The following article on Artsy caught the attention of the SECC this week, especially as we celebrate our 3 years as a collective (CAN YOU BELIEVE IT).
Meow Wolf is an arts collective based out of Santa Fe with more than 100 members working in a variety of disciplines. With the opening of their first permanent installation, “The House of Eternal Return,” the collective has been able to employ about 140 people in the arts, and arts-adjacent fields.
With the precarity of DIY spaces in cities with rising costs and low infrastructure, spaces like “The House” seem to be the mecca of arts employment – artist run spaces that employ and sustain other artists, open to the public, and (maybe most importantly) spaces that are safe and accessible.
As a collective that is mostly digital in nature (we meet in person maybe once per year), the SECC is constantly re-evaluating our collective model. How do we sustain and support one another? Are we fairly compensated for our work? Is our work accessible to marginalized folks outside of the arts/crafts/academia bubble?
We’d like to begin a conversation, with you, with ourselves. What are the challenges facing artist-run spaces these days? The opportunities? What does utopia in the arts look like? How can we enact it?
Learn more about Meow Wolf here
socially engaged craft collective 