Governance as a Design Medium
We often treat governance as the "boring stuff"—the legal necessity that happens in the background while the "real creative work" happens on stage. I disagree. Governance is the operating system of culture.
In my practice as a Cultural Systems Architect, I treat organisational structures—bylaws, board compositions, funding models—as design materials. Just as an architect considers the load-bearing capacity of steel, a director must consider the load-bearing capacity of their team’s structure.
Beyond the Checklist
In the Netherlands, we rely on frameworks like the Governance Code Cultuur and the Fair Practice Code. These are essential baselines for transparency and solidarity. However, compliance is not strategy. A "compliant" organisation can still be stagnant.
True creative governance asks harder questions:
Does our board rotation schedule align with our innovation cycles?
Does our subsidy mix (structural vs. project) allow for failure, or does it enforce safe programming?
Is our "checks and balances" system designed for trust, or for control?
The Responsive Boardroom
If the governance is rigid, the culture stagnates. If the governance is fluid, the culture adapts. The goal is to build "clean power" structures: organisations that are robust enough to handle public money (accountability) but flexible enough to nurture wild creativity (responsiveness).
Innovation doesn't just happen in the gallery or on the stage; it starts in the boardroom. If we want a diverse, resilient cultural sector, we must design our organisations with the same creativity we apply to our art.
