The Weir: Why reforming funding systems and improving artist capacity aren’t enough
The arts and culture apparatus in the U.S. is evolving slowly. Structural experiments, like a movement for the state of Colorado to implement the “A-Corp,” a new kind of corporate status for artists, being one exciting innovation. There are a number of excellent consultants who are helping arts organizations with art-centered data collection, measuring the difference that their work makes in the world, so they can argue more effectively for the value of their work.
For individual artists, Fractured Atlas and Creative Capital have long been solid resources for building the administrative and business sides of their careers, offering guides to help artists write stronger grant applications, better document and archive their work, and articulate themselves with increasing clarity. These resources are updated regularly to adapt to changing technologies and practices.
On the side of institutions and foundations, innovation is less transparent. While there is lip service paid to better grantmaking that will redistribute access to opportunity and reduce administrative friction, I believe applications can still be clearer, processes less extractive, and the relevant human relationships set up to be more durable. Trust-based philanthropy is supposedly making slow inroads into foundations that serve arts and culture sectors, but I have not personally seen that in my own practice helping artists and artist-run organizations over the past dozen years.
The A-Corp and the concept of trust-based philanthropy do give me hope, though. It is also good when artists build skills like explanatory writing and spreadsheet fluency. But I have yet to see anything that alters the basic economic, social, or political frameworks that coexist with, and press uncomfortably upon, the lives of artists.
Grantmaking can support time-limited projects or provide temporary fellowships. It can resource organizations through project grants or general operating support. Artist skill-building can improve navigation within these systems, but none of this automatically produces ongoing livelihood, stabilizes income, or supplies healthcare.
In fact, for many artists, income instability, healthcare insecurity, and administrative burden compound one another and intrude on creative work. Income for individual artists and most artist-led nonprofits remains intermittent and insufficient, as project funding does not resolve ongoing livelihood. Healthcare in the United States is largely tied to employment, which the arts sector does not consistently provide, leaving artists to patch together coverage through unrelated jobs or public programs. Some simply go without health insurance altogether, as do many Americans.
Although meaningful improvements remain possible, unresolved conditions accumulate just beyond the reach of institutional change. It is my ardent desire for a movement composed of individual artists, arts and culture organizations, and philanthropies to advocate for universal healthcare and universal basic income in the U.S. I want to see this vibrant cohort play a bigger, more generous, and longer game that will radically shift how we understand not only artistic labor but other forms of necessary work that are un- or underpaid. The problems the arts face are not limited to our field alone.
This is a multigenerational project. I don’t expect to see UBI and UH in my lifetime—but these are things worth pushing for, raising our voices for, and creating images, messages, and campaigns for. Artists are talented in certain ways, but we are not special. We have the same basic human needs as anyone else, and in our country, those needs are not being met for a huge swath of citizens. Additionally, art and culture are relational. We don’t just need to support artists; we need to support audiences as well.