The Northern Michigan Small Farm Conference remains online for 2022

The Northern Michigan Small Farm Conference remains online for 2022

Farmers, home-scale growers, students, food producers and eaters will gather at the Northern Michigan Small Farm Conference—that is, over the internet. The pandemic has driven another year’s conference to the web, but this year the conference is more than twice the size. What hasn’t changed: a chance to network, share ideas and gain new skills that will make small farms in Michigan more economically viable and environmentally sustainable.

Crosshatch Hiring—Questions, Answers and Resources

Amanda lays out the pay scale and system for raises—no gumption required, at least for raises.

Amanda lays out the pay scale and system for raises—no gumption required, at least for raises.

Most Recent Questions

I received word that emails regarding the first round of questions had been sent out, but I can't find anything in my inbox. I've searched for emails from Slideroom as well as Crosshatch, and have checked spam and such to no avail. Thanks!

I just saw that you sent an email to all applicants, whether it's thumbs up or thumbs down. I applied but didn't receive an email.

Yikes, and ugh. Sorry about that. If you do not see an email from us in your inbox (it would come from brad@crosshatch.org or amanda@crosshatch.org), you can help us try a workaround and troubleshoot the problem too.

(1) Jeannie Sheneman is going to act as a go-between; retaining your anonymity while passing important information along. Please email Jeannie with your name and which position(s) you applied to. She'll be able to look up your information and cross-reference it to our anonymous ID system, without anyone on the selection panel being exposed to that information.

(2) We're going to resend some of the emails, so some of you may wind up getting two emails from us. Sorry about that.

Thanks for your patience while we figure out what's screwing up the email system.

General Remote Work

Is it possible to work remotely?

Can this position be entirely remote?

Is this position truly remote? It indicates that on idealist.org, but I am uncertain if that means the position can be filled by someone out of state. Thank you. 

What percentage of the job will require remote working vs in-person working?

Is this primarily a remote position (other than donor visits, events, etc.)? That is, is it necessary for the person in this position to live close to Bellaire?

Honestly, how open are you to folks who would not reside in MI all year?

Talking about living in the 10-county area; is [sic] living in dual or tri-states, would you consider a candidate who lives mobile.

Are you open to international candidates?

The position is better described as “home office” but with a fair amount of meetings, site visits, and other in-person gatherings. Because Crosshatch’s work is based in the 10-county region and accountable to both the people and places in that region, an applicant needs to spend the majority of their year in or very near here, and needs to be capable of a sustained relationship with the people and institutions in this place.

The 10-county region runs from Manistee to Mackinac. Crosshatch’s work happens in many places, small and large, across these 10-counties, but a person living near Traverse City, Petoskey, or Bellaire will log fewer overall miles than someone living further from those places.

We will definitely consider candidates with a sincere desire to move to the region, and can discuss the timeline and logistics of that in the interview. Just know that affordable housing is a major issue in our region right now, and we aren’t able to coordinate a housing search beyond putting the word out to friends and partners.

We aren’t able to administratively support international hires right now, sorry.

What sort of home office setup and connectivity do you require?

We’re not prescriptive, but you’ll need internet that can handle Zoom calls, a reliable computer, and the ability to send and receive texts. We can help: after an introductory period, you are eligible for reimbursement of up to $500 for home office supplies and $2,000 towards a computer every 3 years.

For applicants near Traverse City: Crosshatch also has a membership at Commonplace that allows you to work in the commons area.

Salary and Benefits

Unlimited PTO 21 days minimum -- what does this mean? UNLIMITED PTO?

Crosshatch has a take-what-you-need PTO policy for exempt (meaning full-time) employees, and a minimum requirement that you take at least 21 days PTO. There are some parameters around this policy, and we ask that you be considerate of events and other work deadlines. We also have a generous parental leave policy. When you’re on staff, we trust you, and we trust in your commitment to the projects you are stewarding. We’re accountable to each other and to the community we serve, and that includes self-care, family leave, and avoiding burnout. The employee handbook linked at the top of the page has more detail about this policy.

Will there be opportunities for salary increase?

What is the process for staff salary raises at Crosshatch?

