We are not a collective; we are a marketplace of individuals trying to survive.
“Community” is the most overused word in design. We are told we belong to a global collective of like-minded souls. It is a comforting thought.
It makes the late nights feel like a shared sacrifice rather than a private struggle. But the “creative community” as it is sold to us in newsletters and conference keynotes does not actually exist. It is a branding exercise designed to make a cutthroat marketplace feel like a neighborhood. We are encouraged to join, to participate, and to contribute, but the benefits of this membership are rarely tangible. It is a social contract with no enforcement and no real safety net.
In reality, we are competitors. We are all bidding for the same few projects. We are all chasing the same handful of awards to justify our rates. When we talk about community, what we usually mean is “audience.” We want people to see our work and validate our taste. This is not a criticism of the individuals; it is a critique of the terminology. Calling a marketplace a community is a way to lower our defenses and encourage us to share our secrets under the guise of mutual growth. It turns our peers into unpaid consultants. We trade our hard-won insights for digital approval, while the platforms hosting these groups collect the profit.
The industry thrives on this performative togetherness. We attend meetups where everyone talks about their “process,” but nobody talks about their profit margins. We see the polished case studies online, but we never see the emails where the client refused to pay. This version of community creates a massive gap between our lived experience and our public persona. If everyone else is part of this thriving network, why do we feel so isolated when a project goes sideways? The answer is that the network is built for visibility, not for actual support. It is a gallery, not a workshop.
True support happens in the dark. It is the text message to a former colleague asking what they charged for a similar scope of work. It is the private chat where people are honest about which agencies are currently failing to meet payroll. These are small, closed loops based on trust, not public-facing platforms based on industry buzz. The larger the group gets, the less useful it becomes for the actual practitioner. When a group becomes too big, it stops being a support network and starts being a stage. On a stage, everyone is performing. Nobody is going to admit they are struggling when there are potential recruiters in the audience.
There is also a cost to this forced belonging. It creates a homogenization of thought. If we are all part of the same group, reading the same newsletters and following the same people, we eventually start producing the same work. We adopt the same aesthetic styles and use the same vocabulary because we want to be recognized. The fear of being cast out leads to a creative timidity. We stop taking risks because risks are, by definition, outside the consensus of the collective. We prioritize being “correct” according to the latest trends over being effective for the problem at hand.
We should stop looking for a village and start looking for a few good peers. The work is solitary by nature. It requires long hours of thinking, failing, and refining that no amount of networking can solve. Admitting that we are mostly on our own is not cynical; it is liberating. It allows us to stop performing “creative person” and start being one.
We do not need a community to validate our existence. We just need to do the work.
Northern Arts and Regional Innovation
This is a collaborative initiative by The Arts Incubator Winnipeg and the Art Borups Corners art collective, supporting artists and creative projects in Melgund Township, Northwestern Ontario. Our groups champion rural arts development, community programming, Indigenous arts partnerships, and cultural innovation—strengthening the local and regional arts sector through mentorship, exhibitions, digital media, and sustainable creative entrepreneurship. Our events and activities include artists from Melgund Township, Winnipeg, Ignace, Sioux Lookout, Dryden, and beyond. You read more innovation-focused posts here.
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