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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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!