Let’s dream bigger.
OCW is a nonprofit and arts management collaborative based in Saint Paul, Minnesota. As a partner to artists, entrepreneurs, and creative visionaries, we provide essential support to become more effective and sustainable, and be true to whole selves and our individual creative visions.
What we believe
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Art has the power to create joyful connections, heal communities, and build a more just and equitable society.
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All people have equal potential to create. All deserve the freedom to connect, share, and live an inspired cultural life.
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Cultural work is personal and precious. It deserves intentional and evolving stewardship.
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Cultural workers need support to remove barriers, navigate unjust systems, and keep growing.
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The creative spirit needs fuel. Ideas need action. Progress needs planning.
How we work together
Active Listening
We learn alongside our partners to understand their needs in context and pursue their goals with awareness and vulnerability.
Fluid Engagement
Tomorrow will be different than today. We stay in sync with cultural workers to empower their vision in different ways on different days.
Deep Relationships
Growth isn’t a shallow or short-term goal. We invest in each other to help remove barriers and build toward amazing opportunities.
Who we are
OCW is led by visual artist and nonprofit and arts management leader Shannon Brunette and supported by a collective of cultural advisors. Working collaboratively, we bring our whole selves, shared values, and diverse capabilities to uplift our partners’ practice.
Shannon Brunette
Founder
Shannon Brunette founded the Office of Cultural Work to support cultural workers in navigating oppressive systems and moving their visions into reality. She has had the privilege to work alongside visionary artists for her entire career. She’s held leadership positions at Penumbra Theatre, Walker Art Center, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Lambent Foundation, and the Blue Man Group. The final years at Blue Man were spent with the touring production, allowing her to develop a solid foundation for managing artists and dealing with just about everything you could imagine happening with artists on the road.
Shannon’s management partnerships include individual artists such as Seitu Ken Jones as well as organizations such as New York Foundation for the Arts, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and Northern Lights.mn. She is a working art educator partnering with institutions and community organizations such as Minneapolis College of Art and Design, Wet Paint Art, Grand Marais Art Colony and more. Shannon holds an MFA from the School of Visual Arts in Chelsea, New York, was a 2017 recipient of the MRAC Next Step Fund award supported by the McKnight Foundation, and was a James P. Shannon Leadership Institute Fellow in 2017. She serves as alumni and inaugural Board Chair of artEquity, an equity and inclusion training organization focusing on the arts and culture field.