Lisa Wagner is the Executive Director of Levitt Pavilion Dayton, a local non-profit with the mission of building community through music, one free concert at a time.
Tune in as we discuss the transformative power of live music, creative placemaking, and how Levitt Pavilion is intentionally building social and cultural bridges and creating a lasting, positive impact within the Dayton community.
Learn more about Levitt Pavilion Dayton and follow Lisa on LinkedIn.
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Episode Transcript:
Evelyn Ritzi: Hi, everyone, and welcome to Creating the Future. I’m Evelyn Ritzi,
David Bowman: and I’m David Bowman,
Evelyn: and today we’re joined by Lisa Wagner, the executive director of Levitt Pavilion, Dayton. We’re thrilled to have Lisa on the show today to talk about the power of live music creative placemaking, and how she’s using collaboration to connect people and create a lasting, positive impact on our Dayton community. So let’s get started. Lisa, thanks so much for being here.
Lisa Wagner: Thanks for having me. I know that I feel like I’m with friends. Anyway, this is wonderful. So fun. Yeah, thank you.
Evelyn: Let’s get started at the beginning. Can you tell us a bit about you, your background, what drew you to arts and culture?
Lisa: So I had a career of 15 years at the Victoria Theater Association, now Dayton Live, and I was at the end of my career, really over everything, kind of audience-facing the Vice President of Ticketing and Hospitality, and the ticketing piece is the piece that always used to tug at my soul, because I saw as people were coming in for Lion King or Wicked — the big blockbusters, clearly, I knew that this was it for them. They were not going to be coming to the Nutcracker or an opera. They were literally spending their you know, stipend of entertainment dollars on that, maybe one show for the family. And it really bothered me. So simultaneously, we were at a senior leadership meeting talking about this thing called Levitt. And to be frank, there were concerns in the room, like people felt a little bit threatened about what is Levitt and how is it going to affect us? And I said, Well, this is kind of ridiculous. Or having an information session at Amy Deal’s studio, my husband and I all go, and I fell in love with the mission. I was also looking for my next role. I literally worked myself out of a role because I developed such a great team, a high performing team at the Victoria, that I was getting kind of bored. I didn’t know what was next for me, so I I started asking a lot of questions, and what I found out later was that that was my job interview. They knew. They knew I was coming. And Sharon Yazowski, the she’s now her title, is the President and CEO for the Levitt Foundation, was in town for these fundraisers. That was all to raise the capital campaign to build the Levitt. They put her on me like they, you know, they literally, she became my handler for the evening. So I reached out to Jeff Ireland after that to see if I could find out more. And he was in the middle of, like a huge litigation, so he didn’t have time to meet one on one, but in January, he floated me the job description. So I went to April. April Mescher was in my Leadership Dayton class, and she was helping with the capital campaign. And I said, are you interested in the executive director position for this organization, and she’s like, I don’t want to, I don’t want to run it. She’s like, and she her eyes got real big, and she’s like, are you thinking and about throwing your hat in the ring? I said, I am. I’d like to explore it a little bit. So the funny story is that I went through the interview process, and I had coffee with April, and I said, I want you to be the first to know I think I’m gonna withdraw my hat. And she goes, wait what? And I said, I mean, come on, I’m leaving a $16 million well oiled machine to go to a startup. I said, I don’t know if I have the energy for this. Like I’m really to be, I mean, to be fair, I was scared, yeah, and she coached me a little bit through it, and said, You know what, for no other reason, just go through the process and for the experience, like she was throwing that whole just Interview, you know, come on. So I did. And, you know, I here I am today. It was probably one of the most terrifying things I’ve ever done. It was one of the hardest thing. I mean, I thought opening the Schuster was hard. This was harder because, you know, there was, there wasn’t a computer, there wasn’t a stapler. There was, I mean, you didn’t walk into an organization with an IT department, excuse me, it was all, you know, it was all from scratch and, you know, but it was a beautiful. Thing, and that the team that I so I was hired in, actually, I was hired in June of 2017 but they weren’t done with the capital campaign. And so then when they did the shovel ceremony in August, obviously they knew who the Executive Director was, but they didn’t want to do both at the same time. So I had to stay to the first Broadway show. So I stay till October and but Ken Neufeld, my boss at the time, was very generous in saying, I know you need to hit the ground running. Do what you need to do. I just want you here to make sure the team is solid. I know they’re solid, but so I hired staff in May of 2018 and then we opened in August of 18. So between that timeframe, I was trying to, I never said no to a coffee. I never, I mean, I said I tried to get out and network as much as I possibly could. I would speak to anybody if it was a group of five people or group of 100 people, to try to get the word out about what we were trying to do. So for me, it was my passion project. There’s a whole other side that I’d be happy to share with anybody over coffee, but they’re all of my doubts, when I was having doubt, and when I was going to pull my hat out of the ring, when I had doubts, the universe gave me signs, and they and they were dragonflies. And like, I would be walking to the arts garage, and I would just be like, This is ridiculous. What am I doing? And all of a sudden, a dragonfly would, like, show itself today. And so by the third time, like in my backyard, I got the nudge. I was like, Okay, I think this might be a calling in some way, that I’m supposed to be doing this. And what I love most about it is that we got to design culture as a leader of an organization like it’s really fun to be able to design that with the founding team. Oh yeah, and as a female executive, I actually got to be my authentic self, which was leading with love. And I, everything that we really do at the Levitt and kind of around it is centered around love and creating that on the on the lawn. So, you know, here we are. This is our sixth in person season in 2024 and you know, it’s been a it’s been a great ride. I feel like we’re finally hitting some momentum. We were hitting a great momentum before the pandemic, but it’s really coming back stronger than ever. I think people love being outdoors. Oh yeah, and, and they’re getting kind of what it is that we’re trying to do as well.
