ALI Covid Economic Impacts Project
Donation protected
8 days ago I set up bit.ly/artsandcovid - a repository for economically precarious artists, gig workers, creative freelancers, and event workers to register their real and anticipated income losses as a result of Covid-19 cancellations and layoffs. I have also created the largest listing, that I know of, of direct-to-artist relief fundraisers, that have sprung up on Facebook, Gofundme, and elsewhere (see sheet 2 of the spreadsheet) since the pandemic hit.
Since then, over 350 creative practitioners in 44 states have registered over $3.4 million in real losses, with more than $6 million anticipated lost just through June. These figures show us just what the scale of relief is going to need to be: far, far, far more than a one time $1,000 payment from the Federal government.
It's essential that we have this data to understand the true scale of impact on precarious workers. Besides circulating this data collection project, I'm now launching a series of discussions with artists, labor advocates, arts administrators, regional arts organizations, and their funders/donors to figure out how we take these numbers and turn them into urgent action (financial relief) and structural change (the end of economic precarity).
This is about millions of vulnerable workers, and the catastrophic impact the pandemic will have on their lives, even if they never get sick at all. It is not just artists and creative freelancers, but all vulnerable workers that we need to create solidarity around. This project is the tip of a very big iceberg; but it is premised on the idea that this pandemic can be both a crisis and an opportunity for radical change.
So why am I here on Gofundme now?
Last month I launched a Kickstarter campaign for an arts-based research and 'civic intervention' in the 2020 election. That's the kind of thing I do: work with artists to reframe their role in society, and thus their economy. Artists shouldn't have to struggle - *nobody* should have to struggle in the way so many do. But our economy is built with hierarchies, and what's worse than that, some communities have it ingrained in them that they are worth less than others. Artists and creative workers, just to take one example of this, are primary knowledge producers for our culture and society, and yet our very arts education romanticizes struggle, social exile, scraping by, and being misunderstood.
Anything that undermines and dismantles that kind of internalized oppression is my work at the Artists' Literacies Institute. (artistsliteracies.org)
The funding from that Kickstarter campaign and the project revenue was going to be my overhead for March-June while developing and implementing it. Two weeks into running that campaign, however, I and the whole world had to turn our attention to something else.
With Kickstarter's help and support, I have pivoted my focus, and migrated my fundraising here because there is suddenly an even more urgent crisis to attend to - the public health and economic destruction of the coronavirus pandemic. And I can't afford to wait for an 'all or nothing' campaign to come through.
I'm asking my supporters from Kickstarter to join me in this necessary pivot, and I'm asking you who've found this fund to join me in supporting the millions of precarious workers for whom we now need to respond with urgent and immediate relief, and strategies for a more secure future.
It is important that the fundraisers exist - it's also important that they be coordinated, and not drain support for one another. That's one thing I'm working on - reaching out to every fundraiser and trying to connect them in a network of mutual support.
It's important that we workers see each other. How much we might earn, how much we're each worth, and how much we are worth all together. Many of us are bad about talking about money, and that reluctance will be taken advantage of if we don't share our knowledge and work together for real, meaningful relief.
These are workers who have no salary, no backup, no security. When the gig is cancelled, rent doesn't get paid, and food doesn't get bought.
And I'm one of these workers - workshops, facilitations, production contracts, etc have all disappeared for the next 3 months, at least. That's a minimum of $9,000 lost, with no replacement forthcoming, no safety net, and now days full of home schooling and a steep challenge to develop new paying projects.
That's why I need your help. I want to get money to vulnerable workers in need. I want to coordinate these disparate funds, and develop strategies and structures that can help lead us out of precarity economics. I'm asking you for whatever you can give to keep this initiative going - anything you might have previously spent on movie tickets, music, culture but can't now that we're all cooped up - if you can spend this now to help build a cultural economy for the future that is more resilient and just, then it would be a few dollars very well spent. And especially, if you have a salary, and at this moment can at least rely on some semblance of financial continuity, I'm asking for your help now for those millions of us who have already fallen off a financial cliff.
Your donation will help to continue to maintain and grow this database, invite new registrants, coordinate with the various funds to help them share resources, and weave networks between stakeholder organizations, donors/funders, and the workers themselves as we enter a phase of ideating and strategy. This work will get relief where it is needed as soon as possible; and it will aim to build systems to prevent the kind of precarity we have fallen victim to in 2020.
