Social media can be tricky for all of us. Should you use it as a way to show yourself in the best possible light or use it as a way to be authentically vulnerable with the people who are in your network? Should you use it as a platform to talk about social and political issues or is that just virtue signaling? How do you modulate between the nice dopamine hit you get when you get a “like” and the negative feelings you might experience seeing people whose social media presences make them seem blissfully successful and happy?

One of the biggest challenges for sex workers and adult content creators today, in addition to the threat of violence on the job (including from law enforcement) is that the online platforms where they work could kick them off at any time. Online adult content is a massive industry worth $800 million. The workers who generate that content are at the whim of companies and platforms who both extract profit from their work and then make decisions about their operating terms that often harm the sex workers who have created the value for them in the first place.

The word “toxic” has been having a big few years. It was chosen as the Oxford Word of the Year in 2018 and, honestly, it’s still going strong. It is applicable to personal relationships, environmental collapse, and, of course, workplaces. With the fallout from COVID, the rapid shift to remote working, and an unsteady implementation of hybrid working, everyone is thinking about their workplaces more and more. Are they especially brutal? Are they supportive? Do they let us live dignified lives? One framework for thinking through particularly bad workplaces is the concept of a toxic workplace. But what does that phrase really mean? And why does it matter to define it carefully?

Raffles are a time-honored way for artists to raise funds. With a raffle, you solicit small donations in the form of “tickets” or entries to the raffle. Then, you randomly choose a winner to receive the prize.

Not all fundraising looks or functions the same way. Fundraising for different kinds of projects or in different fields will often adhere to specific norms, modes, and strategies.

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.

As we close out our summer and head into fall, we are entering a new phase at Fractured Atlas.

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.