As experts, reporters, and the public weigh-in on the factors threatening the financial stability of the arts and culture industry, small arts organizations across Chicago are exploring sustainable futures for artists, administrators, and the communities they serve. Innovating new models for pay equity and share of labor, five non-profits based in Chicago—2nd Story (Albany Park), Roman Susan (Rogers Park), ACRE (Pilsen), Synapse Arts (Rogers Park/Edgewater), and Threewalls (Loop)—give examples of how small arts organizations are reimagining traditional ways of working in the arts by prioritizing and democratizing artistic labor, while building infrastructures for future generations of arts workers to thrive.
Ellen Placey Wadey, Program Director for Arts & Collections at the Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation, says: “The perception may be that small arts organizations can’t participate in the movement to increase pay equity because of their size. The exact opposite is true. Because of their size, small arts organizations can quickly innovate and test models for providing better resources to arts workers. They may not be able to solve the issue on their own, but they’re used to working together to make big things happen.”
Placey Wadey adds, “The Chicago arts scene—from theater to visual arts to dance to music—has a breadth and depth of creative voices that many cities envy and few can rival. Chicago’s small arts organizations produce their amazing work in every neighborhood in the city. Sometimes we forget how lucky we are to live in a place that offers so many excellent creative choices.”
Industry-wide discussions about the financial future of the arts and culture industry in Chicago have focused on issues ranging from Box Office sales, to government and private funding, to the type of content that will attract audiences back to cultural venues post-pandemic.
Nimble and collaborative, these small arts organizations offer examples of how their labor and pay models have changed since the shutdown; how they are addressing sustainability and thinking about building infrastructures for future generations of artists; and how they are sharing their work with their communities, revealing three broad trends:
Organizations have internalized learnings from the pandemic and are caring for arts workers in a more holistic way:
· 2nd Story, the roving storytelling company now in its 25th year, is producing roughly one third of the events they did prior to March of 2020, from over 35 performances, workshops, and conversations to about a dozen engagements each year. “There was a lack of sustainability. We were doing that many shows, but man, it was tough,” said 2ndStory Artistic Director Amanda Delheimer. The reduction in production costs allows 2ndStory to pay artists more equitably, “so that a career in the arts really feels like a viable choice,” adds Delheimer. Since the pandemic, 2ndStory has become a city-wide leader in pay equity standards. In August 2020, 2ndStory launched The Leap to 15 campaign, a multi-year campaign to increase all artist stipends to a minimum of $15 per hour. As of this season, artist stipends have been raised to a minimum of $20 per hour, with plans to grow to a minimum of $25 per hour by August 2025. In 2022, 2ndStory proudly became certified by the Pay Equity Standards, a system to establish and publicly recognize equitable pay practices within theatre companies, arts organizations, and non-profits.
· “During the shutdown, we had to start asking the tough questions: what do we actually have capacity for, and what do we already have here that we can use?” said Kate Bowen, Executive Director of ACRE, a Chicago-based non-profit which operates an artist residency program out of a rural farm in Southwest Wisconsin. During the pandemic, ACRE reduced the number of artists they host in each residency session, expanded their program timelines to be more inclusive and accessible, and shifted the nature of their work to center slowness and intentionality and tend to the needs of the people who are rarely given priority. “Community model-making–and breaking–is part of the artistic practice of ACRE,” she adds. By shifting from “outputs to outcomes,” ACRE’s refined operational and financial systems have allowed them to double the number of full-time staff from 2018 to 2023, add paid seasonal employees, and rely less on volunteer support.
· Threewalls relinquished their bricks-and-mortar gallery space during the pandemic to practice the “people over property” mindset. “Without taking on the financial responsibility of a building, we can attend to not just the labor of artists and creatives but also arts workers and their wellness,” says Jeffreen Hayes, Threewalls Executive Director. Threewalls re-allocated funds to artists and new programs, such as the Culture of Care virtual wellness series, which continues to be offered as a virtual program to hold space for disabled artists and creatives who are not able to attend in-person events. As part of their move to pay artists and creatives a fair or living wage, Theewalls also created a Wellness Circle for their fellowship programs, in which industry consultants—licensed counselors, wellness and professional coaches, financial coaches, digital coaches, access and disability consultants, and virtual programming coaches—offer various consulting services with no cost to the fellows.
· At dance theater companySynapse Arts, all staff are part-time and paid the same rate, offering flexibility for caregivers, people with kids, or chronic illness. “Modular” casting and performance schedules allow artists to select only rehearsals and performances that they can attend, with flexibility to sub for one another as needed. “The shutdown did a good job disrupting our workaholism, and that was a very valuable lesson,” says Synapse Arts Director Rachel Damon. “We were on burnout cycle before, but the shutdown allowed us to turn toward the human aspect of the organization—understanding that we are all whole people who have complex lives. That equity has contributed to staff retention and starts to build a trust where everybody can contribute their opinion and feel like they’re helping to steer the organization,” Damon says.
· Roman Susan, an artist-run non-profit in Rogers Park serving artists and new curatorial voices from the Great Lakes region, pays all artists for their work, with growing stipends each year. Their artist honorariums are publicized and made public through open proposals for artists. Roman Susan is one of the five Chicago organizations who are W.A.G.E. Certified, a national program that publicly recognizes non-profit organizations demonstrating a history of, and commitment to, voluntarily paying artist fees that meet W.A.G.E.’s minimum payment standards.
Organizations are making decisions together:
· 2nd Story launched The Rising Tide Project, a multi-year project rooted in creating a framework to achieve pay equity, with three major components: a cohort model where they engage other arts organizations, such as ACRE, in ongoing conversations to support their development of policies and practices around arts worker care; conversations and workshops that are open to the public, called Radical Imagination Town Halls, where the community can discuss different aspects of arts worker care; and internal budgeting and forecasting that allows 2nd Story artists and administrators to collaborate towards creating an organization where artists and arts administrators can thrive, and not just survive.
· Synapse Artsmoved to a shared leadership model, splitting administrative and programming duties between two co-directors that focus on respective areas of expertise. The co-director model has allowed Synapse Arts to expand their programming, nearly doubling the number of weekly programs they offer to their communities.
- ACRE practices a participatory leadership structure, ensuring stewardship of their programs by inviting participants to become key decision-makers for the organization cultivating leadership from within the ACRE community. Every artist who has participated in the residency is invited to return as a staff mentor, serve on a committee, and ultimately make decisions about the organization. To support this community-driven model, ACRE hosts learning workshops for artists where they share key information about the organization’s finances and operations, and learn about effective communication, governance, operational culture, and consensus-based decision making. These planning workshops have been vital to equip artists with valuable skills in and outside of ACRE’s programs, as well as guiding the future work of the organization as a collective of diverse voices.
Organizations are sharing new models and resources:
· Threewalls offers free information sessions and one-on-one conversations to mentor local artists about pay equity, wellness, and the nuances of artistic labor. These programs “remind artists and creatives that they deserve to be paid equitably and that their labor to make a thing or program or engagement is just that: labor,” says Hayes. The policy will be shared in early 2024 through a number of convenings throughout the field.
· ACRE is sharing the resources of the residency with other artist run non-profit organizations, such as WILD YAMS and Bulk Space, who use ACRE’s space to supplement and expand their program offerings or to support their organizational development with space and time for rest, relationship building, and strategic planning.ACRE also added a program called Chicago Arts Census, which collects data about the living and working conditions of arts workers in the Chicagoland area and allows ACRE to share learnings with their broader network about new models for pay equity and caring for artists in their own communities.
