Build Cultural Infrastructure

How cultural institutions are lagging and a vibrant and often overlooked wave of creators and community builders are filling the void.

August 7, 2025

JOEL CONNOLLY

In June 2025, I flew to San Francisco to give the opening talk at the 1517 Fellowship Summit - a gathering of people building weird and wonderful programs that support young people. Hacker houses, artist residencies, microgrants, pilgrimages, six-figure fellowships plus loads more.

Danielle Strachman and her co-founder, Michael Gibson, hosted the summit and were behind the Thiel Fellowship, which was quietly one of the inspirations for the Blackbird Foundation and our program, Protostars. So it was a full circle moment to find myself, a guest at their summit, offering some ideas on institutions and cultural infrastructure. I thank them with all my heart!

When we started the Blackbird Foundation, our mission was simple: unleash creativity in young people. We believed in the power of making - of creating something from nothing - as a deeply transformative act. Our first grants went to organisations we thought shared that belief. But something didn’t sit right. The impact felt vague, disconnected. We didn’t know who we were really helping.

Then we tried something different. We started funding people directly - small grants, hands-on support, and most importantly, belief. That became Protostars. And just like that, everything changed. The feedback loop tightened. The energy shifted. We could feel the impact - not just in what got made, but in how people saw themselves.

Danielle described this kind of philanthropy a few years back in her brilliant essay, which argues for a return to funding individuals, not institutions:

“As a non-profit, you can’t just give people money. No matter how much sense it makes. You have to first talk to people in bespoke, very well-tailored suits. Is it any wonder that the great art of patronage has been reduced to seemingly eccentric philanthropists and their small circle of benefactors?”

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My talk was an extension of these ideas - that institutions are failing us and we need better ways to unearth and support brilliant young people. I argued that we are all makers of cultural infrastructure and that we have found ourselves in this position as a matter of necessity. And what a grand a beautiful way to shape the world around you. By building scaffolding that supports noble acts of creation!

Our beautiful community of Fellowship Builders

Build Cultural Infrastructure

JOEL CONNOLLY

Cultural institutions used to build cultural infrastructure

Cultural institutions shape the way we see ourselves and understand the world around us. Museums, galleries, universities, and libraries act as mirrors, reflecting curated ideas that prompt us to question, interpret, and ultimately reshape our sense of self and society. This process isn't just about appreciating art or knowledge - it's about driving human progress itself. By cultivating imagination and creativity, cultural institutions historically have created the essential scaffolding upon which innovation, advancement, and societal growth are built.

Yet today, many traditional institutions seem to have lost their magic. While still important, they often struggle to keep pace with our rapidly evolving culture. Slow, exclusive, and overly focused on preservation, they find it challenging to match the speed and openness of contemporary society.

If traditional cultural institutions are lagging, who's stepping in to build the cultural infrastructure we urgently need?

The answer lies in a vibrant and often overlooked wave of creators and community builders. Most of these new builders aren't even aware they're constructing cultural infrastructure - they're simply pursuing passions, solving problems, and connecting communities. Yet, they're quietly establishing the foundations for powerful new cultural expressions and societal change.

These new builders aren't replicating old models. Instead, they're nimble, inclusive, collaborative, and wonderfully unique, reshaping culture from the ground up and redefining what cultural infrastructure can look like.

Understanding Cultural Infrastructure

We tend to think of infrastructure as physical - roads, bridges, buildings. But cultural infrastructure is different. It’s the invisible scaffolding that makes creativity possible and ideas contagious.

In the past, this role was played by institutions: the Medicis funding Renaissance art, universities producing research, museums curating public taste. They built infrastructure through hierarchy, permanence, and physical presence.

Today’s builders do it differently. Instead of museums and universities, cultural infrastructure might come from a zine launched in a group chat, a Discord that turns into a fellowship, or a platform like Are.na, where people assemble and remix knowledge in public. Startmate runs programs that feel more like creative residencies than startup accelerators. Cabin and FWB are designing not just communities, but entire ecosystems for shared culture. It’s scrappy, fluid, and full of heart.

