Project developed with the participation of OBORO
The Artist-Run Centres and Collectives Conference/Conférence des collectifs et des centres d’artistes autogérés (ARCA), in partnership with the Independent Media Arts Alliance (IMAA) is proud to launch The Silver Guide to Non-Monetary Transactions, a digital, interactive resource designed to assist managers in small not-for-profit arts organizations document and account for in-kind exchanges and donations of goods and services (non-monetary transactions). The guide, written by auditor Sophie Houle, provides the basic rules and methods for documenting, assessing and accounting for the many informal transactions that occur during regular and event-based programming in small organizations. This practice, if widely adopted, could more fully represent the value of artist-run organizations’ contribution to the arts sector. By encouraging this accounting practice, ARCA and IMAA wish also to thwart the perception that small organizations are over-reliant on public funding by making evident, instead, how large institutions and large-scale events benefit from the generous, and underrepresented material, human and artistic resources of small organizations. This contribution ranges from training cultural workers with employment and internships, support artistic experimentation so that museums may later realize the value of these practices, producing knowledge through commissioned texts and colloquia, and conserving media archives for research.
