Greetings everyone. I have been invited to write a little for SoCiArts and I have decided to call my column "The Frame" because I wish to explore how creativity is constrained and framed by our political and economic institutions. I have made my living as a visual artist for about 20 years and I found ways of doing this without participating in traditional venues, competitions, grant writing and those sorts of things largely because I believe that our art industry does more to crush creativity than it does to broaden it. The general theme of "The Frame" is to encourage artists (which in itself is an elitist concept that we need to think about) to resist the old institutions of the art industry and to help build our own new institutions in their place.