Artist Resources, Grants for Artists, Creative Projects, Making Money for Artists

It may still be summer, but fall's around the corner and we have exciting news here at Fractured Atlas. The entire team will be convening in the Twin Cities — Minneapolis and Saint Paul — from Monday, September 23rd to Friday, September 27th. It will be the first time many staff members meet each other in person, and there's a fun public event in the works, too. Give this interview a read (or listen!) to get the full scoop.

Whether you’re an individual artist or budding young arts collective, googling “artist grants” will only get you so far, friend. Most of us are aware that grants and other funding opportunities exist, but don’t know where to find them or how to cultivate a sustainable research routine. It takes quite a bit of open-minded foraging, disciplined hunting, and genuine community building to keep your application plate full of real, feasible opportunities, rather than expensive busy work. Like a grizzly bear posting up at a bend in the river in anticipation of salmon season, or filter-feeding barnacles that grab tasty stuff as it floats by, there are plenty of different tools and strategies to choose from when you’re developing your own, personal approach to discovering new funding opportunities.

For creative people, text boxes with harsh word limits (or god forbid, character limits) are public enemy no.1. Distilling a deeply personal, evolving artistic journey into a few hundred characters can feel like an emotional and creative abyss—one that you can easily pour hours into with unsatisfying results. From our point of view (as a fiscal sponsor for artists that reviews thousands of grant applications per year), we have a few (humble) recommendations for making the writing process more fulfilling and framing your work to resonate with potential funders.

Fractured Atlas is no stranger to change. Over the past two plus decades of working as a nonprofit arts service organization, Fractured Atlas has embraced the inevitable ebbs and flows of what it means to be part of a living, breathing arts ecosystem. Today, we’re excited to share some transitions that are underway at the board level. In October, Board Chair Russell Willis Taylor completed her service and the Fractured Atlas Board selected Andrew Taylor to help steward the organization’s next chapter. We talked with them about what the work has meant, field-wide trends on board relations, and the fluid shape of organizational resiliency.

This past summer, the Fractured Atlas ecosystem welcomed Alberto Mejia as our organization’s new Chief Operating Officer. As the confetti settled, it was time to sit down and chat expansively with Alberto. He shares his personal definitions of artist support and solidarity, his hopes for the creative economy, and how fiscal sponsorship can fit into this complex puzzle. We hope you enjoy Alberto’s colorful window into Fractured Atlas’s work.

Donkeysaddle Projects is hard to pin down. It’s an art collective and a group of organizers working locally and globally. Donkeysaddle Projects creates plays and films; its members organize events and create environments for participatory co-creating. The Donkeysaddle Projects team has experience in journalism, poetry, theater, community organizing, social justice education, and human rights activism.

It is with a mixture of sadness and profound thanks that we say farewell to Shawn Anderson and Pallavi Sharma later this month. After nearly a year of planning and preparation, Shawn and Pallavi will be departing Fractured Atlas on August 31 to pursue new opportunities and new challenges. With their departure, the four-person shared, non-hierarchical leadership team will become a two-person leadership team. Lauren Ruffin and Tim Cynova will stay on in their co-CEO roles, continuing to guide the organization and engaging in the exploration of new structures of leadership and decision-making begun several years ago.

Whether you’re an individual artist or budding young arts collective, googling “artist grants” will only get you so far, friend. Most of us are aware that grants and other funding opportunities exist, but don’t know where to find them or how to cultivate a sustainable research routine. It takes quite a bit of open-minded foraging, disciplined hunting, and genuine community building to keep your application plate full of real, feasible opportunities, rather than expensive busy work. Like a grizzly bear posting up at a bend in the river in anticipation of salmon season, or filter-feeding barnacles that grab tasty stuff as it floats by, there are plenty of different tools and strategies to choose from when you’re developing your own, personal approach to discovering new funding opportunities.

When you set out as an artist to answer the question, "How do I make art?" there is a whole host of funding and labor considerations you may not initially consider. Supplies funding, as well as management of the business aspects of an artist's work, can prove cumbersome and overwhelming. They can also seem far removed from your true mission of creating your actual art. But there are many options out there to provide artist help and support you on your path.

If you’re like us, you’ve been getting a lot of emails from companies across the spectrum that are announcing changes to their privacy policies to be in compliance with GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation). Because this regulation was initiated by the European Union, most of the companies are obliged to update these policies by May 25th because they deliver products and services directly to users in the EU (and the UK despite their pending Brexit). The goals of the GDPR are to protect the privacy of Internet users in the EU and the UK by disclosing what data will be collected about them, how data will be used and shared, and what users can do to protect their information. A lot of companies are racing toward this deadline, and many will be working past May 25th to come into compliance.