Invisible Spill: Expansive ambition, narrow vision

For this first essay in my series, Pouring Water into Boxes, I want to share an analysis of an application for an opportunity I recently encountered. It offers a clear example of how structural problems are embedded in the formats artists are routinely asked to navigate. This isn’t about calling anyone out; it’s about examining how opportunity is designed and what that reveals about how artistic work is understood and valued.

This particular opportunity, offered by a leading contemporary performance presenter in a major city and funded by a local foundation, provided two weeks of development in a professional theater. In-kind support included rehearsal space, technical equipment, staff, and the costs of a culminating public presentation.

The application guidelines specified an “Artist Fee” consisting of $4K to be developed into a project “budget” collaboratively with the presenter’s staff. The fee and the project budget were treated as interchangeable. Collapsing the two erases the distinction between paying a person for their labor and funding the delivery of a project.

Additionally, there was this instruction: “The resident artist must allocate at least $500 [of the $4,000] to artist fees i.e. we want you to pay yourself!” This places responsibility on the artist to pay themselves. It does not say we want to pay you a respectful fee for your labor. The exclamation mark adds emphasis, perhaps meant to encourage artists to eschew longstanding norms in which they use all available funds to realize projects while finding support for their own lives elsewhere. However, the instruction does not structurally correct that problem. It reproduces it.

In the economic context of a major U.S. city in 2026, $500 functions as a token gesture relative to two weeks of highly skilled work. In the performing arts, projects are often ensemble-based and resource-intensive; while an artist could theoretically allocate the full $4K budget to their own fee, the opportunity’s design clearly anticipates broader production demands.

Finally, there was the question: “How would your project impact the civic life of [City]?” Here, the applicant is being asked to take responsibility for producing civic impact through the work itself, at the level of the city. The magnitude of that expectation and the suggested support for artist fees (pay yourself $500!) do not align.

In our field, grand ambition is routinely poured into narrow forms of support. The “invisible spill” shows up when artists quietly subsidize projects with their own time, money, or precarity. It also appears when others never enter the system at all because they cannot afford to work under these conditions, and when outcomes fall short of the expansive civic and cultural claims made on their behalf.

For now, I’m not proposing solutions. I’m trying to make the structure visible. Until we can see how responsibility, ambition, and support are currently misaligned, it’s hard to have an actionable conversation about our futures.