Category: Resource Sharing
After many years of working in non-profits, dabbling in grassroots and institutional fundraising, it is safe to say that organizations are heavily reliant on major donors or foundations to keep their programs running. We reach up, seeking the perfect foundation “match” or network so we can convince someone we know with connections to make us a grant. It is a system that arose during the 1970s with the proliferation of non-profits at the same time as large wealth creation and conservative governmental control of this country.
What is OurGoods? OurGoods is a network of artists, designers, and cultural producers who want to barter skills, spaces, and objects. OurGoods is a place where you have the agency to decide what your obects and services are worth. OutGoods is an infrastructure for mutualism.
How does it work? OurGoods facilitates the barter of skills, spaces and art objects. Organize your projects with what you have and what you need. OurGoods marches you with barter partners, tracks accountability, and helps the business of independent work. You can find collaborators, see emerging interests, or just execute your project without cash.
The beginning and the ending of my project Daytoday have been marked by two major economic crises. From the end of 2001 through the beginning of 2002, Argentina suffered from the culmination of the country’s financial decadence that started in 1998. Suddenly there was no cash flow. Argentineans had to resort to all kinds of imaginative strategies to make their “day to day” possible. A strong national barter network (based on local and community nodes) sprouted. This showed the rest of the world that grassroots collaborative efforts can generate autonomous solutions that benefit and dignify an entire population.
We’ve managed, in the last ten years, to help build an emerging field and stuff the CAN site with more than 10,000 pages of news, critical writing, profiles, case studies, dialogues, field reports and interactivity—all on $100,000 a year. And we were even able to pay freelance writers, something that is rare in the arts and on the web. This was only possible if we left California and its ludicrously sky-high cost of living, and moved to North Carolina, where we inhabit in a cozy singlewide mobile home and a yurt on twenty-eight wild and glorious acres of woodland with wireless broadband.
Recent Articles
- ART WORK at Carnegie Mellon University’s Miller Gallery, Feb. 1-28
- ABC No Rio, NY, Discussion, February 18th
- Money! Money! Money!, February 12th, Sprout Spaghetti Dinners
- Art Work Discussion, MCAC, Bloomington/Normal, IL
- Art Work in Grand Rapids, Michigan
- Art Work at Gallery 400, Chicago
- Art Work at Conduit Gallery, Dallas
- Intermedia Porch Gallery & Public Space One, Iowa City
- Personal Economy #16
- Events in Austin (Jan. 22) and Houston (Jan. 23 & 24)
Money! Money! Money!, February 12th, Sprout Spaghetti Dinners
Copies of the newspaper will be available at the is event.
Many thanks to Rebecca Uchill for making this happen!
You’re invited to
Money! Money! Money!
a sprout spaghetti dinner
Sprout spaghetti dinners is a dinner theater series seeking to bring people from the Somerville and Cambridge communities together around good food, good music, and good performance. Each month, we’ll find an eclectic group of performers to explore the month’s theme through different lenses. In the tradition of dinners hosted by NYC-based theater company Great Small Works, we want to cast new light on common ideas from artistic, musical, and scientific perspectives. You can
find information about past dinners at our blog.
The theme for this month’s dinner is Money! Money! Money! It will be happening just outside of Davis Square at sprout (339R Summer St.) on Wednesday February 17 with dinner at 7:30pm and performances beginning at 8. $10 suggested donation. The spaghetti will be prepared by Food not Bombs, and our performers will include ::
- Local musicians Jon Hersh and Kathy Fletcher playing a set of old-time tunes on banjo, fiddle, and voice.
- Frank Ackerman, a research scientist at Tufts, speaks about the economics of global climate change, addressing the question, “Does it make economic sense for us to try to fight global warming?”
- Shauna Gordon-McKeon, a researcher in the field of moral psychology, will perform and discuss experiments in social psychology and behavioral economics looking at how money affects our decision-making processes.
- Liz Hall and Casey Engels of Artists in Context will present The Fundred Dollar Bill Project, a nation-wide drawing project started by artist Mel Chin. Audience members will contribute to the project by designing their own “fundred” dollar bills to help raise money and awareness to begin clean-up efforts of lead-contaminated soil in New Orleans.
- Community members will also share personal monologues responding to the prompt “Literally, money represents gold or silver; socially, it is a status symbol; personally, it might mean everything from success to security to selling-out. What has money meant for you?”
Please send any questions to spaghetti@thesprouts.org or call
617.575.9219.
339R Summer St.
Davis Square
Somerville, MA 02144
About
Art Work is a newspaper and accompanying website that consists of writings and images from artists, activists, writers, critics, and others on the topic of working within depressed economies and how that impacts artistic process, compensation and artistic property. The newspaper is distributed for free at sites and from people throughout the United States and Puerto Rico. It is also available by mail order from Half Letter Press for the cost of postage.
Distribution
Art Work is being distributed throughout the 50 United States and Puerto Rico (among other locations). To find a hard copy of Art Work near you, please read on.
Major support for SPACES is provided by The Cleveland Foundation; Cuyahoga Arts and Culture; The George Gund Foundation; Donna and Stewart Kohl; Kulas Foundation; Toby Devan Lewis; National Endowment for the Arts; Nimoy Foundation; and the Ohio Arts Council.
Art Work is partly funded by Lauren Rich Fine & Gary Giller and the John P. Murphy Foundation.