David: And so you said, here we are, which, for those who don’t know, the Levitt is part of the national Levitt Foundation, and it’s a select network around the country. So can you tell us a little bit about that network, and then how Dayton was chosen? Yeah,
Lisa: Yes, absolutely. So the Levitt foundation is based upon the philanthropic focus of Mortimer Levitt our founder, he was from an immigrant family living in New York City during the Depression, and his father had a cart outside of Coney Island, and he could hear the music from afar, but could never afford access, so he went, he left school at a very young age, went into the garment industry, and ended up having what became the Custom Shop, which was giving men an affordable option to custom suits and shirts. And ended up franchising. He also was a very smart real estate investor. Anyway, his his philanthropic focus in New York City. He and his wife, Mimi, gave access to children to arts experiences in New York. So now we move ahead, and they have a home in Westport, Connecticut, and Westport is going to take a landfill area and build this beautiful music amphitheater, and they asked, just like we asked Benjamin and Marion to help us with the Schuster center, they asked Mimi and Mortimer, you know, would you come on as a donor? And he said, sure. He said, But the stipulation is you can’t charge for a ticket. It has to always be free. And that was in the mid 70s, and I think over the next couple decades, what they saw unfold on the lawn about taking that barrier away, the ticket barrier, the community building, started to flood his heart and see that this music was able to change the world and his dream. Was that we would be in 30 cities. We are in seven with permanent venues. The foundation has a secondary actually, there’s three programs now. There’s a program called amp your city, which is a matching grant for smart smaller rural areas like Berea, Kentucky and Sheboygan, Soldotna, Alaska, and they just, they just unveiled at our convening in January Vibe, Levitt Vibe, which is Chicago, Indianapolis, and I don’t know what the third or fourth city is. So they’re bigger cities who are culturally rich, but the South Side of Chicago is not right, so that way, it gives accessibility to the arts in areas that are like a desert, cultural desert. So those, all of those combined, create the network. The Levitt Foundation’s commitment is different. Our agreement is a tri-party agreement, the City of Dayton, the Levitt Foundation and then our nonprofit were our own, 501(c)3, here locally, all have skin in the game. So technically, Levitt Dayton is on land that is owned by the City of Dayton, but because it’s run by, you know, us, and then it has a foundation name, it kind of holds a sacred space that it it’s not a First Amendment space, things like that. So how did and so the cities are, LA, Denver, Sioux Falls, Arlington, Dayton, Bethlehem and Westport, those are the seven. Houston, San Jose, and I believe there’s a third city are raising capital now and but they are going to cap it at 12. They, they, they announced two, three years ago that the Levitt Foundation is now a spend down. They’re going to spend down all of the family assets. So they’re looking to expand and make more of an impact with the assets that they have. So I think you’ll see more amp cities, more vibe cities, because the investment on a permanent venue is so much greater. So right now, for instance, our million dollar budget, $200,000 comes in from the Levitt foundation for operations. And then, you know, there’s a lot of great shared best practices between our permanent venues that really make it. It’s nice to have a tribe. It’s nice to have sister executive we’re all females executive directors, to be able to lean on and say, “Hey, what do you you know, we run into this. What do you do about that?” And Dayton became in contention in the true Dayton format of people sitting around a kitchen table talking about they were grieving the loss of City Folk (music festival) and how much City Folk provided in terms of cultural diversity of music and opportunity for artists from a regional and local level. And there just happened to be somebody sitting at the kitchen table that knew about the Levitt programs, and said, “Have you guys heard of this?” And I mean, they at the kitchen table, brought a computer, they were looking it up, and people started falling in love. And this, somebody raised their hand and said, You know I know the mayor. I know this person. I know that person. And within two weeks, they went to at that time, Memphis had a permanent stage, and they went down to Levitt, Memphis and Rodney Veal, our current board trustee, one of the founders, who was at the kitchen table, said that he tells a story of how, after the concert was over, he went over, and he was talking to people who clearly did not know each other outside of the Levitt. They were clearly from two different economic backgrounds. And said, you know, how Why do you love the Levitt? How did you guys? And they said, Well, we met here. We always sit in the same place, like we we meet each other here, and we’ve become such great friends that we do things outside of the Levitt together. And Rodney said that was the defining moment that he felt like this is what Dayton we need this as still a highly segregated city. You know, we would like that river to disappear and bring everybody together. So that was the impetus that set kind of things in motion. And of all the cities that I mentioned, Dayton raised the capital campaign