Thomson on the Independent Arts Collaborative: will it quash independent arts?

by Bill Davenport July 25, 2011

Culturemap’s Steven Thomson questions whether the upscaling and combining of several of Houston’s important arts orgs into the new Independent Arts Collaborative building, now in the planning stages for a Main St site in Midtown, will slam the door on the many low-budget groups that use the orgs’ spaces on a part time basis. Of course it will, but the process, codified in my 2007  blog on “Org Ecology,” is natural, and inevitable. “Nonprofit organizations are like sharks- they’ve got to keep swimming or they’ll die,” I said, and so it goes: smaller, poorer, fringier orgs will occupy the former tawdry spaces the majors (now they’re “majors”) are abandoning, and life will go on . . .

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Gina Stevens July 26, 2011 - 09:47

Maybe you’ve misunderstood the goals and design of the IAC? “Upscaling” isn’t exactly the right word— collaborating is more like it. What if there was a place were the “smaller, poorer, fringier orgs” could collaborate and present without roaches and high rents? Would you feel they were selling out because they weren’t suffering enough? I suggest you do a little more research on the design and organizational structure of the new venue. Oh, and, I’ll see you there in a few years. It’s going to be great!

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