Owning Our Future. Thriving Where We Live.
At the height of the pandemic, KST staff, board members, artists, and community members came together to reflect on the impact KST has made in our community and to imagine the impact KST will have 100 years from now. We envisioned KST as a national cultural destination, a brave and creative home for bold voices, owned by a Black Cultural Trust. Huddled around the Zoom screen, we recognized that the future of our organization hinges on our ability to strategically plan for the next three pivotal years. Owning our Future. Thriving Where We Live. sets forth KST’s path toward ownership, sustainability, and making this vision a reality.
Our plan has four pillars — four interconnected priorities for realizing our goals: Our Story, Our Space, Our Capacity, and Our Money.
Our Story guides KST’s strategic communications so regional and national audiences understand, share, and stand in support of major KST initiatives. The story of KST is not only the story of East Liberty, a Black neighborhood in Pittsburgh that was systematically neglected and is now re-emerging with high rents that push out historic residents. It is a story of so many Black and brown neighborhoods and organizations. Many Black-, Indiginous-, and people of color-led organizations and businesses get the rug pulled out from under their feet in gentrifying neighborhoods because they do not own their spaces. Owning Our Future is OUR story, where OUR represents the plurality of Black communities, the hundreds and thousands of Black-founded and Black-led organizations that want to thrive in a space that is owned by them. We are building for the shared futures of Black people. We want to create a model for other Black-led organizations to claim their impacts and future. And we want to do it together—across the nation.
Our Space means developing and effectuating a plan that anchors KST in East Liberty as a property owner. Currently, KST is renting space in two locations: The main Kelly Strayhorn Theater and KST’s Alloy Studios. The lease on the theater is expiring in seven years, and the lease on KST’s Alloy Studios is ending in three. While we have been in conversations with the property owners about our future in those spaces, it is clear to us that our physical spaces are not guaranteed to stay as they are, and that their loss would possibly erase the KST from the map of East Liberty. We know with the loss of the other neighborhood cultural and social anchors that there’s no history of sustaining Black-led institutions in East-Liberty. We choose to find a pathway to achieving equity and owning our own space. We invite Pittsburgh policymakers to show up and stand in communion with us in ensuring that mistakes of the past, when East Liberty suffered an economic downfall because of urban policies, are not repeated.
Our Capacity means ensuring KST is staffed and resourced sufficiently in order to provide our artists, patrons, and partners with high-quality, thought-provoking experiences. We realize that to effectuate our mission and vision, Kelly Strayhorn Theater needs to ensure that our people — staff — are taken care of, inspired, and equipped to do the work. During the last few years, low compensation, a fast-paced work environment, and long to-do lists have caused burnout and a high staff turnover rate. This, in return, has inhibited KST’s capacity and drained institutional knowledge that propels the organizational systems, culture, and learnings. We plan to grow the team in the upcoming years to meet our capitalization goals and to advance our vision of Owning Our Future. Our strategy includes cost-of-living adjustment salary increases and expanded benefits.
Our Money addresses enhancing our business model in order to generate new earned revenue streams. KST wants to ensure that our organization grows and thrives in fiscally sustainable and generative ways. Like most nonprofit organizations, our revenue could be more diversified. We primarily rely on local philanthropic support, which makes us dependent on a few funders. The lasting reality of COVID-19 has affected in-person revenue opportunities such as rental income, tickets, and merchandise. Our goal is to diversify our contributed income moving forward by building relationships with national philanthropic funders, policymakers, and corporations who share our values.
For KST, ownership is about safeguarding the spaces where we create as a community. Where we care for one another. And where we unapologetically claim our right to possess and present our stories. Our vision represents a collective moment to set brave intentions. For Pittsburgh, our region, and nationally. We must ensure our Black and queer communities have the freedom, ownership, and opportunity to nourish new generations. We must control our futures.
We choose to own our futures.
We choose to thrive where we live.
We will achieve our vision by working in partnership across sectors with community, allied partners, and You. We are determined to own our future and thrive where we live: Join us.
As you read our strategic plan, imagine where you will fit into this journey. Consider Supporting the mission by adding your voice today.
