A New Economic Model for Museums?

Andrew Taylor’s blog post, Rethinking Arts Economies and Arts Exchange, introduces Stolen Chair Theatre's new initiative to support new works. Instead of grants and traditional subscriptions, they propose a community support system modeled on Community Supported Agriculture (CSA).

Like the CSA model, Stolen Chair hopes to build a membership community, a "CST", which would provide 'seed' money for the company's development process and then reap a year's worth of theatrical harvests. The organization has received a grant to create the model as part of The Field's Economic Revitalization for Performing Artists (ERPA) initiative.

Writes Taylor, “Is unprofitable theater (or other arts endeavor) a charity, a community resource, an entitlement, a labor of love, or some combination thereof? Whatever we choose as our cluster of definitions, it will be helpful to align our business models and our resource strategies accordingly.”