Thank you for your support, for sharing, and for any other part you're willing and able to play in this group effort.
in solidarity
Andrew
Founder/Director, Artists Literacies Institute
#SmallBusinessRelief
#artists
#culture
#covid_19
#economicimpact
Since then, over 350 creative practitioners in 44 states have registered over $3.4 million in real losses, with more than $6 million anticipated lost just through June. These figures show us just what the scale of relief is going to need to be: far, far, far more than a one time $1,000 payment from the Federal government.
It's essential that we have this data to understand the true scale of impact on precarious workers. Besides circulating this data collection project, I'm now launching a series of discussions with artists, labor advocates, arts administrators, regional arts organizations, and their funders/donors to figure out how we take these numbers and turn them into urgent action (financial relief) and structural change (the end of economic precarity).
This is about millions of vulnerable workers, and the catastrophic impact the pandemic will have on their lives, even if they never get sick at all. It is not just artists and creative freelancers, but all vulnerable workers that we need to create solidarity around. This project is the tip of a very big iceberg; but it is premised on the idea that this pandemic can be both a crisis and an opportunity for radical change.
So why am I here on Gofundme now?
Last month I launched a Kickstarter campaign for an arts-based research and 'civic intervention' in the 2020 election. That's the kind of thing I do: work with artists to reframe their role in society, and thus their economy. Artists shouldn't have to struggle - *nobody* should have to struggle in the way so many do. But our economy is built with hierarchies, and what's worse than that, some communities have it ingrained in them that they are worth less than others. Artists and creative workers, just to take one example of this, are primary knowledge producers for our culture and society, and yet our very arts education romanticizes struggle, social exile, scraping by, and being misunderstood.
Anything that undermines and dismantles that kind of internalized oppression is my work at the Artists' Literacies Institute. (artistsliteracies.org)
The funding from that Kickstarter campaign and the project revenue was going to be my overhead for March-June while developing and implementing it. Two weeks into running that campaign, however, I and the whole world had to turn our attention to something else.
With Kickstarter's help and support, I have pivoted my focus, and migrated my fundraising here because there is suddenly an even more urgent crisis to attend to - the public health and economic destruction of the coronavirus pandemic. And I can't afford to wait for an 'all or nothing' campaign to come through.
I'm asking my supporters from Kickstarter to join me in this necessary pivot, and I'm asking you who've found this fund to join me in supporting the millions of precarious workers for whom we now need to respond with urgent and immediate relief, and strategies for a more secure future.
It is important that the fundraisers exist - it's also important that they be coordinated, and not drain support for one another. That's one thing I'm working on - reaching out to every fundraiser and trying to connect them in a network of mutual support.
It's important that we workers see each other. How much we might earn, how much we're each worth, and how much we are worth all together. Many of us are bad about talking about money, and that reluctance will be taken advantage of if we don't share our knowledge and work together for real, meaningful relief.
These are workers who have no salary, no backup, no security. When the gig is cancelled, rent doesn't get paid, and food doesn't get bought.
And I'm one of these workers - workshops, facilitations, production contracts, etc have all disappeared for the next 3 months, at least. That's a minimum of $9,000 lost, with no replacement forthcoming, no safety net, and now days full of home schooling and a steep challenge to develop new paying projects.
That's why I need your help. I want to get money to vulnerable workers in need. I want to coordinate these disparate funds, and develop strategies and structures that can help lead us out of precarity economics. I'm asking you for whatever you can give to keep this initiative going - anything you might have previously spent on movie tickets, music, culture but can't now that we're all cooped up - if you can spend this now to help build a cultural economy for the future that is more resilient and just, then it would be a few dollars very well spent. And especially, if you have a salary, and at this moment can at least rely on some semblance of financial continuity, I'm asking for your help now for those millions of us who have already fallen off a financial cliff.
Your donation will help to continue to maintain and grow this database, invite new registrants, coordinate with the various funds to help them share resources, and weave networks between stakeholder organizations, donors/funders, and the workers themselves as we enter a phase of ideating and strategy. This work will get relief where it is needed as soon as possible; and it will aim to build systems to prevent the kind of precarity we have fallen victim to in 2020.
Thank you for your support, for sharing, and for any other part you're willing and able to play in this group effort.
in solidarity
Andrew
Founder/Director, Artists Literacies Institute
#SmallBusinessRelief
#artists
#culture
#covid_19
#economicimpact
Organizer
Andrew Freiband
Organizer
Woodside, NY