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

Every month, Fractured Atlas provides a list of upcoming grants and opportunities for artists and arts-based projects so that you can discover more opportunities to get financial support and other resources for your work. As a fiscal sponsor of over 3,000 artistic projects, we provide access to grants for artists in every discipline.

We believe that artists need to be able to connect with one another to share information and resources, to collaborate with one another, and to inspire each other. It’s great to be able to connect with your local community, but physical proximity isn’t a possibility for some artists depending on geographical location, physical ability, or discipline. You might be the only harpist in your town, or unable to physically attend meetings or classes in your area. 

We’ve all seen beloved brick and mortar arts and culture spaces disappear. Record stores and bookstores have closed, nightclubs and theaters have shuttered, and indie movie theaters have folded. When these physical spaces close, we lose community centers and places to truly nerd out about what we love. We lose places to discover niche media and art and to connect with one another. That’s why when beloved Baltimore video store Video Americain was closing down, Kevin Coelho, Greg Golinski, and Eric Hatch tried to save it. Unfortunately, they weren’t able to. So instead, they built something else. 

We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming about fundraising best practices, challenges that artists face, and musings about organizational design. It’s a hard world out there and our brains are collectively pretty fried these days, especially as we continue to navigate the art world together. Something that brings a lot of joy to some members of the Fractured Atlas staff (myself included!) are memes. Specifically, we love niche memes about art and the art world. 

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 over 3,000 artistic projects, we provide access to grants for artists in every discipline.

For artists and arts organizations, posting on social media is important. Social media, whichever platform(s) you choose, will help you raise awareness about your work, keep your audience engaged with you between performances or other big events, let you connect more deeply to your creative community, and ultimately drive sales and fundraising donations. A successful social media strategy requires regular posting, which leads to a big question for many artists. What to post?

For over 40 years, Split Britches has been creating art that is both lesbian and feminist. Split Britches projects span theater, solo performance, live art, workshops, digital media, models for public conversation, and written work. Founded by Lois Weaver and Peggy Shaw, Split Britches “is about a community of outsiders, queers, eccentrics – feminist because it encourages the imaginative potential in everyone, and lesbian because it takes the presence of a lesbian on stage as a given.”

During the height of the pandemic, we saw exhortations to support frontline workers, to tip extravagantly, to be kind to the person providing phone support, and to remember that the person working behind the counter or on the delivery truck is potentially risking their life to get you what you are looking for. There was at least some understanding that the customer-facing workers are the people who actually keep the wheels running of our society.

The return of office life is on the horizon. For many, it’s already here. But it won’t be the way that it was in February 2020. As we reopen, many workplaces will be using a hybrid model between in-person office working and remote working. They will be doing this to reopen offices gradually and because the past year and a half have shown many of us that we can work from anywhere and that not commuting to an office has a number of benefits (not least of all getting our commuting time back). 

Artists and arts organizations, welcome to NYSCA season! What is NYSCA, why does it have a season, why do artists and arts organizations care about it, and what’s it doing on the Fractured Atlas blog? We’ll cover it all below.