Open Handbook
How we work, pay, decide and use technology, shared so others can use it*
*None of this was designed in one go. Since we began in 2011 we’ve worked as a non-hierarchical, artist-led organisation, mostly volunteer-led until 2023. We introduced flat pay in 2020, moved to Carver governance in 2022 to help build a more diverse board, and moved to sociocracy in December 2025 as our team grew. We experiment, learn from failures, keep what works and change what doesn’t, so what follows is where we’ve got to so far, not a finished system.
We know how much the cultural sector gains when organisations share what they learn, so we publish our policies and methods openly. We welcome feedback and exchange at any time.
We use Jack Tan’s easy read artist contract, commissioned by FACT, as a baseline for all our contracts and as a guide when writing our handbook, so it’s in plain language.
Our Culture and Values
We work via a horizontal/ non-hierarchical structure that seeks to implement grassroots and radical approaches to organising, we believe no role is more valuable than another, and leadership comes from expertise and experience, not a job title. We refuse extractive models, putting care first in how we work together, make work, who decides and what gets valued.
Flat Pay
We acknowledge the equally important different forms of labour that go into running an organisation and believe no one person's hours are more valuable than another's. All of our team are paid the same rate of pay. This is currently £18, based on UK median household income. We acknowledge the equally important different forms of labour that go into running an organisation and believe no one person's hours are more valuable than another's, whether the contribution is organisational, technical, relational or artistic. It’s less about equal pay as a principle and more about redesigning the conditions of collaboration: reducing power asymmetries and building an organisation where creative practice is supported by fairness, mutual care and long-term sustainability. We build pay increases into our funding applications, so when the rate rises it rises for everyone.
Sociocracy
As our team grew, we carried out a collective governance review and moved to sociocracy in December 2025. Not every decision needs everyone’s input. Small circles each have a clear aim and domain, and the people with the relevant expertise make decisions within it. To protect both our operational agility and our deepest shared values, we work through a hybrid approach: using consent to give our everyday work iterative momentum, and consensus to ensure unanimity and deep alignment on our foundational rules. This keeps responsibilities explicit, power shared, and our core purpose collectively held.
Neurodivergent and Artist Led
Strange Field is a artist-led, queer and neurodivergent organisation. All of our programming is developed and led by artists or creative practitioners and we design our working practices around the people doing the work. We review our processes annually. Our current working methods and policies have been developed this way.
Safe Space
Everyone at any of our venues should feel safe, welcome and free to be themselves. We ask everyone to respect every body and identity, use the names and pronouns people share, ask before filming or photographing anyone, and look out for each other. There is a quiet space at every event and all our toilets are gender-neutral.
Digital Ethics
Where we can, we choose tools that are European, GDPR compliant, values-aligned and not backed by venture capital or surveillance models. It’s an ongoing process, and not every tool meets every criterion. We’re moving from Google Workspace and to kSuite and we’ve already left Notion and Wix. We score every tool we use, including the ones we use pragmatically, such as Stripe, Meta and Claude. Any new tool has to be approved first.
AI and Document Review Policy
We value AI, including as an accessibility tool for a neurodiverse-friendly workplace, and everyone is free to use it in their own work. But AI makes long documents easy to produce, and nobody should have to read them unsolicited. We agree in a meeting whether a document is needed before anyone writes one, and agreed documents fit on one page. If you send one, you check every line and say how AI was used. We never upload financial documents to AI tools, and we keep personal or funder-sensitive information out of unapproved ones.
How We Document
What we document and how we share it depends on how the work was made. Work we commission, we document and share as part of our programme. Work made in our open access spaces belongs to the people who made it. We don’t use it to promote ourselves or claim it as our own, and anything we share is shared at their request and on their terms.
Social Cost-Rent
As a member of Friends of The Pipe Factory, we’re working on a model for running community-owned buildings that social landlords can use. The idea, social cost-rent, is that the building carries no debt and pays no dividends, and tenants pay only what it costs to run and look after. Charges follow published formulas, the books are open, and any surplus goes back to tenants or into the building. It’s still in development but we’re writing it up so others can use it and help shape the final proposal.