Developing a pricing strategy in the arts requires as much art as it does arithmetic. And both parts are equally important. After all, the value of a creator’s work isn’t in the cost of the raw materials. It is in the experience, the expertise, and the skill added to those raw materials. And it is in the feelings, emotions, and experiences that affect the reader, or the viewer, or the audience member. But there is no math formula for that. There is no explicit mark-up percentage that captures emotion. It is subjective. So, I’m giving you permission to ignore math—not forever, and not completely, but just for a bit while we talk about a pricing framework to capture more than just the math.

The Dance/NYC Junior Committee (JComm for short) is a group of dancers, arts administrators, and advocates that includes emerging leaders from the field working to create positive change in the New York City dance and artist community through research, activism, and community support. Through this challenging time, JComm has been a community I could rely on for support and comfort. As “social distancing” became an increasingly common theme among social media feeds, the news, and even my favorite podcasts, I was concerned and disappointed that I wouldn’t be able to feel connected or stay close to this dear group during a time of panic. 

As we turned the corner into 2020, the Americans for the Arts staff put our heads together to come up with 10 big trends that we think are worth paying attention to this year. Together, these ten trends will inform Americans for the Arts’ next strategic planning process, which will occur this year to drive our work from 2021 to 2023. Some of them you’ll surely already know about—it is an election year, after all! But others may surprise you. From demographics to climate change to the creative economy and more, take a read and let us know what you think—what resonates most with you? What is top of your mind that is missing here? And what are you planning to do to prepare? 

For systemic change to take place, anti-oppression work compels us to examine our organizational core values and how they’re manifest in our processes, in order to critically identify where there are gaps to be filled. These gaps are then addressed by examining how we’re allocating our time, resources, and power to build our staff, board, communities, and audiences. More significantly, anti-oppression work requires us to fill these gaps through staffing, curatorial, and artistic choices that advance inclusivity and representation in order to address racial injustices. Anti-oppression work looks like a life-long commitment to equity, diversity, and inclusion; it is a continuous process of active learning in which artists and arts leaders pursue change, while leaving a map for those who are doing the work with us, to ensure that this work is sustained and remains constant.

As a queer, North Korean immigrant whose family has been displaced from our native land for three generations, Andrea Smith’s framework of the “Heteropatriarchy and Three Pillars of White Supremacy” helped me understand how my own experiences as a perpetual Other (and potential “terrorist threat” from the Axis of Evil) is connected to a larger system of white supremacy. Therefore, to fully pursue our company’s artistic mission of creating a culture of peace and nonviolence, I searched for ways to align our company’s work with ongoing efforts to attain racial justice, while decolonizing my practice within arts and cultural institutions. But how does this framework become activated into something practical and real? How does one create cultural change? How do I affirm my relationships to others, to the land I stand upon, and honor my interdependence with our collective struggles? 

In the small city of Akron, Ohio, a group of artists organize as VIBE Collective. We are “a network of Northeast Ohio artists in the intersection of art, culture, and education, who seek to create spaces for community transformation and healing.” Throughout the organizing of our network, a breadth of knowledge arose from us as ones who have worked alongside institutions in partnership. We’ve often been on the receiving end of challenging experiences with businesses and civic and cultural institutions in all forms and sizes, and from those experiences have been able to curate a list of ways to partner with community artists. Our hope is that you will pass this list along to your organizations, colleagues, and staff. Together, we can build a brighter future through the arts.