Unhooking from Norms (EP.92)

What happens when the people an organization exists to serve are also the ones designing it?

On this episode, host Tim Cynova is in conversation with Lu Zhang, Gregory Sale, and Diya Vij of A Blade of Grass to discuss what it looks like to approach your organization as a living experiment.

A Blade of Grass supports socially engaged artists through a grants program, an in-fellowship cohort, and a digital publication called Landscapes. But their work goes well beyond their program design. They're actively questioning whether competition-based, project-focused philanthropy actually serves artists. They pay their board members. They use a randomized selection process for small grants. They talk openly about sunsetting the organization in the same breath they discuss 100-year plans. These are not things most organizations do.

This conversation explores practitioner-led governance, the gap between what socially engaged artists need and what traditional arts infrastructure delivers, how to build for responsiveness and long-term strategy at the same time, and what it means to make an organization that doesn't require artists to check their creativity at the door.

If you're a leader questioning default organizational norms, a funder trying to align your grantmaking practices with what artists need, or anyone building infrastructure in a sector that keeps treating creativity as something that happens somewhere else, this one is worth your time.

In this conversation:

What "practitioner-led" really means when it extends from staff to boardThe case for randomized grant-makingWhy A Blade of Grass paused programming for a full year to do field researchBuilding a paid, working board and what that changes about governanceHow socially engaged artists think about entering and exiting community work and what organizations can learn from thatHolding grief, iteration, and ambition without getting precious about any of it

Links & Resources

A Blade of Grass — Website, Newsletter, Instagram, Facebook, Landscapes

2025 In Fellowship Cohort:

Great LeapWhat Would an HIV Doula Do?Wild Path CollectiveReflections on the first year of In Fellowship

About the Guests