Salaries are determined by a formula that is outlined in the employee handbook, which takes into account (1) base pay, (2) seniority, and (3) the type of position you hold. The base increases 3% per year to keep up with the cost of living. Everyone gets a raise every year, and knows exactly how much it will be. This increases transparency and eliminates the need to ask for a raise.

The employee handbook has more detail, but here’s a quick overview of the formula:

base pay + seniority (years) * job type.

Base pay for FY22 (which begins 7/1/21 for us) is $41,750. That will increase by 3% for FY23 and each year after that. This can be revisited if the cost of living leaps ahead.

Seniority is calculated as base * years employed * .003. So if you started in 2015, your seniority pay would equal $41,750 * 6 (years) * .003, or $751.50.

Job Type is a multiplier with four categories:

  • Support Staff - largely administrative assistance (we currently don’t have any of these) - 1.0

  • Program Staff - all the positions managing our slate of programs (three staff, including the communications hire will fit here) - 1.1

  • Development Staff - all positions related to fundraising (the new development hire fits here) - 1.2

  • Leadership - the co-directors and our replacements (two staff fit here) - 1.3

Seniority is added to base pay, then that total is multiplied by the job type.

At the highest job rating, with 16 years of seniority, the pay for the Co-directors is just 23% more than the pay for a Communications Director with zero seniority. As Crosshatch grows, any increases to the formula will apply to base pay, and so will be shared by all staff.

Will this job involve travel? Will there be support (financial or otherwise) for continued education via conferences, residencies and so forth that will either directly or indirectly benefit Crosshatch?

Travel to and from meetings, both internal and with partners, is an important part of the job. There will also be travel to and from events held in the region. Out-of-region travel is rare but can happen as part of a conference, training, or other professional development opportunities. Crosshatch pays mileage for all work-related travel except to and from our in-person staff meetings.

Crosshatch offers financial support for professional development and a wide latitude of what is considered acceptable (including artist residencies, of course).

Hiring Process

What is your timeline for this hiring process? When do you anticipate to reach out to applicants about the 2nd round of questions?

When do you anticipate announcing successful round one, round two and final employment offers?

When does the position start?

What would be the start date of the role, how long will the contract be for?

Where will the first questionnaire be made available? (now)

note: some of the Round 2 and later dates have been revised.

Application deadline (Round 1): July 14 @ midnight

Emails sent to all Round 1 applicants.
Release of Round 2 questions for those selected: July 19 @ 9 am

Application deadline (Round 2): July 25 @ midnight

Emails sent to all Round 2 applicants.
Interview and resume requests for those selected: July 29 @ 9 am

Interviews: August 2 – 5 (and August 10 – 12 if needed)

Hire offers will be made 3-4 business days after the last interview. All other interview candidates will receive notice once the hires have been confirmed.

Best guess start date: August 25

There is no timeline or work contract—we hope good staff will stay with the organization even as specific roles and tasks evolve.

Since the process is anonymous, how will successful applicants be notified? Will unsuccessful applicants also be notified?

We are using an online platform called Slideroom, which allows us to review applications without seeing the contact information of the applicant. We will send emails directly from Slideroom. All applicants will be notified if they move forward or not. After Round 2, we will reach out for a resume (no cover letter) and to schedule an interview; at which point the process will no longer be anonymous.

We don’t have the capacity to respond to queries about why an applicant did not advance.

To submit the first round of questions, the system is asking for a portfolio. What media materials are you looking for here?

What are you looking for in the media phase? More clearly, what media example should be uploaded to proceed to final submission section?

Yeah, that’s a confusing mistake on our end that we can’t change now that we’re midstream. Slideroom is going to ask you first to “upload your response to the Round 1 questions here.” and then it’s going to ask you for 1-5 media pieces in a portfolio. Please just upload the same PDF in both rounds. No other materials are required. 

If we want to apply for both positions, we should go through the hiring process for each position individually, right?

Is it ok to apply for both positions if we feel qualified for either?

Yes and yes.

Are you hoping for in-person interviews?

I’d say yes, we’re hoping, but we’re flexible, especially depending on the state of the pandemic; we don’t want to put anyone at risk.

