Leigh Burns With The Fox Theatre

Intro: [00:00:04] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Atlanta Business Radio. Brought to you by On pay. Atlanta’s new standard in payroll. Now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:25] Lee Kantor here, another episode of Atlanta Business Radio, and this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor, Onpay. Without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories. Today on Atlanta Business Radio, we have Leigh Burns, Director of Community Partnership Fox Gives with the Fox Theater. Welcome, Leigh.

Leigh Burns: [00:00:46] Thank you for having me. Lee.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:47] I am so excited to number one be talking to another Lee, which like we discussed pre show short list. But most importantly to be learning about the Fox Gibbs program. Uh, you know from the Fox Theater. Can you share a little bit about that.

Leigh Burns: [00:01:03] Sure. Um, the Fox Theater for about the 15:15 years has been working with communities all over our state here in Atlanta and further out to really kind of bolster and encourage historic theaters, both through ongoing rehabilitation but also through operations and performances. We recently were rebranded and relaunched as Fox Gibbs. We were the previously known as the Fox Theater Institute.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:30] So now how does that work? Like most theaters are just kind of struggling to exist, but Fox Theater obviously has been around for a long, long time. Have you’ve gotten to a point of stability where now you can not only just thrive and survive locally, but you can reach out and support the other theaters around Georgia?

Leigh Burns: [00:01:52] Right. We’re very fortunate here in Midtown to have such a thriving, economically successful theater. And what we found over the past 15 years is that there are theaters across our state that don’t always have the resources that we do. First of all, probably more than half of the theaters that we work with are volunteer operated. Um, they’re not operated by staff. So we’ve been able to really focus on sharing over $3.2 million in grants with them that cover everything from planning for expansion of their building to ongoing restoration projects. We’re just very grateful that we have the ability to pay it forward. Many here in Atlanta remember the Save the Fox campaign of the 70s, and our mission to preserve and share really is born out of that, that place of revitalizing ourselves and then watching Midtown revitalize.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:46] Now as kind of the director of community partnerships, what is kind of a day look like for you or just theaters just constantly coming up to you and saying, hey, Lee, we need some help. Hey, we need some help, or is it you kind of going out and saying, okay, we can help this theater or that theater?

Leigh Burns: [00:03:03] Well, I think in the beginning we were definitely putting ourselves out more to to go and meet with theaters and find those. But with the growth of Fox, Gibbs and our presence in the state being known a little more, they typically reach out to us. I received lots of emails. We do initial consultations with theaters, and we work with them not only with strategic planning, you know, in their operations, but they’re building, but they’re consistently reaching out. And we also have education programs. So I oversee not just our preservation grants and our operations, but we have two other programs, our box and a box education program. And then we also have our Georgia Presenters Consortium, which is assisting theaters with booking with operations. So every day is different and always exciting, and meeting partners and building those relationships is really, I think, encouraged me to continue to do this every day.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:06] Now, with some of your work teaching the theater owners or helping them build community partnerships themselves, the way the Fox has done locally here in Atlanta?

Leigh Burns: [00:04:18] Absolutely. One of the things that we work on is leveraging partnerships locally. So when we invest, say, $100,000 in a new roof on their building, what we look for are other organizations locally that might join us in supporting those efforts, but also letting people know what we’re doing and letting them know the importance of why the fox is in their community and trying to make an effort there, and why the arts are so important to every community in Georgia.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:49] Now, um, is there any advice or tips that you can share with our listeners who, you know, building a community partnership program around a theater that has some allure, just kind of the history and things like that. But is there any advice you can give for any other business that maybe is transferable that how to, you know, get your whole community to support your effort is have you got anything you can share in that regard? Because I think that pertains to pretty much every business.

Leigh Burns: [00:05:19] Yes, absolutely. I think when you work in business, going back to the stories in your own organization, um, looking at the staff that you work with your own people and recognizing how important the arts are to their family and to their children’s education and making those investments, I think meeting people and putting yourself out there not only to financially support them, but to maybe have volunteer days where you work with them at their theater, where you give them advice on marketing. Um, there’s so many theaters around our state that need assistance in growing strategic planning and marketing support, and so many businesses want to reach out and do this. So I think there’s endless opportunities there.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:04] But at the heart of it, you have to get to kind of the why and the story behind the story where you’re emotionally kind of connecting rather than the transactional, oh, you’re coming here for a show. Thanks. Bye. You know, you’re trying to really integrate them into the why of the business.

Leigh Burns: [00:06:22] Absolutely. I think you need to make connections. Maybe they have a summer camp for children and, you know, you could sponsor certain components of that. Um, maybe there’s opportunities for people to really reach out and offer support in certain areas that they excel with in their own business. Yeah. I think when we look at partnerships in the past, a lot of times we see typical partnerships like banks with investment or, you know, those types of industries. But there’s so many other opportunities for small businesses to engage with partnerships at local theaters.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:59] And I guess, like you’re saying that historically, you know, the sponsor was happy with a plaque on the wall or a name of, you know, their brand associated with the thing, but now it’s people are getting more creative and, um, leveraging the theater and the work that’s being done there differently than maybe in the past.

Leigh Burns: [00:07:21] I think if you look, um, at the old look at investing in, in sponsorships and partnerships, it was a lot. The plaque on the wall in the restaurant, you’d walk in and and see people being sponsored by baseball teams, you know, businesses. Now, I believe that, you know, with technology and with the expansion of what these theaters can do behind the scenes to build audience development, there’s so many new opportunities there that we would have never even imagined. The possibilities are endless for those creatives to really get in there and kind of see what kind of impact they can make.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:59] Now, you mentioned the importance of having a theater in a town or a city. Can you talk about, um, is there any data to support that? Like, it sounds and feels like it’s the right thing to do, and especially for the character and of the the town or the city? Uh, is there a kind of data to support the importance of, um, leaning into the arts for community?

