How to Goblin: a Step-by-Step Guide

70% of the survey respondents on our IG said they wanted to know how to run a Goblin Market. I always thought it was quite easy to pull off a Goblin Market until I had to explain it.

Before we begin, some announcements:

For those in Halifax, here's a chance to learn how to goblin by doing: https://www.ukaiprojects.com/open-call-residencies/gm-halifax-opencall

For those representing corporate or institutional bodies wanting to truly invest in creativity, look no further—we got you: https://www.ukaiprojects.com/rfp

In 2024, I wrote the grant that eventually kick-started this project. It was originally designed as a place-to-place system centred on craft for artists to make locally and network globally (I know, just words). With the support from the “founding goblins,” I subsequently turned this into something closer to a travelling prototyping lab for a new arts economy under volatility, complete with a microfestival. It felt like the right call, and it was. The Canada Council for the Arts portal then went down for most of 2025, a tough time for many. Everyone was yelling across the room at each other, but nothing really felt different except that we are collectively poorer.

In late 2025, we began developing the Halifax iteration with CFAT to create a hopeful, wholesome experience. The week we had planned to launch the project, Nova Scotians were handed the news of a massive budget cut to cultural programming, public service, and programs serving vulnerable populations (with a small percentage rolled back later as people rallied).

Is this a win? Is it just losing less? Tomorrow is another day at the hamster factory.

Luck really is a strange thing. Although I had a feeling that more budget cuts or funding decreases would happen, and with fascism rising again from both the left and right, it seems it will continue to be the case. There’s really an absurd amount of certainty in betting on our own downfall. I also don’t think it is going to get better. The economic reality will become increasingly volatile, and in search of safety and certainty, resources will be allocated to what have historically been considered “safe bets.”

You wouldn’t go to a slot machine and think of any of your moves as a safe bet. It’s just luck, a rigged one at best. 

Since February, I've been seeing submarine ads everywhere—in real life and online. Me? Buying a submarine? Where would I even keep it? I kept thinking that spending on the submarine ads targeted to Ottawa is likely in the millions by now. The issue isn’t the allocation of resources, nor is it that building submarines is a more valuable national asset. It’s that widespread ad campaigns make defence and military spending seem normal. They normalize the idea that war is ordinary in our public imagination. 

What else has become normal that really shouldn't be normal?

The “arts” is a funny place, too. It is a sector where you see both the fancy, auction-going people who grew up with horses in their stables and creatives who are precarious in their employment. It really is a cross-section of life and a reflection of the gap in our economy. In Canada, the majority of the latter depend on grants and government funding, which is another blow to the already fragile system. Even if they don't write grants themselves, their work depends on institutions that, to continue operating, receive funding from major donors or governments. As a sector, the arts have routinely been a victim of exploitation. Not only are the workers chronically underpaid (or run on the privilege of free interns), artists and creatives at large do not own their work, their tools, or distribution. The rampant purity mindset around money and the lack of capacity to maintain a healthy creative ecosystem make even a small win seem monumental. Of course, we have to get past the winner-take-all mentality first.

How do you make good money in the arts, then? You asked.

Try again.

The cynicism and the fear of doing anything other than maintaining the status quo are increasingly frustrating. This makes building a small network of a handful of people such a precious experience.

I know there are people proposing to bring UBI into the mix, citing the positive outcomes from Ireland and even from CERB locally. But that’s unreliable, too. Beyond political wind, the fact remains that the people siphoning wealth through war and wage theft continue to fuel the dumpster fire. We are here applying for grants, asking people to pay a $20 cover charge for a show, and working with our peers so they have a gig that pays the bills, while someone on the news asks whether the war makes the market bullish. 

While preparing for my talk at Agnes/Queens and, subsequently, at George Brown in Toronto, both of which focus on capitalism, ecological metaphors, and AI, I came across a study showing that “learned helplessness” isn’t actually a learned behaviour. Researchers discovered that we must learn and practise agency throughout our lives. Helplessness is the default state of our comfort-seeking brain. We give up not because we tried and failed too many times, but because giving up is just that easy. The hopeful side of not being born with a predetermined level of agency, then, is that we can learn to step into our power and keep learning to be better at it. 

