Common Field is a national network of independent visual arts organizations and organizers that connects, supports, and advocates for the artist-centered field. Founded in 2013 by a group of national arts professionals who recognized a need to respond and adapt to the evolving field of artist-spaces and organizations, Common Field launched in 2015 and has grown its network to include nearly 900 members nationally. Their vision is to build platforms and advance thinking that support diversity in identity, geography, history, orientation, perspective, and circumstance and create space for many people to enter and shape the field.
Common Field’s network includes contemporary, experimental, noncommercial artist-centric organizations and organizers that range from alternative art spaces, publications, and digital exhibition venues, to individual organizers. These projects and spaces provide interdisciplinary and hybrid forms for art production, reception, and exchange; generating independent, responsive, grassroots, and artist-centered cultures. They support artists, create connections with the public in intimate, experimental, and generative ways, and are deeply involved in the shape and characters of the contexts where they work. Through a program of national convenings, publishing, research, resources, regional meet-ups and advocacy, their members stimulate ideas, imagination, and innovation in their communities.