Stacy Busch: Executive Director and Co-Founder of No Divide KC
⚲ Kansas City, MO
Mission: No Divide KC uses the arts as a vehicle for stimulating social awareness, participation, and community building. No Divide KC partners with Kansas City-based artists and organizations to create artistic events that are focused on the stories of underserved and misrepresented communities in Kansas City, Missouri.
Stacy Busch is an inventive arts leader and composer who recognizes the immense power of local art-making and works to change unfair policies and practices within the arts industry. She recognized the importance of safe spaces for artists, particularly those in the LGBTQIA+ population, and worked to make that space in Kansas City. Joining forces with co-founder Emily Spradling, No Divide KC was born with the intention of creating a celebratory community sanctuary.
“My life was saved by community spaces,” Stacy said.
The arts as an industry is famous for opposition and competition. No Divide KC works against that, through its active collaborations, strong community based leadership, and a culture of celebration in place of competition. No Divide KC is also committed to working across different artistic disciplines, serving their community as they are, and making space for artists to explore in a nurturing environment.
“Redefining what artistic excellence is, is another way we can actually appreciate and understand what art should be in our lives,” Stacy said.
No Divide KC doesn’t stop there when tackling pervasive industry issues on the local level. They set an example for all arts organizations through their prioritization of fee-free submissions –– a practice not widely accepted across the industry at this point.
“I’m a real stickler about calling something an artist opportunity if it’s funded by the artists it’s supposed to serve,” Stacy said.
Ditching the submission fees lowers the barrier of entry to artists of any background to engage with the opportunity while also giving No Divide KC a further reach into their artistic community.
Another supportive financial practice is their artist payment policy. Since the beginning of the organization, No Divide KC has always paid its artists.
For as long as we can remember, the somewhat folkloric artist’s path to “making it” in the United States has begun and ended with the metropolitan hubs: New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami, and Boston for instance. It’s pitched to artists as a way to flee their hometowns in pursuit of being somewhere with supposedly more abundant opportunities. There’s a new movement emerging to address this classic artists’ woe: investing in your local communities to create spaces and more opportunities for yourself and other artists.
Stacy saw this issue in Kansas City from the angle of academia. She recognized that local higher education institutions tended to isolate the students from the community in which they attended school. There weren’t many opportunities to connect with Kansas City and to be a part of the arts scene locally. Stacy recalled this sense that you’d come to this community, get all that you could out of your education, and then leave Kansas City for a land of opportunities somewhere else.
So Stacy decided to stay in Kansas City, to experiment with what it would be like for her career as a composer to dedicate herself to local opportunities and to work toward creating more arts engagement in her community through No Divide KC. This choice allowed her to explore other sides of the arts industry as No Divide KC grew and grew. Through connections with local business leaders, her eyes were opened to a new way of understanding what she and No Divide KC were capable of.
“I realized I wasn’t thinking big enough, [entrepreneurial leaders] were able to see something larger that I hadn’t considered,” Stacy said.
Through dedicated, mission-driven work, reflection on processes and industry issues, and a passionate local focus, Stacy and No Divide KC are leading the way for a new kind of socially aware community art-making.
To learn more about No Divide KC please visit their website.
To learn more about Stacy Busch’s work please visit her website.