Springboard’s new leader starts by listening 

Ilah Raleigh was in middle school when she first heard New Zealand soprano Kiri Te Kanawa sing. It changed the direction of her life.

“I was like, ‘Oh my goodness, that’s what I want to do,’” Raleigh said. “And she’s a woman of color too. I could sing like her and wear these fabulous gowns.”

Now a performing artist, educator, author and arts leader, Raleigh took over as executive director of Springboard for the Arts on Oct. 1. The St. Paul-based nonprofit supports artists with the tools to make a living, and it works with communities across Minnesota from its offices in St. Paul and Fergus Falls.

Raleigh started out in visual art. She worked at her local theater from elementary school through high school and planned to become a costume designer. After discovering opera, she began vocal training as a teenager and went on to perform with organizations including Minnesota Opera and Washington National Opera. She still considers herself a performing artist.

Teaching began as a way to pay for voice lessons and audition trips, and she would teach almost anything.

“If you want to learn it, I will figure out a YouTube video to watch and I will teach it to you,” she said.

A little less than 15 years ago, with her son still a baby, she reached a turning point while sitting in rehearsal.

“I just want to be home with my baby,” she remembered thinking. When that show ended, she made education her main career and singing her second.

That shift led her into leadership. She held leadership roles at the Saint Paul Conservatory for Performing Artists and faculty positions at the University of St. Thomas. Most recently, she directed visual arts, performing arts and debate programming at The Blake School. There, she oversaw 24 full-time and eight part-time faculty members and about 100 events a year for students in pre-K through 12th grade.

While earning a doctorate in educational leadership at St. Thomas, a professor asked her to write a book chapter. That led to a contract for her own book, “From Ivy Queen to Bad Bunny: The Sonic Travels of Reggaetón,” due out from Bloomsbury Publishing in 2027. The book builds on her doctoral research into Caribbean and Latin American artists in hip-hop and reggaetón.

Raleigh describes her leadership style as relational. She said she believes it is worth slowing the pace of change so everyone has a chance to be heard. In her first weeks, she has held one-on-one meetings with staff and visited the organization’s Fergus Falls office.

That location reflects a part of Springboard’s work many people don’t know about, she said. The organization focuses on BIPOC artists, LGBTQIA+ artists, artists with disabilities and artists in under-resourced communities, both urban and rural.

“There’s been a real drain of resources in rural communities across our country,” Raleigh said. “It’s really important to us that we have that rural location.”

She said she said yes to the job because she believes in artists, and in the idea that almost everyone is one.

“We all have that creative spark within us, and some of us embrace it, and some of us reject it, and some of us haven’t even been allowed to think of ourselves in that light,” she said.

Rather than steering Springboard in a new direction, Raleigh said, she wants to build on the work of longtime staff. Many of them helped the organization keep artists afloat during the COVID-19 pandemic, when many arts organizations closed for good.

Artists are often independent business owners with no employer to cover health care or taxes, she said, which leaves them especially vulnerable in an economic crisis.

Raleigh said people underestimate how much direct funding Springboard provides. The organization runs a statewide emergency relief network for artists, a fund for artists with disabilities and a creative business recovery fund for Minnesota artists. Since taking the job, she said, friends have told her those programs kept their businesses open. One was the photographer who took her headshot.

She is especially excited about Springboard’s guaranteed income work for artists. Launched in 2021 alongside the City of St. Paul’s guaranteed income efforts, the program provides monthly payments to 50 artists in the Frogtown and Rondo neighborhoods and 50 in Otter Tail County, where Fergus Falls is located.

“You can’t really create when you’re constantly worried about your basic needs day to day,” she said. When artists can thrive, she added, “it lifts up a whole community.”

Raleigh also hopes to bring her background in education to Springboard. Staff have begun discussing andragogy, the practice of teaching adults. She sees an opening as recent federal changes limit funding for some education and training. Artists’ desire to keep learning doesn’t go away, she said, and Springboard can help meet that need affordably.

Outside work, Raleigh trains performing artists through her studio, Volare. She also serves as assistant program director for a local chapter of Jack and Jill of America, Inc., where she helps lead service programming for young African American leaders.

For Raleigh, sharing her story with the MSR carried personal meaning. Her late stepfather, Ron Bell, was a community organizer and social worker from a family with long roots in North Minneapolis, and the MSR was always in their home.

“I just know he is tickled pink from heaven,” she said.

Learn more about Springboard for the Arts at www.springboardforthearts.org.

Jasmine McBride welcomes reader responses at jmcbride@spokesman-recorder.com.