of $5.1 million in the fastest in 18 months. So we have a very generous and philanthropic. community, and I think that the Foundation said that we were on their radar, because there isn’t another there isn’t even an Amp in Ohio. There’s three in Kentucky, I don’t think other than now this new vibe one. I don’t think anybody’s in Indiana, but there are a couple in Illinois. So from our area of the country. You know, I think Dayton was on the radar, but what solidified it for them was how rich our cultural arts and cultural scene is, and how philanthropic our community. Because while the foundation is there from the beginning, the terms of the agreement have an end date, and the hope is that the community falls in love and embraces it, and then they take over and they start supporting it and making it thrive. So excuse me, even though they’ve truncated that time with the spend down of the foundation, we all knew that there was an expiration date on on the Levitt foundation being part of our tri party agreement. So it was, how do you create this swelling of love and and, you know, wanting it to continue on and get keep getting better and better. So that’s, I think that’s our challenge. Now, that’s the I mean, we do. We have an incredibly generous community, so we’re very lucky.
Evelyn: And that idea of falling in love with love, I mean, that’s how I feel about it. I mean, you have, you really have to go to a concert to experience it, and it’s almost magical. I know people call it Dayton’s Living Room, and once you’re on that lawn, it’s just there’s so many people from so many different backgrounds, different zip codes, even different walks of life. Can we talk about how it’s just more than music? It’s more than going to see a show?
Lisa: Yeah, Thank you for saying that, Evelyn, because you know, whenever we were talking about, like business development and resource development in terms of like fundraising, we always came down to, we have to get them on the lawn. It’s very hard to explain it to somebody who’s not experienced it or or I could say the why and give you stories at nauseam that come off the lawn, but really to experience it is what I think touches your heart when you see you know people from our vulnerable population, dancing with some of the you know most well and resourced people in Dayton. And none of that really matters. It really is kind of magical. I think that what gets some of our founding board members emotional is that it happened right out of the gate. It’s like a field of dreams, like you’re out pitching what you think is going to happen. And this is a very unique public-private partnership in terms of creating a cultural asset. But it’s, I think it’s the from the onset, it was really important for us to create a space where we wanted everyone to feel as though they were invited to this space and that when they got there, that they were very welcomed and that it was theirs. This is theirs. And, you know, we silly things, like we marvel at the end of a concert that there’s no trash on the lawn. I mean, that’s a simple little thing that shows that ownership of pride of place and our homeless community put money in that bucket every night. And oftentimes I’m like, Yeah, I just love that you’re here. You don’t have and they’re like, Nope, this is my Levitt. This is my Levitt, and I want you to be here next week or, you know, so it’s those things that matter. I tell the story to every musician that comes through. When we just had Ruthie Foster here last week, and that was her third time here, but her first time here, all we could afford was her and the guitar. And I was looking for her after the show to pay her, and she pulled me in her dressing room, and again, just having opened a venue, I’m thinking, Oh, great. What happened? Yeah, did somebody you know, hurt her or whatever? And she said, she goes, I want to talk to you. And I says, everything, okay? And she’s like, I play a lot of venues. She said, You know, like, I even play a lot of Levitt spaces. She’s like, the venues that I play, white folks sit with white folk, and black folks sit with black folk, whatever you all are doing here in Dayton, Ohio, like this is what the world needs right now, more than ever. And she goes, I have to be a part of this. You have to bring me back with my full band next year. And I said, you know, I forget, because I came from the theatre world, and the lights blind you. But everything. About our build, the height of the stage, the way that it’s designed is about connection. It’s all about connectivity, the fact that we have a dance floor, the you know, the way that everything sloped, and I forget, that you can see what’s happening. And so her encore was real love, and everybody was dancing together on everyone’s standing up on the lawn, holding hands, swaying. And I got real emotional, because that’s, I mean, I’ve where, like, Where have you ever seen something like that before? And she said, No. I said, How do you tell a funder that there’s love coming off the lawn? And she said, I don’t know, she said, but it was so palpable as a musician that I didn’t want to stop performing. So we ended up bringing them back. And she actually negotiated, because we she had a two Grammy Award-winning players to her to make a trio, and the price triples when you add, you know, more players, and she negotiated to fit our budget for 2019 and those two players were in the green room afterwards, and I went in to thank them, and they were stymied. They just said, what like? What is this that you’re doing here? This is like