A few weeks ago, more than 200 arts workers, educators, and community builders gathered in Traverse City for the Northwest Michigan Arts & Culture Summit. The theme for this gathering had emerged long before: Against the Current.
It was fascinating to watch that motif weave through the sessions as speakers, performers, and facilitators each interpreted it through their own contributions. The concept became far more than a marketing tagline; it became an invisible thread connecting ideas across topics, and one that has persistently followed me since.
What are the invisible currents shaping our lives that we may not notice?
The obvious forces are easy to name: political polarization, pervasive consumerism, and chronic busyness. Most of us routinely recognize the crushing weight of these cultural tides. Other forces, however, are far more stealthy —such as the way we are conditioned to justify our very existence in terms of capital.
We increasingly evaluate our daily choices according to what they produce. What is the outcome? What is the return? What moved forward? Admittedly, these are important questions when developing strategy for a business or a nonprofit. They are precisely the type of introspective prompts we at the Arts & Culture Network share with our program participants. But we may not notice how deeply we have been steeping in this metrics-driven mindset.
Under its influence, friendships risk becoming networking opportunities. Hobbies are rebranded as side hustles. Community gatherings are viewed as professional development, and art is reduced to “content.” In the process, we lose our grip on just how profoundly valuable certain things are, simply because they exist.
That realization was hard to escape during the Summit.
For two days, hundreds of people chose to simply spend time together. Certainly, new partnerships formed, ideas were exchanged, and professional opportunities emerged. But the deeper, enduring value was relational.
People shared challenges openly. They encountered like-minded souls, reconnected with old friends, offered spontaneous encouragement, and exchanged knowledge generously. Most of these moments will never appear in an annual report or a strategic plan. Yet they are precisely the unquantifiable interactions from which resilient communities are built.
We often speak about community in placemaking discussions as something that can be delivered, fostered, managed, or engineered. It is important, of course, to have a structural direction when designing a physical space with a certain human experience in mind.
However, the reality remains that community is a consequence of participation. It emerges organically when people invest in one another without expecting a return on investment.
The arts embody this.
This is not because artists are uniquely virtuous, but because a dedicated creative practice demands room for things that inherently resist easy measurement: curiosity, imagination, beauty, connection, meaning, and mystery. Yet, these qualities don’t make sense on paper in a culture obsessed with immediate outcomes.
As a result, we frequently feel compelled to justify the arts through their measurable benefits. We point to tourism data, economic impact, educational outcomes, workforce attraction, and downtown vitality. All evidence demonstrates that the arts influence a positive net return in those areas.
But the intrinsic value goes deeper.
A mural is not valuable because it artificially inflates property values. A friendship is not valuable because it tactically advances a career. A community gathering is not valuable because it boosts local economic activity.
That, ultimately, is what Against the Current came to mean for me. It is not rebellion for its own sake, nor is it opposition adopted as an identity. Rather, it is a quiet willingness to question the invisible systems shaping our lives. It is the wherewithal to recognize that participation holds value independent of productivity, and to understand that the most vital things we build together are often the hardest to measure.
In a culture increasingly organized around fiscal metrics, choosing to create, contribute, gather, and belong may be one of the most profoundly countercultural acts available to us.