Development and Special Projects Specific

What is the current demographic makeup of your donor base? 

We don’t ask donors for demographics, so coarse-grained best guesses are that, like our current audiences, donors are majority-white, more female than male, and fairly well-distributed by age-range but clumping a bit around 25 to 60.

Can you briefly discuss your current donor base?

Of the $280,000 in contributions from 2020, how many donors including individuals and organizations/foundations will the Development position manage?

The Development Director will manage both grants and individual giving. Grants make up a much larger percentage of our donation income than individual giving, and the number of grants varies from year to year.

For our 2020 end-of-year campaign:
40% of total contributions came from foundations
27% from corporate grants, and
33% from individuals.

The total number of individual gifts was 143, with an average gift of $129.

Some other stats:
Total number of donors (all time) 783
Average gift: $146

Most donors give $100 or less. Crosshatch has a limited portfolio of consistently supportive major donors.

What platform are you currently using to maintain and communicate with your donor database?

Salesforce.

What will the training process for the Development and Special Projects Director look like? 

We are willing to formally train someone with exceptional skill but limited development experience. In the past, we have used the Lillie Family School of Philanthropy and would likely use that program again, but that would be part of a larger conversation at the interview stage.

Beyond that, both new hires will receive introductory training to familiarize you with Crosshatch operations. Once you are acclimated to your role with Crosshatch, we’ll start talking about how to use professional development funds to build up your skill sets.

Do you know off the top of your head how much you received from MCACA? Operational grant or project?

This year we received $18,000 in Operational Support from the MCACA.

I understand that the Development & Special Projects Director will spearhead much organizational and fundraising work of Crosshatch programs and special projects. Will the Director also have the opportunity to propose and contribute to the creation of projects/programming that aligns with Crosshatch's mission, reach, etc? To what degree is this position one of execution vs. one that will contribute to creative visioning, planning, etc.? 

All staff have the opportunity to propose and contribute to the creation of Crosshatch’s programs, and in fact, many of our best programs come about that way. The process is less “here’s my great idea” and more “here are some conversations I’ve been having in the community, some excited partners, and an interested funder” or other signs that show that ideas are coming from collaborative effort and are ready to meet a yearning already out there.

How do you feel about the director being engaged with other organizations whose missions may overlap with Crosshatch?

I feel nervous about a development person trying to represent two organizations. I haven’t seen it done well except in very unique circumstances. That said, we’re open to the conversation; just know it’s an uphill climb to convince us it could work.

Do we use the actual Antrim County Master Plan to complete question 3?

If it were me, yeah, I would.

What is the CDFI that is referenced in the questions?

You can use any existing CDFI or invent one.

What if it takes us over 90 minutes and/or we come back to it later?

Hopefully, it doesn’t take you too much longer, but yes—no problem completing it in stages, as long as you meet the deadline.

Making this amazing dream (Hatchquarters) come true - What is your ideal timeline and date for the makerspace campus to be open to the public with programs running?

2010. But since we missed that timeline, we are open to “when we can make it happen.” This is our life’s work, and it’s a rare thing, and we’ll give it the time it needs—but yeah, we’re ready!

Would you foresee this person being able to, or even required to, live onsite during key development phases?

Not likely. The campus project will include housing at some point, but it’s unlikely it would be used to house either of these positions. Either way, a decision about that would be a year or three down the road.

Communications Specific

For the 6-month sample marketing plan, are you looking for *exact* spends on *exact* media buys, etc - or are you more interested in a general but comprehensive plan outline that summarizes the ratio of budget spend across different channels? In other words, are you expecting "3 display ads in XYZ Newspaper, at a cost of $450" and so on, with absolute specifics about every detail of the marketing campaign, or something more like "30% of budget allocated to display ads in regional print media, approximately 1 ad per week for 4 weeks prior to event" or something along those lines. Thanks!

We are not asking you to research specific ad buys, and “comprehensive” is definitely one of the ways I’d describe a successful marketing plan. That said, seeing that someone knows our local media landscape is a bonus.

What is your current reach for Communications directives?

Limited. 6,000 or so followers on Facebook and a few thousand on our email list, with very limited reach on other social media platforms. We hope this position will expand our reach ten-fold, fairly quickly.