nothing I’ve ever experienced. So for me, that was the through line. It wasn’t a one and done. It wasn’t, you know, it was something we were really creating, something special and something very real and and we just keep building on that, you know, I there, there’s a young lady who was not a good player. She was living on our property prior to the pandemic, through our resources and connections with the Dayton Police Department, she was able to find, you know, the right path forward. And so now, Karina is on our lawn at every sound check, and last season, she started crying at the end of the season, like she, I think probably she has the mental ability of a young child, but she was crying. And I said, What’s Yeah, Karina, what’s the matter? And she’s like, I’m going to miss you so much. You’re my family. This is your You are my family. I’m going to miss you so much. And I hugged her, and I said, it’s okay. I said, I promise I’ll write to you in the off season, like I’ll write you a letter. And I sent her a letter every month. And then, as the season was coming and I had the schedule, I, you know, mailed that to her. And sure as Sure enough, at the season reveal, there was Karina. So it’s just this beautiful space of where, I mean, I think a lot of people on the lawn feel that connection, and they do. They grieve the end of the season because they miss each other. So that’s really kind of special,
David: I think, and it’s so needed, like, yes, today, right? Because we’ve gone from a front porch world to a back porch world, right? And we’ve gone from well, they’ll go out and do things to and I’ll stay home and order it and, yep, remote work and other things, where people are just more and more isolated and in their own tribes and in their own bubbles, or in their backyard, right? As opposed to you come to the Levitt and it’s a lot of times you just go to go right, right? Sometimes you’ll go to see a specific deck, but sometimes you’re just going to go to go yes, and you don’t know who’s going to be there or what’s going to be on stage. You just know it’s going to be a great experience. You’re going to meet people and enjoy yourself, right? And it’s it is what community is all about. Yeah,
Lisa: Thank you, David, that’s true. I think a lot of people have shared with me that they’ve had really important and meaningful conversations with people that they would have never met had they not been sitting on the wall together, and I mean somebody, somebody who has been my critic every season. As she approached me, she was like, I have something I want to tell you. And I’m like, okay, yes, like, what can I do for you? And she she shared, she said, on Friday night, I was sitting next to a woman, we don’t know each other. And she said, I really she changed my mind about a lot of things, and just because we had a shared conversation and we paused, and she was on, I think it was a two way street. It wasn’t just you know me learning, think we were both learning about each other. And she said, we pause and kind of gave reverence to the fact that this would have never happened had we not been here and how special this space is. And she said, I just want you to know like, Thank you for creating such a safe it’s a safe place to have those conversations in a world where it’s not safe to have any. Conversations. And I think that I’ve been using this data from the 2023 Surgeon General’s warning on isolation and loneliness that it being a crisis similar to the tobacco crisis. And the data is staggering, and the data in that warning is pre pandemic. And to your point, like, I think the pandemic was an accelerator to those isolation feelings that people are doing, you know, and remote work and things like that. So I’m, you know, I’m scared. I really, I’m hoping that more spaces like this become a place where people can come together, and I think community is at the top of everybody’s mind right now. How do we create community? And what’s fun about what we do is that’s the checkpoint in everything that we do. We always make sure that we’re not going into mission blur and things like that, because we do the camp in the summer. And then a lot of people were like, you know, why are you taking on a summer camp? And I said, you need to see what happens when the kids come on day one and they’re super awkward and they’re not looking at each other, and they’re like, you know, kind of and then by the end of that first day, they’re exchanging phone numbers, and they’re hugging each other to the end of the week, where they’re crying because they have to say goodbye to each other because they come from all over the Miami Valley. That’s a that’s tribe, that’s community, that’s, you know, so, I mean, community looks different in some ways too, even our even our musicians, right? Connecting them to new audiences, that’s creating community. So it’s, it’s, it’s really core and central to everything that we’re doing is that connectivity and community. So, yeah,
David: Well, when you go to the Levitt it all looks seamless and easy, but I know that, like, there’s a ton that goes on behind the scenes when it comes to, like, 50 free concerts a year, and when we say a year, not a whole year, right? Like the summer, and what we love is how intentional, intentional you are in curating the artists and the bands who appear on stage, and how that reflects the Dayton community. So can you tell us, like, What’s that process like to select the genres and artists for each season. And then, you know, how does, how do you use creativity in that role to make sure?
