Stepping Aside Without Stepping Away: Lessons from an Eight-Year Experiment Designing with Artists

Across the nonprofit arts sector, national regranting programs are ending and institutional infrastructures are shrinking as philanthropy resets how it supports the field. In this moment of contraction and uncertainty, institutions can no longer afford to remain unprepared to work with artists on structural design. The Dance/USA Fellowships to Artists program (DFA) became one attempt to learn how.   In this episode, Haowen Wang of Dance/USA joins artists Laurel Lawson and Peter Rockford Espiritu (Tau), and curator Michèle Steinwald to reflect on eight years of responsive design through DFA. Together, they examine moments of rupture, redesign, and learning, and share lessons about what it takes for institutions to reposition themselves so artists can lead.

This episode was recorded on March 9, 2026.