Work as Art :: Art as an Organizational Artifact
Custom-designed art installation and artifact representing HopeLab's values and work, by Michael Cultlip (2005)
Part 4 of a series exploring the use of art at work and seeing work as art.
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In the 1980s, MIT professor Edgar Schein created a model that continues to influence our understanding of organizational life. His model describes three ways in which culture manifests - in its visible artifacts and behaviors, by its espoused or explicit beliefs and values, and through its basic underlying assumptions about work and people, which are likely unconscious or implicit and taken for granted within the organization.
Schein describes artifacts as all the phenomena you can see, hear, and feel when encountering an organization. “Artifacts include the visible products of the group, such as the architecture of its physical environment; its language; its technology and products; its artistic creations; its style, as embodied in clothing, manners of address, emotional displays, and myths and stories told about the organization; its published lists of values; its observable rituals and ceremonies; and so on.” These are all things an alien (or cultural anthropologist) might observe if they landed smack dab in the middle of your workplace.
Artifacts [are] all the phenomena you can see, hear, and feel when encountering an organization.
As a consultant and artist, I am always curious about an organization’s artifacts. Artifacts are easy to observe but can be challenging to decipher. This is precisely why they fascinate me. At the start of any consulting project, I collect as many artifacts as I can. Reviewing them gives me a feel for an organization. These documents, objects, and other things embody an organization’s being and they hold an individual and collective memory that, when explored, reveal the implicit elements of an organization’s culture. Through artifacts I begin to discover the heart and pulse of an organization.
Artifacts hold an individual and collective memory that, when explored, reveal the implicit elements of an organization’s culture.
Some artifacts simply exist in organizations, but they can also be created intentionally. In my last organization, HopeLab, we purposefully used artifacts to express who we were as a community of humans joined together in a common cause. We enjoyed partnering with artists (painters, ceramicists, metalworkers, graphic artists, and others) to make bespoke gifts, to honor employees leaving the organization, to celebrate an individual or organizational accomplishment, to generate positive emotion, and enliven connection to each other and our purpose. In each case, the intentional use of art elevated our experience to a level of beauty that for many felt quite profound and even transformational. I have two powerful examples of this.
Artifacts to Celebrate Endings
When employees leave an organization colleagues often plan an event and pull together a gift to celebrate them. At HopeLab we did this too but worked hard to elevate this practice to an art, making each celebration unique to the individual. At the end of one particular year, we happened to have a sizeable number of staff leaving us – some due to a re-organization and others for personal reasons. This was a significant loss for a small organization and we wanted to do something special to honor their contributions.
We began by collecting from every employee 10 words to describe what they loved about each person leaving. Inspired by that, we then worked with a local sculptor, Linda Raynsford, to craft bespoke gifts. We shared the survey results with Linda and spent time her studio, sorting through her storehouse of found objects to source things that suited each individual. We then stepped away and left her to tap into her creativity and assemble a small sculpture for each person. What she created was inspired (see image below). To top it off, we worked with a graphic artist to design wrapping paper for each gift, drawn from the survey results of the things we loved.
The gifts were ceremoniously presented at the close of our year-end retreat. It was a touching moment and marked a significant cultural milestone. The artistic artifacts we created celebrated these individuals but also captured and expressed something fundamental about our culture and values.
Campfire Tales
Years earlier, in the same organization, we created a wellbeing program which we fondly called H.O.G.S. (health and other good stuff). We had divided the staff into four working groups based on different types of energy – physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual – and each group was challenged to design and deliver an activity that would refresh learning and reinvigorate energy practices.
The group focused on emotional energy decided to use a year-end gathering to craft a special experience for the staff. They first created a survey that asked employees to provide 3-5 words to describe how each of their colleagues was delightful (sound familiar?). The results were compiled and handed over to artist and ceramicist, Sheri Jarvis. The group shared with her their goal of building a ritual that would create a positive emotional experience and they were drawn to the memory of sitting around a campfire. Sheri took it from there and what she devised was brilliant.
After breakfast, we began our meeting sitting together around a large conference table. In the middle of the table was a large mysterious object covered in cloth. After a welcome and some context setting by our CEO, the cloth was removed and Sheri’s artistry revealed – a hand-crafted campfire complete with ceramic flames that had small battery-operated lights inside. It was extraordinary and a moment of silence gave us time to fully appreciate Sheri’s art. She then shared with the group what she had designed and the process she went through to create it.
There was a ceramic flame for every employee. Each one had a tag with their name on it and a hand-drawn note from Sheri that captured the essence of the words submitted for each person. We sat in silence for another moment and then in a go-round shared reflections about our feelings in that moment, about the year we just completed, and our hopes for the year ahead. The sharing was tender and at times quite vulnerable. There was laughter, tears, deep empathy, and caring. In closing, each person was then allowed to collect their ceramic flame from the campfire, a metaphor for taking away the spark of connection and love we had created and sharing it with others.
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Every time I share this story it makes me teary. I still have my flame and I know my former colleagues also cherish theirs. As an artifact, it evokes poignant memories of a unique and beautiful moment. It reminds me of our work together, the community we created, the many things we learned from one another, and the value our culture placed on connection, wellbeing, beauty, and joy.
Art is the act of triggering deep memories of what it means to be fully human.
There are many more examples of artifacts we collectively crafted at HopeLab. This became a kind of ritual for us, one that I cherished. Artifacts offer an emotional through-line to an organization’s values and assumptions and in my work since HopeLab I often build in the creation of artifacts as a part of a workshop or retreat. They are powerful. To quote the well-known poet, David Whyte, “Art is the act of triggering deep memories of what it means to be fully human.” The intentional use of art to create artifacts can support deep connection, amplify emotional expression, and reminds us of what it means to be human and to belong.