70Building on what APAP members have always counted on—and expanding what's possible.
New connections. New partners. New opportunities. And a stronger return to the people and organizations whose work creates value far beyond our field.
The performing arts have always created extraordinary value.
We must welcome a new chapter that ensures the value circulates back into the field—strengthening the artists, organizations and professionals who make it possible.
Because a stronger performing arts ecosystem doesn't only create more art.
It creates greater capacity to serve communities, take artistic risks, employ people, build audiences, experiment, adapt—and create what comes next.
Why this, why nowThis is not simply about demonstrating, once again, that the arts are valuable. It is about ensuring that the value our field creates is recognized, invested in and translated into lasting opportunity for the people and organizations doing the work.
The performing arts field is navigating a period of profound change. Opportunities and pathways that our members have relied upon for decades are shifting. Some have disappeared. Others have been rerouted, diminished or fundamentally transformed. At the same time, entirely new possibilities are emerging—often in places where the performing arts have not traditionally been positioned, funded or understood.
Many of our members are navigating this while facing real, immediate pressures of their own—from unstable business models to the basic costs of health coverage and economic survival.
As the environment around us changes, how we work must evolve with it. We cannot simply work harder to hold onto ways of working built for conditions that no longer exist. We have an opportunity—and an imperative—to build more durable, adaptable models that can stand the test of time, respond to the needs of our communities and remain connected to the world in which our members live and work.
That requires us to understand the performing arts as fully interconnected with the world around us. Our work does not exist apart from the needs, challenges and aspirations of our communities; it is part of how communities respond to them. The arts contribute to health and well-being, strengthen connection and belonging, foster civic engagement and trust, drive creativity and innovation, and create experiences through which people understand themselves and one another. Our impact extends far beyond beauty, entertainment or decoration. The arts are indelibly woven into many dimensions of how people and communities live, connect and thrive.
Recognizing that interconnectedness is also essential to building stronger business models. When we understand—and can demonstrate—the many ways the performing arts create value, we expand the range of people, institutions, industries and communities that see themselves as partners in our work. That can mean new relationships, new investment, new audiences, new applications for artistic work and ultimately new opportunity for APAP members.
We've been looking closely at three forces reshaping our world—and what they could mean for APAP members and the future of our field.
Our first responsibility is to understand what these changes mean for our members and for the performing arts field. Where are existing business models being disrupted? Where are new markets, resources and partnerships emerging? What new skills and capacities will our members need? Where are decisions being made that will affect how artists create, how work is presented and distributed, how organizations operate, and how communities experience and support the arts? APAP must help our members understand and navigate these changes—not simply ask how the arts can contribute to them.
At the same time, we must recognize the extraordinary value the performing arts already contribute across society. For generations, our field has been called upon to give: to educate, heal, inspire, convene, build bridges, strengthen communities, animate places and help people make meaning of the world around them. Yet the reciprocity has too often been unbalanced. The value created by the arts has not always returned to the artists, organizations and arts professionals who create it in the form of sustained investment, opportunity and resources. It is time for that to change.
Our engagement in technology, health and well-being, and civic trust is therefore not simply about demonstrating, once again, that the arts are valuable. It is about ensuring that the value our field creates is recognized, invested in and translated into lasting opportunity for the people and organizations doing the work.
We want our members to understand where the world is changing, to be prepared for what those changes mean for their work and businesses, and to have a meaningful role in shaping what comes next. And where the performing arts are creating value—whether in health and well-being, community vitality, civic engagement, technology or other areas—we want to help build the partnerships and investment that let that value return to our field.
As APAP approaches its 70th anniversary under the theme "Welcoming the New, Becoming the Next," there may be no better time to embrace this opportunity. Becoming the next is not about abandoning what has made our field distinctive. It is about building from the strength of what we've created together, while opening new possibilities for how our members—and our field—connect, adapt and thrive.
"Becoming the next is not about abandoning what has made our field distinctive. It is about building from the strength of what we've created together, while opening new possibilities for how our members—and our field—connect, adapt and thrive."
The framework moves from the changes we are unpacking, to what those changes mean for members, to the new opportunities APAP can help members build and access.
For 70 years, APAP has connected the people who make the performing arts possible—artists, agents and managers, presenters, producers and other professionals across our field.
We have created a marketplace for artists and their work. We have brought people together to build relationships and conduct business. We have advocated for the field, shared knowledge and strengthened the people and organizations that make this work possible.
That remains at the heart of APAP.
But the world around our members is changing—and what it takes to build a thriving career, organization and performing arts ecosystem is changing with it.
Our next chapter builds on what APAP has always done well, while widening the circle of people, partners, ideas and resources connected to our field.
And that changes the question we are asking.
Not only: The performing arts create extraordinary value.
But also: Let's discuss what needs to come back to the people and organizations creating it.
At the center of this work are APAP members and the arts workforce—the people and organizations with the capacity, resources and relationships to create, present, tour and sustain great work.
APAP has long helped members discover new ideas, learn from one another and adapt their work and organizations as the field changes.
Artists and arts organizations should not simply be consumers of the technologies reshaping our world. Our field should have a hand in shaping them.
That means creating opportunities for artists and arts professionals to engage with AI, technology and innovation in ways that serve people and creative practice—and exploring how those tools can help members work differently, reach audiences differently, reduce unnecessary costs and create new forms of artistic and commercial opportunity.
