If we have a local artist who’s contributing to the exhibition in some way, we typically don’t pay them an artist’s fee or honorarium unless they’re doing something substantial for the exhibition.

There was one time very early on in the creative catalyst program, when our creative catalyst coordinator was working on an art demo project. There was a festival downtown and the creative catalyst wanted to do something with it so they went out and recruited a bunch of aerosol artists to use these art cubes we had built, doing aerosol art outside onsite at this festival as a part of community engagement for creative catalyst. When I realized that they had lined up all these artists that were willing to donate their services – the only thing we had done was buy the paint – it actually bothered me because we don’t generally ask artists to work for nothing. So, as a thank you to them, because they were already lined up and the event was about to happen, we ended up giving all the artists who participated vouchers for tickets to come see a show. They got two free tickets to a show of their choice.