In 2020, nearly 4,000 artists in dire financial straits received $5,000 each in relief grants from a coalition of seven U.S. funders. These funders came together and launched a $21 million relief fund for artists during the height of the coronavirus pandemic. 

As a population, independent artists were devastated by COVID 2020. In the United States, the pandemic laid bare the minuscule and brittle securities that artists, makers, gig workers, freelancers, and other self-employed creators had in the form of financial reserves and social safety nets. As a companion piece to the We Are Bound: Excavating the Story of Artist Relief 2020, Lisa Yancey drafted this comprehensive set of recommendations in WE ARE BOUND: RECOMMENDATIONS, which addresses crisis preparedness and the systemic problem of economic disparities for artists in the creative economy. In these recommendations, Yancey specifically speaks to Philanthropy/Conscious Capital Investors, Cultural Institutions, Regulators, and Artists and Creators. Crisis Preparedness recommendations include proactive and reactive suggestions, while the proposals for Resolving Economic Disparities analyze the need for shifts in the creative-economy ecosystem. 

Produced by Collaborative Consulting Group (CCG), this report set out to capture the story of artists and creatives who sought funding from the Artist Relief grant initiative. CCG managed and analyzed a representative sample of more than 1,300 Artist Relief grant applicant narratives. They sifted the data through comparative analysis to identify prominent threads within, across, and between selected demographic groups. 

Produced by Americans for the Arts, this report provides a quantitative analysis of aggregated results from a national online survey of just over 33,000 artists and creative workers from April through November 2020. It examines five sector-wide socioeconomic inequities exacerbated and exposed by the pandemic: economic insecurity, job insecurity, exploitative working conditions, inequities in the digital environment, limited access to health care, and housing and food insecurity.

Yancey Consulting. “January 2018.”

Regent Atlantic Neighborhood Nonprofits Group Symposium. Created for Regent Atlantic Neighborhood Nonprofits Group Symposium “September 20, 2018.”