Values
These values are guides that help us clarify our working methods and our decision making, and in this sense they will always mark the horizon of any process within SPIN. We are aware that there will be moments when we fully embody these values, and at other times our failure to do so will lead us to pause, reflect and try to do things differently.
In the late winter of 2025, we gathered in a small Belgian village called Dourbes to try and formalise an ongoing process of articulating the values of the organisation that we carry. We shared what we saw as the explicit and implicit values of SPIN, and also spoke about values that we individually hold close, that might have a place in the way we lead and practice inside this organisation in the future. From this process, a series of values emerged.
We are articulating and sharing these values with you, our collaborators, board, general meeting, peers, employees, audience, funders and friends, in the hope that you are excited to share this horizon with us and that we can help each other to re-orient ourselves towards these values if need be.
These values can (and will) change as the future unfolds.
If any of these values resonate with you and your organisation or collective, please feel welcome to use, adapt and adopt them.
DIT (Do It Together)
SPIN is created and managed by and for the practices and people that inhabit and orbit the organisation, which means we rely on each other.
When we “do it together,” we try to:
- Centre ethical communication and care.
- Understand that hierarchies are always present in groups and commit to naming our responsibilities and acknowledging blind spots.
- Step into the discomfort of learning new skills when we need to and invest in listening to our mistakes.
- Balance the excitement of thinking big with the capacities and limits of everyone involved.
- Work to strengthen our political alignments based on the strategies of anti-discrimination and respect towards difference.
Relevant contexts: Meetings, partnerships, internal and external collaborations, internal communication, SPIN projects, decision-making…
MUTUAL AUTONOMY
SPIN supports diverse arts practices with different needs and purposes. We share resources, while navigating the balance between autonomy, interdependence and solidarity within SPIN. SPIN is practice-led.
To keep our artists’ and art-workers’ practices at the centre of what we do as a group, we aim to:
- Acknowledge and build from the differences in our practices’ content, disciplines, speed, productivity, knowledge bases, networks and publics.
- Make space for the autonomous development of each practice.
- Believe that the needs and desires of our practices define where SPIN is and where it is heading.
- Cultivate and embrace mutual trust.
- Maintain a pragmatic and accessible administration structure, and organise at the service of transparency.
- Share a central budget with solidarity as a guiding principle.
Relevant contexts: Tools, communication, resource distribution, decision-making, meetings, planning, responsibility distribution…
SHAREABLITY
SPIN is an infrastructure of collective resources and tools.
To remain usable, we try to be shareable by:
- Developing administrative processes with accessibility and transparency at their core.
- Supporting each other to use and feel confident within our tools and resources.
- Contributing to the smooth running of our infrastructure so that time and space can be made for exceptions when they arise.
- Recognising that staying small makes us agile, responsive and sustainable, while also welcoming opportunities to share.
Relevant contexts: Tools, internal and external communication, future planning, organisational structure, training, resource distribution…
SOLIDARITY
SPIN is built on our belief in solidarity, both within the organisation and towards the broader art, activist and educational fields we are part of.
We ground ourselves in solidarity by aiming to:
- Create fair, respectful and supported working conditions for ourselves and our collaborators.
- Build moments for generative mutualisation with each other and those outside of SPIN.
- Contribute resources to transformative processes when we can.
- Organise our mutual budget along principles of solidarity.
Relevant contexts: Employee relationships, contracts, tools, training, future planning, organisational structure, resource distribution…
ABUNDANCE
SPIN facilitates the sharing and exchange of financial, creative and infrastructural resources.
Within the reality of our material limits, we attempt to nurture abundance by:
- Staying grounded.
- Practicing long-arc thinking.
- Taking care of each other and the organisation.
- Embracing dissent.
- Reacting to needs with generosity and responding to desires by asking what we can do with what we have.
- Approaching our labour, time and ambition realistically.
- Making space and time for rest.
Relevant contexts: Internal relationships, tools, future planning, organisational structure, resource distribution, internal communication, future planning, decision-making, meetings, planning, responsibility distribution, partnerships, internal and external collaborations, SPIN projects, decision-making…