New technology is now moving faster than most sectors can respond to. But the performing arts offer something tech companies can't generate on their own: empathy and the discipline of live, human connection. Culture is how societies remember, adapt and innovate, and the arts are being sought after by more and more organizations to help ensure technology serves humans and not profits. This includes major funders like the Doris Duke and Mozilla Foundations to put artists at the center of building this technology—not just adapting to it. For members, that's not abstract: it's access to that funding, and a hand in shaping tools that cut our costs, build our capacity and move us past just breaking even—not just technology for its own sake. The window to help shape this technology, rather than just respond to it, is open now.
APAP members have always understood something that the world is increasingly recognizing: the arts change how people feel, connect, heal and experience their lives.
What if that value were reflected not only in applause or impact reports, but in the systems and investments that support health and well-being?
There is growing opportunity to connect artists and arts organizations with health systems, community partners and others investing in well-being—creating pathways for arts experiences to become sustained parts of how communities care for people.
For our members, that can mean something very practical: new partners, new settings for the work, new audiences and new sources of sustained engagement and investment.
The science just caught up to what we've known for over 40 years. A 2025 review in Nature Medicine compiled 95 published studies on arts and health with the same kind of evidence that turned exercise into standard medical advice in the 1980s. The World Health Organization made it official. Its first-ever resolution on social connection, adopted in 2025, names culture alongside health, education and housing as core to the response. And insurers are catching up and investing in what can become national infrastructure for the arts workforce vs four decades of arts and health work we've all helped shape, that is almost entirely siloed locally. The health system is only now ready to fund and scale. Massachusetts launched the country's first statewide arts-prescription program. So did New Jersey. More are on the way. What was missing wasn't more proof, more examples or more lived experience. It was the national infrastructure to let that experience flow from locality to locality, with funding behind it. Until now. The window to help shape this nationally is open now.
Our members do more than present performances.
They create places where people gather. They bring people who may see the world differently into shared experiences. They help communities tell their stories, celebrate who they are and imagine what they might become.
APAP has long advocated for that value.
Now we want to help translate that value into stronger relationships with the institutions and leaders investing in communities.
That means helping members connect with civic, philanthropic, business and community partners who may not traditionally think of themselves as part of the performing arts ecosystem—but whose goals intersect directly with what our members make possible.
Trust is breaking down faster than most institutions can respond to—seven in ten people now say they're unwilling to trust across difference (2026 Edelman Trust Barometer). At the same time, real money is moving toward rebuilding it: Allstate and the Aspen Institute awarded $5.25 million to trust-building projects this year alone, drawn from over 1,600 proposals—a sign of how urgent this work has become. The performing arts are one of the few spaces that can still reliably bring people together across that gap, and the funders looking for ways to do that are looking for partners now.
This is not APAP moving away from what members know us for.
It is APAP doing more to ensure more work reaches our members.
APAP is a marketplace.
We remain a marketplace—and we want to expand who sees value in what our members have to offer, so more opportunity flows back to them.
APAP is a connector.
We will continue connecting our field—and bring more partners from outside our traditional ecosystem into that circle, because it benefits our members.
APAP is an advocate.
We will continue making the case for the performing arts—and broaden that case around the many ways our members contribute to the priorities communities are already investing in, so more of that investment reaches them.
APAP is a place for learning and professional development.
We will continue that work—and bring members the ideas, tools and business models that can help them adapt and thrive.
APAP is a community.
And we will use the collective knowledge, creativity and reach of that community to help build what none of us can build alone.
New relationships and partners. New bookings, markets and revenue. And the staff support, shared research and practical tools that free up time for the work itself.
Showcases, EXPO, meetings, discovery, learning, deal-making, relationship-building and encounters with ideas and partners members might not otherwise access.
Community, knowledge, resources and opportunities that help members act on what they learn and sustain relationships beyond January.
The value members have always counted on, now including practical tools and insight for navigating technology, business-model change, partnerships and emerging areas of practice.
Connections within the performing arts field and beyond it — to health, technology, civic, philanthropic, public and private-sector partners.
A stronger public and policy case for the performing arts as vital infrastructure — and for investment in the people and organizations delivering that value.
Here's what's behind this framework, and what we're committing to as we build it with you.
These are consequential forces reshaping society, markets, institutions and how value is created.
Members will understand how these shifts affect their work and where new possibilities are emerging.
Traditional pathways, funding sources and operating assumptions are changing; durability requires adaptability.
Members will gain ideas, partners, tools and models that can support a stronger organization, career and revenue.
The arts create value far beyond entertainment or decoration, and that broader value creates new relevance.
Members can enter new partnerships, markets and applications for their work without diminishing their artistic purpose.
The field has often been asked to demonstrate what it gives without receiving proportional investment in return.
We're seeking pathways through which value returns to members as work, resources, bookings, partnerships, investment and capacity.
This becomes useful only when members can encounter people, ideas, tools and opportunities and act on them.
Members will connect, discover, learn, do business and build relationships that carry forward after the conference.
The 70th anniversary is a natural moment to honor what APAP has built while preparing the field for changing conditions.
Members are invited to shape what comes next — and to build the adaptability and relationships needed to thrive within it.
As we develop this work through sessions, partnerships and programs, here's what we're holding ourselves to: