By Doug Noonan
A few weeks ago, I was in a fantastic conversation where someone posed a thought experiment: what would our system look like if there were no money at all in it? What resources would be there, what activities, etc.?’ This wasn’t an invitation to imagine a currency-less future, but rather a call to think of the arts world absent the influence of external money.
I invited 3 experts and leaders in the field to respond to this thought experiment. We have a sage, a scholar, and a champion. (You can decide who is who.) Their short replies to this prompt are below. Enjoy the diverse thoughts! And thanks to these great minds for playing along!
Terence McDonnell. Henkels Family College Professor of Sociology, Department of Sociology, University of Notre Dame.
Much of the American arts system is organized around money. Commercial enterprises (like record companies) chase profit. Non-profits (like symphony orchestras) rely on donations, hoping “white knights” arrive with blank checks—even as their audiences dwindle.
At an engaging conversation put on by CultureSource and Doris Duke, I offered a provocative thought experiment: what if the arts didn’t have money? What would artmaking look like then?
The financial threats facing the arts are real—and severe. But they’re also part of a longer trajectory of collapsing support. Even before debates about defunding the NEA or dismantling the NEH, both for-profit and non-profit cultural sectors faced crisis (McDonnell and Tepper 2014).
Imagining a world without money forces us to rethink what we value. It can free us to ask: how has centering money highlighted certain aspects of artmaking—and what have we neglected? Without financial support we focus on the survival of the arts, but could we think about thriving instead?
Art without money is amateurism.
Even in a world without funding, people would still make art. The word “amateur” derives from amare—to love. Amateurs create not for gain, but out of passion. Yet as Bill Ivey (2008: XV) argues, amateur art making is in decline in the U.S. How we think about “arts participation” over-emphasizes audience and consumption rather than amateur production (Tepper and Ivey 2008).
The non-profit arts model, for a time inspired Americans to pick up instruments and paintbrushes, but as the arts are increasingly linked with excellence these systems suppress amateur art production (Bryan-Wilson and Piekut 2020; Singerman 1999). A hierarchical arts infrastructure centers elite professional artists and institutions—Broadway theaters, museum galleries, prestigious MFA programs. The more we invest in excellence, the more everyday artmaking is pushed aside. The result? The arts are increasingly seen as irrelevant (Ostrower 2020).
As we’ve invested in excellence, everyday artmaking dies on the vine. Schools are still vital for artistic development, but many turn to other pursuits when they don’t see a viable career path. Without opportunities to continue creating for pleasure, their engagement often ends when the classes do.
Without money, the arts could foster a more robust peer infrastructure to support amateurs, especially adults. Local jamming groups, church choirs, ethnic clubs, and university a cappella ensembles all support the creation of music, not for financial gain, but for the sake of community and the love of playing and singing. Participants encourage one another to improve, learning from each other. These once robust communities of practice need bolstering to grow their skills and encourage amateurs to share their talents with the community.
While we have increasingly inclusive access to creative tools for amateur production (e.g., GarageBand on every Apple device and “how to” YouTube videos), those technologies are worthless without communities of practice. We need robust communities where people share their work, seeking feedback and support outside a market logic.
Such commitment of people’s skills and time would be high, but they would also gain value–feeling part of something bigger than themselves, gaining mastery by teaching, and pushing each other creatively. As people create art for others and themselves, rather than for financial gain, artmaking turns local. The sociological effects of the arts–shared meaning, connectedness through ritual, voice and creative expression–emerge from social commitments.
The question of how amateur arts participation is related to attendance “remains as essential as ever” (Novak-Leonard and Brown 2011: 18). I suspect that the collapse of art consumption may be due to declining amateurism. Theater people go to theatre productions. Amateur artists visit galleries for inspiration. The more people engage in producing art, the more they will consume.
Steven Tepper and I have argued that we need “movements that build community and infrastructure to support creatives” – the Maker Movement offers a template for the mobilizing amateur artists. Makers harnessed the potential energy of individual garage tinkerers, creating platforms for creative exchange (e.g., Make magazine, Maker Faires, and Maker spaces). Makers established a community of practice that had clear value to participants, whom they invested in with their skills, energy, time, and creativity. Makers, too, brought professionals and amateurs into dialogue and co-practice, something Novak-Leonard and Brown (2011) advocate for as well.
What, then, is the arts equivalent to the Makers?
