The current turbulence in the arts (and every other) industry has driven me back to reading about complex ecosystems, how they work, and how they evolve over time. My current inroad is Resilience Thinking: Sustaining Ecosystems and People in a Changing World, which Robyn Archer mentioned during her brilliant remarks at the Arts Presenters conference (here’s another speech she made elsewhere that engaged similar themes).
This book, and others on the subject, build upon the idea of the ”adaptive cycle,” a recurring pattern that appears in most natural, social, economic, or other systems, at different speeds and scales over time. In considering the current state of the economy, and of the arts, the cycle seemed eerily resonant.
Says the book:
By studying ecosystems all around the world, researchers have learned that most systems of nature usually proceed through recurring cycles consisting of four phases: rapid growth, conservation, release, and reorganization. The manner in which the system behaves is different from one phase to the next with changes in the strength of the system’s internal connections, its flexibility, and its resilience.
”Resilience,” in this context, refers to any system’s ability to absorb disturbance and still behave in essentially the same way, rather than shifting to a distinctly different state of being. Just a quick review of the four phases in the adaptive cycle should bring some arts industry insights into focus:
- The Rapid Growth Phase — a period in which ”species or people…exploit new opportunities and available resources…. The systems’ components are weakly interconnected and its internal state is weakly regulated.” Think start-ups, product or category innovators, scrappy young upstarts. Think the arts world in the 1960s and 1970s.
- The Conservation Phase — ”energy gets stored and materials slowly accumulate. Connections between the actors increase….and competitive edge shifts from opportunists to specialists,” who are more conservative and efficient in their use of resources. New entry becomes increasingly difficult, as energy in the system becomes more and more bound up in unavailable forms (in nature, it’s bound up in physical biomass like wood or organisms, in social systems, it’s bound up in formal organizations and established social structures). Think about the rise of professional arts organizations in the 1980s and 1990s, the boom of more formal corporate behavior among nonprofits, and the rise of endowments and family foundations (forms of economic biomass that pull cash out of the system). Favorite quote from the book: ”Such a system is increasingly stable — but over a decreasing range of conditions.”
- The Release Phase — ”a disturbance that exceeds the system’s resilience breaks apart its web of reinforcing interactions. The system comes undone. Resources that were tightly bound are now released as connections break and regulatory controls weaken.” In natural systems, think fires, drought, insect infestations, and disease. In the arts industry, think market shock and rapid shift in wealth, credit, and financial options. In other words, think now.
- The Reorganization Phase — with the massive release of previously unavailable energy, ”all options are open…. Novelty can thrive. Small, chance events have the opportunity to powerfully shape the future. Invention, experimentation, and reassortment are the order of the day.” In nature, this is when new species emerge, or non-native species invade the ecosystem. It’s not all roses…it’s chaotic and unpredictable. In the arts world, recall the collapse of traditional social values and constructs in the 1950s that made the 1960s possible. Or think of what might happen in the decade to come.
Not all systems move through this cycle in sequence. Some skip steps, some loop back upon themselves, some experience multiple loops at multiple levels simultaneously. But the utility in exploring the adaptive cycle comes from its suggestions about opportunity and challenge, about when smaller groups can have larger impacts, and about how crisis and collapse are distressing but also entirely natural.
The concept of the adaptive cycle isn’t likely to make insolvent arts organizations feel any better about their current state. Nor is it likely to pay the bills of the unemployed. But it might help us understand where we are, what might come next, and how we might productively engage the challenge.
UPDATE: Lots of great comments coming related to this post. Be sure to read below. And I find myself returning frequently to the closing paragraph of Robyn Archer’s speech to the AnzArts Institute (linked above, but also here) as a far better closing than my own. Says she:
”A creative society is one which is flexible and generous and values all
parts of its collective enterprise and activity — one which ultimately
prizes resilience, and to that end the positive and continuing support
not only of the tallest and most celebrated trees, or the sexy new ways
in which one promotes, deploys their strengths and profits from them,
but also the small and vital but as yet largely un-noticed new growth
at the bottom of the forest. It is from this floor the future emerges.
Neglect it, deprive it, and render it less important and less worthy of
investment and despite your best efforts at the canopy, your forest is
already dying.”
Andrew, how do the issues of legacy, investment, establishment (all in relation to the top tier of the arts market) color this circle? In ecosystems and business the release phase most often includes loss. Examples, forest in fire, asset loss in bankruptcy or loss of market share. In the “Art Market” the underlying assets (master works) remain and dominate what is essentially a closed financial system. In your opinion, does this current phase indicate a renewal of the arts in creative terms (and if so what is the driver) or is this specific phase only financial and thus, at best, we can expect a change in the nominal players?
Thanks Tony, great comment…
Two thoughts (and I’d encourage other readers to respond, as well):
One, I wouldn’t necessarily use the word ”loss” in describing what happens in the release phase. Rather, existing energy in the system is converted into other forms, or ”released” (forest fires convert wood into ash and heat and chemical byproducts…certainly, the tree ”loses” something in the process, but the system doesn’t).
Second, I would consider ”master works” as one of MANY underlying assets in the arts market. A painting or a composition, for example, can’t really be broken down. But the structures and organizations that hold them and connect them with an audience can certainly break down. In other words, it’s not the artwork, but the museum that dissolves (as a cluster of financial, legal, social, and human assets organized in a particular way). A reconfiguration of how expressive works are controlled, contained, sustained, and connected to the world is more than ”a change in the nominal players” but less than the entire reconfiguration of what we now call art.