What sort of training do you envision for this role?

That mostly depends on the strengths you already bring to the role. Most immediate training will be around specific platforms that we use, and we anticipate the possibility of training someone in video or audio production if need be.

Beyond that, both new hires will receive introductory training to familiarize you with Crosshatch operations. Once you are acclimated to your role with Crosshatch, we’ll start talking about how to use professional development funds to build up your skill sets.

ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE AND LEADERSHIP

What would you say the current management style is at Crosshatch and/or does each leader have their own style?

Daniel says “You can count on Brad to be inquisitive and expansive in providing feedback and giving input regarding projects and partnerships, and you can count on Amanda to be concise and decisive. When it comes to taking the complexity of a project and reducing it to some clear steps, existing within that tension is just part of doing this work.” Jeannie’s input is reflected in the next answer below.

Especially as most of the work is done remotely, how does the organization manage work culture and togetherness from within?

Can you please describe the work environment/culture at Crosshatch? 

Since staff work remotely (maybe until Hatchquarters is occupiable?), I understand that a certain degree of self-discipline and self-motivation are essential. So what actions do you take to help folks keep the passion fires stoked to feel like every day, no matter what, we are all working in connection toward the same vision and not isolated and just "working alone together"?

What are your favorite & most challenging aspects of Crosshatch's work culture?

First of all, we’re a small shop: three full-time and one part-time person, which will expand to six total staff with these new hires. We have a close-knit feel, which extends into knowing a bit about each other’s kids, vacations, quirks, and personal lives. We enjoy each other’s company and see each other outside of work—usually at lunch, drinks, or dinner following a work event.

We use a single 60-90 minute meeting each week as our primary check-in. Called a “tactical meeting,” we adopted it from a governance model called Holocracy, though we decided we didn’t resonate with other parts of that system (we also love their use of Roles though). This meeting covers all the current projects with lightning round updates, followed by focused discussion time called “triage.” If anything needs more time, the interested parties hop on zoom for 20 minutes to an hour some other time in the week. We do our best to keep any and all internal meetings to T-Th so we have unbroken work time on Mon and Fri. We also see each other in external meetings with partners.

Folks who are used to being prompted, nudged, or asked to report in on progress between meetings might struggle with our hands-off approach. We are always here to support you but we wait on the employee to reach out. Ok, we do all nudge each other: “Hey, just checking in on the updated infographic for the Artist Emergency Fund. Can I get that by the end of the day?”

We abhor email. We still use it for external communications but prefer to use Asana for all internal communications. We text sparingly, usually to convey urgency around getting a question answered or some small task completed. Work hours rarely fit the standard 9 to 5 office model, because (1) we all work when we are feeling productive (for me, Brad, that’s often after dinner), (2) we make time for other parts of our life (like picking the kids up from school or getting out to the garden in the one hour it’s not raining today), and (3) because there are evening events, both ours and others’, that require our participation.

We expect, as a baseline, that you are really good at what you do; as in other-non-profits-trying-to-poach-you-at-conferences good. While you’re here, you’ll get even better. We expect you to be curious, humble, and authentically excited about the arenas we work in. We all have rich lives outside of work, and pulling all-nighters or 60-hour weeks is the opposite of what we celebrate. Also, we recognize that any of us might stumble after being awake all night with a sick child or pet, or dealing with an injury, illness (acute or chronic), or just bad news. We recognize neuro-divergence (Brad manages ADHD) and high variance in working styles. As long as you can move your projects forward (both the big vision and the on-the-ground daily work), steward our reputation in the community, and support your fellow staff, we’re probably going to get along pretty well.

The most challenging aspect for most people, I think, is getting comfortable taking a strong sense of ownership over their projects, then knowing when and how to ask for feedback or help.

How is Crosshatch committed (or not) to antiracism, equity, and inclusion in the workspace and world?

Crosshatch staff, leadership, and board are all committed to a practice and a process of anti-oppression. We aim to avoid performative answers and get into the complexity of that work. That includes truth-telling and acknowledging that this is a majority-white community and that there are systemic reasons for that. It includes acknowledging whose land we are on. It includes ongoing learning and looking for specific ways to enact anti-racist action into the particulars of each project.

We’re grateful for the education we’ve received from Elisheva Wolff, Lisa Funderburke Hoffman at the Alliance of Artist Communities, YK Hong, Holly Bird, and folks at Title Track and E3. We’ve been inspired and instructed by reading adrienne marie brown, James Baldwin, Resmaa Menakem, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Tema Okun’s work around white dominant culture.

We recognize that there is not a separation between the work to care for the places where we live and the work to care for others—and that includes first recognizing and acknowledging the harm done.

Here are some of the ways the learning edge of anti-racist work manifests:

This hiring process, which prioritizes work samples and removes all personal information in an effort to avoid implicit bias (though we recognize that there are more insidious ways that bias might still present itself).

Transparency and accountability, seeking to build around Tema Okun’s work in white dominant culture, in part by posting our complete employee handbook and a clear description of benefits and pay. For more on this, scroll down to the question “How will the team be affected, or perhaps require a shift or change, should a person of color join you on staff?”

We are making commitments to speaker representation—hard numbers around demographics that we don’t always meet, but we pledge transparency for goals and outcomes (you’ll first see this as it relates to the Northern Michigan Small Farm Conference coming in early ‘22).

Commitments to accessibility that go beyond ADA, with a team who audits our events in exchange for free passes or other compensation.

Commitments to increase our budget to improve all this work—money for event scholarships, sustaining the Artist Emergency Fund, and other uses that we can’t always anticipate ahead of time but that we know will arise.

What are your mission, vision, and values? How are you benchmarking and goal-setting around those? 

Our mission and vision are here. Our process is not inherently driven by benchmarking and goal-setting, though that happens regularly in response to the desires of grantors or in accountability to partners. Instead, we hold space for thousands of possible outcomes that serve a vision of restoring people to kinship with the living world and each other—largely around art, ecology, agriculture, local economy, and good governance—and as opportunities arise with partners, funders, or a clear demand from the larger community, we look for ways to contribute. Crosshatch is inherently collaborative. If there is one aspect of our work that is internally driven, it would be our artist residency programs, which are driven from the heart by Amanda and Brad. If you want to hear more about this process and the values that drive it, you’re in luck—our new communications director will help propel that message out into the world.

What are 3 of the largest challenges the organization is facing?

  1. how to balance the tension of being in service to our home place while we assertively expand our message to a broader national audience.

  2. how to speak with honesty, integrity, and nuance about the work we do while still connecting with a wide audience, including local people with diverse political views.

  3. how to create a development program that turns our weaknesses into strengths, knowing that our organization doesn’t fit neatly into many donor-shaped keyholes.

Have the leadership and team members completed cultural bias training? Are you committed to reparations?

Most staff and board have completed at least one anti-racism training, but I don’t think any of us have taken a cultural bias training specifically. We have not had a conversation about reparations at the level of the organization, but we will commit to doing that this year.

How will the team be affected, or perhaps require a shift or change, should a person of color join you on staff?

I was recently moved and instructed by ruth tyson’s resignation letter to the Union of Concerned Scientists, which illustrated the many ways mainstream non-profit culture can be not only toxic for all workers, but particularly unwelcoming to employees from outside white dominant culture.

I believe we’re building an organizational culture that prioritizes flexibility and care, with a commitment to mutual support and good communication. I’m hopeful this previous work will provide a foundation for our ongoing commitment toward an anti-oppressive and liberatory organizational culture. We have skillful antiracist advisors and consultants whom we can rely on to support Crosshatch around hiring across race and/or other cultural differences. That said, we recognize the complexity particular to DEI and anti-oppression work.

Crystal Byrd Farmer created a concise guide we are leaning on called The Token: Common Sense Ideas for Increasing Diversity in Your Organization. Here are some of the steps we are taking with our board this year, designed to pivot our organizational culture toward authentic diversity, not just in a new hire, but in board development, speaker engagement, audience development, and fundraising:

  • ongoing anti-oppression and implicit bias training for staff, board, and community partners (we specifically added implicit bias training after the question on the employment call). This includes workshops on identity, privilege, power, microaggressions, and understanding and de-centering dominant culture.

