WolfBrown continues to evolve to meet the changing needs of the cultural sector. Over the coming months we’ll share our new brand, unveil an all-new website, announce new research and consulting services, and invite young researchers into partnerships.
As with all creative enterprises, our people are our most important resource. Today we are pleased to share a number of additions to the WolfBrown team.
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Surale Phillips is a distinguished researcher who has guided countless organizations and agencies through research and consulting projects over the past 20 years. Her work focuses on applied research for assessing market demand, informing community cultural plans, building organizational capacity, and developing marketing and audience development strategies.
“Currently, I’m evaluating a three-year capacity-building program designed to increase the touring capacity of small and mid-size dance companies that started just as the pandemic hit. Venues closed, dancers had to practice social distancing, booking conferences sunsetted, and travel basically stopped. Imagine that! What emerged from the tragic impact of COVID-19 on this program has resulted in artists, presenters, and funders working together to reimagine how dance can be experienced, new pathways for community engagement, and most significantly, increased artist agency within the field of presenting.”
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Kathleen Hill joins the Cambridge office of WolfBrown to support clients in research, evaluation, and strategic planning efforts. At Carnegie Mellon University, she studied the intersections of culture and policy with a goal of empowering data-driven solutions in the arts and culture sector. Having benefited from a robust public school system that valued the role of arts education and arts integration, she firmly believes in the role that arts and culture play in incubating, amplifying, and achieving transformative change through storytelling.
“I am supporting our work with Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Bloomberg Arts Internship (BAI) program. BAI aspires to be a pipeline for the diversification of the arts and culture sector at all levels—audiences, artists, organization staff and leadership, board members. It allows rising high school seniors in Baltimore, Boston, New York, and Philadelphia to work in arts organizations for 6-8 weeks over the summer.”
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Matthew Garcia is currently attending Harvard College with a concentration in Human Developmental and Regenerative Biology. He joins WolfBrown to support the research and evaluation projects of Dr. Dennie Palmer Wolf. A product of a public school education, Matthew is an advocate for educational equity in the historically inaccessible worlds of the arts and academia.
“At WolfBrown, I am working on a multi-year, longitudinal study of the National Youth Orchestra 2 Program funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. My favorite part of this project is interviewing all 72 members of the NYO2 2016 cohort. Every conversation with a member of the cohort is an opportunity to discover how participation in a musical festival can impact long-term musical participation.”
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Emma Terrell is pursuing a master’s degree in Arts in Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She received her bachelor’s in Percussion Performance at Rice University. She is thrilled to join WolfBrown, as she is drawn to the organization’s multifaceted approach to helping arts and cultural organizations create effective and relevant educational programs.
“I am currently working with Dennie Palmer Wolf on Carnegie Hall’s Reflections on Resilience Project, in partnership with PUBLIQuartet and PlayUSA. This project documents different ways in which PlayUSA member sites execute a group creative project and the impact it has on teaching and learning in community music settings.”
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Marco Emilio Bruscoli is completing a master’s degree in Performing Arts Management at Accademia Teatro alla Scala and Politecnico di Milano’s Graduate School of Business. He completed an internship with Alan Brown in January 2022 and will continue his research in digital, immersive, and virtual arts and entertainment projects as a Research Fellow.
“The commercial entertainment sector is pivoting rapidly towards immersive and virtual experiences. During the COVID-19 pandemic, we saw massive levels of commercial investment in highly interactive and immersive experiences, at a time when nonprofits were closed down and slowly reopening with pre-pandemic programming. I am pleased to be working with WolfBrown to support the nonprofit arts sector in coming to grips with this tectonic shift in public tastes and consumer behaviors.”