tldr: I worked for 3 diff arts orgs, one that I cofounded, that all burnt me out. Pandemic revealed major issues. Each experience was connected. Left it all behind to writes grants for myself.
It was the first day of the pandemic and a prominent literary festival that was about to begin decided to cancel. My boss, the ED of another festival and a gemini, said “its terrible what they are doing to those artists”. I thought it was a very human response to choose to violate their contracts with funders and pay artists while canceling activities in order to save lives. My boss had a very “the show must go on” attitude and would often cite the AIDs epidemic like “we made art thru aids so why would this stop us”.
It took my boss until May to accept that we couldn’t have any in person components to our July festival. The team kept planning in person events because we were ordered to, even though we all knew they were a joke and would have to be cancelled. I was told to get food donations for receptions.
My ex boss, an ED of another festival and also a gemini, acted appalled when I told her about my current boss’ “show must go on” attitude, acknowledging that this was a time to take a step back and reflect on how to move forward mindfully. Well, about 2 months later she launched a massive fundraising campaign, which cashed in on both the pandemic and the poor neighbourhood in which the festival was situated. The org launched this campaign without the institutional infrastructure to carry out the proposed activities, so they ended up commissioning out their social justice activities to smaller grassroots orgs, while taking credit.
One of these small orgs they commissioned was a group I co-founded. After my colleague chose to take on this massive project (with a lot reluctance from everyone else on the team) 3 people burnt out, including myself, and we were ultimately pushed out of the organization.
Anyway I worked in Development and fundraising mainly so I basically took my grant writing skills and raised money for my art practice, my partner’s art practice, and any community projects I wanna do, instead of giving away my time to those assholes for less than I need to break even.
I’m still so bitter and I don’t think any of these people know quite how angry I am about this. And this really just the tip of the iceberg of those 3 job experiences.