The minimum viable arts venture

What if every increase in arts organization size and complexity needed a reason?

“In anything at all, perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away…”
—Antoine de St. Exupéry, from Wind, Sand and Stars

I’ve written about the rise of the nonprofit arts enterprise – fueled by historic growth in wealth, labor, and learning – that led us to equate growth with success. And I’ve also suggested often that any such growth comes at an unconsidered cost, suggesting a “minimum viable” approach to boards, process, and almost everything else as the more resilient path.

But following last week’s post on “Helping arts workers flourish,” it’s worth naming exactly what “minimum viable” means. It doesn’t mean cheap, or tiny, or even simple. Those approaches usually survive by shifting risk or cost onto individuals (artists, staff, contractors) or into the future (deferred or irresponsible maintenance).

Instead, I propose the following:

A Minimum Viable Arts Venture is the smallest coherent undertaking that can responsibly carry an artistic purpose in context.

“Coherent” and “responsible” mean that the venture can meet its commitments, sustain healthy relationships and systems, center artists and arts workers alongside audiences, and carry its full costs and risks without unfairly shifting them onto the people who make the venture possible.

Again, that doesn’t mean the venture is the cheapest or lightest possible configuration of people, stuff, and money.¹ Rather it is carefully and continually calibrated to match capacity and ambition within a particular context. That could result in a $40-million annual operating budget and a campus of cultural facilities. Or it could result in an informal cluster of creative people, meeting every weekend in a garage.

Why say “venture” instead of “arts organization”? Because not every initiative in the arts needs to be an organization, or a nonprofit organization, or even a durable entity. Those are all decisions that carry consequences. And every such decision deserves creative attention.

I offer the Minimum Viable Arts Organization not as a prescription but as a provocation. For established arts organizations, it might provoke and guide a radical rethink of size, structure, and complexity. For start-ups, it might reveal whether and how an artistic vision might manifest; what people, stuff, and money it requires; and what shape or structure could carry it responsibly.

I often quote composer Roger Sessions (1950) and his paraphrase of Albert Einstein: “…everything should be as simple as it can be, but not simpler!” But “simple” needs a baseline that includes humane, responsible, and relationally healthy practice. The Minimum Viable Arts Venture is my new attempt to set that baseline.

In development. More to come.

Andrew

---

From the ArtsManaged Field Guide

Function of the Week: Governance
Governance involves structuring, sustaining, and overseeing the organization's purposes, resources, and goals (often through boards or trustees).

Framework of the Week: Requisite Variety
The Law of Requisite Variety, formulated by cybernetician W. Ross Ashby, states that for a system to effectively manage its environment, it must have a range of responses that is at least as varied as the range of disturbances it might encounter. In other words, the complexity of a system's control mechanisms must match the complexity of the environment in which it operates.

---

Photo by Tracey Parish on Unsplash

1. In entrepreneurship and lean start-up circles, “minimum viable” does mean the cheapest and lightest possible configuration of an idea or offering. I’m adapting the phrase here.