What’s in a name? Why ‘agency’ is important to us

People often refer to us as ‘Rising Arts’ - it’s understandable, but it’s also frustrating. Here’s why: it leaves out the key word ‘agency.’ ‘Agency’ is central to everything we do. 

Rethinking the ‘Agency’ model 

What do you think of when you imagine an “Agency”? A recruitment agency perhaps? An unnecessary middle man? Transactional, delivering a service, detached from the work and taking a cut. Exploitative. 

We are not that kind of agency. 

At Rising we are rethinking what agency means, and proposing a radical reimagining of it. 

Our agency is a social enterprise which at the very basic level means we use the income we get from commissions, or through supporting organisations to think differently, and put it straight into the hands of young people - who rarely get opportunities. Our goal is not to make a profit but to make societal change. We are involved, we advocate for our young people, we support them every step of the way, we insist on fair pay. 

We are a community, our community are our peers, we’re about collective strength rather than gatekeeping.  

Agency - Not just how we do, it's why we do 

We exist because we believe that for many young people, the arts and culture sector sucks - it’s exclusive, harmful and exploitative.  

We are here to give agency back to those it's often denied. We work to give young people ownership over the sector and the spaces they occupy. As an agent we’re often in protection mode – we hold partners accountable where young people cannot.

From exploitation to equity 

In Kamina’s last blog post as Director - she was unpicking what it means to have an equitable partnership. We’ve been taking time over the past few years to really interrogate what it means to form, nurture and maintain equitable and sustainable partnerships. What does a meeting of minds, a sharing of resources, power and spaces look like in practice? What could it look like in the creative sector?

Rising has been burned a few times in partnerships - whether it’s through miscommunication, unaligned values, issues with pacing or trust. It’s difficult to create these potentially really special partnerships when many arts organisations are existing in a space that can be particularly hostile, competitive and capacity-draining. 

Some of our most valuable partnership-working has been with organizations and collectives who we’ve never actually ‘worked’ with, but who are doing the work alongside us, fighting towards the same aim or working towards change in the industry. 

In fact, we'll be challenging these experiences into our Collaborate project, thinking about how these power dynamics can be at least named and hopefully the barriers dismantled entirely.

So when we return back to that question of what makes a sustainable, equitable partnership - especially for a small,  grassroots youth collective like us, who are often at the mercy of funder’s requirements, larger organisations’ programming schedules, capacity issues, systemic oppression etc.. we have to come back to this word ‘agency’. It’s about having a sense of ownership, space to move, flex, pivot and feed-into or leave the work and our relationship is what makes for a truly equitable partnership. Agency.

So if we see some comms that goes out saying ‘Rising Arts’ - don’t be surprised if we kindly ask you to add ‘Agency’, because our name serves as a reminder not just of how we work, Agency is why we work.