Infrequently Asked Questions

What is hybrid art?

Hybrid art happens when artists work outside of the arts. SymbioticA ran for over twenty years as an artist-led laboratory inside a University of Western Australia biology department. Robert Irwin designed a symposium for NASA as an artwork. Hybrid art is an approach to applying creativity, not a style or a medium.

What is a hybrid artist?

An artist who works inside another profession, as an artist. Gudrun Lock held a multi-year artist residency embedded in the Civil, Environmental and Geo Engineering department at the University of Minnesota, written into the NSF grant that created the department’s circular economy graduate program.

What skills do artists bring to collaborations?

Artists read and interpret culture: the assumptions, habits and stories that most others take for granted. The result may look like reframing a problem, asking the question nobody else does, and turning an abstract idea into experience. Artists are also unusually comfortable not knowing the answer.

Can art solve problems?

Rarely, and almost never directly. What artists reliably do is find a different problem, or the same problem stated differently. For the poet Yuko Taniguchi and the psychiatrist Kathryn Cullen, the question moved from “how art can be used to treat mental health” to “how practicing creative expression supports a healthier life”.

What does success look like?

Something in the organization is different afterwards and stays different: a position that did not exist before, an artist written into the next grant application, a community that was being consulted now on the payroll. Exhibitions and reports are evidence of success, not success itself.

What organizations can benefit from collaborating with artists?

Any organization dealing with complex issues can benefit, including those in public health, urban planning, education, technology, and government.

Why this work?

Collaboration is what many organizations and artists want, but few have the infrastructure for it. No shared vocabulary, no budget line, and nobody whose actual job is holding the thing together. And this happens to be the job I like doing.

What's the philosophy behind it?

Frances Whitehead says it better than I can, which is why her line sits at the top of this page. The problems that matter are cultural before they are technical, and artists are the profession that works on culture directly.

Where did the name come from?

The term is inspired by the "hybrid economy" concept introduced in the 2003 report "Investing in Creativity: A Study of the Support Structure for U.S. Artists", which highlighted artists working across sectors. Read more about this on the blog.

Where do I find good examples of creative collaborations?

Check out projects by SymbioticA, Rebuild Foundation, Caroline Sinders, Project Row Houses, Robert Irwin, Frances Whitehead, Municipal Artist Partnerships, Center for Performance and Civic Practice, Yo Mamas House, ...