In many instances of my work, I believe that stepping into a child-like state of mind is helpful in learning agency.

Goblin Market felt a little like child's play when 9-year-old me tried to knock on neighbours’ doors and convince their kids to come out and play in the field. We decide which games to play, what rules to follow, and how to win. Some games were definitive; others were what grown-ups call role-play. Sometimes we’d run into schoolteachers who also lived in the neighbourhood, and as children, we always tried to avoid them. They’d always call our parents, reminding them that we should be studying rather than out playing. We should be disciplined.

I thought it was funny that even though the circumstances changed, the main archetypes in the story remained. 

It wasn’t actually that easy to pull off a Goblin Market, now that I think about it. Logistically, it was surprisingly “normal.” Changing my views on everything I knew about the arts, creative practice, making money, running a business (that’s supposed to be a non-profit), and generating value was a painstaking process. Tears (not just mine) were shed, tough love delivered, hard truths swallowed, some people surrendered, while others persevered to build their own systems rooted in care. I hate to say this, but perhaps the most anti-capitalist thing one can do is to become good at business. A business that serves your surrounding communities (whether online or in person) and creates real value for people’s lives will contribute more to the economy than chasing subsidies or begging for temporary relief. In other words, sell your art. Sell it with integrity. 

This was work that didn’t start with the project. 

At one point, you realize that all your life, you have just been waiting for permission to do something. People will always offer advice, but chances are they’re just repeating what they want to tell themselves—a pep talk of sorts. My advice to you is the same: just a pep talk for me to keep building what I want to see in this world. 

Step 1

That scary thing has now become a curiosity; you must be nosy about it.

Step 2

That dreadful thing you’ve been postponing is now a challenge, a side-quest in a game.

Step 3

The main goal is to live a good life.

All other tasks are side quests. 

A good life means different things for people. Why are you here?

I believe many artists view art as a struggle: something that makes them stand out from everyone else. I also believe that this isn’t just for artists but for anyone who’s ever been drawn to this idea of stoicism. Across the internet, discipline in the form of the rise-and-grind is a virtue. Escape the 9–5, only to work 168 hours a week whenever you want. Art, on the other hand, sits at the extremes in people’s perception: it is either a cutesy hobby or a devoted thing that consumes your life. I'm unsure why you want to make art, but here you are.

There are many situations that will eventually lead you to a solution. Turning left three times ends up being the same as turning right, right?

The situation:

Funding cuts in arts and culture everywhere. In Canada, we are a little too tethered to it.

Artists increasingly urge for stable funding, subsidies, and a universal basic income to help them brave the moment. 

Haggling goes only so far.

Nobody is out there creating opportunities for you specifically.

Step 1: Now I’m curious

Public art funding:

What does it do?

What outcomes does it serve?

Benefits?

Misuse? 

What happens if we go without it?

Subsidies and UBI:

What does it do?

What outcomes does it serve?

Benefits?

Misuse?

What happens if we go without it?

Step 2: This whole thing is dreadful, but I’m always down for a side quest.

If money is what we want, how do we get it?

If a safety net is what we want, how do we get it?

If a life that is filled with art is what we want, how do we get it?

Step 3: What conditions must be true for me to pursue “art”

This is different for many people. 

I personally think art is literally everywhere. Well-made fried chicken is art. You know?

It is a state of mind. 

It is the search for meaning. 

It's about doing things enough times to understand what’s a keeper in you own practice.

In all seriousness, if you start taking notes on your doomscroll, noticing the details that surface and where your attention drifts, that is also, in an almost absurd way, a learning experience. Even better if you choose to do something about it. Maybe, maybe there’s an art to that, akin to garbage sorting and striking gold in the discards. 

Up to this point, I would say, counts as the prep work for Goblin Market.

The next stage is probably the most intimidating: preparing yourself mentally for business. Writing grants is quite manageable compared to the rejection you’ll face from business. Unlike the clear-cut ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answers from a grantmaker, there’s never a straightforward response from “business.” Nobody outright rejects you, but you know it’s happening. Receiving a rejection letter is comforting compared to this strange, isolating experience of people disappearing. The unsubs, the unfollows, the awkward silence between you and your old friends: soggy fries that were also too salty, soda that fell flat.

