. So I look at that to-do list often during the day. I have tricks in my head where I will box things into urgent and important, urgent, non-important.
Matt: 35:12
Is that the Dwight Eisenhower trick or something?
Michael: 35:15
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And sometimes that helps me to figure out what I need to respond to on any given day.
Matt: 35:19
Yeah. And is there any aspect of your job that someone who doesn't know about it might be surprised that that's part of your role?
Michael: 35:26
Oh, interesting. I don't, I don't know.
Matt: 35:29
I know it's so familiar to you, but.
Michael: 35:33
I do a lot of appearances where people are pulling on my background in theater. So I just for Rebecca Shear’s Circle Round, WBR's Circle Round, got to perform two plays. I've gotten to read the Longfellow poem at the Old North Church about Paul Revere. I got to play The Voice of God in Noah's Flood for the Boston Lyric Opera recently. It was so cool smiting people. We should bring that back. For Umbrella Theater, I got to do a one-man play. So those are kind of fun things to do. Maybe the one thing that people don't know is that I do travel the country speaking about the work that we're doing in Massachusetts. There are a lot of people across the country that are very inspired about the leadership and some of the bold moves we make in both grant making but also infusing arts and culture into other sectors. So tomorrow afternoon, I fly to Charlotte, North Carolina to speak about arts prescribing. It's very, very cool.
Michael 36:32
Maybe one thing people don't know is that I do spend a lot of time going to non-arts rooms. And so you'll see me at transportation meetings, housing meetings, climate meetings. These are all critical to the arts sector. We don't have relationships with those sectors, even though those things affect us. And so often I'll walk into a room and people will say, Michael, what are you doing at this housing meeting? And I'll have to remind them that artists live in houses. And a lot of our seasonal locations, like the Berkshires and the Vineyard and the Cape, they struggle with housing and getting artists because they have to house them. And so I will always tell them it's important for you to show up at these housing meetings so that we can together advocate for artist housing. You can imagine the same thing for climate. Climate is affecting everyone, but I'm usually the only person in the climate rooms. So I'm trying to get the art sector leaders to step away from their offices and rehearsal rooms. They're needed in both places, so they have to find that balance, but I need them here to fix the things that are affecting them. So maybe that's something that people don't realize that I'm often in those rooms. I'm serving on the STEM Council and the K-12 Statewide Graduation Council. I serve on the Black Empowerment Council, all appointed by the governor. And so I'm thinking about how arts and culture can be used in all of those things to help with our governor's agenda as well. And then I'm still doing some writing.
Matt: 37:59
That's gonna be my next question. What about outside of the Mass Cultural Council? What is Michael Bobbitt's art world outside?
Michael: 38:05
Yeah, so I had readings of the Monster Mash play last spring. So there's a producer raising money to see if he can get his eye set on London for some sort of world premiere straight to licensing. In about two and a half weeks, I will be going to DC to the first rehearsal of my new farce adapted from Mother Goose rhymes called Mother Goosed. So I'm excited about that. That opens in October. I am flirting with treatments for a Little Rascals adaptation. And then a treatment for a city in the 1920s in Mississippi that became sort of a black utopia called Mound Bayou. So doing some little bit of writing here and there. I just finished graduate school work and completed the coursework for an MBA and looking to see my next sort of education route. Thinking about a doctoral degree in organizational leadership or organizational sustainability or organizational innovation. I do think our sector tends to be a lot really conservative in its innovation, especially on the business side of the work that we do. We're great at innovating on the product, but we are bound to models that were designed literally 75 years ago. So I'm curious about where I can use my brain and all my experience to send ideas out into the arts world that may help them rethink some of these business models that I think make things tough for us, that maybe contribute to our insolvency.
Matt: 39:36
Yeah. That's no, that's a that's could be a whole hour-long topic talking about the business of being an artist. But you guys do, yeah.
Michael: 39:44
But I think I was going to say there's one thing I'm pushing this year that I think will help, but I'm pulling together leadership from the colleges, the deans of schools, art schools, and I really am pushing them to change the curriculum so that anyone getting a degree in art is walking away with business and civics training. If they who are creating the workforce can actually add that into the curriculum, I think we'd see a, I think this is one of those adaptive changes that we would see. So yeah. So anyway, I interrupted you.
