You don’t get a medal for exhausting yourself in the name of community.
A brilliant artist in my world recently asked a question that so many of you will recognise. Let’s call them Kenny.
Kenny runs socially engaged projects. They work with communities over weeks, sometimes months. Workshops turn into conversations. Conversations turn into drawings. Drawings become objects. Objects evolve into sound pieces. Eventually, it all lands as an installation with sculpture and layered audio. It is rich. It is generous. It is complex.
And the budget never quite matches the reality.
Kenny finds themselves topping up production costs. Paying for extra studio time. Covering additional fabrication. Giving more hours than were funded. Holding the emotional labour that was never costed.
They asked me, should I scale up to bigger institutions with bigger budgets, or should I reduce what I deliver?
If this sounds familiar, you are not alone.
Here is what is really happening.
If you’ve ever felt stretched thin by a commission that looked generous on paper but drained you in reality, this one will land.
I break down how to design modular versions of your practice, how to cost invisible labour properly, and how to stop reflex over-delivering just to secure the opportunity.
