Our Work
Values
Our team—staff and board alike—is committed to using these values to guide us as we continue to dream big about how we can best support socially engaged artists and help nurture the broader field.
In this ongoing and iterative process we aim to hold and practice the following values:
Flexible and adaptive creative processes
We believe that how we do matters just as much as what we do. We know that the design of a process will inform the outcome.
In action:
- We adapt to internal and external contexts.
- We build in flexibility and strive to be nimble in our work.
- We try new ways of being while working inside of a preexisting nonprofit structure.
This experiment is imperfect and messy. Messiness for us is a healthy byproduct of experimentation and of a willingness to move with integrity, humility, and vulnerability. We are holding space for imperfection, which allows us to collectively try new approaches in real time.
We are conducting this experiment inside of an existing nonprofit architecture. This creates a dance between efficiency, legal compliance, and organic methods of collaboration. We are attempting to hack a system while working within its legal parameters.
In Practice
We uphold an ethics of care toward our team. Staff work a flexible four-day workweek, have unlimited sick leave, can work remotely, and are offered a professional development budget. As part of our commitment to social and environmental responsibility, we have divested from fossil fuels, prisons, and weapons manufacturing, while increasing investments in clean energy. Our W.A.G.E. certification formalizes our dedication to fair pay for artists, writers, and contractors.
Acknowledgement
A Blade of Grass is situated on a continuum of artist-led and social practice organizations. This current incarnation of ABoG builds on over a decade of work supporting socially engaged artists. From 2011 to 2020 ABoG supported 57 artists and collectives with project grants and commissioned artists, curators, writers, and others through publications and other public programs.
Concurrently, the field of socially engaged art has been evolving for decades with the support of aligned projects and organizations like Allied Media Conference, Alternate Roots, American Festival Project, ArtPlace America, Common Field, Creative Time Summit, More Art, National Performance Network, Network of Ensemble Theaters, Open Engagement, Our Town, Othering and Belonging Conference, Rainin Exploring Public Art Practices Symposium, Vera List Center for Art and Politics, and others.
Team
Artists play a vital role in leading our organization. Our board members, who receive honorariums for their service, are all artists and arts workers with lived experience as socially engaged practitioners. They bring deep knowledge, exceptional dedication, and practical expertise critical to stewarding an arts nonprofit. Our staff, the majority of whom are also artists, work closely with the board to ensure our mission is carried out with purpose and care. Together, this artist-led team fosters a responsive and nimble organization, allowing us to act quickly and effectively while staying rooted in our shared values.
History
Founding
A Blade of Grass (ABoG) was founded in 2011 by Shelley Frost Rubin and Deborah Fisher to support artists as conduits for social change and to deepen understanding of socially engaged art. The organization’s work grew out of an ongoing dialogue about the importance of art to civic life, driven by the belief that creativity and art can be a shared resource that concretely and positively change lives. Over its first decade of operation, ABoG played a pivotal role in fostering dialogue, supporting artists, and amplifying socially engaged art practices.