Bridging the gap (part 2): when culture and business speak the same language

By Tessa Marchington FRSA

Catch up: Part 1 - What culture and business already share

Creating a shared language

In Part 1, I wrote about the common ground between the worlds of culture and commerce - the shared foundations of relationship, communication, and genuine listening.

But knowing that common ground exists and actually standing on it together are two different things.

The bridge between these worlds is built from language. And language, it turns out, is where some of the most significant misunderstandings begin.

The problem with words

Even a single word can mean entirely different things depending on who is using it.

Take the word artist. To some, it means a painter. To others, a poet, a musician, a dancer - someone using creative expression as their primary medium. To others still, it describes any person who thinks so conceptually that they challenge perceived ideas and encourage others to see things differently.

That last definition is the one I find most useful in a business context. And it's also the one least likely to be in the room when someone from a finance or professional services background hears the word.

These aren't just semantic differences. They shape expectations, determine how value is assessed, and can determine whether a collaboration gets off the ground at all. As artist John Latham observed,

"Context is half the work"

He referred to the shift from studio to institution, from material objects to ideas, from individual expression to social relations. What an artist brings into a business environment is entirely shaped by how that environment receives them. Context determines whether the work lands or disappears.

This is also where the lack of clear data and metrics around artistic value becomes most acute. When you can't define what someone does, it's hard to define what they're worth.

And when worth is undefined, it's easy for it to be undervalued.

The invisible workload of the artist

There's something else that rarely gets acknowledged when artists and business professionals meet at a table, and I think it's worth naming directly. In most of those meetings, the business person holds the structural power. They are typically the budget holder. Their title carries institutional weight. The seniority in the room defaults to them by default.

The artist, by contrast, arrives without a formal title. And in environments where titles signal credibility, that absence can make it easy - unintentionally - to overlook what it has actually taken for that person to be there.

Here's what many people don't realise: on any given project, an independent artist typically fulfils a remarkable number of roles simultaneously. They are their own partnerships manager, fundraising manager, marketing manager, project manager, development manager - as well as creative director and practitioner. The entrepreneurial rigour required to sustain an artistic career is significant. Often extraordinary.

So when an artist enters a business conversation, it's worth holding that in mind. The absence of a corporate title is not an absence of experience or expertise. It's a different kind of experience - and often a broader one than it first appears.

The power of the pause

One of the most practical things both sides can do is resist the urge to fill every silence. In music, the rests are where the magic lives: the pause between phrases, the breath before the next line. Timing - the masterful, disciplined control of when not to play - is what separates a good performance from a great one.

The same is true in cross-sector collaboration.

When terminology is unfamiliar, or when an idea is being introduced that requires a genuine shift in thinking, the instinct is often to push through - to keep talking, keep explaining, keep filling the space. But what's actually needed in those moments is room to breathe. A pause that says: "I see you processing this. Take the time you need."

This kind of pacing is a form of respect. It acknowledges that the other person is genuinely engaging with something new, rather than simply waiting to respond. And it creates the conditions for real dialogue rather than parallel monologue.

Where the collaboration actually happens

For a long time, the relationship between culture and commerce was primarily transactional. Businesses funded art through sponsorship. Artists were supported to make work. The exchange was financial, and the two worlds largely remained separate. That model still exists and still has value. But it has evolved significantly.

Increasingly, businesses are inviting artists and creative practitioners not just to benefit from the organisation's resources, but to actively contribute to its thinking, to bring a different way of seeing to problems that have resisted conventional solutions.

An artist embedded in a management consultancy. A musician working with a bank to rethink its internal processes. A creative practitioner as a thought partner in an innovation sprint. These are not hypothetical scenarios - they are happening, and the results are compelling.

"The critical thinking and way of listening that the artist brought to the team enabled a different relationship with the client, who valued the approach and expertise of the artistic nuances." Client, KPMG

What makes this work is not novelty. It's process. The way an artist approaches a problem - getting to the absolute core of the need, resisting the urge to jump to a predetermined solution, staying curious in the face of ambiguity - is genuinely useful in business contexts, particularly in environments where complexity is high and existing frameworks aren't delivering new answers.

Experiencing it rather than explaining it

One of the most effective ways to bridge the language gap is not to talk about it - it's to experience it.

Try watching an artist at work, reading a grant application and understanding the invisible labour behind it, or participating in a workshop where the rules of a different discipline briefly apply.

When senior leaders at Citi took part in a music-based inclusive leadership workshop led by a jazz musician and conductor - who also held an MBA, making him genuinely bilingual across both worlds - something shifted. That wasn’t because they were taught new concepts, but because they felt them. They experienced what it means to listen rather than lead - to hold your part while staying responsive to everyone else's, and to trust the ensemble.

"That absolutely summed up diversity for me. A completely different way of thinking and approaching problems that are often dealt with in the same corporate approach - using an analogy that was easy to understand and meaningful." Delegate, Citi

That is the shared language in action - an experience that both sides understand because they lived it together.

Defining the value - in language the room can hear

None of this means that creative collaboration should be vague or unaccountable. Quite the opposite. The more open the brief, the more important it is to articulate the value with precision, and to do so in language that works for the institution, not just for the artist.

The Artist Placement Group, founded in the 1960s and documented in the Tate archive, is a powerful precedent here. Barbara Steveni's contracts for artist placements - in government departments, with British Steel Corporation, with Scottish TV - were grounded in a completely open brief philosophically, but written in sharp, clear business language. The idealism and the pragmatism coexisted. They had to.

That balance is still the requirement today. To earn a seat at the table, and a line in the budget, the value has to be defined - even when the outcome cannot yet be.

In Part 3, I'll explore the artistic process itself. What it looks like when it's brought into a business context, why undefined briefs can be a feature rather than a flaw, and what genuine collaboration of equals actually requires from both sides.