Last year, a seasoned performer-composer called to ask for my advice: though she had secured her first grant for a recording, she needed additional funds to hire a publicist to promote the project. A week later, another professional musician called to ask how to put a budget together: though they had toured and performed around the world, they were concerned that their lack of experience writing grants would make them look unqualified. The following day, a composer parent called to ask if I knew of any flexible grants to cover childcare for a month so she could finish a piece for a competition.
At the 2024 International Society for Performing Artists conference, Marc Bamuthi Joseph called artists the “stewards of the outer edges of our imagination.” This got me wondering: what would it look like to invest in dignity for artists so that they can be these stewards? There are major challenges facing artists in the U.S, including affordable housing, food security, and health insurance. There is also an urgent need to connect performing artists to financial support and networks that can advance their creative projects. As a full-time Executive Director who interacts with donors, audiences, and multiple professional networks, I believe there are opportunities to bridge the gap between these resources and the performing artists and creators who need them most.
With the encouragement of a few arts leader colleagues, I organized a monthly braintrust of six performer-composers that met from January – June 2024 to discuss the challenges in finding resources and networks to support their careers. The cohort included working performers and/or composers, arts administrators, educators, and founders of artist-led nonprofits. 100% identify as women; the majority identify as women of color; 20% are caregivers; 100% are mid-career artists.
During our meetings, these artists shared some of the most significant barriers to doing what they do best: create. While we will continue this research in a Phase 2 study that will be used to consider new resource-sharing models, our initial findings mirrored many of the topics in Kate Dwyer’s 2024 article, “Who Pays for the Arts.” Below is an outline of the challenges these artists identified, as well as possible solutions for the future.
Candice Hoyes — Photo by Bob Gore, Schomburg Center
Challenge: Grants
Most grants are not open enough in their criteria to empower artists to make decisions about how the funds are used. For example, many grants require the creation of new work. To be sure, the IRS has clear restrictions on individual donations to artists. “Supporting Individual Artists: A Tool Box” by Cynthia A. Gehrig for Grantmakers in the Arts provides excellent details about the permitted uses of individual grants to artists. It is imperative that “the purpose of the grant is to achieve a specific objective, such as to produce a report/product or to improve or enhance a literary, artistic, musical, scientific, teaching, or other capacity, skill, or talent.”
Many of the grants also have criteria that artists don’t fit (location, age, identity, etc.), but an increasingly prevalent issue is grants that require applicants to connect their art to broader cultural contexts. Some of the braintrust members explained: “We do not want to always discuss our alignment with ‘social justice’ issues in order to be eligible for a grant. We live these issues and just want to create art.”
Finally, many artists – especially non-native English speakers – expressed a lack of experience with grantwriting and a concern that their application may not be as competitive as other artists who had access to grantwriting training.
Solutions: There are many ways to “enhance a skill or talent” without producing a brand new opera. Grants could function as general operating support for artists, covering their time to write without a commission. Artists need funding for many aspects of their careers, including childcare, touring, releasing a record, hiring intellectual property lawyers, updating their website, hiring marketing support, hiring other musicians to play on their record, and more. The braintrust also identified that having mentorship from professional grantwriters would be transformative.
There are grantmakers who are trying to make the process easier, and some are even inviting artists to help design criteria for grants. But change can be difficult to implement due to by-laws, and the need to create parameters for how the grant money gets distributed. The braintrust wished that there could be more artist-designed opportunities for accessible funds to serve many more artists around the U.S.
Fay Victor and Rebekah Heller — Photo by Jennifer Kessler
Challenge: Building a Support Network
Individual crowdfunding platforms, like Kickstarter, GoFundMe, and Patreon, favor those with access to wealthier networks and campaign skills. And though there are several examples of wonderful donors, high-earning workers in their 20s and 30s largely do not support the performing arts. These challenges are indicative of a larger issue that the braintrust identified: a lack of opportunities for artists to build meaningful relationships with potential donors, and/or mentors who can support their careers in various ways.
Solution: Artist-centered networking gatherings! Existing industry conferences are often centered on arts organizations and presenters. What could it look like for an event to be focused on knowledge-sharing and relationship-building between artists and arts-loving professionals? Relationships are what make lasting change; if artists had opportunities to connect with a wider network – beyond transactional relationships or pitching their projects – there could be so many possibilities for new collaborations and mentorship.
