E.4 Membership, growth and openness of AC

Membership

On a conceptual level, membership to Arts Collaboratory network is open and voluntary. It is built on common affinities and sensibilities of working together. But considering the social and historical transition of AC from a funding-based network to a self-organizing one, financial issues continue to influence the life course of AC in general and its members in particular.

As far as the sustainability of AC is concerned, there is a deep interrelation between its sustenance and is linked to the core being of each organisation and therefore its sustainability is linked to the sustainability of each separate organisation. However, for specific activities like assembly, fundraising processes will be developed. There is a list of contacts that are interested in Arts Collaboratory and that have expressed the will to further research collaboration. This list will be expanded over the coming years. Also, the founding partner Hivos is researching the possibility of continuing support to AC especially in developing new collective ways of obtaining financing.

It is worth stressing that if organisations reach self-sustainability before the 5 year period, they will subscribe to self-limitation, but will continue to receive financing for AC activities (Collective Pot). Also it needs to be stressed that discontinuation of financial support to any organisation within the network is by no means equal to exclusion from the network.

Openness and growth

An important ethical principle of Arts Collaboratory is being open and relevant to both its local networks, publics and societies and towards the translocal community. This openness is enacted in two ways:

• The first is that openness and growth are considered horizontally. This means that the principle is not that AC itself will grow bigger and bigger, but that its reach and participation grow bigger by actively opening up to the broader local and international networks, publics, in short the constituents of each individual organisation. The growth of AC in terms of quality and scope is parallel to a snowball effect. Affinity is continuously formed by the members as they continue to bring in the diversity of practices, knowledge and desires from their community settings. The way each organisation does this is part of the sustainability plan. But also, for example, an important element of Banga meetings is that other organisations and individuals are invited to join and many will be organized to establish study and debate with wider local constituencies. Note: For AC members, growth doesn't mean becoming a huge organization that manages big programs and budgets, but growing downwards as we give back tools to our contexts, giving space for others to break our own paradigms. In that sense we grow and walk together with our struggles.

• The second one is gradual growth of membership. The openness of Arts Collaboratory will be maintained by accepting maximum 1 new member every year. These members will be brought in via the new project funds that DOEN provides for financially supporting socially engaged art organisation’s mid-size projects (8 projects per year, between 15,000 euros and 60,000 euros). This fund is currently part of Arts Collaboratory. The proposal is that DOEN maintains this program and runs it independently, but part of Arts Collaboratory so that this field of work is continuously supported. DOEN has better capacity to run this programme then AC. However there will be an intimate link between the programme and AC: Arts Collaboratory members will support DOEN in the administration and workload of its selection procedure and AC will select its new members out of the pool of selected projects in this fund. New members will be decided in the Assembly.

Unresolved Question:

What will the process be for integrating the new organizations into the AC ecosystem as it relates to the institutional funding, the collective pot and collective savings?

Should future growth of the ecosystem be collectively considered in the assembly?

Should DOEN still runs a separate AC grant program, and if so is it integrated into the AC ecosystem? If it is discontinued then is it contrary to the principle of openness?