Our values feed into and build on one another, it’s complex. Bow Market is able to pursue interesting, unique, and engaging events, agreements, and physical spaces because we are small and because we have been intentional about the people we invite in and the culture that holds them together

• Complexity relies on interdependence, time, and wiggle room.

• Complexity produces resilience, sustainability, and beauty.

One of our favorite illustrations of complexity (and its less fun, harder to say cousin complicatedness) is the analogy of a rainforest versus a field of crops (I first encountered this analogy through Charles Marohn writing for Strong Towns).

A rainforest produces bounty based on an immeasurably large amount of small, overlapping dependencies between the flora and fauna in the ecosystem. The elements of a rainforest are in such close proximity that they are constantly receiving and responding to feedback from one another. Rainforests are co-created, resilient and self-seeding: they contain within themselves the elements of sustained success. They cannot be replicated, they can not be formulated, and they cannot be artificially scaled. Importantly, there is no one element or individual in control.

Crop fields rely on complicated sets of measurements, formulations, and control. They are designed to be understood, scaled, and centrally operated. They take extensive investment to set up but are intended to run without seeking out or responding to feedback. They are not self-sustaining and often their success sews weakness e.g. monocultures breed fallow fields.

Bow Market is built on and lives in complexity. Though we work with intention we are not in control of what might end up being produced here. Our continued success relies on a fertile environment for ideas and individuals to start and to grow. We believe in the beauty that we hope emerges from letting the complexities of our environment extend past any intention.

We wouldn’t want it any simpler.