What happens after the TED talk (A-Corp Update #2)

This update was originally sent to the Artist Corporation email list.

Back in April I stood on stage at the TED conference in Vancouver to publicly share the idea of Artist Corporations for the first time. (You can read my process diary about that here.) 

But once the lights went down and the talk was over, the real work began.

The weeks and months since were spent trying to start a movement that we’re beginning see to take shape. Myself and a team of collaborators held brunches, dinners, and events across North America where we walked musicians, visual artists, filmmakers, writers, TikTokers, online creators, record and film executives, poets, and pop stars through the ins and outs of A-Corps, answering their questions, and asking their wants and needs. The draft law changed more than once based on what we learned in those sessions.

These months have also found us deep in the process of learning how to draft a law. Our legal collaborator (who we’ll introduce in a later post) is a superstar in her field who has successfully introduced new legal forms that became law before. Soon we’ll present our work to a state Bar Association whose endorsement we’re seeking. A whole other path to explore.

There’s also the legislative process of making a law, which involves finding politicians who will endorse your ideas and agree to sponsor them. For corporate law in America, this happens at the state level. We’ve been on the ground in one focus state multiple times meeting people, building relationships, and making the case why Artist Corporations would be beneficial to their communities. Our progress has been significant.

Finally, there’s been hearing from all of you. When we launched the Artist Corporations website, the initial goal was to get 500 people to sign up this year. After two months more than 3,000 of you have, and we’ve received hundreds of messages and inbound emails offering to help.

We want your help and we want to continue hearing from you, so please keep writing in. The more people who sign up, show up, and share their needs and stories, the more likely Artist Corporations will become a reality.

I want to call out one response we got after last week’s message, from one of you who’s building a community organization to support and promote local artists: 

“We could create an LLC, but it does not seem appropriate to our mission, nor does it help with donations. On the other hand, starting a 501c3 seems administratively overwhelming considering the small size of our organization and the fact that we don't have the budget to pay full time staff to handle the admin work."

This struggle is one of the reasons we feel so strongly about the need for Artist Corporations.

Building a community of voices

The next step of this journey is this project no longer being led by just our voice, but by a growing community of them. We want to tell the stories of people in this community and others, and we want them to join in telling the Artist Corporations story too.

(As we said last week, please let us know if you or your group would like to be featured in some way. Thank you to the amazing people who have already written in!)

This project has been a group effort from the start. We want that group to keep getting bigger. These are still the early days. Thank you for being part of them.