Who Else Keeps Getting Treated Like They’re Running a Charity?
Artists, independent operators and cultural spaces create the value that places and economies depend on. So why are they still treated like a soft burden?
Who else keeps getting treated like they’re running a charity? If one more person assumes I’m running a charity, I may actually scream.
But if you actually look at the numbers, it's the other way around. The system is subsidized by us (yes im talking about artists and culture at large).
The global creative economy is already operating at serious scale. UNCTAD’s Creative Economy Outlook reported US$1.4 trillion in creative services exports and US$713 billion in creative goods exports in 2022. Yet the artists, independent operators and underground spaces who build the actual cultural value of our cities are still treated like a soft burden.
Let's look past localized funding models and look at the global macro economic reality (my fave thing to talk about haha):
Corporate spending is shifting because brands are desperate to buy the "authenticity" that independent subcultures generate organically. Tourism is growing because people want the unique cultural identity of local destinations. The supply chain connecting enterprise demand to grassroots artistic supply is fragmented, so corporate capital gets swallowed up by middleman agencies while the cultural ecosystem is left to starve.
Living between NYC and Berlin, I saw this massive disconnect play out every single day. And that’s when I realized we don’t need more isolated events (lol please stop making more event software platforms ai will do it soon itself) we need better infrastructure.
People are getting more lonely, disconnected, and isolated, while our physical and digital experiences are becoming completely monotonous. We crave raw, authentic culture because it keeps us human.
Thanks to the rapid evolution of open-source tech and AI, we’ve finally been able to build a structural alternative (paid for with many blood, sweat, and tears and whatever savings I have).
A real place, a real budget
To put this framework to work, we partnered with the legendary rooftop cultural venue Klunkerkranich. The artists were paid. The invoices were sent. The average rate was around €50 per hour per artist. The events have also consistently led to more gigs and jobs for Countercult and for the people who come into the network.
That is why we built Countercult Network and Countercult Studios: artist-founded cultural infrastructure for economic development through culture. The Network connects the artists, spaces and operators who make places distinctive to audiences, commissions and investment. Studios works with brands, destinations, venues and institutions to turn that value into paid programmes, experiences, partnerships and long-term infrastructure for places.
The ambition is bigger than a boutique project shop. We are building a repeatable cultural-economic layer that can work across cities, districts, destinations and institutions: public discovery on one side, paid delivery and investment on the other, with more value retained by the people and places creating it.
Paying artists is economic policy
Ireland’s Basic Income for the Arts pilot put this into numbers: more than €100 million in social and economic benefits, with €1.39 returned for every €1 invested. That is not proof that one pilot caused the entire Irish economy to grow. It is evidence that paying artists can produce measurable public returns.
More value circulates through the people and places creating the culture. More spending, jobs and local economic value follow.
Economies grow when more value circulates through the people and places creating the culture.
Paying artists is not charity. It is economic policy.
Have a place, tourism, or cultural-development brief?
Countercult Studios works as a contractor or specialist delivery partner on research, mapping, cultural strategy, campaigns, experiences, commissions, archives, and production.
An original Countercult field note based on Shona Neary’s writing about artist labour, cultural infrastructure, Countercult Network and Countercult Studios. Macro figures referenced from UNCTAD’s Creative Economy Outlook 2024 and Ireland’s Basic Income for the Arts pilot cost-benefit analysis: https://unctad.org/publication/creative-economy-outlook-2024 and https://www.gov.ie/en/department-of-culture-communications-and-sport/press-releases/basic-income-for-the-arts-pilot-produced-over-100-million-in-social-and-economic-benefits
This piece was informed by Shona Neary’s writing, conversations, and thinking around independent culture, artists, and place.
editorial process: Our Journals are pulled from our writings over the years to get information out as quickly and as widely as possible, and to get to what matters: finding each other and claiming our seat in the circular economy. Some ideas overlap between Shona Neary's work on cultural infrastructure and their artist practice as Sketchy Shona. AI is a tool for infrastructure, not for creating Journal writing or artists' work. We welcome original reporting and pitches from journalists and independent publishers.