Community-Supported Art Programs Expand in Popularity

The abbreviation CSA, traditionally associated with community-supported agriculture programs, has taken on additional meaning with programs for community-supported art, reports The New York Times.

The first program was started four years ago in Minnesota by the St. Paul nonprofit Springboard for the Arts, and the idea has now spread across the country, to cities such as Pittsburgh and Miami as well as smaller towns like Lincoln, Nebraska, and Fargo, North Dakota.

Like their farm-based forerunners, the arts CSA programs are intended to be self-supporting. Shareholder money pays artists, typically selected by a jury, to produce a small work in a limited edition based on the number of shares sold. The shareholders often don’t know in advance what the artists will make until they collect the finished work at pickup events. The goal, lifted from the world of small-scale community agriculture, is a “deeper-than-commerce connection between people who make things and people who buy them,” according to the Times.