Artists Support Other Artists; Advocacy

Okay, so now I’m on to advocacy.  So I’m not really 100% sure on what advocacy is so I’m going to do my best here.

What is advocacy?  And how does it support the idea ‘artists support other artist?’

I’ll admit, I Googled this, “Advocacy is an activity by an individual or group which aims to influence decisions within political, economic, and social systems and institutions.”  So how does this support my culminating theme? This is probably the toughest central idea for me to talk about because |I don’t really have any prior knowledge about it.  

So, if advocacy is the act of influencing decisions, and there are many artistic groups across Canada, and the world, that are advocates for art, then I guess that advocacy could also support artists.  Many groups advocate for art to be taught more thoroughly in education systems.  These groups support upcoming artists that may need more studio time to reach their full potential.  Many groups advocate for a change, such as LGBT rights.  These kinds of groups main purpose is to support LGBT people, but they also support artists because if artists feel strongly about a cause such as LGBT rights, it gives those artists a group to join, a cause to stand for, which automatically comes with its own support system.  By joining a group like that, artists almost get a fast pass to an artistic community.  

A great example of artists supporting other artists is The Canada Council for the Arts.  The Canada Council for the Arts offers a range of grants and services to professional Canadian artists and arts organizations in music, theater, writing and publishing, visual arts, dance, media arts and integrated arts. They support new artist, and established artists, they are all for art.  They believe that art is the future and they help artists develop that future. 

Here is a brief look into what they do.

This culminating has defiantly opened my eyes to many ways that artists support other artists.  The main thing I learned throughout the research I did over this culminating it that all of the ways artists support other artists are intertwined; without one, there would not be the others.  I found this kind of funny, because prior to starting this I would not have thought that studio work, community, social media, and advocacy would have anything in common.  However, being an advocate for something can lead to people sharing your posts on social media, which can lead to getting involved in an artist community, which can lead to combined studio work with your peers.  Or being in an artistic community can lead to the sharing of you pasts on social media by your peers, which can make groups such as The Canadian Council for the Arts support you which will allow you to try out more innovative ideas in the studio.  ‘Artists supporting other artists’ is really a whole web of things, and any path can take you anywhere.  It was really neat to learn about this! Hope you all felt the same.  Please feel free to comment if you have any responses to anything I’ve said! J