Director’s Note

What do we mean when we talk about the arts economy?

When I took my one year old for his first blood test, we found ourselves sitting in a waiting room that had an incredible mural with tons of great animals. It was the perfect thing to distract us and it helped calm my anxieties around how he’d react to a needle. It’s easy to take something like this for granted, but I know, from my own work, how difficult it can be to get artwork into spaces like hospitals and how many people are involved in the process. It’s not just an individual artist, but an entire community that makes that happen. 

At TASC we think of this collective community as the key members of the arts ecosystem. Building the arts economy is the core of our mission and acts as our guiding light as we pursue client or collaborative projects and create our own. In our work, building the arts economy specifically refers to creating economic growth for the people, businesses, and organizations that make up the arts ecosystem. But what does that actually look like in practice?

It's important to define who we include in the arts ecosystem. At the core, the ecosystem is artists and arts workers—art handlers, curators, framers, arts writers, gallery attendants, and administrators alike. When you branch out to arts businesses or institutions, you’ll find all of the supporting roles, like the people keeping the books, marketing events, or archiving work. Further out are the art supporters—the audiences, collectors, foundations, and other entities that appreciate and engage with the ecosystem.

From a financial perspective, the arts ecosystem is an underpaid field with the majority of workers operating in the gig economy—even when they have full time jobs. Factor in the inequitable conditions that exist across sectors, and it paints a pretty abysmal portrait of life in the arts, particularly for folks who are not cis hetero white men or affluent. 

Through our work, we are finding ways to build this arts economy and do so equitably. We’ve focused on paying everyone (a novel concept in the arts) and paying as well as we can. In our spare time, we are working to set better wage minimums for work in the arts. We build in ways to pay artists for proposals, exhibitions, and consulting work. We provide time for mentorship (check out some examples in our last issue of the Journal) and incorporate emerging artists and early-career arts workers into our projects. When we need to engage outside vendors and subcontractors, we prioritize working with independent arts contractors or small businesses that provide the services we need, e.g. printing or framing at local shops instead of large corporate retailers. If we’re designing a publication or planning an event for a client, we consider how we can incorporate artists or arts workers into every phase of the project. 

At this point in our journey, we have paid nearly $700,000 into the local arts economy in the Pittsburgh region. We can’t wait to hit the million dollar mark—and beyond. If you’re invested in the concept of shopping local and understand the benefits of doing so, the idea of supporting your local arts economy is not a far leap. Using your resources to support the local arts economy enables it to not only sustain itself, but ideally to grow. Because we all benefit from a thriving arts ecosystem. Whether you enjoy attending an exhibit, purchasing a clever greeting card, seeing a mural on your block, or simply finding something nice to look at in the hospital waiting room—we encourage you to consider all the people needed to make that happen and to nurture that community.