Arts after Covid: Lara Thoms on a collaborative vision for the future

Some of us are finding strength and hope from working digitally with people outside of the arts.

Some of us have brought together groups of artists to lean on each other and gather beyond the neoliberal expectations of outcomes.

Some of us are using this time to find more rigorous forms of self-advocacy.

We are noticing the soft power of salaried arts workers.

That we were atomized before Covid and now face further isolation.

Every project needs others and we have power to pause, lift up, step up, hold up, lean in on each other.

We are remembering the social function of performance spaces.

We are considering a responsibility to our community vs. our personal mental load.

We want to reduce managerial fuckery

– Stop cutting us with your paper.

Don’t assume we are working the same hours as you with the same methodologies.

We want to walk alongside you. We also want to be paid for our time.

We want advocacy groups to see the gaps.

To advocate harder for independent artists and precarious workers.

To support those on the edges of form, discipline and working.

To tell organisations to do better.

We want to decolonise our working spaces and be led by First Nations voices.

We want you to use our dream contracts and our terms of engagement.

We want to present past works and adjust for new contexts.

We want to see artists in leadership roles and controlling the money.

We want more investment in research and to experiment with mobility.

We are looking to Queerer, more feminist shared leadership models.

For community doulas to support us through artistic tensions.

To dissolve borders.

Towards making an organisation a political act.