Working
With Artists
Tips for Municipalities, Agencies and Cultural Institutions
Just as artists need to acknowledge the timelines and working processes of municipalities, agencies and other large institutions, these institutions also need to acknowledge the needs of artists and the challenges they face when leading community-engaged projects. Here is some advice for agencies, municipalities, museums and other large institutions who want to partner with artists.
1. Lend all of your institutional muscle
If you work for a large institution or bureaucracy, you may have a very clearly defined job description. There are tasks that you are responsible for, and others that you can call on colleagues to perform. You know who to answer to, and who to turn to when looking for direction. Artists who work in and with communities, on the other hand, have enormous and fluid job descriptions. Even if they have an artistic team or volunteers, chances are that they are working simultaneously on project planning, outreach, permits and insurance, transportation, food, community relations, supplies and equipment, facilitation and training—let alone the artmaking itself. This is why a partnership with a large institution can make a world of difference to artists, particularly if you wholeheartedly lend them your institutional muscle. Even if you can’t procure cash funds for a project, there are likely a wealth of in-kind resources that you can contribute to a project. You might help an artist navigate a complex permitting process, offer storage space for supplies in a park or nearby, use your institutions’ wide social media reach to publicize events or lean on your network of volunteers to lend a hand. Remember that you have a large machine behind you, and offer as much as you can to artists working on the ground.
2. Consider different forms of partnership
If there are barriers to developing a formal partnership with an artist or arts company, consider an informal partnership. There are lots of ways that your institution can be supportive behind the scenes. Alternatively, it may be valuable to an artist to have your partnership in name only, so they can leverage the credibility of your organization, even if you can’t offer much in the way of resources. Ask artists what would be useful to them and try your best to flexibly offer that.
3. Recognize different ways of working
Finally, it’s important for partners from large organizations to recognize that their way of working is likely very different from that of an artist or small arts company. Not only are artists wearing many hats when they take on community-engaged projects, but they are stretched financially, may be working multiple jobs, and are trained to respond organically to ideas and materials. What an artist has written in a project description is never exactly what will take place on the ground and this is especially true if artists are genuinely co-creating with community members. While changes in plans and organic new ideas may be a source of anxiety or frustration for you as an institutional partner, try to see this flexibility and responsiveness as part of the power of artmaking. If you can respect and value the fact that artists work differently than you do, your partnerships are likely to be a source of learning for everyone.
4. Know your strengths, recognize their strengths
The beauty of partnering to co-produce a project is that partners can each bring their respective expertise and learn from each other through the process. In our post-project interviews for Welcome to This Place, lead artists reflected on what they would do differently next time. Sharon Kallis, from EartHand Gleaners Society, told us: “If I was going to work specifically with newcomers again I would look outside my usual pool of candidates. I would find somebody who had a different skill set to bring people out and I would partner them with someone with the hand skills. Seasonal awareness and plant knowledge are already a huge body of knowledge and I realized that my young artists don’t have some of the newcomer outreach skills. If I was to take on something like this again, I would go back to Adriann at the YMCA and say ‘let’s co-develop this—here’s our strength, here’s your strength’.”
5. Credit the artists
It’s important that artists are credited for their work, including in any photography or resulting documentation. Artists rely on public acknowledgement to fuel their careers and will be sensitive to this issue. Consider including details on how artists, photographers and videographers will be credited as part of any written agreement.