As non-profit arts organizations lose relevance and funding, we need new models (Ostrower 2020). Activating amateur artists—supporting their infrastructure, communities, and practices—may be the key not just to surviving, but to thriving in a new era of artmaking.
Claire Rice. Executive Director of Arts Alliance Illinois and Co-Chair of the Creative States Coalition.
Artists must be paid. Culture work is real work. Creative jobs help fuel our economy and we need meaningful workforce support. These mantras, as a professional arts advocate, are second nature.
But what if money didn’t exist in the world of arts and culture? What if no outside funding made the arts “happen”? My mind went to an example like Burning Man, a firm belief in self-expression and the deeply embedded ethos that “everyone is an artist.” There is no cash. Everyone brings what they need to survive and what they might share with others. Outrageous mid-desert performances and art installations exist based on the will of the community.
And yet, very wealthy people bring the components to create these art experiences. Tickets to Burning Man are over $500 per person, and to be able to survive the week, let alone create interesting art, participants spend thousands in preparation. So, even in this “cashless” art experience, money deeply infiltrates. As one artist put it when critiquing Burning Man: “Decommodification is for artists with day jobs,” Which goes back to my opening mantra of paying artists. Ideas about how Burning Man is living with these contradictions are outlined here, including recommendations for a universal basic income (which we know works incredibly well to support creative practice).
So, it’s hard to imagine spaces where money doesn’t somehow inevitably pollute the system. But what about a world without money? What happens then? You can’t stop artists from making. The creative impulse within all of us, though perhaps currently discouraged by many education systems and career pathways, will prevail. What if the possibility of creative work were driven primarily by this natural human impulse, or other non-financial drivers (love, anger, fear, connection, and other emotional ties)?
In this space, I imagine art making is characterized by mutual aid. Materials are shared across practices. Waste is far less, as the need for efficiency and reuse is far greater, so we reduce our negative environmental impact as a field. Blurred lines and continuums of practice become commonplace: masters train intermediate practitioners who train novices, with relationships connecting all parties. Disciplines lose rigidity and creatives go even further across boundaries.
Emily St. John Mandel’s popular novel Station 11 (and the accompanying HBO series) centers around the life-giving nature of a travelling theater when society has otherwise eroded. The mantra of the theater company is “survival is insufficient.” Might there be lessons to learn here in this moment of challenge for our field, about how we best honor the human impulse to create? How do we leverage this impulse to connect with those who don’t consider themselves a part of arts and culture in this country? What matters and what can we let go?
Bill Ivey. Writer, teacher, folklorist, and former Chair of the National Endowment for the Arts.
If outside money – government grants, foundation support, tax-deductible gifting – were removed from the US cultural system, negative effects would be serious but narrowly focused. The nonprofit sector will shrink at the margins. Small and small-town organizations dependent on federal money passed through state agencies will be especially vulnerable. Big city fine-arts majors will be okay, benefitting from endowments and long-established expertise marketing prestigious experiences in return for the donated wealth of financial and social elites.
Cultural institutions organized for profit will be unaffected. Movies, music production and distribution, live entertainment, art gallery sales, audio books, and streaming all seek investors, not funders. They ask government only for a supportive or passive legal and regulatory frame – a non-interfering regime that facilitates commercial activity.
Americans will still dedicate extraordinary amounts of money, time, and attention to the consumption of cultural content. And aspiring artists will work hard to become players in the cultural arena. Our social engagements with culture are intense, even profound, and we will still pursue the meaning of heritage and the magic of creative practice far beyond the boundaries of what has become known as “the nonprofit sector.”
If leaders believe that Americans have a right to the benefits of an open and vibrant cultural field, we must shift our policy focus away from funding toward the development of a legal and regulatory framework that tilts all artistic pursuit – commercial and nonprofit – toward public purposes. That means addressing copyright, historical literacy, AI research, the cost of live performance, global corporate power, the movement of art and artists across borders, internships and mentoring, intellectual property, licensing. Can nonprofit advocates who have over many decades reduced both message and programing to questions of “more money” somehow recalibrate, advancing policies shaping the entire cultural field?
Can anything good come from the loss of outside funding? Yes. Withdrawal of money tells us support has flagged, an argument failed. This truth offers an opportunity to rethink tactics and objectives. If government and philanthropic wealth are partners in cultural vitality, what will that relationship look like?
And nonprofits will at last be freed from the obligation to pretzel first-rate arts projects into a claim that the arts will advance social justice, rehabilitate youth, reconstruct cities, or mitigate the ravages of war. In itself that is no small thing.