ICA LA is proud to announce the publication of Shared Practices, a framework for presenting performance in visual art contexts. Shared Practices is a collaboratively authored document developed in partnership with Chloë Flores, former Director of homeLA, artist and organizer Dorothy Dubrule, and senior curator at the ICA LA, Amanda Sroka.

Considered a working document, Shared Practices is the result of a December 2025 gathering hosted at the ICA LA that brought together performers and representatives from LA’s visual arts institutions to fine tune a list of questions and concerns specific to both performers and institutions. Participants included taisha paggett, Alex Sloane, Jay Carlon, Alexsa Durrans, John Burtle, Amelia Charter, Will Rawls, K. Bradford, Samuel Vasquez, Asuka Hisa, Mamie Green, Daniela Lieja Quintanar, Katy Dammers, and Asher Hartman, with Emilia Shaffer-Del Valle as note-taker, Patty Gone contributing written documentation. Their insights and lived experience inform the document’s proposed practices, which address key areas such as contracts, compensation, rehearsal and performance conditions, documentation, and care.

This collective effort builds upon an earlier gathering held in March 2025 at the Feminist Center for Creative Work titled Laying Groundwork for Shared Practices, which brought together performers and representatives from LA’s visual arts institutions to imagine more sustainable conditions for movement-based work. The results of this initial convening were published on homeLA’s website in June 2025 and on the ICA LA’s website that fall.

Both documents, Shared Practices and Laying Groundwork for Shared Practices, expand on themes raised in Being Work, Dubrule’s 2024 book exploring the lived realities of performers working within visual arts institutions. Together, they further that conversation through collective authorship and action.

“Too often, performers navigating institutional spaces do so without consistent standards or adequate support,” says Chloë Flores, former Director of homeLA. “Shared Practices is a step toward building mutual understanding and equitable practices.”

Dubrule adds that “artists and institutional staff are not on opposite sides of this work — we are members of the same ecosystem, with a shared investment in seeing performance thrive. Shared Practices compels us to unearth hidden assumptions and approach our roles with care and forethought, so that we stop treating working conditions as a byproduct and start building them as a practice.“

According to Flores, the next phase of this advocacy work is to move Shared Practices into broader public dissemination, institutional implementation, and intercity dialogue. “The framework is intended as a field-generated resource that can evolve through continued collective exchange. We want it to help build more sustainable conditions for performance across LA’s visual art and cultural spaces and beyond.”

As a working resource, Shared Practices is meant to evolve through continued use and dialogue. homeLA invites artists, curators, art education and program teams, and others to share how they have used the document, what has been useful, and where they see opportunities for it to grow in support of the performance community and arts sector by emailing info@homela.org.

Social Media: @home_LA | #SharedPracticesLA

Support for this program was provided by Betsy Greenberg, The Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA, LA), YOLA Mezcal, and homeLA.

A (non-exhaustive) list of related resources within a lineage of dancers and cultural workers advocating for fair practices:

W A G E Working Artists and the Greater Economy

Precarious Movements

The Artist Sustainability Project | David Hamilton Thomson

Dance Data Project

The Dance Union Podcast

Dance Artists’ National Collective (DANC)

Creating New Futures

Open Letter to Artists | Sara Wookey

Being a thing: The work of performing in the museum | Abigail Levine

Critical Correspondence: Dance and the Museum

Museums Moving Forward