Matt: 40:14
No. No, that's great. Yeah. That would make a big difference. Yeah. Yeah. So many artists talk about that, being unschooled in business, but completely well trained in art and not knowing how to make the difference up there.
Michael: 40:26
Yeah, you can make a product but not know how to sell it or price it or negotiate a contract or what your legal rights are.
Matt: 40:32
Yeah. But you guys, there's work like workshops for artists and their training around in the state too. Like is it assets for artists that do that? So there are some things like that that are out there. Do you work with them at all?
Michael: 40:45
Yeah, yeah. So we were hosting a lot of those service organizations, especially during the pandemic when people had the time to focus on that. During our strategic planning process, we really delved into where we can have the biggest impact. We asked the question, what is the benefit of the agency to people that don't get grants? And then what are we uniquely positioned to do? And then I like to ask organizations, so I asked Mass Cultural Council, in order for us to be great at the things we want to be great at, we have to be bad at some stuff. So what stuff are we going to be bad at? And if we're going to be bad at it, we're not going to do it. The things we are needed to do right now is this advancement work and grant making. Like we need to be great at those two things. So we can't be good at marketing the sector. We don't have the core competencies and the capacity for it. Can't be good at professional development. We don't have the infrastructure, the funding, the capacity, the core competency to do it. We can't be good at the kinds of convenings that I would like to do because we just aren't built to do that.
Michael: 41:48
So when we looked at professional development, we decided we're not going to do that anymore. We're going to find other ways to make sure the art sector knows that that stuff is out there. In order for us to be good at it, we have to be better than all the arts service organizations out there, all the nonprofit service organizations, all the for-profit service organizations, all the schools, libraries, Google and YouTubiversity, Coursera, LinkedIn Learning, Udemy, MIT X, Ed. I mean, like it's out, there's not a dearth of that information out there, which is why I go back to this as being an adaptive challenge. Like learning business, there's no access issues for artists. It's out there and most of it's free. But if you don't value it, if you don't think it's going to help you, then you're not going to take those classes. Same thing about learning how politics works. It's out there. You can learn it, but you got to like sit down and take the time to do it. So we're trying to highlight opportunities rather than provide those services.
Michael 42:44
We are actually funding MIT X that's creating an Arts and Entrepreneurship 12 module course. So that's going to launch in January. It's going to be great. It's going to be from an artist perspective. So you're going to be learning about business practices and theories. From an artist perspective, you're going to follow one artist as they're making a film in this coursework. It's going to be asynchronous, virtual, and free. Yeah, I'm excited about it. And then you get a certificate from MIT.
Matt: 43:13
Also nice. Cool. Let's see. Was there anything about the Mass Cultural Council that we didn't talk about that you want to make sure we talked about, or the art sector in Massachusetts in general?
Michael: 43:23
No. I think the main thing is about Mass Cultural Council is everyone should have an account, sign up for the newsletters, get on all of our social media so they can follow because we're not only posting our grant opportunities, but we're posting calls for artists, we're posting convening opportunities, professional development, so there's more information that you can get from us. I think for the arts sector, I hope that this next few years they will decide that being politically engaged is key to their survival. I hope that they will also decide that if they’re not getting the results they want financially, from making their art, before leaving the field and go do something else, they will investigate upscaling so that they can see that entrepreneurial business acumen, innovation skills can actually help them bring in more money.
Michael: 44:16
Like this notion of being a starving artist is something that I think we created, but we certainly perfect and perpetuate. So what happens if we change the narrative and say we're all going to be well-fed artists? What do we need to do to get ourselves in order to become that? I mean, I'm making residual money quite a bit a year from plays I wrote more than a decade ago.
Matt: 44:40
Yeah. That's nice. Cool. Well, you know, that might be a nice way to end it there, unless there's anything else on any of the topics that we hit on, any of your personal art, any of the Watertown stuff, anything else you wanted to hit on?
