Bamrick, Tierney Anne

Description

Minority-led nonprofit organizations are marginalized in the United States arts sector, analyses of which rely heavily on data from dominant, often White-led institutional arts organizations. This study seeks to understand the experience of a minority-led arts organization in that context. I ask, what does artistic practice both creative and organizational look like for this organization? And what are the implications of that practice for the arts sector more broadly? Drawing on over a year of ethnographic work with The Network, a Black-led arts organization in a southern U.S. city, I argue that their asset-focused treatment of place, their value-centric approach to solving organizational problems, and their nuanced philosophy of art show significant differences from dominant sectoral paradigms. The organization consistently prioritizes audience connection and the needs of Black artists, and, in honoring those priorities, it rejects or remakes dominant art sector philosophies and approaches. That this rejection is necessary to establish and hold a space of Black creative freedom suggests a significant distance between dominant arts sector paradigms and the needs and experiences of non-dominant groups. I end this paper by reflecting on the need for ethnographic work in the nonprofit arts sector, calling on scholars and practitioners to undertake corrective work to center the voices, knowledges, and experiences of minority-led arts organizations and pointing to Hunter and Robinsons (2018) Chocolate Cities as a valuable frame through which to do so.

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