Lisa: Yeah, thank you that so it was so the first year that I was doing it, if you had walked in my office, you would have seen post it notes of genres. And then as we were, as I was booking, I was making sure that one was not more full than the other, so it’s pretty even keeled across. And that way I felt like I was, you know, acknowledging some diversity in the programming without a doubt. I learned early on that blues, R&B and funk are going to always be highly attended. But I can’t, I can’t just program that, right? I mean, there I so. So we do have those established genres that later became sponsorship opportunities. I mean, we try to figure out how to leverage that in terms of a series like a rock and pop series, a blues series. We listen to people like we listen to the audience. You know, a lot of people give us suggestions of bands that we should keep an eye on. I mean, my inbox, I probably get 50 emails a day of people who think that, you know, they should be on the on the stage. We so and then we work with booking agents. I and again, this is like a network resource that kind of taught me that there were a couple booking conferences that you can go to, and you can see artists perform and see showcases like so Folk Alliance is, you know, one of my favorites, because it’s really all showcases. It’s it’s richer in that than it is in content. And I got to see The War & Treaty in a ballroom. I got to see A.J. Croce. I got to see John Hall, you know, or no, I’m sorry. Darryl Oates, no, wait, which one John Hall? John Hall,
David: Darrell Hall, John Oates, yeah. One of them.
Lisa: Whichever one, yeah. And he and, like, it was, like, Who knew that he had such a blues like, a gravelly voice, right? So Daryl, it’s Daryl is the singer of the bass player,
David: Yeah,
Lisa: So the bass player, like, who knew he had a voice? Yeah, I was in a hotel. They said they take these hotel rooms and they take out all. Of the furniture, and they create these listening rooms. And so, you know, I got to see a lot of really cool artists, but then I got to see a lot of up and comers that, you know, I was lucky enough to be able to, you know, fall in love with. And that’s what a lot of people don’t understand, is we become fans of everybody before we book them, because we’re stuck with them for a year, you have to listen to them. So we start that process in October, like the season ends in September. We wrap, we do all our little, you know, wrap ups of thanking everybody for making it possible. And then we go immediately start looking in October, November, as you guys know, from a marketing perspective, in order to get the print piece done, you have to back in, I’m sorry, and back, you know, back when you get it to the printers and cop and all that. So my goal is always to have the season book by early March. And that sometimes happens, my director of marketing is very generous and kind to me, because the reality is, I think I have a contract that’s signed, and then somebody backs out like it’s so it’s interesting how that works, is that they can back out without any impact to us. But if I were to cancel on them, I’d have to pay them, you know. So I’m not sure about how that’s all fair, but we’ve had that happen quite a bit, where we’ll lose people at the last bit, and it’s at the printers, and I’m hustling around trying to replace people. So, you know, I think it’s a little bit of everything. It’s listening, trying to be a really good listener to the community and what they want, but also trying to balance the fact that, you know, we want to be diverse in our programming. So even though, for instance, we launched, somebody asked me, What does success look like? I think it was somebody on our production crew. And I said, Well, I think that depends on who you are in the organization. If, if you’re a board, assert certain board, if you’re a finance person on our board, they would say, by our financials, or somebody might say the number of people on the lawn, I’m starting to realize that there’s a qualitative piece in, like the magic of what happens on the lawn. And for instance, this past weekend, we celebrated the first ever World Indigenous peoples day at the Levitt and we had a rock band, an opener, and a rock band from our Native American community, and it was unreal. It was it was their message from stage was remarkable. They had everyone at the end of the concert holding hands. There weren’t a lot of people on the lawn that night, but everyone came down onto the dance floor, and they were all holding hands on a circle and, and so then I thought, okay, that’s success, that that’s like, that really gets you. I mean, it’s a gut moment where you’re, I mean, no offense, but they’re not doing this at other rock concerts, or, you know, other I mean, it’s just really special. The year before, we had Middle Eastern and we had, you know, Indian music, and the same thing, the cultural exchange of having that music and then having people from all over the community, joining people from that nationality or that race and doing their dance, their cultural dance, really becomes something beautiful and special, you know. And I want more of that those cultural bridges, because I think that also gives us a deeper understanding. I think it’s interesting how close all the music sounds, because we’ll have a West African rock group like the tones. When I was listening to the Indian music, the Indian music sounds just like the Arabic music, and then it goes into the African music, yeah? And then even the Native American music from this past weekend, there’s those similar tonal things, and it’s like, well, that’s because
Evelyn: We’re all connected,
Lisa: Yeah, I mean, and that’s and that’s the message. The message is, we are all one family. We’re all one, yeah, we we just need to act more like this. The music has the power it does. You’re right, that’s right.
