The Bigger Picture: The Values of The Listening, Inc.

This is the part of a blog post where a writer, such as myself, would try to start off with a sentence that was both encouraging and enticing. After all, it’s the most intimidating part of writing: the first word. Making the jump from a blank page to a document intended to inspire isn’t happenstance. There’s a mountain of processing and thinking and digesting and navigating all the laws of storytelling and grammar in the way, and at the end of it, the reader should (ideally) walk away with…something.

If I’m being honest, these past few months have nearly beat it out of me, personally. Since mid-March, our organization has been working to make sense and make a way through this dumpster fire of a year. If global pandemic and social unrest wasn’t enough, we all are trying to really understand what to do in our personal lives.

Relationship issues, parenting, hygiene and self-care, mental and physical health - everything has been thrown in a food processor, with the setting on high.

These days are hard. Everything is connected and on top of each other. Normal is gone.

Now, with that understanding, how are nonprofits surviving? These organizations, from those with multi-million dollar budgets to the grassroots operations put together with elbow grease and willpower, are experiencing a severe identity crisis. The resources we need are exponentially different than they were in Q1.

We’ve adopted a mentality of “Responding Over Reacting” in regards to the social crisis impacting our local community. When civic unrest was in our backyard, emotions undoubtedly ran high. Despite postponing programs and transitioning our events to a virtual format, we were among the many organizations who experienced the conflict of wanting to do so much while also not really knowing what to do.

A bit of trivia for you - what are one of the first things any organization, community, business, institution, movement or initiative needs? Before anything else, purpose is crucial. There has to be an answer to the question, “why are we here”. Within the purpose, you’ll find an organization’s mission, vision and values. If you didn’t know, our mission and vision are to see the performing arts as a transformative resource in our community. (Note: this is a very brief summation) If we believe this to be our guiding light, our whole understanding of what change and impact is has to be reckoned with.

Like I mentioned above, a new dynamic is on it’s way - a new world, if you will. While many theories exist about what changes may be in store, The Listening would like to become practiced in leaning on our core values. If we are to consider the words of the late Rep. John Lewis, who we are inspired by in our programming in more ways than one, it is our responsibility as an organization to be up to some “good trouble”. These are the things that define us, and these are the things that, along with our mission of ‘engaging, changing and saving lives’, will guide us forward in serving our community.

We do our best to integrate these values in all of our programming and activities. From our regular events, like our open mic sessions to our programming, like Young, Lit & Free and Freedom School, we maintain our focus. Even in the middle of an actual dystopian novel.

For the next few weeks, we will be featuring weekly blog posts from members of our expansive community - locally as well as nationally. We will be featuring original articles from Listen First Project, University of Lynchburg, Opera on the James, ARC and Urban Confessional. Each post will offer a perspective on our values and serve as motivation to make it through whatever else 2020 has in store for us.

After this campaign, the responsibility then falls on us all to live it out.