Nothing About Us Without Us: Inclusive Strategy from the Margins

Abstract

Inclusive strategy-making has become increasingly important in cultural management and policy, where questions of participation, recognition and cultural value are central to building more sustainable cultural economies. Open strategy research has expanded participation in strategy-making, yet participation alone does not redistribute strategic influence. Actors may gain access to strategic discussions while remaining excluded from defining agendas, shaping categories and influencing consequential decisions. Building on an equity-based approach to open strategy, this study examines how this egalitarian approach can inform the organisation of inclusive strategy-making in practice. This study examines how inclusive strategy-making with and by marginalised actors is enabled in cultural ecosystems through the case of the Outsider Art Festival (OAF), a Finnish outsider-led cultural ecosystem organised around the principle Nothing About Us Without Us. Drawing on a qualitative, process-oriented single-case study, the analysis combines interviews, focus-group discussions, documentary materials and researcher observations collected between 2021 and 2025. The findings show that inclusive strategy-making was not achieved by widening participation alone, but by reorganising who could define strategic issues, exercise judgement and influence decisions with cultural, economic and societal consequences. The analysis identifies seven interrelated mechanisms through which this occurred: insider–outsider collaboration, inclusive inquiry, power sharing, critical reflection, learning by doing, recognition of lived experience and supported risk-taking. The study contributes to the equity-based approach to open strategy by challenging participation-centred accounts of inclusion. It argues that radical inclusion begins when marginalised actors define the terms of inclusion and shape strategy on their own terms rather than participating in processes governed by institutional insiders. The OAF case shows how outsider-led strategy-making can challenge cultural hierarchies and advance social and cultural justice.