The Desire Paths We Build: Rethinking Community and Access in the Arts

There’s a concept in urban design called a “desire path”. It’s the line you see worn into grass where people have chosen to walk, not where they were told to. It appears over time, through repetition and through need. It’s often the most direct route between two points, even if it wasn’t planned that way. And it tells you something very simple: the “official path” didn’t quite work, and so people made their own. [Read on]

In many ways, that’s what we’re seeing happen across the creative industries over the past few years, from post-Brexit through Covid and into the present moment.

Last week, we, together with our co-hosts I Like Networking, brought together a group of founders, community builders, and practitioners for an evening of short “show and tell” presentations, asking a simple question: what does it really take to build community?

What emerged wasn’t a single answer, but a shared pattern. Across visual arts, cultural production, and the wider creative industries, access is still shaped by relatively closed networks. In that sense, the “official paths” into the industry remain narrow, often unclear, and not designed for everyone. Whether that’s through unpaid internships that exclude those without financial support, reliance on informal introductions, or opaque hiring processes, opportunity is often less about ability and more about proximity.

As a result, who gets in, who stays, and who progresses is often determined by systems that are difficult to navigate, and even harder to change from within. So rather than waiting for those systems to evolve, people are building around them.

Setting up. How We Built It: Community in the Arts, March 2026, London. Photo by Karohollin. Courtesy ArtRabbit and Karohollin.

They are creating their own networks, their own support structures, their own ecosystems, often informally, and without a blueprint, but with a very clear sense of purpose. These are “desire paths”. Not always visible at first, but deeply intentional, built through action rather than permission.

What became clear throughout the evening is that community, in this context, is not a “nice to have”. It’s infrastructure. These communities begin to function as alternative routes, making it possible to move through the industry in ways that were not originally designed.

Small gestures. How We Built It: Community in the Arts, March 2026, London. Photo by Karohollin. Courtesy ArtRabbit and Karohollin.

Without functioning community, and by community we mean not just the people who want what you offer, but a space where exchange, education, access to diverse talent, funding, opportunity, and decision making can happen, none of the work we care about is really possible. It’s what allows someone not just to enter the industry, but to stay in it, to navigate it, and to build a sustainable path within it.

Each of our speakers approached this from a different angle, but all were responding to a moment of need. From building networks that create access and mentorship, to creating platforms that bridge culture and industry, to supporting those historically excluded from the arts, each of these organisations is actively reshaping what support structures in this sector can look like in practice.

The work begins before the room fills. How We Built It: Community in the Arts, March 2026, London. Photo by Karohollin. Courtesy ArtRabbit and Karohollin.

These perspectives were shared by Isabel Sachs (I Like Networking), Ade Sanusi (Art Meets Culture), and Meg Molloy (Working Arts Club), each bringing a distinct but complementary view on what it takes to build and sustain community today.

These are communities that began during the pandemic, when people were looking for connection, direction, or meaning. Platforms that emerged to address structural gaps, around access, representation, or economic opportunity. Networks designed not just to bring people together, but to actively support and sustain them.

Setting up. How We Built It: Community in the Arts, March 2026, London. Photo by Karohollin. Courtesy ArtRabbit and Karohollin.

What they shared very candidly was that building these communities is not straightforward. It requires responding to a real need, building trust over time, and a willingness to operate outside of traditional validation structures, often for longer than is comfortable, while experimenting with revenue models.

It also requires acknowledging what is still missing. One of the recurring questions we explored was: what hasn’t been built yet? What is still needed for communities not just to exist, but to thrive? The answers varied, but a few themes came through strongly:

(1) Access to the creative industries remains uneven. Not just in terms of entry, but in terms of progression and visibility. There is job insecurity across the sector, expensive degrees without a clear path to sustainability, and often a lack of clarity around what people are actually working towards.

Nibbles for thought. How We Built It: Community in the Arts, March 2026, London. Photo by Karohollin. Courtesy ArtRabbit and Karohollin.

(2) Sustainability is a constant tension, with many of these communities held together through significant emotional and logistical labour, often without the financial structures to support that work long term.

