A Message from


the Executive Director and CEO John Killacky


Blessedly, I have spent my entire life around artists. I started my professional career as a dancer in New York in the ‘70s. Postmodernism was ablaze: Meredith Monk performing in parking lots, Trisha Brown dancing on buildings, and Richard Foreman reimagining Brecht and Weill in Central Park. Everything—race, culture, aesthetics, genre, gender—was being pulverized and deconstructed artistically.


There was no money to be made in the arts, but cheap rents and unemployment made experimentation possible. With nothing to lose, all aesthetic rules were rewritten in that Do-It-Yourself decade. Every day, I observed artists starting with a blank page, an empty canvas, a barren rehearsal hall, struggling to go deeper to create something both thrilling and bold. If something didn’t work, they thought of something else. If it worked, they tried to make it even better.


These skills have been essential to my work in the nonprofit arts, in which we move forward with whatever resources are available, and build a future by crafting the present. My entire career has been built upon what Buddhists call sho-shin or “beginner’s mind.” Zen master Shunryu Suzuki describes this state: “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s mind there are few.”


In my first year running the ‘house’ that Andrea Rogers and this community built, I worked with staff, board, and community advisors to learn and then imagine a future for this incredible community asset. An innovation grant from EMCArts (funded by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation) allowed us to dream an expanded online future, shifting our social media strategies and accelerating mobile integration. Participation by the Emergent Media Center at Champlain College was integral to this initiative.


IBM loaned us three consultants to undertake a strategic assessment to help better align our structure and activities with our mission and strategies. This work will form the basis of the next iteration of long-range planning.


The Kresge Foundation generously awarded the Flynn a $500,000 grant toward the capital needs of our 81-year old facility— helping us enclose the loading dock, and providing the nucleus for the upcoming replacement of our theater seating.


In my first year at the helm, I’ve learned a great deal and benefited from a community working together toward a greater common good. I believe we are hired for what we know, but our job is to learn what we do not know—a task and responsibility I enjoy immensely. I look forward to learning from you as I steward your organization in the years ahead.


Choreographer Margaret Jenkins said, “The only way to keep balanced is by moving forward.” Thank you for your ongoing support of the Flynn Center for the Performing Arts.


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