Teaspoons

Shaker Lyndyn just sent me this email, which I am reprinting with her permission, as it's a great suggestion, and I'm sure there are other Shakers who might be able to use it:

Liss, I know that you know Shakesville touches people and changes lives and behavior, but I thought you might like to know, in specific detail, how and when and why, sometimes.

I'm a working artist – sculptural textiles, mostly, although I'm also a fine art photographer and an occasional event and documentary photographer. I volunteer to shoot for a lot of events, including at my day job (a public library), and several other cultural organizations.

Yesterday, I quit volunteering. Instead, for a gig for the local art museum, shooting their new, not-yet-opened exhibit for promotional materials, I wrote up an invoice and wrote SERVICES DONATED across the bottom. This gets them a couple of hundred dollars of in-kind closer to their matching grant, and it also puts a dollar value on what I do. It short-circuits the idea that artists' work, and women's work, has no value. I'm not asking for cash from this particular job because I know that the organization simply doesn't have the cash to give; but I am giving notice that I expect my work to be valued appropriately. This thinking follows directly upon this post.

"Donating" rather than "volunteering" is such a small shift, and the outcome is mostly the same, but it feels so different. I feel like a Real Professional who has the leisure to give back in the form of labor, and not a passive community resource to be mined at will, a camera with a girl attached. Thank you.

Note that Lyndyn is also helping the museum, too, when she donates services instead of volunteers.

Which is not, of course, to denigrate volunteering. It is merely to highlight that there are times when being a volunteer is appropriate, and times when being someone who donates her services is appropriate, and times when being someone who charges for her services is appropriate. Recognizing that those choices exist is a teaspoon; navigating them in a way that redefines service work is another.