We could ask why this kind of critical infrastructure isn’t more consistently supported by public funding bodies. But with reduced budgets across the board, the question becomes more complex: where does that support come from, and how is it prioritised? This highlights a wider gap between where cultural value is created and where resources are allocated.

In practice, what we’re seeing is ongoing experimentation. Much like “desire paths” themselves, these models are formed through trial, adjustment, and repetition, rather than pre-defined structures. Founders and community builders are piecing together models as they go, monetising content and services, asking their audiences to support a bigger mission, seeking sponsorships, testing what sticks, and adapting quickly.

Where conversations continue. How We Built It: Community in the Arts, March 2026, London. Photo by Karohollin. Courtesy ArtRabbit and Karohollin.

(3) Visibility, perhaps more than anything, continues to shape opportunity. Not just what exists, but what is seen, shared, and recognised. Which brings a certain responsibility for those who benefit from these communities: to share what is useful and meaningful, not to gatekeep, but to generously amplify what is working.

This is something we think about a lot at ArtRabbit. Over the past decade, we’ve been building slightly adjacent to formal systems, connecting art professionals, organisations, and audiences, without public funding. Our role has increasingly become one of visibility and connection, helping to surface what exists. In a landscape where so much happens informally and can easily remain invisible, this becomes critical.

In vino veritas. How We Built It: Community in the Arts, March 2026, London. Photo by Karohollin. Courtesy ArtRabbit and Karohollin.

In that sense, we don’t see ArtRabbit as separate from these communities, but as part of the same landscape of “desire paths”. Our role is to map, amplify, facilitate, and help these paths intersect.

Because ultimately, these paths don’t just serve individuals, they reshape the environment around them. They influence how people move through the industry. They open up alternative routes. And over time, they begin to challenge the idea that there is only one way in.

As the room fills. How We Built It: Community in the Arts, March 2026, London. Photo by Karohollin. Courtesy ArtRabbit and Karohollin.

What the evening reinforced for us is that these communities are not temporary responses to crisis, but long-term structures in the making, designed differently, built collectively, and evolving in real time.

If we return to the idea of “desire paths”, what’s striking is how they continue to form, often in parallel to the “official” routes, and sometimes despite them, because while institutions and gatekeepers may define where paths should go, people will always find their own way through, walking where it makes sense, where there is a need, and where there is momentum.

A moment before the show and tell. How We Built It: Community in the Arts, March 2026, London. Ade Sanusi and Isabel Sachs. Photo by Karohollin. Courtesy ArtRabbit and Karohollin.

So the question is not whether these paths should exist, but whether they are recognised, supported, and integrated into the wider landscape, or whether we continue to design systems that people feel the need to walk around.

In conversation. How We Built It: Community in the Arts, March 2026, London. Photo by Karohollin. Courtesy ArtRabbit and Karohollin.

We will continue to explore this space, and to play our part in making these paths more visible, more connected, and more accessible.

Thank yous

A final thank you to Isabel and the team at I Like Networking for co-hosting the evening with us, to Ade Sanusi and Meg Molloy for their generosity in sharing their time and experiences so openly, and to Made by Many for opening their doors to ArtRabbit last year and providing us with a home at The Wharf. It’s a space where community is built through the sharing of resources, ideas, and this beautiful event setting, and it has enabled us to bring our in-person events and activations back to life in London for the first time since the pandemic.

In conversation. How We Built It: Community in the Arts, March 2026, London. Photo by Karohollin. Courtesy ArtRabbit and Karohollin.

Hosts and presenters. How We Built It: Community in the Arts, March 2026, London. Photo by Karohollin. Courtesy ArtRabbit and Karohollin.

Mingling. How We Built It: Community in the Arts, March 2026, London. Photo by Karohollin. Courtesy ArtRabbit and Karohollin.

About the writer

Vivi Kallinikou is Managing Director of ArtRabbit, where she leads the organisation’s strategic vision and development. Her work focuses on audience development, cultural infrastructure, and community-building, exploring how people connect with art and how those connections can be made more accessible and sustainable.

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