THE ARTS AT THE FOREFRONT OF SYSTEMS CHANGE

From Woodstock to “Sun City,” culture has helped people act together. Lasting change also requires systems that sustain the creators.

Before people change a system, they often need to see themselves—and their possibilities—differently.

A song can give a movement a shared voice. A film can reveal an injustice. A performance can turn an unfamiliar struggle into something people feel compelled to understand.

The arts have repeatedly helped people question power, build solidarity and imagine another way of living. Their contribution becomes especially powerful when creative expression connects with organised action.

The history offers several different lessons.

Music can build a movement from within. During the US civil rights struggle, freedom singing helped people organise, sustain courage and carry their message. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee’s Freedom Singers brought that work to audiences beyond the communities where it began. Cultural expression was woven into the organising itself.

Woodstock made a cultural longing visible. In August 1969, the festival in Bethel, New York, became an enduring expression of a generation’s search for peace, community and cultural freedom. Its significance was primarily cultural: a gathering became a shared image of possibility. Turning those aspirations into public policy and lasting institutions required further work.

Live Aid turned attention into humanitarian fundraising. On 13 July 1985, concerts at Wembley Stadium in London and JFK Stadium in Philadelphia mobilised artists and audiences for African famine relief. The event demonstrated the extraordinary reach of coordinated music and broadcasting. Its purpose was emergency assistance; lasting food security also requires accountable institutions and the leadership of affected communities.

“Sun City” connected creative solidarity with a specific boycott. In 1985, Steven Van Zandt, Arthur Baker and collaborators brought together Artists United Against Apartheid. Their record and video supported the cultural boycott of apartheid South Africa, focusing on artists’ refusal to perform at the Sun City resort in Bophuthatswana. Rock, jazz and hip-hop artists contributed to a wider South African-led struggle. The campaign made participation in an unjust system a public question for the entertainment industry.

Farm Aid built continuing capacity around the concert. Established in 1985, it developed into an organisation combining cultural events with year-round farmer support, resources and advocacy for fair agricultural policies. The music helps sustain attention; the organisation carries work forward between performances.

These efforts used different mechanisms: belonging, fundraising, boycott and sustained advocacy. Understanding those differences helps us design what comes next.

A powerful cultural moment needs a practical pathway into change.

Who defines the problem? Who makes decisions? Where does the money go? What can an audience do after the performance—and who continues the work?

Cultural diversity matters to every answer. People affected by an injustice need meaningful authority over how their experiences are represented. Their knowledge, languages and creative leadership belong at the centre of the response.

We now have extraordinary tools for producing and distributing work. Yet UNESCO’s 2026 review of cultural policy identifies declining public funding, precarious artistic livelihoods, threats to artistic freedom and concentrated digital platform power. Visibility and financial security remain very different achievements.

A familiar observation invites us to question that arrangement:

“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”

This is the usual wording of the saying often attributed to Jiddu Krishnamurti; his foundation cannot verify these exact words as his.

A society that relies on artists to inspire change should also make it possible for them to live, work and create.

When the design fails, creators can become dependent on unpaid labour, unpredictable attention or agreements that exchange long-term control for short-term survival. Communities lose voices when only people with independent financial support can afford to develop their work.

The next question follows naturally: How can creators balance creative control with financial stability?

“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking that created them.”

The exact wording is not verified as Einstein’s. Applied here, it encourages a combination of individual bargaining power, shared infrastructure and dependable public support.

Five practical principles can help:

• Know the rights and control involved. Identify who owns the work and what a partner needs permission to do. Negotiate clear uses, duration, exclusivity, approvals, payment and reporting terms. Ownership and licensing are different arrangements; WIPO explains how rights holders can authorise uses through licences. Independent contract advice can help creators assess the trade-offs.
• Build relationships with an audience. Permission-based newsletters, memberships, screenings, performances and workshops can support continuing contact. These relationships take time and resources to maintain.
• Choose complementary income sources. A creator might combine commissions with teaching, sales with memberships, or performances with licensing. Budget for production, collaborators, administration and delivery. Predictable income can protect time for less commercial or experimental work.
• Share the work of independence. Cooperative distribution, shared equipment, collective administration and joint marketing can spread costs and responsibilities. Establish clear rules for decisions, payment, ownership and resolving disagreements.
• Make sustainability an institutional responsibility. Fair commissioning fees, timely payment, collective bargaining, accessible venues, social protection and sustained arts funding can widen participation. A healthy cultural system gives people with different incomes and backgrounds a realistic opportunity to create.

Working models already exist.

New Day Films, founded in 1971, is a filmmaker cooperative whose members share distribution, operations and leadership. Its educational licensing model connects socially engaged films with audiences through collective infrastructure. Cooperation itself becomes part of the business design.

For musicians, Bandcamp’s current terms illustrate a different arrangement: artists retain ownership while granting the platform non-exclusive permissions needed to host and sell their music. That distinction demonstrates how a distribution relationship can be structured without transferring ownership. It offers a mechanism, not a guarantee of earnings.

Even the Band Aid Charitable Trust describes managing intellectual property to generate regular annual income supporting its continuing work. A creative project can produce an ongoing resource when its rights and revenues are carefully organised.

“The future has always been here, it just hasn’t been evenly distributed.”

This wording adapts William Gibson’s observation. Here, the unevenly distributed future includes access to audiences, ownership, professional advice, collective support and time to create.

A community can begin by connecting the people already doing the work: artists, local organisers, venues, educators, producers and audiences. Choose a shared purpose. Agree on fair payment and decision-making. Build a programme that links performances and storytelling with practical opportunities to participate.

Publish what happened to the funds, what changed and what needs improvement.

“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

This popular saying has no substantiated Einstein attribution. As a warning against repeated failure, it asks us to carry learning from one cultural moment into the next.

The next chapter can grow from a neighbourhood stage, a community-owned studio, a filmmaker cooperative or a collaboration across cultures.

Its strength will come from connecting creative freedom with the resources to sustain it—and giving the people whose lives are at stake a meaningful role in shaping the change.