Insights

What's the Opportunity Now? Exploring an agenda for the arts, cultural, and creative sector in 2025

January 2025
By Daniel Payne
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Image courtesy Creatives Unite

If the first few weeks are any indicator, 2025 is poised to be another year of change arriving in big bold headlines: a new president in Washington who sees a mandate from a thin majority, fires in California destroying homes and cultural history, a ceasefire in Gaza holding on tentatively, major investments in artificial intelligence, nations around the world preparing for new tariffs and trade restrictions. It is dizzying, at best – the pace is unrelenting, and hasn’t seemed to slow during the now half-decade since we all became amateur virologists and learned about SARS-CoV-2. 

The early days of that COVID-19 pandemic seem like a distance speck in the rear-view mirror. What did we do when the world stopped in its tracks – for days, that turned into weeks and months? Within the cultural sector, the pandemic break was the most significant challenge many had ever faced, as organizations sent their artists and audiences away. While dim for many, the weeks that unfolded did present new possibility – a potential for a discontinuity, and an opportunity to re-evaluate where the sector was headed.

Nearly five years later, though, most in the cultural sector would have to admit that few opportunities were truly seized. Executives and leaders spend more time spinning plates filled with day-to-day challenges, placing many organizations closer to a trajectory that looks like 2019 than in pushing toward a healthier outcome for the sector, its organizations, and people. “Will people return in person?” has been answered with a “yes”, but also a continued battle with competition from streaming services and apps optimized to eat up attention. Organizations survived because of funds accumulated from government interventions and charitable largesse from strong market returns, but many leaders call us today to ask about navigating “structural deficits” and resource constraints. Most government checks have been spent; with many competing crises, there is no guarantee that funds from individuals and organized philanthropy are coming to the sector. 

This means the time for change is – still – pressing. The sector needs a proactive, compelling agenda. What might that look like today?

1) Expanding freedoms through support for artists and creators

If “freedom” was a key buzzword through the last US political cycle, how can cultural and creative organizations expand the definition for their own purposes? One way may be through their support for artists, creators, and storytellers, who provide the content behind the mission of cultural organizations – providing freedom to explore through time, funding, and planning assistance. Enhancing this support for their unique visions and points of view can provide outsized benefits. Immersion within the world of a single artist offers a portal to other worlds not easily accessible in other media–- see for example, the impact of large-scale works of Mark Bradford and Laurie Anderson at the Hirshhorn, the long-term exhibition of works by James Turrell or Sol LeWitt at MassMoCA, or the large-scale performance experiences of Kyle Abraham or (forthcoming) Yoko Ono at the Park Avenue Armory. Alternatively, artists can also unpack an institution’s history from their interpretive lens – see, for example, Hew Locke’s recent “what have we here?” show at the British Museum. 

While artists provide this work, organizations might then unlock their own potential through focus on where their value is added in creative support and administration – constructing a cohesive identity (brand) around how audiences can come and engage with these distinctive experiences, and attracting people to interact with creativity in new forms.

2) Creatively building a big tent 

Some DEI programs are ending with the strokes of a president’s pen, and other corporate programs are being dropped as higher near-term costs give cover to relent to pressure from activists. These short-term decisions, however, do not invalidate the moral need for supporting justice, not to mention the simple business case for doing this work – whether in creating opportunities to grow audiences and visitorship to cultural attractions, or in providing support to unlock previously overlooked and underrecognized human talent.

Cultural organizations, however, must also recognize the limits imposed by their scale and resources. Unlike most for profit businesses, more programs and more growth often just means losing more money, especially without careful planning. Providing a welcoming home for all is an important value, and organizations are usefully orienting themselves to creating an experience that offers entry points for people from all backgrounds. Yet to be able to break through the noise of the attention economy, organizations should think about how they create target audiences and understand the people they most want and need to engage with. For example, while MoMA is one of the largest museums in the world, its Access Programs team brings focus to how they can reach visitors who might have challenges otherwise engaging with the museum–- those who are blind or low vision, who are Deaf or have hearing difficulties, who have intellectual and developmental disabilities, and other groups who identify as disabled. Their programs evidence clarity around how each of those groups might be different from one another, and how they can bring them together into a common experience with art.

3) Enhancing small-scale connections

There has been increased attention on the loneliness epidemic across western cultures, as people increasingly take to their cars, phones, and social media. Though recent studies have highlighted more dangers, this topic has been in focus at least since Robert Putnam was exploring “Bowling Alone” in the 1990s. Artists, creatives, and cultural organizations might be well positioned to medicate this however – AEA recently explored how The Bentway is combatting this phenomenon in Toronto and other organizations like Springboard for the Arts in Minnesota have launched a series of artist projects and workshops to help combat isolation. While a “big tent” is important to bring us all together, creating these smaller scale connections is also an important indicator of the health of our culture. Organizations might learn from architects and designers (see, for example, Henning Larsen's exploration here) – as well as educational or scientific organizations to help them support the small-scale interactions that knit people and communities together.

4) Exploring Artificial Intelligence and other technologies, with a decision in mind

No look at trends in 2025 can ignore the present and coming impacts of artificial intelligence on the ways we work and the ways that we create. Generative AI programs like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini are increasing their presence in the workplace – 95% of senior leaders are investing in AI systems; nation-states are launching massive investment programs to ensure they (and presumably their people) are not left behind; and corporate leaders at AI giants are suggesting the artificial general intelligence is on its way. Cultural leaders may not have access to the budgets required to create and operate bespoke AI programs, but these technologies can now be accessed at the consumer level. This provides even greater opportunity to deploy these technologies to automate small-scale processes. While experience with AI software suggests it still lacks the judgement and creativity of talented staff, there may be opportunities to leverage it in process-oriented areas or to generate structured frameworks – thus unlocking opportunities to devote more time to areas that humans are required, or at least are still ahead. And artists are also exploring AI – and have been for some time – suggesting further opportunities for exploration, even if the outcomes are not perfectly understood.

While the capabilities of these tools in administrative and creative processes may represent an opportunity, there is also a need to recognize the challenges that may arrive alongside, and for organizations to stake out a position as an investor, or potentially as a resistor. The exciting noises generated by those enticed by the economic value unlocked through AI may run counter to a people-centered mission in the humanities. Arts and cultural leaders and organizations will need to think about their own position – as ‘human’ versus ‘algorithm’ places itself on a new axis alongside ‘mission’ versus ‘money’.

5) Tracking – and accountability for – social impacts

Culture is not not an industry; it is more than an industry. That means economic impacts of the work will be explored in parallel with their social impacts. Of course, the evaluation and quantification of the economic impacts is a relatively well worn territory, which is why creating greater clarity around the social impacts of the arts, cultural, and creative sector is worth our focus. AEA has been working with organizations to structure their thinking on these questions – and as more organizations take this on, enhancing our collective understanding of the places our work makes a difference as well. 

Tracking the social impacts is just the first step, however. The next comes in taking responsibility for the decisions around the impact that is being created. This means that leaders need to step back to take stock – to celebrate successes, but also understand roadblocks and failures, and be willing to move on from projects that are no longer working as they were intended. Understanding opportunities for subtraction is a healthy antidote to social models predicated on unfettered growth.

 

These of course are not the only areas for focus – managing climate changes and its impacts, new models for governance and ownership, changing philanthropic focus and models – the list goes on. Yet without some areas of shared focus, the sector risks being overrun by five more years of crisis management. Clear thinking and planning provides a more fruitful path forward.

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