Evelyn: Levitt has become such an anchor in the downtown community, too. And, you know, acknowledging that every concert is free, but there’s also this economic impact that’s happening with all the surrounding businesses. Can we talk a little bit about that economic impact?
Lisa: So, that was an intention, intentional strategy as well, in that when we were talking about where to put the Levitt. The economic revitalization piece of creating the nine. The Nine is a nine block radius around the Levitt and so it was this a focus of, if we’re bringing 90 to 100,000 people downtown every summer, that that’s gonna feed the businesses and the foot traffic, kind of in and around, you know, of course, there was a ton of momentum in Dayton, I’m such a huge fan, the river is thriving, right? Same thing happened with Dragons baseball and everything that’s happened around Water Street and then the library. So we felt like this energy was coming south, and then the pandemic happened, and everything’s really halted. I think like the Fire Blocks were just coming on online. But then what a lot of people don’t realize is that what happened with Levitt leveraged the Arcade to be able to go into Baltimore and say, Hey, we have this, you know, multi million dollar investment coming from outside the area that’s going to do this. I think it helped the developers see the vision of the Nine and what was going to actually happen. And I think for the first time, we’re starting to feel it as things are closing, you know, The Center City Building, their financing is going to come to fruition, I think, by the end of the year. So we’re very excited to see all of that happening around us. We actually had the University of Dayton, the PA program the Masters of PA, they did an economic impact study, and so that we could say, with scientific evidence, that 1/3 of our audience is spending a minimum of $60 in businesses around us, so that we can talk about that from, you know, a real economic impact of millions of dollars that are actually being, you know, infused into first floor businesses. I remember, I think it was Emily Mendenhall. She’s like, Oh, we know at Lily’s. She’s like, we know when it’s 11 at night. I mean, and they feel it, and especially in the Oregon District, but I mean, the Century Bar was feeling it. And I think now, with all these places that are going to open up around us, it’ll be really exciting to see what happens. I do have, I think I got it from the Downtown Dayton Partnership, the vacancies, the number of vacancies, pre Levitt and post Levitt. I do have it, but I don’t have it memorized, but it is pretty amazing to be able to see that you know, aside from doing things that make your heart feel good, you’re actually creating impact in the city of which we’re huge fans of we just want to keep it see it thrive.
David: Well, aside from the summer concert season, which is monumental in and of itself. Levitt Dayton stays busy with pop up concerts, educational opportunities, including a summer camp for teens, which you talked a little bit about, but tell us about each of the programs and then how they impact the Dayton community.
Lisa: So coming out of the pandemic, we saw that the barrier was just not the ticket. There are other barriers. And so we peeled back. We’re doing 45 concerts at this the venue, in the summer, and then we do eight pop ups in the community. So what we’re and the way that we went about it was, again, trying to be authentic and intentional is working with people who have trusted relationships. I mean, you have to build those relationships at the speed of trust. So sometimes, if you are working with people who are already there, you can go into historically marginalized neighborhoods and they’re loved and accepted, and we’re just there to help celebrate the work that they’re doing. Examples of that would be like the Edgemont Community Solar Garden, Omega CDC. I mean, we’ve gone into Dayton leadership academies and done some pop ups there.
