The Cherdlu Institute is the beating heart of the city's cultural industry. It is a common belief that one is not truly an artist until one has Institute membership and before that point one is merely a scribbler, a graffito or a vandal. In fact, it is all but law; the Institute doggedly prosecutes printers, galleries and theatres that host unlicensed works, or sponsors frivolous lawsuits against them that would otherwise never see court time. Primarily centred around a tastefully designed (but sprawling) club in the inner city, the Institute wields surprising influence for a civilian organisation. While it lacks formal government authority, it is essentially a monopoly on the creative industries including painting, the writing of fiction and poetry, the staging of theatrical productions, musical composition and performance, and the architectural design (though not the actual construction) of many buildings. Only fashion, in the sense of the design and manufacture of clothing, appears to be utterly out of their reach in some way.
The majority of the city's artists and performers pay dues to the Institute and and a select few are sworn-in as full time members, which is regarded as having formally 'made it' in your art or the difference between being an artist and an artiste. Most civilians will encounter dues-paying members almost daily, in drinking halls or on street corners playing for pennies, but with sworn-in Institute members on a very rare basis. The Institute's presence is everywhere in the city; every park's statue, each printed serial, each oil painting hung on a drawing room wall, each new songsheet spread amongst the music hall crowds, bears an Institute seal somewhere on it. They maintain a very respectable reputation, arguing that their control over the production of art and media is to ensure "moral decency" and the promotion of "proper social values". The Institute's main building, Picabia House, is a massive complex containing the member's club, a fully-fitted theatrical performance space, an extensive gallery with new exhibits fortnightly, and the Institute's frankly appallingly huge library of approved novels, poetry collections, songsheets, blueprints and other printed works, as well as their corresponding contracts. Performances at Picabia House are some of the best attended events in the city and often the place to be seen for the great and the good. Many attend for a chance to see the Institute's famously reclusive Director, a man by the name of Etienne Cherdlu. Artists need patrons, and it is at Picabia House that they find them.
An artist who is a member in good standing likely never wants for work and can command fine prices for their work. Even the most Bohemian painter or run-down street accordion player pays regular dues to the Institute for the privilege of performance, or at least to avoid the legal and medical problems that arise from creating without a licence. Someone might join the Institute if they wished to pursue a career in the arts as a novelist, a poet, playwright, actor or musician; even architects, composers and art historians fall under their broad and vague umbrella. Someone might be employed by the Institute (but not be a member) as a legal representative, an archivist, printer, costume-maker or censor. Or perhaps in a less reputable and honourable sense, the Institute always has use of those who might make it clear to theatre-owners that accidents can happen, or to renegade poets that a fall down the stairs is awfully easy to do if one is looking the wrong way..
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