OUR SHARED GOALS

Common Folk Artist Collective is a group of local and emerging creators who share and utilize resources to explore and thrive in our creative endeavors.

Common Folk members collectively invest in a shared studio, retail, and performance space that is available to all members at affordable costs. Leadership Members organize opportunities for members to share their creative work with the community and actively advocate for and promote member's work to the greater public.

We contribute to our communities by providing safe space for community gatherings and hosting accessible creative events. We address needs within the community by collaborating on projects that make a positive impact in North Adams and beyond.

We are a economic incubator for low to moderate income creators in the Northern Berkshires and surrounding Northeast region. We have 40+ members, a majority of which have launched and/or strengthened their professional creative businesses through accessing resources and networking provided by the leadership and partnerships of the collective.

OUR CORE VALUES

We create. We believe that everyone has the capacity to express their creativity. It is this innate human ability that we encourage people to use. We challenge ourselves to strengthen this ability throughout the creative process and encourage each other to try new things.

We find common ground. By creating an inclusive, equitable, and welcoming environment, we offer a supportive space for people from all walks of life to come together to share creative experiences with one another.

We inspire. We strive for our accessible platform to inspire people to reach a potential they didn’t think they could. By connecting with other emerging creators in and around our community, we hope to inspire folks to be creative, explore the boundaries of their creativity, and challenge themselves to try new things.

We celebrate. Becoming a professional artist is not easy. Sometimes and often, we fail. But by banding together, and showing up for each other, this process becomes easy. We celebrate each other through support, promotion, and most times with food.

We believe that art is a catalyst for change. Art not only functions as a form of entertainment, but can also be used as a tool to share messaging and engage communities. Our artists are encouraged to explore ways in which their creativity can make a healthy impact on North Adams and beyond.

We collaborate. We pride ourselves on our ability to adapt to new surroundings. We are always interested in exploring a project with other folks, whether big or small. We believe that collaboration is the key to success. We can accomplish more together than as individual artists.

We don’t know everything. Being a member of Common Folk is a learning experience. Some of us take on tasks and projects that we may not know how to do, but we are interested in learning. We make mistakes, but we learn from them and make the next project better because of it. Through collective mentor-ship, we support and encourage each other to accomplish our goals.

We are actively reassessing our mission and core values to ensure our spaces and programming are racially inclusive and equitable. The Leadership team is undergoing extensive training with Multicultural Bridge; supporting the work of area organizations leading in creative racial equity work, such as the Berkshire Cultural Resource Center; and developing/encouraging shared educational opportunities for Common Folk members and the community at-large.

OUR STRUCTURE

Common Folk Artist Collective is currently a sole proprietorship fiscally sponsored by Fractured Atlas. Common Folk does not currently employ any staff, is entirely run by its members on a volunteer basis, and the financial owner receives no % of profits. Our spaces, programming, and resources are made possible by collective investment in part by our members and supportive community. When projects generate revenue, it is redistributed to the collaborators of that project.

The collective is actively working on finding a sustainable business structure where all members have financial ownership of the organization and there are several paid staff positions. Common Folk does not seek to become a non-profit organization for several reasons: we are founded on the collective investment and decision-making power of our active members, rather than a board of directors; the Berkshires is disproportionately composed of non-profit organizations with limited tax revenue, therefore we prioritize contributing taxes to our small city; and we strive to be a model for collective-owned, mission-driven businesses in North Berkshire.