What Does a Healthy Arts Ecosystem Really Look Like?

More than a century ago, a systematic effort began to eradicate wolves from Yellowstone National Park. By 1926, they had been eliminated from the park. 

What happened afterward has become a familiar story in modern ecology. Without wolves, elk populations grew and their heavy grazing reduced willows and other vegetation along riverbanks. As willows thinned out, so did beaver populations which depend on them for food and building material. Without beaver dams stabilizing soil, riverbanks eroded and the water became muddy. Muddy water and less vegetation eroded habitats for fish, birds and other wildlife. 

In other words, the health of the ecosystem was deteriorating.

In the 1990s, wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone. Their return again altered relationships throughout the ecosystem.

Sometimes it’s suggested that wolves single-handedly transformed Yellowstone’s landscape. Scientists caution that the reality is far more complicated. Ecosystems almost always are.

An ecosystem isn’t simply a collection of things living in the same place. A wolf doesn’t exist independently of an elk. An elk doesn’t exist independently of the plants it eats. Plants affect other animals, soil and waterways. Predators, prey, vegetation, climate, geography and countless other forces interact in ways that aren’t always obvious until something changes.

It’s the relationships among them that help determine the health of the ecosystem.

Those of us in the arts have been borrowing the language of ecosystems for years. But what do we mean?

In his 2015 report “The Ecology of Culture,” British cultural researcher John Holden suggested: “Culture is an organism not a mechanism.” His research focused not simply on cultural institutions themselves, but on the relationships among them – how people, ideas, money and opportunities move throughout a cultural system. He also suggested that a cultural ecology is non-hierarchical: “All the parts are required to make the whole.” 

Years earlier, a study of the McKnight Foundation’s arts program urged the foundation to view Minnesota’s arts community as an “interdependent cultural ecology.” 

So the idea that the arts constitute an ecosystem isn’t new. We have thought a lot about what an arts ecosystem looks like, but I wonder, what would change if we actually started acting like one? 

And, when we talk about the arts ecosystem and “supporting the arts,” how much of the ecosystem are we actually considering? 

Certainly, a thriving arts community needs strong artists and arts organizations. But what else does it need? 

If we want the arts to thrive, perhaps we need to start thinking about the health of the whole.

What is actually in the arts ecosystem?

Often, when we talk about strengthening the arts, we default to thinking primarily about artists and arts organizations. Do artists have the resources they need to create? Are theaters, museums, orchestras, dance companies and other cultural organizations financially stable and sustainable?

Without artists, there is no art. Without organizations, much of that art has no home. But artists and arts organizations alone do not constitute an ecosystem. 

Teachers introduce children to music, theater, dance, film and visual art.

Arts councils and advocates connect, support and champion the field.

Volunteers usher, serve on boards, raise money and provide thousands of hours of labor.

Colleges and universities train artists and cultural workers.

Donors and foundations fund this work.

Critics, journalists, bloggers and others help people discover, understand and talk about art.

Marketing professionals and publicists help get the word out.

Community organizations create pathways into cultural life for people who might otherwise never encounter it.

And, of course, there are audiences – the people who buy tickets, visit museums, attend festivals, read stories, bring their children, tell their friends and decide that learning about and participating in the cultural life of their community matters.

None of these are optional in the arts ecosystem. They are the ecosystem.

But even making a list is problematic because an ecosystem isn’t ultimately a list of participants. What we need to start considering is the influence each of these participants have on the others.

What does it take to thrive?

What if we looked not only at who is doing the work, but at what needs to happen in the ecosystem?

A healthy cultural ecosystem needs not just the creation and presentation of art. It needs education, access, discovery, interpretation and criticism, documentation, advocacy, funding, participation, connection, preservation and audience development.

It also needs pathways for new people, new ideas, new voices and conditions that allow them to thrive. 

Thinking about the system as more than the art it produces forces us to ask questions about the connective tissue. Where is discovery happening? Who has access to arts education? How do emerging artists find opportunities and audiences discover unfamiliar work? We can ask where serious criticism and documentation are happening and how occasional audiences become regular participants, volunteers, donors, advocates or board members. We should recognize new leadership as an opportunity for change and evolution. We need to consider how the arts shape the life of our community in ways we may not even recognize.

Which connections are strong? Which are fragile? Which have disappeared? Which need our attention?

And what essential work might be going unsupported simply because it doesn’t fit comfortably into the categories we’ve traditionally created? 

This is where the ecosystem metaphor becomes more than a metaphor. It becomes a way of thinking about health.

The Silo Problem

If a healthy ecosystem depends on connections, perhaps one of the biggest obstacles to thinking like an ecosystem is that we have organized much of the arts into silos.

Silos, which are designed to keep things separated, aren’t necessarily intentional in organizations. In many ways, however, the structures we work within naturally create them.

We have become very good at thinking about what our own silo needs. 

And scarcity strengthens those silos. When there isn’t enough to go around, the rational response is to make the strongest possible case for ourselves. As one person interviewed for Holden’s “The Ecology of Culture” said: “Each art form sees itself as the most neglected.”