Michael: 44:58
I will say that I feel like my role right now is to be tough parent to the sector. I think I've built up the trust and the love, and I see so much how we may be self-sabotaging, that the problems that we have maybe are problems that we created. Which I think may be hard to hear. But I think we can also fix them. I think the reason why we have to fix them is because we need art in our lives. We need that distraction from the mishigas that's out there. We need the ability that you all have, which is to see the future, to look at a blank piece of paper and compose music, or look at a blank canvas and see all the things on the canvas that most mere mortals can't see. We need you to bring us together so we're enjoying something together and feeling good and healing our hearts. We also need you all to save those little Michael Bobbitts out there that are in homes that are disasters, that are dumpster fires. We need you to help them.
Michael: 46:08
And the things I'm offering, the getting politically engaged and stepping up your business skills, will only allow you to amplify those things that you do really, really well. If we focused on that and we were to marry our creativity with solid business acumen and political power, oh my God. There could be no people living in dysfunctional homes because they all have arts engagement. We could have less healthcare issues because people see that going to the arts helps them deal with loneliness. We could have prettier streets and more people spending money and secondary money on, you know, going to restaurants and such. The arts are one of two sectors in my mind that support everything else in this world for the better. That's technology, arts and technology. So we need the arts. But the arts will never have its moment until we demand it.
Matt: 47:08
Nice. I think that's a nice ending one there. But is there any place that you want to send people to to check out more information, and I can put links in the show notes for people.
Michael: 47:17
Yeah, sure. If you want to know more about Mass Cultural Council, go to www.masscultural council.org. Or you can get on our social media. We're on most of the platforms. And if you message on those platforms, someone will get back to you. Love to hear from you all. And those of you that are listeners that aren't artists, go see some art. Go spend some money. Make a donation, volunteer, because our sector is going to go through a really tough few years. And if you all remember how it felt in those early days of the pandemic, it was the arts that helped you get through all that.
Matt: 47:53
Yeah. And we do have the new Watertown Cultural District website, which I'll link to in the show notes too, so you can see what's going on right here in town. So thanks for taking the time to sit down and chat and share your thoughts and stories.
Michael: 48:04
Thanks for having me, Matt.
Matt: 48:05
So that's it for the conversation with Michael. You can find out more about the Mass Cultural Council where he mentioned, I’ll also put links in the show notes. And if you'd like to listen to more of these types of interviews, you can head on over to LittleLocalConversations.com, where I have all the interviews, information for events coming up, such as the Creative Chats series that I host over at the Mosesian Center for the Arts once a month. It's always on the first Friday of the month. Have some great conversations coming up for that. So again, check that out at LittleLocalConversations.com. Click on events. Then over at the website, you can also sign up for my newsletter if you want to keep up to date on the interviews, events, and such they have going on. And as Michael said, different ways of creatives making money from their work is always a work in progress. So one of the things I do is I have a support local conversation button in the menu on my site. So if you are a fan of this podcast and you'd like to help support it, please click on support local conversation, and you can choose to donate once or on a monthly amount and become what I call a little local friend. So much appreciated if you're able to pitch in.
Matt: 49:05
Alright, and to wrap up here, I want to give a few shout-outs. First one goes to podcast sponsor, Arsenal Financial. They're a financial planning business here in Watertown that's owned by Doug Orifice, who's a very committed community member, and his business helps busy families, people close to retirement, and small businesses. So if you need help in any of those areas, reach out to Doug and his team at arsenalfinancial.com. I just want to give a thank you to the Watertown Cultural Council, which is supported by the Mass Cultural Council, who have given me a grant this year to help support the podcast. So I want to give them the appropriate credit, which is, this program is supported in part by a grant from the Watertown Cultural Council, a local agency, which is supported by the Mass Cultural Council, a state agency. You can find out more about them at WatertownCulturalCouncil.org and MassCulturalCouncil.org. And a couple more shoutouts to promotional partners. First one goes to the Watertown Business Coalition, they're a nonprofit organization here in Watertown. They bring businesses and people together to help strengthen the community. They're also the organization that is the umbrella for the Watertown Arts Market, which is a hugely successful arts event here in Watertown. So you can find out more about them and what they do at WatertownBusinessCoalition.com. And lastly, promotional partner Watertown News, which is an online newspaper focused purely on Watertown, run by Charlie Breitrose here in the city. It's a great resource, so go check that out at WatertownMANews.com. So that's it. Until next time, take care.
