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

Crowdfunding campaigns are time-limited, goal-oriented fundraisers where you seek donations from your personal network. They are great ways to get financial support for your work using small, individual donations that can add up to something much bigger. Crowdfunding campaign donations tend to come from within your expanded network–your friends, family, and community–rather than strangers.

Every month, Fractured Atlas provides a list of upcoming grant opportunities for artists and arts-based projects so that you can discover more opportunities to get financial support for your work. As a fiscal sponsor of 4000+ artistic projects, we provide access to grants for artists in every discipline.

We all have job interview horror stories. Mine have included interviewing for a gallery communications position where the interviewers spent the hour complaining to one another about how dysfunctional the gallery was, getting ghosted by the HR representative I was supposed to meet with, and having an interview for a retail job consist entirely of taking pictures of me instead of asking any questions about my experience (I could say RIP American Apparel, but I wouldn’t mean it). A major feature of bad interviews is the inappropriate question. The interviewer asks you something that doesn’t quite feel right, that doesn’t relate to the job, and that makes you divulge something about yourself that you don’t want to (and shouldn’t have to) share. It’s hard to know exactly how to respond to these inappropriate interview questions, especially when you really need a job. And right now, a lot of people really need a job.

Unlike music for big symphony halls, chamber music is meant to be intimate. It is written for between two and eight musicians and designed to be enjoyed up close. Q Concerts is a chamber music series based in Charleston, SC that uses creative programming (even virtual programming) to create meaningful, intimate experiences. Their work seeks to demonstrate that chamber music is important and that it can be for everyone. Q Concerts is dedicated to bringing people and ideas together through the power and beauty of music.

Artist residencies are designed to give you time away from your everyday life to concentrate fully on your creative practice. Artist residencies can actually vary widely. Residencies can be in cities or in the countryside, they can be medium-specific or open to all creators. They can be big or small, designed to facilitate solo work or collaboration. Residencies can take place over the course of weeks or months.

Artist residencies are an important part of the arts ecosystem. They give artists across disciplines the time and space away from their regular life to concentrate deeply on your work and to collaborate with one another. Especially for artists who are juggling other jobs, caregiving, and other responsibilities, it’s hard to find time for your work. You need the mental and physical space to create, and residencies are one of the tools that you can use to give yourself that space.

Applying for grants as an artist can be challenging. It can be time consuming and hard. It can sometimes feel like you’re sending out applications into a void never to hear back from funders. If you are consistently not receiving funding that you’re applying for, you might not even know why.

Ballet dancers Rachael Gnatowski and Emily Orzada met while they were both dancing for the Fort Wayne Ballet in 2017. After dancing together for several years at several companies, they decided that by starting their own company, they could seek to remedy some of the issues that they saw in the dance world, while performing top-notch pieces. So, in winter 2020, New England Ballet Theatre was born.

Some artists want to make art for art's sake and don’t want or even need other people to see it. Abstract artist and mystic Hilma af Klimt didn’t want people looking at her visionary paintings until 20 years after her death, for instance. But for the rest of us, we want our art to be seen! We want people to come to our performances, to our gallery shows, to listen to our podcasts, to read our poetry. 

Not every artist has the luxury of making art whenever inspiration strikes. Most artists are juggling other jobs – sometimes full-time jobs – plus other responsibilities like taking care of children or elders. It can be hard to find time to make your work, or to justify spending time on your creative endeavors. As a fiscal sponsor and artist membership organization, Fractured Atlas is dedicated to providing artists with tools to help you find more time and energy to do your artwork. We want more artists to make more work. Even when things are bad, we need art and we need artists. Plus, as artists ourselves, we feel the struggle between our creative work, our careers, and the rest of our lives!