Communities: Standing Outside Together
Several communities are emerging in alternative environments in response to the sector’s lack of diversity. In the cross-field between art and activism, groups are working to promote better representation and inclusion in the artistic public from which they feel excluded. The collective practices and loose structures provide freedom and autonomy, but also create insecurity and precarious conditions.
The approach of these groups is often different from that of large institutions, which are also rethinking their own practices and correcting structures in order to contribute to increased diversity, equality and inclusion within their own institutional frameworks.
The price of freedom
The new ways of organising can also be seen as a result of changing economic conditions in the art world, which call for new ways of financing artistic practice. The communities are thus a mixture of both desire and need, and are quite often temporary.
However, they also provide an opportunity to break free from existing structures and try out alternative forms of expression and practice. Often these communities go hand in hand with the ambition to achieve greater artistic diversity and solidarity-based organisation, but due to a lack of ongoing support they may operate under precarious conditions, and the community can risk becoming laborious in the long run.
The signals point to a future that is more equable and characterised by diversity. The question is whether, and to what extent, the various agendas can in the future come together in a common understanding across practices and institutional frameworks? And whether alliances between small and nomadic platforms and larger institutions can lead to benefits and continuity for more of them?
