COLLECTIVITY AFTER ACCOUNTABILITY
Artists lead the transition to worker-ownership at Dorchester Art Project.
ISSUE 1: THE UN/MAKING ISSUE
Editor Alula Hunsen spoke with Lina Cañon, a new Steering Committee member who has witnessed and participated in DAP’s ecosystem for over 5 years, to get the specifics.
I think it was important to take decision-making and even structure-building from two white folks leading, who had some idea about Dorchester, to BIPOC folks who were really in it.
Lina Cañon: [The pandemic, which hit in] 2020 had affected DAP. There had been some really harsh decisions around the physical space at the time, which artists were renting and relying on. And to be completely honest, they were dependent on spaces that should not have been occupied. There was a lot of negligence around the building and a lack of supervision or support in that space that would have been necessary to make it conducive to community. A lot of trust was lost between DAP’s former leader and the artists, so the artists actually got together and signed a petition saying, “We don't want to be led by you anymore.”
I'm trying to think of how frank I can be, but I'm just gonna keep it a hundred—DAP before was a thousand percent engaging in a cookie-cutter way of participating in the nonprofit industrial complex, especially in the moments following the loss of the building. That’s what caused me to step up. When I heard that the storefront was closing, I checked in with Amyas [McKnight], a long-time staff member of the organization, and I was like, “What is going on?” What I learned was that DAP was not only fiscally sponsored by a white-led nonprofit but that it was also [financially] strained. The person who used to lead DAP’s fiscal sponsor, Brain Arts, was taking out loans to keep it afloat, so the question became, how can we just become sustainable and not have to jeopardize our own financial well-being?
Amyas brought me and five others onto the steering committee, and that’s where we started peeling back the layers of where DAP was at as a fiscally sponsored project. And, we found issues that are not unique to DAP or nonprofits: everybody's overworked, everybody's over capacity. The majority of the people making executive decisions at the time were making them based on their biases rather than community-informed or community-driven decision-making. So [their choices] were being imposed on the community without their input, and folks in the community still felt the responsibility of reciprocity. That was really harmful.
How did the transitional team address this harm? And what did moving forward look like?
This is where [the steering committee] came in. We were like, “Okay, we're gonna mediate this.” We executed succession planning with that fiscal sponsor and then had to do a lot of harm reduction. For over a year, we attempted various harm reduction initiatives, got artists some necessary transitional support, and then continued building the steering committee. We joke about Amyas gathering us like the Avengers; we all came from very different disciplines. All six committee members are very different people: Amyas is a film and live event producer, HAAWWS is a rapper, Stephen LaFume is a community organizer and co-runs Thrill [a monthly music showcase and competition], Rob Kelley-Morgan is a talent manager who runs PUTINWORK [an artists’ management company], and Adrián [Roberto Román] is a cooperative organizer. All of us, however, are either from or living in Dorchester. All of us are people of color: four Black men, one Latino, and then myself as a Latinx immigrant. I think it was important to take decision-making and even structure-building from two white folks leading, who had some idea about Dorchester, to BIPOC folks who were really in it.
I think because the Dorchester Art Project itself has existed for so long, it already had community buy-in; like, that wasn't even a question. The community's mistrust was there because of the management, but once we let folks know, “Hey, we're in the trenches. We're working on something that will involve your voice and participation before even moving forward,” we were very well received by the greater Boston creative ecosystem.
We started with getting the hard things out of the way—the bylaws and the operational structure—so we could pave the path for what a worker-owned co-op looks like and what artist ownership means to our stakeholders.
That’s actually a central question for us moving forward: what does community-informed, artist-led work look like? That's how we landed on the co-op [model]. Artist ownership is embedded in our bylaws. We started with getting the hard things out of the way—the bylaws and the operational structure—so we could pave the path for what a worker-owned co-op looks like and what artist ownership means to our stakeholders. The hope is that we are now practicing what we preach and that [artists will] come in and define themselves.
The other piece is economic access for everyone. We will have the same access to resources as the artists who will join us, and we will be co-participants in advocacy and shared ownership. So, everybody will get a cut of the check at the end of the day, and everybody's cut of the check will look fair, and creatives from Dorchester can feel proud and be looked at with the same level of value that people view creatives from other places.
One of our biggest goals with the transition was making sure that we stayed focused on Dorchester. We're trying to secure a space and do all these other things, and everybody's like, “Come to Cambridge, come to Somerville!” [But] we're committed to Dorchester and Fields Corner specifically. We have a radius that we want to stay within.
Place-based strategy is a real thing. It does matter, to be rooted in a location and to be specific about where you're going to be, what kind of work you're going to do, and who makes up the community you're engaging.
Exactly. When people ask me, “What are you mad about today?” Every morning, for me, it’s very consistent: it's gentrification and artist displacement. When I ask folks, “Why are y'all leaving your neighborhood?” they respond that there's no space, no resources. So we need to do this here because [if we don’t,] Dorchester talent leaves and supports economies elsewhere. We keep losing things. And so, if there's no economic mobility in Dorchester, if we're not building things here, then what are we doing? We're just leaving space for people to come and gentrify the area further. So, artist retention is huge for us.
The hope is that we are now practicing what we preach and that [artists will] come in and define themselves.
We piloted an artists’ accelerator last year, and focused a lot on resourcing, asking questions like: What does a budget look like for your craft? Where do you get the money for your work? Where do you get the materials? Who can help you with marketing? When we really get down to it, everything is a business venture and will involve capital; whether it’s philanthropy, not-for-profit, for-profit, LLC corporation, or co-op, it's all operating under the same capitalistic structure. And you're either finessing the game or you're trying to do something forward-thinking, forward-moving.
We’re changing how we hold equity and how we access the money being funneled out, but are we changing how the money's coming in? DAP is hoping to ask (and answer): Where can money come from that is not burdensome on artists, on their production, on their health, on their community? Where can money come from that is not exploitative?
This conversation is also part of the Fortunately digital series SWARM, exploring solidarity and mutuality within collectives.