However, the market existed before capitalism. Money existed before capitalism. Enterprising people existed before capitalism.

Do you dam the river to accumulate the water (which, down the road, might cause a catastrophic breach), or do you slow its flow to nourish the ground it passes? Business is a bit like building a dam. You can always choose to be more like a beaver, even if you're driven by spite.

Sylvie Prorier recounted a story in Entangled Territorialities:

“Indigenous territorialities are further informed by memories and oral tradition, by a rich and detailed toponymy, as well as by the cosmological and aesthetic potentialities of the land, including the voices and intentionalities of its non-human inhabitants - the animals, trees, plants, water, wind, fire, and various kinds of spirits, including those of deceased relatives. An elderly Nehirowisiw man explained how, after the construction of a small dam by Hydro-Quebec in 2009, the waterfall near the community of Wemotaci became silent, its voice and reverberation no longer heard. From his perspective, the absence of this voice/sound was the main cause of the deterioration of the local flora and fauna that followed the construction of the dam."

I can't help but think we are living through this deterioration, yet we, as a society, firmly believe it's progress. Rather than the Hydro-Quebec dam, it was this economy that stopped circulation. Our economy became silent and unlivable, and kept on feeding the conditions that made it so in the first place. I wonder how that eventual breach would manifest.

I wish I could teach this "How-to" thing clearly: these are the tools, these are the instructions, and these are some fun or useful things you can do with them. But it is yours to learn. I can't show you everything.

I would list out the ingredients without a reliable recipe:

• 6-weeks of figuring out what a heist looks like. If your goal is to give everyone a first exhibit and experiences to list on their CV, make sure they are documented. Most people want an exhibition credit or an art residency credit, but this can also work for admin, budget management, curation, writing, etc. That missing relevant experience on your resume? You need to create the conditions for you and others who might need them to fill that gap in genuinely supportive ways. 
• A venue by any means.
• Relentlessly advertise the thing as if it is your passion.
• Social proof: You can talk a lot about your practice, and people will be skeptical that it's AI-generated. But if they’ve been there and experienced it, that’s a different story—a way better one.
• If nobody shows up, you’ve got all your goblin artist friends who share your ideas. Support each other. Build the story together. Having a public space as a venue helps; you can always attract unsuspecting passersby into your scheme, have a good time, and maybe turn them into your fans.

These are probably already in a medieval cookbook. Lost knowledge has resurfaced. This is literally how you organize a show before the halo of gallery representation, international residency, or playing a notable music venue got into your head. They were probably the way you played music with friends, because you simply cared.

I’ve probably just invented a thing that already existed, like the time a kid with their guitar accidentally wrote Smells Like Teen Spirit while messing around too excitedly. Just because the song existed doesn't mean that your (my) explorations weren't meaningful in my own journey.

Notes

What’s particular to me:

I wrote a grant for the initial GM, and I’ve been writing many grants to fund things outside this bucket. Some parts of me, like managing an arts org, carry a responsibility for circulating revenue when we make any. I go and get resources where I can, and I want to develop more ways for resources to flow into this pot. I think paying our artist friends on the premise of creating our own little communal safety net (rather than treating them as your subcontractors) is a worthwhile practice, even if sometimes they don’t reciprocate the way you want them to. I believe in using the resources we've got to build community assets and infrastructure, whether they come from a job, a grant, or a lottery. GM is founded on the premise of building artist-run networks to circulate our work, our collaborations, and our growth opportunities. This is also not from a place of charity. Everyone I return to is someone I genuinely respect for their art. I don’t believe in communities that exist to lick each other’s wounds. That would be a cult.

There are pools bigger than the one we are currently swimming in. There’s the river. The sea. The vast ocean. The universe. 

Get out, do the thing, and build the community you want to be part of. Do it small. Do it badly (with obvious caveats, of course). Do it tired. Do it even when only 3 people show up. 

The worst thing that can happen is that you regret not doing the thing. 

Thank you for reading this far. 

I’m done hyping you up. I’m done hyping myself up.

If people do the things they say they’d do, they’ll be more content, I guess?