Cultural infrastructure now looks like:

Capital: Microgrants, fellowships, non-dilutive funding that give people time and permission to create.
Community spaces: From hacker houses to Discord servers - places where people connect, share, and build in public.
Amplification tools: Newsletters, podcasts, and social feeds that spread new ideas faster than institutions ever could.
Legitimacy systems: Not just awards, but clout - who gets platformed, who gets quoted, who gets the vibe right.
Shared language: Memes, metaphors, and naming conventions that help people see themselves in a movement.

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These pieces don’t operate in isolation. A grant funds a zine that builds a Discord that inspires a residency. The flywheel spins faster than ever.

This is infrastructure - not made of steel, but of story, community, and belief.

Build Cultural Infrastructure

JOEL CONNOLLY

Fellowships as a New Model

Interestingly, fellowships increasingly resemble traditional cultural institutions without explicitly adopting that label. Fellowships provide essential capital - grants, stipends, non-dilutive funding - that empowers creatives with financial freedom and time to innovate. Yet, they surpass traditional models through speed, transparency, community involvement, and minimal bureaucracy.

Fellowships create inclusive, accessible spaces - physical and digital - such as hacker houses, residencies, and vibrant online communities. These spaces foster collaboration and community-driven creativity rather than top-down, hierarchical control.

Selecting individuals for fellowships parallels traditional institutional curation, amplifying creators' impact. Yet fellowship selection is open, meritocratic, and community-informed, shaping cultural and societal progress from grassroots up.

Using modern distribution channels - podcasts, events, newsletters - fellowships rapidly amplify ideas, leveraging scale and speed in ways traditional institutions cannot match.

Moreover, the simple yet powerful act of believing in someone enhances all these efforts, becoming a profound catalyst for creative and cultural advancement.

What’s the point?

This might sound like semantics. So what if fellowships are infrastructure?

But naming matters. If we keep seeing these things as niche or temporary, we’ll miss what they’re actually doing: shaping who gets to create, what gets built, and what culture becomes.

Ignore this shift, and we risk letting an entire generation’s creative potential slip through the cracks - not because they lacked talent, but because no one built the systems to catch them.

At a time when institutional trust is collapsing and creative ambition is rising, fellowships might be one of the last remaining tools that can scale both belief and belonging.

Traditional institutions still matter. But they’re slow, risk-averse, and often behind the curve. Meanwhile, fellowships and grassroots programs are moving fast, funding new voices, and creating the kind of cultural conditions we desperately need - ambition, experimentation, belonging.

The stakes are high. We’re in a moment where old systems are cracking and new ones are trying to emerge. If we want a future that’s more creative, more inclusive, more alive, we need to start recognising and resourcing the infrastructure that makes it possible. That’s the invitation: not just to observe culture, but to build it.

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written by

JOEL CONNOLLY

Exploring New Creative Frontiers: Into the Metaverse with Ivan Medrano 

We talk all things metaverse, diversity in art, creativity and digital fashion with two-time Protostar alumni, Ivan Medrano

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The first issue of Ivan's digital magazine: The Independent Variable

interview with ivan merino
by Theia Gabatan

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“I’m really excited about how we can use the metaverse to challenge ethnographic practices within the art world. Within our institutions, there are so many instances in which people of colour have been put into narrative boxes.”

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The first issue of Ivan's digital magazine: The Independent Variable

interview with ivan merino
by Theia Gabatan

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Build Cultural Infrastructure

Cultural institutions used to build cultural infrastructure

Understanding Cultural Infrastructure

Fellowships as a New Model

What’s the point?

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Exploring New Creative Frontiers: Into the Metaverse with Ivan Medrano

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Exploring New Creative Frontiers: Into the Metaverse with Ivan Medrano 