Simon-Kennedy’s work with China Residencies began in 2013. Since then, the organization has offered funding to nearly 70 artists, including filmmakers, choreographers, visual artists, circus performers, and writers. Originally a platform to help artists across the world connect with each other, China Residencies has grown into a full-fledged nonprofit, directly supporting artists with resources to find residencies and opportunities, and mentoring the next generation of artists and organizers through fellowships and a fiscal sponsorship program.
“Commodity City” came about through what Simon-Kennedy refers to as her “parallel life” as a film producer. She and director Jessica Kingdon worked together to develop a story that showed day-to-day life in China’s markets. “People have a vague knowledge that things tend to be made in China,” Simon-Kennedy explained, but they don’t know about the entire trading process that contributes to their production. The film offers a glimpse behind the scenes of “how the flow of goods moves through the world, from not just production and consumption but all of the in-betweens.”
Through both China Residencies and “Commodity City,” Simon-Kennedy hopes to alter people’s misconceptions about China. “A lot of people outside of China have a very misconstrued idea of how things actually are over there. There’s a lot of talk on the news that China’s either taking over the world or a really backwards, terrible place,” she says, “but in fact, you know, it’s just–a place”–complicated, with a different reality that’s good and bad, just like any other.
China Residencies started as a side project that Simon-Kennedy began with her friend, Crystal Bell. After Crystal passed away from cancer in 2014, Simon-Kennedy decided to continue and expand the project. Right around that time, she received a LinkedIn message directed at Penn alumni who were executives in nonprofits, which, as she put it, was “technically my title at this side project.” The message was “very well timed”: Simon-Kennedy already knew some things about the art world, but didn’t have as much experience with the day-to-day workings of a nonprofit. “We didn’t have a five year plan, we didn’t have any kind of official board relations, we didn’t think of it in terms of a business that had a marketing side, and a staff side, and a financial planning [side]…We were getting money and giving it to the artists directly, which was great, but there was never any plan to stand on more solid ground, and so the program was really the first time that we thought about all of that,” she said. It helped Simon-Kennedy learn to integrate a wider variety of skills: she understands now how to use tools from the business sector and “infuse them” with the ethics of a nonprofit.