  • talking more about these issues with our larger community and soliciting feedback to help us better see the landscape of community opinion around making these kinds of changes; this prepares us for how to anticipate and handle conflict as these programs come to fruition. We also will invest in skill-building around anti-oppressive conflict resolution processes.

  • working with our full staff and our board members to create ongoing courageous “ground rules” for engaging in culturally conscious organizational change.

  • creating consent-based processes for BIPOC staff, board, speakers and audience; ensuring that conversations about identity are not the responsibility of the new hire et al. When we need consulting, we’ll retain and pay consultants from diverse backgrounds, not ask for free additional labor from staff or board et al.

  • working through Lisa Funderburk Hoffman’s “Thoughtful Invitation Process” and other processes for identifying how Crosshatch events, event invitations, event locations, conflict resolution processes and other details of our work can be shifted toward more authentic connection across race and other cultural differences.

  • doing all of the above in a more committed and sustained manner—brainstorming next steps, identifying and prioritizing the most important areas of work, seeking understanding about that work (and paying for the folks doing that labor with us), creating a task force (BIPOC hires are not expected to serve on a task force), setting and then measuring objectives. Learn. Repeat.

We also lean on the work of Vu Le at nonprofitaf.com to help us understand how to build a culture of resistance to the standard non-profit urgency/burnout model, and we expect to find lots of overlap between these two efforts.

How hands-on is your board? Are they a working board?

Crosshatch has a governance board. They don’t act as staff, but they stand ready to support staff without interfering. They excel at helping us think through knotty problems, and at connecting us to people and resources to keep projects moving forward. We love our board, and we’re actively interested in finding new board members!

GROWTH AND FLOURISHING

What are you looking for in these roles?

What types of skills is the team missing that you’re looking to fill with a new hire?

What is the most valuable quality for a candidate to be successful and valuable at Crosshatch?

The job descriptions have a lot of this information already. I’ll just add that my top answer is that you need to love the mission and vision of this organization. Our work is a little weird and hard to explain, and without the love to see into why we wake up and do this every day, well, you won’t be able to wake up and do this every day.

Beyond that, we don’t micromanage. We do check in every week, but you’re going to need to be good at working from home. Hopefully, the pandemic has revealed that for you. You need to be good at knowing where you need help and what’s keeping you from hitting a deadline.

There’s also a certain way to be in an external meeting as a Crosshatch rep—open, attentive, curious, flexible, patient, humble. Ready to look for ways to serve the bigger picture, or to draw a connection that no one else saw yet, or just to build a little more trust between people in the room. Our hiring process probably won’t pick up on that kind of skill set, but it becomes clear in the first year or so. That said, this is Brad writing this, and Amanda or Jeannie might say it’s just as (or more) important to get every to-do nailed down and make sure every box gets checked. Yeah, that’s good too.

Would this person have any educator/instructional role?

Might there be opportunities for the Director to participate in educational programming as an educator, student, or both--depending on what skills the director brings to the table or is interested in developing further?

Is Crosshatch interested in a director who is also an artist, farmer, maker, cultural worker, and/or active member of the community? Will the position be such that ongoing work in such fields will be encouraged and even supported?

Crosshatch staff have always brought something extra to the role. We don’t ask for it in the application process but it shows up anyway. We are all artists and makers, active in the community and in our gardens and landscapes. Some have been cultural workers before joining Crosshatch, others find that role as part of their work here. We have all taught classes both for Crosshatch and for others. In other words, the answer is a resounding YES—we are interested in who you are as a whole human, and we make time for that side of you to flourish both outside of Crosshatch and within it. I’ll temper this though, by saying that we are hiring for a specific role, and that those responsibilities come first.

What kind of growth plan is set for the role?

What are the biggest barriers faced and growth opportunities for each position?

What is the process for performance reviews at Crosshatch?

How will these two positions (and others like them) fit and fulfill the long-term vision and growth plan for the organization/movement?

Growth might look a little different here because the organization is small and has a fairly (not perfectly) flat structure. We all engage in visioning and strategizing, and we all fetch the folding tables from the storage unit and figure out the coffee machine. There is not much in the way of direct upward movement, except to say that someday (after Hatchquarters) Amanda and Brad want to retire and pass the directorship of the organization to someone new.

