It is wonderful that the St. Albert city council, and Mayor Crouse in particular, are looking at providing a space for artists at the old RCMP station. But let's not limit the space to artist incubation, where artists, once successful, leave the space.
Instead, the focus should be on an artist-run centre (ARC), whose mandate includes incubation of emerging artists, but could include much more: education and art demonstration, exhibition of art, public outreach and participation in local events, camaraderie/collaboration between artists, and arts advocacy. An ARC exists for the artists, the public, and the art, where an incubator only serves a subset of the artists.
New businesses sometimes need incubation because they don't have enough initial funding to provide all of the resources they require to get started. As they grow, they hope to develop sufficient funding to have a team of resources that work together to deliver the service or good they provide.
An artist's work, by comparison, is most often a personal expression, rather than a product of teamwork. Once artists become more successful, they usually sign with galleries and shops that provide marketing and sales support.
In some cases, they team up for marketing and sales, and they also support each other with critique and creative thinking, but even then, their primary focus remains on their individual artwork.
So incubation just doesn't work in quite the same way for an artist.
Once successful, the artist still needs to engage with other artists regularly. While art making requires focus and concentration, most people need workplace companionship as well. Healthy, happy artists are more able to develop strong artwork, despite the stereotypes about the tortured artist. More experienced artists are obviously useful as sounding boards for emerging artists, but the reverse is also true.
In business, more experienced companies generally look for the same to partner with, so that each brings something equitable to the table. In art, the emerging artist has a useful viewpoint to share with the more experienced artists.
So the idea of pushing out the successful "fully incubated" artist is counterproductive. The community of artists in an ARC makes the individual artists stronger.
Schools of art, like the Group of Seven, often develop as individual artists, share their creative ideas, techniques, and philosophies with a trusted group. This at least, is similar to how successful business teams function.
But in business, the teams are maintained and succession planning is extremely important. To suggest that successful artists need to leave their creative support teams once they are strong enough to support themselves financially is to suggest that it is important to break up the components of their success and hope it still survives.
Succession planning is important as individual artists retire or move out, but keeping a successfully collaborating team working together is fundamental to any endeavour.
I hope that the city council recognizes the greater overall benefits of an ARC and shifts their thoughts a little bit on the proposed use of the Hemingway Centre.
Rick Rogers is a visual artist and an IT consultant, living and working in St. Albert.