Okay, that was probably a bigger response than you were looking for…
I think we also have to consider the interconnectedness and interdependence of systems and the fact that conserving one system while the systems around it are naturally releasing and reorganizing is somewhat artificial and potentially counterproductive.
What good does it do to keep a 19th century arts discipline (system) alive in the 21st century if the systemic context (audience tastes, values, educational priorities, etc.) in which it emerged and found sustenance has undergone extensive reorganization? It could be argued that conserving an arts system beyond its natural release date will deprive other systems of the resources they need to enter the rapid growth phase.
Does that enormous, venerable arts institution that sucks up so many resources really nourish the cultural community? Or would ‘releasing’ those resources contribute to an overall healthier system? Didn’t Mufasa have to succumb in order for Simba to ascend to the throne and restore balance to the Pridelands?
Great points, Trevor…and excellent integration of the Lion King reference. You took the bait.
You bring up another point that’s central in the *Resilience Thinking* book: That efforts to optimize a narrow range of outputs in any system tend to reduce or threaten the long-term resilience of the system. So, if you try to build and maintain the number of mature trees in a forest, for example, you create a forest that’s closer to the edge of catastrophic collapse (insect infestation, massive fire, etc.). Hence the ”controlled burn.”
Problem is, there’s really nobody in a position to make those choices within our cultural ecology (nor would we necessarily want there to be). It’s all individual players making individual choices, and optimizing what they believe to be important from their narrow perspective. So, even if you wanted to ”thin the herd,” how would you decide who needed the thinning, and how would you convince them to let go?
“Does that enormous, venerable arts institution that sucks up so many resources really nourish the cultural community? Or would ‘releasing’ those resources contribute to an overall healthier system?”
It seems clear by the works you chosen (enormous, venerable, institution, sucks up), that you’ve made up you mind already and feel that “big” equals “bad”.
However, can’t “big” also mean better paychecks for the artists, better benefits for employees, more jobs for local workers and more opportunities for audiences for world-class art? Could a gig at a well-paying “venerable institution” mean that an artist can afford to explore a smaller project later in the year? Can a bigger operational budget mean that a Midwesterner is able to experience certain art which otherwise is out-of-reach?
I live with each foot planted firmly in both big and small budget art worlds and I feel they complement each other.
Sadly, Andrew, I think the herd thinning is happening now. The aging of the great 20th century arts audience and the economic crisis are coincident disturbances that will probably exceed many systems’ webs of reinforcing interactions.
And to Everycritic’s point, I think the culling will effect the canopy and the floor alike leaving enough of both, one would hope, to keep things in balance.
I must admit, though, that I like the part where Archer says, “It is from [the forest] floor the future emerges.”
Walker’s four points are helpful, but they miss the deeper systemic dynamics fueling even these four moments, which are both simpler (although these are pretty simple) and more profound for our approach to arts organizations, as well as everything else.
If you go back to the basic tenets of system dynamics, we encounter this fundamental assertion — nothing grows or diminishes forever (see Senge’s ”5th discipline” for the most accessible treatment of this). The natural world, indeed the entire world, is dominated not by growth, but by a dynamic equilibrium, that keeps things operating within mutually interdependent parameters, and which will self-correct any growth outside those parameters, gently if the cycles oscillate quickly, more dramatically if they are delayed.
At EmcArts, we are working right now with lots of organizations seeking to maintain their innovative edge while their economic world is falling apart. We find that the ”teachable moment” presented by this crises is that most organizations, and most people, embrace a tacit assumption that continued growth is the path toward sustainability. It’s not. The focus on bigger exhibits, longer seasons and larger budgets in fact doom organization to perpetual cycles of boom and bust, as the limits of the growth of these things are reached, with the consequent crash that must accompany these encounters.
What leads to a truly sustainable organizational life is the ability to adapt quickly to changes in the environment, and the organizations we see succeeding have both a radical openness to that environment, cultural values that encourage reflection and reward learning as well as accomplishment, and process that enable them to test adaptive ideas in a way that allows them to ”fail safe”.
The economic bust we are experiencing is the sadly predictable result of the pretty delusion that the velocity of the economic growth of the last decade reflected its permanence. In fact, it reflected its fragility. Developing the capacity to adapt is not a good idea because of the times — it a good idea because the world is wired to reward dynamic, adaptive stability, not dramatic growth.
John Shibley
Director of Organizational Learning, EmcArts
I recommend also reading *Getting to Maybe* by Frances Westley, Brenda Zimmerman, Michael Patton, which uses insights of complexity theory and social innovation to challenge anyone (arts organizations) to rethink how, why, and what to change.
I would refer to the astute comments of Mr. Taleb in a previous AM post to anyone feeling prescriptive about the fate of any system at the moment.
For the entities hungry for energy release: I would also like to point out that living in a permanently destabilized culture isn’t any fun. You, too, will become the lumbering ox one day beset a bajillion bloodthirsty mosquitoes clambering to release your energy.
Finally, dynamic equilibrium isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be: each transaction creates a loss of mass into heat energy which dissipates steady throughout the universe until ubiquitous equilibrium is achieved, but all potential for energy transfer is lost. Apply the metaphor liberally.