overview
The Rising Tide Project is 2nd Story’s initiative focused on advancing pay equity and equality, improving worker care, and transforming organizational and sector-wide practices through storytelling, strategy, and solidarity in the arts and culture sector.
Our multi-pronged approach includes:
Public events: Programs that share learning, cultivate community, and build momentum around equitable pay and arts worker care.
Publicly sharing and publishing our findings from these different threads of inquiry in order to contribute to the learning of the field and to provide tools and strategies to support our collective effort towards pay equity.
Individualized coaching and collaboration: Dedicated support and thought partnership for both organizations and individuals, offered as one-off sessions or ongoing partnerships tailored to specific goals. Please email info@2ndstory.com if you’re interested in learning more.
Cohorts: 2nd Story has facilitated one- and two-year long small groups of arts organizations who have worked together to develop their own internal initiatives and tackle shared challenges.
Frameworks for thriving: Developing strategies and tools to achieve pay equity and equality, explore new models of worker care, and imagine what it means for arts workers to thrive rather than just survive.
At 2nd Story, we use ourselves as our first laboratory. The strategies, structures, tools, and resources developed through The Rising Tide Project come directly from our lived experiences as arts workers and arts administrators and the work that we’re doing at 2nd Story to build an environment where all arts workers can thrive. By testing approaches internally, learning from successes and challenges, and reflecting on our own stories, we create practical frameworks that can be shared with and adapted by other organizations. Storytelling is central to everything 2nd Story does—not only is it our primary art form, it also allows us to surface insights, make sense of complex challenges, and inspire others to envision new possibilities.
our origin story
2nd Story’s focus on pay equity and arts worker care grew out of a series of moments that highlighted the challenges of working in the arts.
Around 2015, Artistic Director Amanda Delheimer made a joke about “wouldn’t it be cool if we were commissioning new stories for $500?!?!” This number felt outrageous at the time, when storytellers were often only paid $30 for a performance and 2nd Story’s staff were all volunteers or received small stipends. Around the same time, 2nd Story noticed that more people were declining critical roles like directing, sound, and production due to insufficient compensation. We noted that it felt like we were asking people for favors, as opposed to hiring artists for their expertise. With reflection, it became clear that the ways and amounts we were paying people was neither sustainable nor fair. We began to think in earnest about how to get our rates to a level where folks would feel able to say “yes” to working with 2nd Story.
Another pivotal moment occurred when a board member shared a story at a meeting of our Governing Board about reviewing our annual budget. He had been reviewing 2nd Story’s annual budget at home, when his wife looked over his shoulder and said, “Whose salary is that?” (pointing to our staff budget line, i.e. the total amount of all those staff stipends.) He shared that he felt embarrassed when he replied, “That’s for all of them.” In that board meeting, the Board of Directors realized that we wanted to feel proud of what we pay people. This became the foundation of our first compensation philosophy.
Pay across the organization gradually changed and increased, but our commitment solidified in 2019 when Kris Vire published an article in Chicago Magazine called “Where does non-equity theater go next?” We had a gut-punch realization: we wanted to build an organization, not just a club. This meant formal structures, full-time staff, benefits, and—very critically—fair pay for all the artists we hire.
We then spent significant time looking at our work and the people who do it, beginning with an audit of the hours, pay, and roles. We were confronted by many discrepancies and points of (frankly) embarrassment. Therefore, in August 2020 (in the height of a global pandemic) we launched the Leap to 15 Campaign, where we began moving to a minimum of a $15/hourly minimum rate for artists across the organization. We reached that goal in August, 2023, and have continued to raise our rates since then.
The Rising Tide Project is made possible by the Paul M. Angell Foundation, Walder Foundation,
and the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation.
Paying it Forward:
2nd Story's Journey to Equitable Compensation
Featured on The Arts Work Fund podcast.
In this episode, 2nd Story turns the microphone inward and discusses their ongoing work to advance pay equity through the "Rising Tide" project. They explain how pay equity encompasses equal pay for equal work as well as broader issues of fairness, justice, and making sure arts workers can thrive. 2nd Story aims to develop an organizational framework for equitable compensation while bringing along partners through town halls and resources. They describe efforts like financial planning, pay transparency, and open communication to embed pay equity into their culture.