The Silver Guide to Non-Monetary Transactions

ARCA, in partnership with the Independent Media Arts Alliance (IMAA) is proud to launch The Silver Guide to Non-Monetary Transactions, a digital, interactive resource designed to assist managers in small not-for-profit arts organizations document and account for in-kind exchanges and donations of goods and services (non-monetary transactions).

To access the Silver Guide to Non-Monetary Transactions: http://silver-guide-argent.arca.art/

The guide, written by auditor Sophie Houle, provides the basic rules and methods for documenting, assessing and accounting for the many informal transactions that occur during regular and event-based programming in small organizations. This practice, if widely adopted, could more fully represent the value of artist-run organizations’ contribution to the arts sector.

Empowering managers in small NFP organizations

By encouraging this accounting practice, ARCA and IMAA wish also to thwart the perception that small organizations are over-reliant on public funding by making evident, instead, how large institutions and large-scale events benefit from the generous, and underrepresented material, human and artistic resources of small organizations. This contribution ranges from training cultural workers with employment and internships, support artistic experimentation so that museums may later realize the value of these practices, producing knowledge through commissioned texts and colloquia, and conserving media archives for research.

A guide for peers, by peers

Besides the written guide, the online resource, designed and developed by Corina MacDonald, Antonia Hernandez and Evan Savage of MAT3RIAL, includes a glossary, diagrams, and template letters and forms generously supplied by peers from the artist-run community who also composed the project’s advisory committee. ARCA is grateful for the input of Emmanuel Madan (IMAA), Dana Kletke (MAWA), Emma Hendrix (Video Pool), Debbie Keeper (Urban Shaman), Linda Gorrie (grunt), Yuras Mourog (OBORO), Tam-Ca Vo-Van (SAW), Claudine Roger (VOX) and project coordinator Pierre Beaudoin whose experience managing artist-run centres served to ground this resource in more relatable terms.

Training on hold

The launch of The Silver Guide to Non-Monetary Transactions and training session planned to take place in the context of Lands to Travel Through, ARCA’s biennial conference co-produced with the Alberta Association of Artist-Run Centres (AAARC), was sadly cancelled due to Covid-19 travel restrictions. Training sessions are still planned for the conference hopefully in the summer of 2021.

Support for the development of The Silver Guide to Non-Monetary Transactions was provided by Canadian Heritage’s Strategic Initiative component of the Canada Fund for Cultural Investments, a program that recognizes the non-monetary contributions of our project partners, without which this project would’nt have been possible.