Evelyn: The Foodbank,
Lisa: The Foodbank, yeah, their mass distributions. That’s a pretty emotional one when you see people hanging outside of their windows singing at the food bank at a time that’s probably hard for their family in terms of bringing a little bit of joy to a time that’s really difficult. So, you know, working with those types of partners, we saw, and then we started being we were being asked a lot, can you do this? We’re asking you. So we added the position. So we dug in our heels and laid a flag down and said, This is important. And did a community partnerships and relationship building position in the organization. So the summer camp educational outreach and pop ups all fall, kind of underneath that our commitment to education the summer camp also was a realization coming out of the racial uprisings after the George Floyd murder and the pandemic that these kids, their voices are just locked up, and we just, we really want them to be able to express their voices matter, and what they have to say is matters, and then also inspiring creativity. So our partner, Sierra Leone and her company, urban creative arts and signature education solutions. They came to us and said, we really feel a calling to our youth at this time. You know, who do we talk to and to help? Partner with Levitt, I said you’re talking to if we can make sure that this is music focused and that it’s community building. I think it definitely feels great. So that was started in 2021, and then what we also we’ve talked about the grieving that happens at the end of the season, we were trying to figure out, how do we keep everybody connected? And so there’s that conversation happening. But then there’s also this other conversation of, how do we add more earned revenue? We tried a ticketed concert at the venue in 2019 after doing 53 free concerts, we put a fence up around the Levitt and it felt disgusting and gross. And everybody was like, This doesn’t feel right. So, and we had people saying, Wait, what like I have to pay to get in now. And so we created a ticketed series in our off season this year, this past year, 23 into 24 and that is to help fund and fuel the upcoming season. And it is a secret concert in a secret location with secret artist called up close, and it’s been hugely widely accepted in that we sell out every, every, every month. Excuse me, and we’ve been in places like Black Palette, Boonshoft planetarium, the Peace Museum. We were at Front Street galleries. I’m looking at you because you’ve been through a lot of them with us, trying to remember if I’ve so really like kind of unique fun space,
Evelyn: unexpected, unexpected venues
Lisa: that maybe people, oh, a sound studio we went to, Dayton sound
Evelyn: Yeah.
Lisa: Dayton Sound Studios in Kettering, West Kettering, which people geeked out of, you know, being around all this kind of equipment and stuff. So that was fun. So and, and, and we meet with those groups ahead of like, I’m doing that right now. I’m vetting all the venues, and we find out, like, what’s the capacity. And what are your rules? Can people bring their own beverages in, or do they need to bring their own chairs, like the Levitt or do you have fixed seating? Or do you have, you know, chairs that we can set up and and then we put it on sale, and usually it sells out within, like, a day or two. And so it’s been fun, and I think that people love so it’s 24 hours prior they get the address so they know where they’re driving to or walking to, and and then when they still don’t know who’s performing, and we try to do a local opener, and then a regional and national artists. And what’s nice is that there are artists that are coming through this way, we let them stop. They perform for 30-40, minutes. We give them lodging, you know. So it’s they get to lay their head down on their way to the next gig. And it turns out the it ends up being a really lucrative, you know, good for all of us. So that’s been kind of fun. But it’s, it’s not it just as non stop, you know, because I’m gonna do all of that and try to get it programmed, and I’ll no sooner get done programming that, and it’ll be time to reboot and put up the 25 season, which includes fundraising and programming.
Evelyn: You just never stop.
Lisa: It never stops. Yeah, people think that there’s like a quiet season at 11, and there really isn’t, because the tempos are different. The summer tempo is kind of physically demanding and a lot of work to just put on an event. We do that, you know, 45, 46 times at the venue, and then it’s all the planning. You know, it’s no different than any other organization. You have to figure out what your budget is and where’s that money going to come from, and you know, all of that so. And then, you know, contracts and production and things like that. It’s, there’s a lot of moving parts, and we could. Do I we’re small but mighty team. There’s four of us on staff, but we have an incredible Board of Trustees, and we have committees that help us, and they actually help shape some of the work that we do to the committee work. So yeah,
Evelyn: I love that too. I was going to shout out that you have a very small team. It’s remarkable what what you accomplish. And I wanted to give a shout out to you to volunteers, because you’re always looking for volunteers throughout this concert season. So if anyone’s interested in getting involved, it’s such a fun I mean, what other volunteer experience you just get to hang out, listen to music and, yeah, meet people.
