The life of an artist can be a financially precarious one. You might be spending a big chunk of your own personal money buying supplies, traveling for research and then to show your work, or hiring outside help with funds out of your pocket to realize your vision. You might spend your time applying for grants and other funding opportunities without knowing if they are going to come to fruition. You might never see that money come back in the form of sales, royalties, or freelance jobs. And in case of emergency, artists are hard-hit. As we’ve seen in the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, when an emergency happens and planned contracts or shows fall through, there aren’t real safety nets for artists. There are very few formal mechanisms to support creatives and freelancers in an economic crisis, even though art has been more crucial than ever in the age of social distancing. We’ve seen tremendous and inspiring work to support artists in emergency. We’ve seen emergency grants, mutual aid funds, and spontaneous organizations of artists sharing resources and supporting each other. But we know that that isn’t enough.

Maybe you’ve recently published a statement in support of Black Lives Matter and committed publicly to begin working towards being an anti-racist organization. Maybe folks internally or externally are asking what changes you plan to make after seeing that statement. Maybe you think that you’ll have your staff go through a full staff training and will be “done with it.” Maybe you’re a white person in an organization who thinks that it’s not something you need to worry about because it’s something that some other department needs to figure out. That’s not enough. If we are committing to being anti-racist organizations, we have a lot of work to do that touches every organization and every department. There is a lot of rightful skepticism about statements companies are making right now, so how can we as organizations work towards making sure these statements are not hollow or performative?

As an artist, you need money to make your work. You might need money to pay someone to build your website, run lights for your play, or purchase the raw materials to make costumes.

Artists are fantastic multitaskers and project managers. Often, in the course of a single day, you might function as everything from a creator, to a curator, editor, manager, assistant, fundraiser, and gopher. Never mind going to the grocery store! So when it comes time to find people who will support your projects, it’s hard to find time to start. Thankfully, finding prospective donors to support your work isn’t as mystical as it seems. A little bit of research can go a long way!

In response to massive upheavals in the arts, nonprofit, and social justice sectors as a result of COVID-19, Tim Cynova (Chief Operating Officer at Fractured Atlas) and Lauren Ruffin (Chief External Relations Officer), recognized that we need to be talking to each other. In the arts and nonprofit sectors, we need to hear about how other institutions are managing crises and uncertainty, and how they are envisioning our future. So, they started talking to their colleagues.

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.

For any organization to remain relevant in changing times, you have to be able to change. Organizations need to be able to adapt to uncertain futures, new technologies, new tools, and the changing needs of the communities you serve. You need to build a working environment where teams are able to try new ways of working and to develop new projects, and to not be afraid if an experiment doesn’t work out.

By now, you’ve almost certainly seen the Angela Davis quote that reads “In a racist society, it is not enough to be non-racist, we must be anti-racist.” We have to do more than share a somber tweet or email to members and donors. Anti-racism is an ongoing commitment and practice. For individuals and organizations, it involves examining the way our organizations operate, who and how we hire, how people are compensated, how meetings are conducted, who receives funding, and other structural considerations.

When we say that the Fractured Atlas team understands the pain of our members who have had to cancel shows and performances because of COVID-19, we mean it. When External Relations Associate Sophia Park isn’t managing grant applications for Fractured Atlas or working on other projects to help our operation run more smoothly, she curates independently and as one half of Jip Gallery. Her summer show was cancelled because of COVID-19.

The Board of Fractured Atlas strongly condemns the structures of racism and bias that perpetuate inequities in the lives of people of color in communities across our country. Today we are reminded once again of the far-reaching and malignant impacts on the health, safety and economic opportunity of Black Americans. We re-commit now to eliminating structures of bias and oppression in our work. As we work to increase the economic, political, and social power of artists and creatives we join with others who see creative expression as part of a just society.