The Countercult Fund for hospitality and tourism businesses
For hotels, restaurants, bars, tour operators, and destinations, the Countercult Fund uses client-held budgets for agreed local work. Selected sales may inform the budget; clients pay artists and Countercult Studios separately.
How the Fund works
Selected sales may inform an agreed client-held budget for marketing and creative delivery or community programmes and residencies. The client keeps the budget and pays artists and Countercult Studios separately. Any sales and recording method is agreed before work begins; automated holding and routing are not live.
You already have a business to run. Countercult brings trusted local relationships, curation, logistics, and production experience, then manages the work so your team can focus on serving customers. The client pays the local creative partners for the commissioned work.
What the available evidence says
The figures come from an American Independent Business Alliance analysis, summarized by the University of Minnesota Duluth. The analysis shows the stronger local circulation associated with independent businesses in its sample.
Separately, Arts & Economic Prosperity 6 analysed 2022 activity around nonprofit arts and culture in the United States. The study found $151.7 billion in total economic activity: $73.3 billion from organisations and $78.4 billion in event-related audience spending. That audience spending includes the wider outing-food, transport, parking, childcare, and other local purchases-not only the cultural ticket.
For a business, the opportunity is to create a locally rooted reason for people to visit, return, share, and spend time in the place it serves.
What businesses gain
- Better local marketing. The business gets a specific, human story instead of generic purpose language.
- Useful cultural intelligence. Countercult helps make the connection locally relevant rather than choosing a random artist or visual style.
- A customer touchpoint. The contribution can live on a receipt, menu, product label, checkout card, or in-store message.
- Support through the whole process. Countercult brings trust, curation, logistics, and delivery, so the business can keep its attention on its customers and day-to-day work.
For a hospitality or tourism business, the Fund uses a client-held budget for a focused commission. Selected sales may inform the agreed budget. Countercult brings local context, curation, logistics, and production; the client pays artists and Studios separately.
Martha’s Burgers: the pilot in plain sight
On Saturday 23 May, Shona Neary hosted Party, Burgers, & Cultural Investment at Martha’s Delicious Burgers on Mehringdamm in Berlin. The event was framed as a Countercult Exchange pilot: a way to test whether an independently owned food business could fund local culture through the normal rhythm of a busy street weekend.
The proposition was deliberately direct: come hungry, feed an independent business, hear local electronic music, and help fund an artist’s career. The Countercult Combo (€9.50) and Aperol Spritz (€6) gave the idea a simple public form rather than turning it into a distant sponsorship message.
The mechanism
The event copy described a direct slice of food and drink revenue staying with the local artists playing live in the windows. The artists named were mad.mod__, natasharoze, gege_bln, and avhdworks. This early Countercult Exchange event connected a clear customer experience with paid creative work. The current Fund uses client-held budgets for agreed commissions; selected sales may inform a budget, and clients pay artists and Studios separately.
The listing also used a local-spending comparison, citing ACT Insurance: “keeping your money local leaves 68% of every dollar completely inside the community, compared to less than 14% at global corporate chains.” Local circulation varies by business, supply chain, and place.
Why this matters for a Fund partner
Martha’s Burgers did not need to become an arts organisation or manage every detail alone. The pilot brought a strong local idea, relevant artists, and an understandable customer experience together around the business. Today, the Fund uses client-held budgets for agreed work. Selected sales may inform a budget under agreed terms; clients pay artists and Studios separately.
The pilot points to a model for connecting ordinary commerce to paid local work and keeping more value connected to the people and places that make a neighbourhood worth visiting.
Do not borrow the look of a culture while ignoring the people who keep it alive.
That principle from the Countercult Studios manifesto is the boundary around the Fund. The contribution has to become a paid relationship, not a decorative claim.
What a Fund partner should measure
Track the agreed budget, any selected-sales basis, the people paid, customer response, repeat visits, and whether the client wants to commission the work again. Together, these signals show what the Fund makes possible and where the next opportunity lies.
Want to be considered?
Apply to be one of Countercult’s Fund partners. We are looking for hospitality and tourism businesses with a strong local relationship and a reason to connect commercial activity to paid local cultural work.
Sources: American Express / PayPal, “We Asked, They Answered: Five Insights From Shoppers on What They Want from Small Businesses” (2023; survey of 396 shoppers); Americans for the Arts, Arts & Economic Prosperity 6 (national findings, 2022 activity); National Endowment for the Arts, Economic Impact of Arts and Cultural Institutions; and the Martha’s Burgers / Countercult Exchange event listing supplied by Shona Neary.
This piece was informed by Shona Neary’s writing, conversations, and thinking around independent culture, artists, and place.
How this Journal is made: Countercult publishes writing from years of work across independent culture, local economies, artist-led technology, and place. These essays, field notes, guides, and case studies make that knowledge useful and help artists, operators, and commissioners find one another. The Journal is human-authored; AI supports infrastructure, not authorship or artists' work. We welcome original reporting and pitches from journalists and independent publishers.