Lisa: Our beverage crew has been known to break out and dance and behind Yeah, so depending on who’s back there, Wink. Wink [laughs]. You can be a greeter. You can be at the information, selling merchandise, which could be banned merchandise, or ours and or ours, and then beverage, selling beverages when we have our bucket brigade, which is probably my favorite thing in the world, because you get to meet all the smiles. Oh, it’s amazing. I mean, people are just so grateful, and they actually get mad if you don’t get there fast, like
Evelyn: They do. People are waving their dollar, waving their dollar bills. And they’re not really just giving dollars, they’re giving, like, 20, yeah, it’s a whole thing. And people recognize the importance of the Levitt and they want to keep it around
Lisa: Keep supporting it. Yeah, that’s, I think that’s, I think that is finally resonating, is that, yes, it is free to attend, but like we say, it’s not free to produce, and just like everybody else’s expenses, you know what we used to say was, like a $10,000 per concert. I mean it’s well over 15,000 I mean it’s artist fees are through the roof because everything’s more expensive for them, productions more expensive. So it’s yeah, it’s getting to Yeah, everything’s more expensive. Unfortunately,
Evelyn: One last question that we ask all our guests, since our podcast name is Creating the Future, what’s the future that you’d like to create in Dayton?
Lisa: Well, I I kind of where I started the conversation in that this was a leap of faith for me. Gosh, I’m gonna get emotional. This was a leap of faith for me professionally, and it has filled every imaginable thing in my world, in that if I could leave the world in Dayton, especially downtown, a little bit better and full of love, then that would be something pretty terrific. Sorry, I don’t know that’s why, and I saw the questions. I didn’t expect that. Sorry.
Evelyn: That’s exactly, that’s exactly what you’re doing.
Lisa: Thank you. If I you know you always worry as a leader, when is when is it time to step away? You don’t want to overstay your I still feel like I have more to do and more to give, but for me, it’s if we could get everybody dancing, yeah, or whether they’re at the Levitt or not, if they experience some type of joy and that trickles out into their life in some other way. I mean, I, I had a moment early on where, like, I will hug anybody, anybody that wants a hug. I’m like, and I don’t really advertise that, but people just come up and they want to hug me and and one evening I my husband, I do this little debrief at the end of every Levitt concert where we just, like, sit and usually sip a bourbon and talk about the evening, and it hit me that I was hugging people that probably have never had a hug, and how much physical contact and being able to give that it’s so effortless, or it’s just like giving someone a smile and saying hello and making eye contact and making them feel like they matter, and whether that’s someone who’s unhoused or somebody who’s very sad in their life and dealing with a lot of stuff, I think that that’s what I hope we can do. And sorry, I cried so much. I can’t believe this.
Evelyn: It’s so needed. And I always look forward to my Lisa hug when I go on the lawn.
Lisa: I know not everybody’s a hugger, so I always try to weigh that, but yeah, it’s, I think it’s really important to have to share that with each other
Evelyn: It could change the world.
Lisa: I hope. It’s my hope.
David: I think what I really, I love about that is that’s a future that we all can create pretty easily.
Lisa: Easily. It’s not there’s no money involved, yeah, right, if we could just be kind Yeah, yeah. I had a really emotional moment. Clearly, like, there’s a lot of emotional moments that have happened over the past six years, five, seven years, really. And there was a woman who shared, I don’t know what what it was that precipitated this, but we were like dancing on the dance floor. And she came up and said, I need you to know how important this place me, what it means to me. And I said, Oh, thank you. And she goes, No. She said, My son committed suicide in 2020 and I don’t want to leave the house. And like, I started crying immediately, because I can’t imagine losing a child, right? And and I said to her, I’m so sorry. And she said this place is what pulled me out of my depression. She said, I to be able to come here and dance. And she said one of the artists that you had shared their story from the stage, and it was a similar story to her, her son, and she said it made me, or I’m sorry, a volunteer, somehow a volunteer, and they connected. And she said I didn’t feel alone like I haven’t felt alone since. And so we hugged each other, and I bawled my that was the night that I could, I was on bucket, and I couldn’t get my life to get like I kept I sobbed through the whole lawn, but I told her story all night long. I’m like, this is this is what we’re really this is what we’re doing. You know, it’s a place for healing. It’s a place for love. It’s a place to feel seen and not be alone.
Evelyn: Yeah, it’s amazing.
Lisa: thank you for being a part of it.
David: Well. Thank you for being a part of the podcast and sharing such beautiful story.
Lisa: Thank you.
Photography provided by Levitt Pavilion Dayton – Photographer Love-Yah Stewart.