Sound familiar?

We spend a lot of time thinking about how to bring more people through our doors, how to raise more money, how to attract more attention and support for our own work. Those aren’t bad instincts. Keeping our own work healthy is part of our responsibility.

But what happens when that focus makes it difficult to see the bigger picture?

We miss opportunities to work toward common goals. Needs that don’t belong comfortably to any one organization can go unmet. We start judging something’s value by whether it benefits us directly, right now, sometimes recognizing how much it matters only after it has weakened or disappeared. 

Interdependence asks something fundamental. Can we recognize that the health of one part can affect the health of another? And what do we do about it?

Are we supporting and paying attention to the whole ecosystem, not just the most obvious or visible parts? 

This doesn’t mean abandoning our work or pretending that competition and scarcity don’t exist. It means recognizing that the boundaries we create to organize our work don’t define the limits of our interests. 

My part of the ecosystem is more likely to thrive when your part thrives.

If we are really part of an ecosystem, its health is our interest, too.

The challenge becomes making the health of the ecosystem a more intentional part of our missions and decision-making.

Sometimes this means sharing opportunities, connections or expertise with someone outside our own organization. It means helping audiences discover cultural experiences beyond the ones we produce ourselves. It means not only opening pathways for new artists and leaders, but asking our institutions to evolve when those new voices bring different ideas about what the work can be. 

And it means investing beyond our silos by supporting something whose benefit to us isn’t immediate, direct or easily measured. That investment might be money, but it could also be our reach, our relationships or other resources that can help make the larger system stronger. 

Is this realistic? Scarcity is real. Choices have to be made. Resources are finite. But if we believe our futures are interconnected, perhaps return on investment looks a little different in an ecosystem.

The return isn’t always immediate. And it doesn’t always come directly back to us.

Sometimes the return is the healthier ecosystem.

Giving and Getting

So, how do we figure out what needs our attention?

If we are truly interdependent, support can’t flow just in one direction. Each part of the ecosystem contributes something to its health, and each depends on other parts in order to thrive.

That suggests two questions for all of us:

• What can I contribute to the health of the ecosystem?
• And what do I need from the ecosystem?

Those questions require us to look in both directions.

Arts journalism is the part of the ecosystem I know best. At Culture OC, we should look for more ways to help people discover the breadth of cultural life around them. Whose work aren’t we seeing? Which stories aren’t we telling? Where could we help make stronger connections among artists, organizations, audiences and the broader community? Are we doing enough to develop new voices that can help us discover new parts of our community and tell stories in new ways? 

But we also have to ask what journalism needs from the ecosystem to do its work well. We need artists and organizations willing to engage with independent coverage and audiences willing to seek out our stories and share them, along with the financial support and resources that allow journalists to keep doing the work. 

You can ask the same questions. What are we contributing? What do we need? Where are those exchanges working? Where aren’t they?

Perhaps thinking about what each part needs and contributes helps us notice things we otherwise might not. If we improve our understanding of what different parts of the ecosystem need and what they have to offer, we may start seeing connections and opportunities for support that our siloed way of thinking obscures.

The opportunity is to get better at discovering and connecting what we have to give and what others need. 

What are our wolves?

This brings me back to Yellowstone.

I don’t think arts journalism is the wolf of the arts ecosystem. That would be a wonderfully convenient conclusion for the co-founder of an arts journalism organization to reach. But I do think arts journalism may be one of the wolves.

When arts coverage disappears, we don’t simply lose reviews and feature stories. Artists and organizations lose a way to reach people who don’t already know them. Audiences lose a dependable source of discovery and context. Communities lose an independent record of their cultural life. And connections among artists, organizations, audiences and the broader public become harder to make. 

When arts journalism reemerges, an important connector returns to the ecosystem, creating new opportunities to rebuild other connections.  

As we look around in our own communities, what other parts of an arts ecosystem might serve a similar keystone function, with their weakening or disappearance creating cascading effects elsewhere? 

For instance, when arts education is reduced, fewer young people may develop relationships with the arts as creators or audiences. When affordable spaces disappear, artists may have fewer places to live and create, and organizations have fewer opportunities to present their work. 

In other words, there may be more than one wolf, and the wolves may not be the same in every community. 

Again, a healthy arts community isn’t only one with excellent artists, successful organizations and full houses. A healthy arts ecosystem is one in which people throughout a community have meaningful ways to encounter, create, understand and participate in cultural life. One where new people, ideas and voices can enter and have the opportunity to thrive. One where the connections among the people who create art, experience it, teach it, fund it, advocate for it, document it and make it possible are strong enough to sustain the whole. One where all its parts have the opportunity to thrive. 

I certainly don’t have all the answers. But as Culture OC begins its fourth year covering our remarkable cultural community, I’d like us to move from talking about what a healthy arts ecosystem is and requires to doing what we can to strengthen the one around us.

So, let’s begin: What is one thing your arts ecosystem needs to thrive that isn’t getting enough attention? And what can you do to help it thrive?  

Tell us.

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