There is a question that cultural organisations avoid asking aloud, perhaps because the answer is uncomfortable: to what extent is what we can say and do conditioned by those who pay us? I pose this from within, not as an accusation. I direct a foundation with a tight budget, dependent on grants and support, and I know that this issue is not theoretical.

There is a classic theory of organisation that states this bluntly: whoever depends on an environment to obtain resources remains, to that same extent, exposed to the control of that environment. No one needs to issue an order. It suffices that the dependency exists, alongside the need for resources to return the following year. Applied to culture, this means that the funding structure determines not only how much can be done, but something more subtle: which topics appear fundable, which language is safe, which conflicts are best left unopened, which metrics are prioritised, and which audiences are named and which are not.

Research into the sector qualifies and refines this. Different types of funding push in different directions: earned income tends to be associated with greater autonomy and artistic risk; public and private funding often orient towards the community, accountability, and the expectations of the funder. None is innocent; none is free in the profound sense. And managing several simultaneously—each with its own deadline, form, and shifting priority—generates a specific type of precariousness: that of an organisation dedicating a growing portion of its energy to sustaining its own scaffolding of funding.

The most delicate aspect is self-censorship, because it is invisible. It is not that a funder forbids saying something; it is that the organisation, knowing upon whom it depends, learns by itself not to say it. This is little studied in culture and somewhat more in the third sector in general, where there are indications that certain funding structures are associated with a greater tendency to 'moderate criticism' towards the administrations upon which they depend. In the sphere of European museums, recent surveys include precisely this among common pressures: dependence on public funds, interference in programmes, pressure to align with agendas, and its most silent form, self-censorship.

I acknowledge the discomfort of writing this while presiding over a foundation that needs to be funded. But precisely for that reason, I believe it must be said: the solution is not to feign an independence that no organisation possesses—living without depending on anyone is not a real option—but to name the dependency and work upon it. An organisation that recognises how its funding conditions it is in a better position to resist that condition than one that tells itself it is free. Lucidity regarding one's own tether is the first way to loosen it.

Viewed with the vocabulary I use in other texts, funding functions as an infrastructure for what can be affirmed. It neither creates nor destroys the existence of a cultural practice, but it decides to a large extent which becomes visible, defensible, sustainable, and speakable in the public space. It is an infrastructure, and like all infrastructure, it is not neutral: it favours some things and hinders others, quietly, without the need for explicit censorship.

From this, however, despondency does not follow, but rather a concrete task. Autonomy does not consist of not depending—that is a fantasy—but of not depending on a single hand. Diversifying sources, so that none can dictate; earning own income to widen the margin; and, above all, saying aloud what funding conditions, because what is named can be negotiated, and what is silenced, cannot. A foundation that recognises these strings is, paradoxically, freer than one that boasts of having none. Freedom, here as almost always, begins by seeing clearly what one is not entirely free from.

On open conversation

This text is part of my sub-series Art and Society, which examines with honesty, and from within, the real conditions of cultural work; here, how vocation is used to cheapen the work of those who possess it, and whom it leaves out. If anyone wishes to intervene from the sociology of work, the economics of culture, or the labour organisation of the sector, the notebook remains open.

Sources

Pfeffer, Jeffrey and Gerald R. Salancik. The External Control of Organizations: A Resource Dependence Perspective. Harper & Row, 1978.

Sherer, Peter D., Roy Suddaby and Mary Rozsa de Coquet. “Does Resource Diversity Confer Organizational Autonomy in Arts Organizations? Extending Resource Dependence Theory”. The Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society 49, no. 4 (2019): 224-241.

Ashton, Daniel. “Funding arts and culture: Everyday experiences and organisational portfolio precarity”. European Journal of Cultural Studies 26, no. 3 (2023): 388-407.

NEMO (Network of European Museum Organisations). Barometer on political influence in museums in Europe. 2025.

Arvidson, Malin, Håkan Johansson and Roberto Scaramuzzino. “Advocacy Compromised: How Financial, Organizational and Institutional Factors Shape Advocacy Strategies of Civil Society Organizations”. Voluntas 29, no. 4 (2018): 844-856.