Instead, we do our best to make this an amazing place to work, to invest in your development, to pay well and provide thoughtful benefits, and to find new ways to keep you interested in your role. Sometimes we lose people “up” to organizations with more hierarchy and bigger budgets, but we hope applicants see this work as more than a stepping stone to a better gig a year or two from now.

When staff do leave, we hold a “sticky-note” meeting with potluck and poetry, markers, and a lot of post-it notes. We write down every role in the organization and then talk through who is currently doing what, who wants to take on something new, what projects no one wants, and what a new hire might take on. This is often when space is made to pilot a new program, or when a large program becomes a little smaller. But when we can, we’ll hold onto good staff for as long as possible.

SPECIFIC PROJECTS

What phase are you in for creating the listening room in Traverse City?

We are excited to be the nonprofit partner for the Commongrounds real estate cooperative in Traverse City, and we’re looking forward to presenting exceptional art across a variety of disciplines. The listening room space has evolved into a multi-partner project with dozens of uses beyond concerts. We’ll be able to say more about programming in the space next year. The building is slated to open doors in spring/summer 2022.

Will the Hill House model return in some form in 2021?

While the Hill House itself (the original space) will not return as a Crosshatch program, the residency model is hugely important to us and we are always looking for ways to relaunch that program. That said, we are excited about some upcoming partnerships to do just that!. We can't make any announcements just yet—stay tuned!

How is the Long Memory Project progressing? Has there been more movement forward in phase II?

The pandemic made hosting a Long Memory Project unsafe, so it was put on hold for a spell. We are now back in conversation around re-launching the project and are working with a range of partners around a range of themes. Up North Pride is our partner for this next iteration. Once we have a few of these completed, we will work to toolkit the program and offer it to other communities.

Have you considered your makerspace campus to also include a space for meditation, yoga, and wellness? It would be wonderful to have a space dedicated for self-care for artists and participants.

For sure. More important than what we want, though, is to hear from our community about their top priorities. We definitely don’t want to compete with our friends at Yoga Bellaire so we’ll want to make sure whatever we do supports their efforts. You can be pretty confident, though, that the campus will include at least one movement studio kind of space, suitable for social dancing, dance practice and performance, and all the uses you mention.

I’d love to know more about the chicken coupe project. How many farmers are involved, where are the chickens being processed? Is the meat/eggs going to local restaurants? Farmers’ markets? How has it grown? What are the most important needs of the program currently?

The Chicken Coupe originated at the Martha Wagbo Farm & Education Center to meet the needs of farmers who want to process their own poultry. The coupe is a mobile poultry processing center that can be hauled from farm to farm. The trailer is MDA-certified, so farmers can sell the poultry direct-to-consumer on their farm or at the farmers market. Selling to restaurants or other retail requires USDA certification, which the trailer currently doesn’t qualify for. We can have up to 12 members per season, but typically have 6-8. The Chicken Coupe is aging and in need of repair. We are in conversation with food systems organizations to determine the next steps for this project, as well as to consider the bigger picture of poultry processing in our region.

FUTURE PROJECTS

Do you foresee a time in near future (2-5 years perhaps) to create some other part-time jobs - what would those position(s) be?

We hope so! More program staff, more communications staff, more event coordination, and we’d love to hire an administrative assistant soon. Sometimes a program (like Hatchquarters) is big enough to generate its own staff member (or more than one). That’ll take a little time though.

We are counting on the added capacity and expertise of these two new positions to help us grow a little more in the next two years. That said, we don’t aim to get too big; at some point an institution becomes unwieldy, consuming too many resources just to keep the basic operations alive, and at the same time loses touch with the people it claims to serve.

Do you see a possibility that you may help others in another location open up a sister institute?

Definitely.

We think every major watershed should have its own Center for Art and Ecology (no matter what you call it), and we are definitely down to help others get set up. We also hope to offer these kinds of consulting services in the future as part of our earned income model. We’re not opposed to offering free help—we do it a lot—but we also appreciate it when people recognize the value of our labor and are willing and able to compensate for it.