The braintrust imagined a “dream list” of types of professionals to invite to a gathering large enough to meet people, but small enough to build authentic connections:
- freelance performing artists,
- intellectual property lawyers
- professional fundraisers
- arts foundation program officers
- venues seeking public programming
- marketing experts
- website IT experts
- big tech/AI leaders
- photographers
- recording studio owners
- artist residency leaders
Challenge: Awareness of existing resources
There isn’t a one-stop shop for performing artists and creators to find affordable rehearsal space, housing, grants, recording studios, legal support, publicists, or venues. Yet there was a great deal of knowledge once the braintrust started sharing information with each other. There is a vast network of resources for artists in the U.S., but many artists simply do not know what is already available.
Here is just a snapshot of resources the braintrust gathered, including service organizations for housing, health insurance, financial wellness, grants, legal support, and more. If you have additional resources to contribute to this document, we invite you to submit them here.
Artists: if you’re seeking legal support, be aware that applying for volunteer legal services can take time; for urgent matters, consider asking friends and family if anyone knows an attorney who might offer pro bono legal help. The list also includes resources for fiscal sponsorship. If you do not have a 501c3, you can apply for fiscal sponsorship to take care of the administration of receiving funds for your projects. The process can be fairly time-consuming and the fiscal sponsor usually takes a sizable cut of donations, but it can save a lot of time and headache to use a fiscal sponsor like those listed if you’re seeking grants.
Sara Serpa — Photo by Paulo Fonseca
Looking ahead
Larger foundations such as the Howard Gilman Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, and the New York Community Trust are still supporting performing arts groups, which in turn hire performing artists. Yet strategies at many philanthropic institutions are shifting away from direct support of artists and the arts organizations that employ them. A divestment from music ensembles, dance companies, theater companies, and the venues that present them directly affects artists. When funders decrease spending on the ecosystem of arts organizations, those organizations put on fewer performances and hire fewer artists. In an article for “On Curating,” I argue that social justice ought to be a value for every organization; shifting funding priorities will especially affect artists from historically underrepresented backgrounds when there is simply less work overall.
As an ecosystem, it is equally important to fund the smaller ensemble as it is to fund the venue where the ensemble must perform to realize its mission. And it is important to fund artists directly, too.
There are promising new projects: while writing this article, the William + Flora Hewlett Foundation published an exceptional Performing Arts Program Artist Strategy outlining their updated approach and rationale for funding artists directly. The Creatives Rebuild New York program helped to imagine a guaranteed income model for artists, with some exciting findings and a blueprint for the future. Additionally, there are organizations already doing the critical work to connect artists with resources: the wonderful American Composers Forum (the publishers of this essay) are one of the nation’s go-to organizations for funding and resources to composers and music creators. Artists at Work is a national model that supports artists through civic engagement projects. New Music USA offers multiple grants and professional development opportunities. The Entertainment Community Fund (formerly Actor’s Fund) has for decades offered tools for artists to plan a long life in the arts. And grassroots initiatives like Pick Up the Flow on Instagram sources and posts easily accessible opportunity listings.
Jen Shyu — Photo by Daniel Reichert
In addition to leveraging our existing resources, we urgently need to consider new ways to connect performing artists and creators with networks that support them. If you’re a freelance artist and interested in participating in our Phase 2 survey, please click here.
We also need to look beyond existing grants to create new accessible models for revenue-generation. This can start with organizing opportunities for artists to take the lead on identifying what they need the most, and looking to industries that are committed to innovation to solve systemic problems. We won’t necessarily be able to serve every artist that needs support, but with more direct funding, new opportunities to generate revenue, and more easily-accessible networks, artists can continue to be the extraordinary catalysts for hope, beauty, connection, healing, and community, a world that our society desperately needs.
I CARE IF YOU LISTEN is an editorially-independent program of the American Composers Forum, and is made possible thanks to generous donor and institutional support. Opinions expressed are solely those of the author and may not represent the views of ICIYL or ACF.
You can support the work of ICIYL with a tax-deductible gift to ACF. For more on ACF, visit composersforum.org.