Leigh Burns: [00:08:22] There is data. Um, we have two partners that we work with here in the state quite a bit. The Georgia Council for the Arts and the Georgia main Street program. And, you know, when you look at towns that are really viable, when you see a theater, you see restaurants that are open before and after the theaters open. You see Friday night downtown opportunities that might include an engagement from the town theater company in the square. There’s endless ways that we can quantify how this creates a ripple effect. And if you look at the fox here, we’re really the main proponent of that. We look at the businesses around us that that help us and in turn, we help them. I think that one of the things we have to start thinking about as a whole is what preservation looks like, not just for the landmarks in in the town, like the courthouse, the theater, the schools, but the buildings around those that are sustained because of these key landmark buildings and their success.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:24] Is there a story you can share where some of the work you did in a in a locale that has made a difference and moved them to a new level?

Leigh Burns: [00:09:32] Sure. Um, there’s a small town outside of Athens, Georgia, um, called Winterville. We began working with Winterville in 2017. They had an auditorium, uh, built in the 50s, and it had been dormant for many years. And this is a very small city where people usually go into Athens to see live music, or they go to Greensboro around them. But they really wanted to reengage this auditorium and reopen it. Um, they started looking for public private partnerships. They started trying all kinds of opportunities to raise awareness. They raised a lot of funds. And at the same time, the state was developing a bike trail from Athens to Union Point, and they knew it was a good time for them. So now when you look at that community, there’s more of a cohesiveness in what their programing looks like for their city. While there may not be direct restaurants opening yet, there is a re-engagement of people coming there and seeking out these things versus going outside of the city. And so we do think that there’ll be continued growth there around opening restaurants. Um, and we’ve already seen a tremendous success. They’ve joined our group, Georgia presenters, and they present all types of music, theater, dance that in the past they would not have had. So we’re that’s just one small example. Um, but there’s many across Georgia. If you look at Augusta and the success the Miller Theater has had, um, that was a massive rehabilitation of a dormant theater and restaurants, re-engagement of downtown. So there’s so many about about these stories on our website. You can you can look at the map of all the theaters and see some of the impact.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:25] But the theaters don’t have to have kind of that, um, the bones of maybe that the fox had. It can be a smaller, um, auditorium like, uh. Place that, um, you know, still, you can build a theater program around. It doesn’t have to look like the Fox Theater for you to help them, right?

Leigh Burns: [00:11:46] Not at all. You know, these are not many foxes. These are theaters that can also be in auditoriums and old school buildings. Um, we’ve seen churches that have been repurposed as art centers. Um, these don’t have to be traditional theaters. It can be a place where this development can grow for the arts and take on many forms. We don’t really want them to be miniature foxes. We want to celebrate their their own identity and their own town and all of those wonderful things that come with it.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:17] Now, um, you mentioned the, uh, I guess previously this was called the the Fox Theater Institute, and now it’s Fox Give. Was that just a name change or has other parts of that changed as well?

Leigh Burns: [00:12:32] No. We’ve also launched two new programs.

Leigh Burns: [00:12:36] Um, Fox gives really is at the heart of our mission, which is to preserve and share the Fox Theater. And when we looked at we had we went through strategic planning and we looked at a lot of ways that we thought expansion would be most impactful. So we began two new programs. We have an all access Pass program, which is a high school program where we bring students here to the Fox to see shows on our stage, and then have a have a presentation with them from someone in the field who works behind the scenes in presenting. Um, that can be someone who works in tech design and costumes. We want to mentor with them the arts, vocations. You know, the film industry in Georgia obviously has been a huge success and performing arts, so we want to prepare the next generation to really dream of these opportunities. Maybe not always acting and dancing, um, on the stage, but there’s so many other great opportunities. So that was our All access program. And then we also decided to expand our grant program. And we have a multi year grant. Um, when we relaunched into Fox Gibbs, we announced a half $1 million investment into Hart County Community Theater in Hartwell. And they will now receive the largest investment for any single theater that we’ve ever awarded.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:57] Now, what do you need more of? How can we help you?

Leigh Burns: [00:14:00] We awareness is so important. Um, we would absolutely love for more businesses to be engaged in, in smaller communities across our state, to really take on the role of leveraging some of our own work. Uh, it’s just really exciting to see we have a leveraging partner through Southface Institute. We’re growing our sustainability and that impact, but we’re always looking for individuals and organizations that can assist theaters in some of the behind the scenes operations. Um, and we would absolutely love for people to visit our website and become more engaged with some of our partner theaters.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:39] And, um, what is the website and what is the best way to connect with you or somebody on the team?

Leigh Burns: [00:14:45] It’s, um, Fox Theater. Org and you can look there at Fox Gibbs and see all of the theaters that were networked with around the state. You can always reach out to me directly, and I’d love to hear from others how they would like to be engaged.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:01] Good stuff. Well, congratulations on all the momentum and the impact is real and we really appreciate the work that you’re doing.

Leigh Burns: [00:15:10] Thank you so much, Lee. I appreciate this opportunity to really expand our, our imprint and and further our mission out into the state. Thank you so much.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:20] You got it. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on Atlanta Business Radio.