Social feeds and email bulletins make the problem obvious. Post after post from agencies, peak bodies, boards and “thought leaders” celebrating governance frameworks, compliance milestones, “sector‑leading best-practice” and new strategic documents - all delivered in a tone that treats artists as background detail, rather than the reason any of their accomplishments exist.
In these communications, the working artist appears as a logo, a photo or a brief success story. There is almost no acknowledgement that outside of the mainstream (i.e. government-funded companies), it is more often than not artists who routinely balance fragile budgets, [fail to] negotiate with venues, manage collaborators, deal with donors, hustle for funding/discounts, read contracts - and hold the morale of companies and boards together while also making the work.
The polite exclusion, in public view
The language of these posts is polished and familiar: safeguarding, due diligence, strategic alignment, impact measurement. There is nothing inherently wrong with any of it. What is striking is who is quoted, and who is absent. Policy‑makers quote executives. Boards quote consultants. Consultants quote each other.
Artists, especially those outside mainstream institutions, are rarely cited as the architects of these ideas. When they do appear, it is usually as decoration: a photograph, a pull‑quote about “passion,” a testimonial about how a program supported their practice - not as thinkers shaping the need for governance, fundraising or policy. The implicit message is clear:
agencies and non-arts bodies run the system
administrators and managers keep it compliant
artists provide talent, stories and images to prove it all matters
What artists are already doing
The picture painted in public communications bears little resemblance to how most artists actually operate.
Outside the spotlight, countless artists are:
planning seasons and projects with the same strategic discipline claimed by institutions
constantly re‑budgeting around late payments, lost venues and shifting grants
managing risk in real time for collaborators, communities and audiences
building relationships with donors and supporters, often the only people who can communicate the work’s value convincingly
keeping teams, and sometimes even boards, motivated when resources are thin and uncertainty is high.
These are administrative and executive capacities by any reasonable definition. Yet the communications that set the tone of the sector rarely acknowledge them as such. Artists’ labour is described as “creative input,” while the language of leadership is reserved for those drafting frameworks and policies from a distance.
Who gets to speak, and about what
Who appears as an expert in these posts and announcements? The same names circulate: directors of agencies, senior executives of major organisations, consultants specialising in governance or philanthropy. Panels are advertised with familiar headshots, and the topics revolve around strategy, sustainability, governance reform, innovation - almost always discussed without a single artist from outside large institutions at the table.
When artists are invited into these communications, it is usually:
to provide a brief “artist voice” quote about how a program came to be
to perform or speak at a launch or donor event
to offer a short reflection on creativity, framed as inspiration, rather than structural critique.
There is almost never room for artists to speak publicly, through these channels, about the architecture of policy, about how governance requirements land in daily practice, or about what fundraising actually looks like on the ground. Those conversations stay in the hands of agencies and executives, who then broadcast their conclusions as settled wisdom.
A sector talking to itself
The result is an echo chamber. Agencies and institutional leaders speak to one another in public, confirming each other’s frameworks and applauding each other’s initiatives, while artists - particularly independent, experimental and marginalised practitioners - watch from the sidelines. They see systems being designed around them but rarely shaped with them, and they seldom get direct access to the people who could actually change those systems.
This is not just a question of optics. Public communications shape who is perceived as an authority. When artists are consistently absent from the serious parts of the conversation – governance, fundraising strategy, policy design - they are treated as extras in a story that depends entirely on their work. The sector starts to believe its own publicity: that responsibility and rigour live with agencies and executives, and that artists simply supply the content and the morale.
A healthier communication culture would look very different. It would:
present artists, especially those outside mainstream institutions, as co‑authors of governance and policy thinking,
centre artists’ analysis of how frameworks and funding structures actually function in practice,
give artists direct, sustained space in public channels to speak to donors, decision‑makers and the wider sector about more than inspiration,
acknowledge openly that artistic labour already encompasses administration, leadership, fundraising and organisational care.
Until that happens, every glossy post about “best practice” governance without an artist’s voice attached simply confirms the same old problem: those deciding the rules still don’t trust the people who make the art to help write them.