📚 Learning Applied: Budget as Critical Practice

From W4 and W11, I began to rethink budgeting not as an administrative task, but as a curatorial decision-making tool.

In W4, Gabi’s session on relational ethics challenged me to consider:

Who is being paid? Who is contributing without recognition? Who has the power to say no?

This directly shaped my approach to volunteer honoraria, where I included line items for cross-school collaborators and student assistants. Rather than assume goodwill, I translated co-labour into financial and material recognition.

From W11, I drew from our discussions on “scaling through tools” instead of scale through budget. I chose platforms like Woolclap not only because they were free, but because they aligned with the values of open authorship, anonymous contribution, and decentralised control.

The budgeting process became a way to embody my values:

• Transparency over spectacle

• Collaboration over outsourcing

• Access over exclusivity

By the end, every cost wasn’t just a line item—it was a reflection of curatorial ethics in action.

I kept my budget strictly within £2000, guided by a resource-sharing ethos that prioritises low-threshold access, intra-school collaboration, and sustainability.

📊 Budget Strategy: Resource-Conscious, Ethically Aligned

Funding comes from three key sources:

• 🏛 EUSA Development Fund (£500)
  

  “The Student Opportunities Fund supports students to deliver events, activities, and projects with community impact.”
  EUSA Funding

• 🌍 Creative Scotland Open Fund for Individuals (£1300)
  

  “Supporting a wide range of activity initiated by artists, writers, producers and other creative practitioners in Scotland.”
  Creative Scotland Funding

• 💡 Own Contribution (£200) — allocated toward zine printing, design materials, and micro-gifts.

Infrastructure, Not Decoration

The exhibition’s physical and interactive design was shaped around necessity:

• The site—ECA Main Hall—is an open-access, in-kind supported venue.
• TESOL & Inclusive Design students designed multilingual signage and accessibility prompts.
• ECA Bookit resources (recorders, polling boards) and digital screens were integrated, avoiding extra rental costs.
• CAP student works form the core of the exhibition content—no artist fees required.

Shared Tools, Shared Authorship

Interactive systems were built with open-source platforms like Woolclap, allowing anonymous input, multilingual co-writing, and slow-tech responses.
Equipment such as cameras, screens, and sound systems were borrowed within the school ecosystem.
The exhibition is digitally inclusive without becoming digitally exclusive.

Cross-School as Co-Labour

Collaboration was budgeted as co-authorship:

• 5 cross-school units were supported (Design, TESOL, Education, Art History, CAT).
• Volunteer honoraria and co-creation materials were included to ensure commitment was recognised.

Micro is Sustainable

Rather than scale through money, I scaled through imagination and alliances.
No hired install crew. No designer fees. Instead: a network of student collaborators and shared responsibility.

The budget became a curatorial medium—reflecting my ethics, values, and sense of what must be shared, and what can be let go.

Approx. £450 of this is in-kind support (space, equipment, co-curation labour).

24.3% of the budget reflects shared resources—not as a compromise, but as a commitment to an open, collaborative curatorial ecology.

(ECA Request Flow Diagram for ART/DESIGN/ESALA requests)

Selected Budget Breakdown