A CIC, or Community Interest Company, is a limited company (Ltd) by guarantee and has the status to trade, as with any Limited Company, but also has some additional features and benefits with CIC status. It's halfway between a limited company and a charity, and is regulated by the CIC Regulators at Companies Housewww.bis.gov.uk/cicregulator This legislation was introduced in 2004-2006, so it's a relatively new legal structure, designed to ensure that community interest groups have every advantage to succeed in their stated purpose.

The features and benefits of CIC status enable artistsmeet.org to trade, but also to apply for funding, as with charitable bodies. The difference between charitable status and CIC is that the directors of a CIC can be paid a nominal sum for administration from any funds gained, ensuring that costs to lead a project are covered. That means that artists who act as directors for this company are in a stronger position to initiate and lead projects, and bid for them to external funding bodies, or to respond to other artists ideas, and bid on their behalf. Funding is a highly competitive area, but with a group or pool of artists who express an interest in a given area, this immediately focuses any bid more effectively to ensure that the bid submitted is as effective as it can be, and hence to make projects happen.

How good is that?!!!

CICs are asset-locked. That means, on dissolution of the company, that all of the assets are passed to another CIC or registered charity, ensuring that embezzlement can't happen. That's why funders accept and treat CIC's in the same way that they would with charities. Also, the CIC regulators require a yearly report on how the CIC has met it's stated aims in that year, with accounts, to ensure that the CIC meets it's stated aims or is actively working towards them.

Artistsmeet.org's aims are outlined in an informal way on the page 'all about us' and are formally presented on the Articles of Association, which can be seen on request. Artistsmeet.org aims to role model a democratic and responsive model of artists professional development, resielient to economic pressure, to be relevant and engaged in contemporary practices.
Effectively, artists can meet once a month to discuss proposed topics, their own work, and upcoming opportunities. It's free, and as far as possible, will always be, because it's supported as part of audience development for the host organisation, TAP, who do not charge rent to artistsmeet.org. Directors who facilitate a meeting or organise a skillshare are not paid for these activities, as these are an act of goodwill and civic participation, but are also seen as an artists professional development in leadership and facilitation.

Currently, some of the ideas and methods of accessing contemporary art are very traditional - look at it and then discuss it. How that is accessed, either live in the gallery, or through the web, creates different impacts, and these actual and virtual realities are part of grappling with being part of the visual arts. How participation occurs, how opportunities happen, the interrelationship of viewer, participant - and viewer as part of the artwork, is a very small part of Relational Aesthetics, an area of interest for Madelaine Murphy. The role of facilitator, instigator, or conductor is also an increasing area in which more can be achieved.

Artistsmeet.org runs on generosity, goodwill and participation and this is part of the constitution of the organisation, to ensure a long-term commitment to artists and their development. It's important to provide consistency, through economic success, and also recession, and through the different phases of an artists career, and that's why the sky might fall down but artistsmeet.org will always be there.