The Creative Agency Experiment: Reflecting on 10 Years of ART x LOVE

In 2005, after receiving my MFA from the Edinburgh College of Art and attending lectures at the University of St. Andrews’ Institute for Theology, Imagination, and the Arts (ITIA), I was at a crossroads. I had been studying synaesthesis (the harmony of different or opposing impulses produced by a work of art) for six years and thought I was ready for my next step in academia. After a lecture, I stuck around to speak with Dr. Jeremy Begbie, renowned theologian and co-founder and assistant director of ITIA, to discuss my next steps for enrolling in ITIA. His candid feedback changed the course of my life.

Dr. Begbie said something to the effect of “while we’d obviously love to have you in the program, we are still getting it off the ground, and you would be the youngest person in it by ten to fifteen years. If you are already doing the work, and already gaining the knowledge and insight you need, you might want to consider whether it would be more productive for you to keep going with that rather than to spend the next three years in the classroom and library.” That perspective freed me to think of my creative practice as an ongoing experiment to test my theories, and to continue my study of the role those creative impulses play in our lives.

When my wife, Allyse, and I met at Sterling Brands in 2010, I was a manager of design intelligence, learning the art of brand equity evaluation (BEE) from Mike Bainbridge, and design thinking from Debbie Millman. When Allyse and I moved to Ohio and got married in 2013, we believed there was a tremendous creative and business opportunity to apply these methods to public art, placemaking, and interdisciplinary design projects.

When we founded ART x LOVE as our creative agency in 2015, it was as much to own our own work and processes as it was to give shape to the needs of our creative landscape. We believed there was a space where a for-profit creative agency could perform in ways the nonprofit sector inherently couldn’t and also provide greatly needed investment across our landscape and creative industry. We were pervasively aware that, at the time, the following were true:

Artists were being asked to work for free or were severely underpaid.

The only sustainable jobs in the arts were in nonprofit arts administration.

Many public art projects were performative: designed for photo opportunities or political expediency, rather than a sustainable impact.

Local artists were under-represented and needed more opportunities for professional development and growth.

There was an overall lack of diversity and inclusion, particularly when it came to research-driven projects in the creative sector.

Local foundations and grants claimed selection based on “merit,” when in fact many awards were pre-assigned and based on personal relationships.

The cultural pulse of the community believed that the ecosystem was successful, when in fact few leaders (if any) were speaking of the scarcity mindset driving so many artists to leave the region or give up their practice entirely.

A lot has changed in the last ten years, and while our industry still faces many of these challenges (and new ones), we have been encouraged by the changes we’ve seen—even though some are slow on the uptake.

As we have grown our business, our knowledge and experience with this landscape continues to percolate. The hypotheses driving our creative initiatives continue to expose alternative paths for connection, growth, and sustainable impact:

Believeland—transforming the Main Avenue Bridge corridor in Cleveland’s Flats East Bank into a chalk mural district, spurring tourism, economic development, and a renewed sense of pride.

Hypothesis—what is the biggest impact we can have in this space with the least amount of support or risk?

Path—chalk murals in environmentally resilient corridors are an excellent way to test the viability and impact for public art.

@PLAY Akron—an eighteen-month interactive art project that mapped every street in the city, engaged more than 10,000 residents, and hired 168 artists to produce more than 100 murals, 50 placemaking initiatives, and 26 events across Akron’s 24 neighborhoods.

Hypothesis—what if we take a holistic approach to community engagement, public art, and placemaking instead of concentrating on a narrow corridor?

Path—broad, intentional, interactive engagement and follow-through build trust and pride, and expose systemic inequities needing improvement.

Steps to Equity—a geospatial walkability assessment of Cleveland’s Buckeye-Shaker neighborhood that inspired and informed a free community activity book, several public art projects, and local investment.

Hypothesis—what if we empower residents and students to objectively capture and report on the condition of their environment using the same tools cities use to evaluate and address these needs?

Path—when you give everyday people access to geospatial information systems (GIS) and work in groups with objective parameters for reporting, the data is not only highly actionable, but also optimized for achieving a meaningful impact.

Akron Stories—a grassroots oral history project that supported the construction of the Rubber Worker Statue in downtown Akron while collecting, preserving, and sharing the stories of the people who made Akron the “Rubber Capital of the World.”

Hypothesis—what is the most authentic way of capturing people’s stories and sharing them in the most palatable way for future generations?

Path—the more accessible and comfortable you can make your storytellers, the more authentic and vivid their recall will be. Micro-documentaries in a choose-your-own-adventure format are an exciting way to gamify the sharing of knowledge across generations.

Akron on Deck—playing cards celebrating local landmarks, icons, and artists. Akron on Deck and Asheville on Deck (a flood relief effort to support local artists and businesses in North Carolina after Hurricane Helene) have together generated more than $300,000.

Hypothesis—how can we celebrate local artists in everyone’s home, raise awareness and drive tourism of cultural landmarks, and create passive income for our creative community?

Path—combining art with the right everyday household/work items is a powerful way to differentiate a community and generate revenue for local artists.

And while there are many points we are excited to celebrate and share from this year, given the present moment it is the opening of Forever Changes, our creative studio and art gallery in downtown Akron, that gives us the greatest hope and courage for the future.

Our hypothesis with Forever Changes was that, based on the number of artists we knew and the amount of available exhibition space in the area, there was a huge opportunity to offer artists and the public a space to display, shop for, and learn about local artists’ work.

Forever Changes offers an easy path for creative connection where anyone can either apply for a free display with a thirty-percent gallery commission or pay $150 per month for a display with no gallery commission.

Since opening Forever Changes in May, we have seen a consistently steady increase in sales of local artists’ work, both in volume and in revenue. And while this is great news for our sector, and certainly indicative of the incredible talent we have across Northeast Ohio, it is not the path that most excites us for the future.

We have learned that when you truly, proactively, and intentionally focus on creating more art collectors and advocates, it raises the tide for everyone. The art sector tends to focus on the imposter syndrome that artists feel, rather than the imposter syndrome it perpetuates among everyday people who feel disconnected from art and their own creative impulse. If we want to grow and thrive and earn a fair wage for our work, I think it begins with welcoming the disenfranchised back to the table. If there is one thing this creative agency experiment has taught us, it is that our most meaningful, impactful, and enduring success comes from the creative agency we inspire in others.

ART x LOVE
35 South Main Street
Akron, Ohio 44308
artxlove.com
Facebook: Art x Love
330.238.8588