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

by Lauren Lattimore, Program Associate at Fractured Atlas The Syndicate is a fiscally-sponsored project who has been successful at using our program to advance their mission. We talked to Megan Paradis Hanley of The Syndicate for our monthly “Meet the Project” interview series. They shared some project developments and how their work has impacted the communities that they serve.

by Nicola Carpenter, Associate Director, People Operations at Fractured Atlas Full team photo from All Hands 2019 At Fractured Atlas, about half of our team work fully distributed so we started having full staff events 6 years ago when we realized that there are conversations and activities that are better to do in person. We originally called these week long events “OkTECHberfest” but changed to “All Hands” last year. Through these years, we’ve found ways of creating an event that supports our organizational shared purpose.

by Molaundo Jones, Social Media Specialist for Fractured Atlas Melissa Dowler and Cynthia Siadat, LCSW, Co-Founders of She Sees Cynthia M. A. Siadat, LCSW, and Melissa Dowler are the founders of She Sees, a volunteer-driven organization dedicated to inspiring the next generation of diverse female filmmakers and empowering young women to tell their stories through film. They have been members of Fractured Atlas since 2016.

By Molaundo Jones, Social Media Specialist at Fractured Atlas At Fractured Atlas we value our members’ privacy and want to ensure that our systems align with the most current data protection laws. We just updated our Privacy Policy, clarifying what we do and don’t do with the information that we collect. Additionally, we will continue to assess our infrastructure and fortify the conditions and procedures that we have in place for protecting member data. We are also working to ensure that members have the increased ability to opt in or out of specific services.

photo credit: Marcel Münch via Flickr As scout for the Exponential Creativity Fund at Fractured Atlas, I’m in the unique position of finding arts entrepreneurs to pitch to our impact investment fund, helping them prepare, and participating in the pitch sessions.

An interview with the Director of Strategic Partnerships at Creative Many Michigan Joe Voss, Director of Strategic Partnerships at Creative Many Michigan This is an interview in a series featuring a broad range of reactions to President Trump’s first 100 days in Office, conducted by Lauren Ruffin, Vice President, External Relations at Fractured Atlas. In this interview we hear from Joe Voss, Director of Strategic Partnerships at Creative Many — Michigan’s creative sector advocacy organization.

Clockwise from top left: Sarah Carson, Sriram Emani, Erica Taylor, Jess Peterson. Event featured Adam Huttler and Courtney Duffy as panelist and moderator, respectively by Courtney Duffy, Robert W. Deutsch Arts & Technology Policy Fellow at Fractured Atlas What better day than February 14 to celebrate our love for creative entrepreneurship? Last Tuesday, Adam Huttler and I joined four arts entrepreneurs for a Capitol Hill panel hosted in conjunction with the Congressional Arts Caucus, and in collaboration with Public Knowledge. In addition to Adam, our talented panel consisted of the following entrepreneurs:

Source: keepwatchstayfree.org Lessons from the SOPA/PIPA Battle Are Relevant As Ever by Courtney Duffy, Robert W. Deutsch Arts & Technology Policy Fellow at Fractured Atlas On Wednesday, January 18, 2012, major Internet websites united to protest censorship and defeat SOPA/PIPA. Five years later, it’s as important as ever that we — both the arts community and the Internet community at large — rededicate ourselves to the principles of Internet freedom. Join the conversation on Twitter by using hashtags #InternetFreedomDay, #SOPA, and #PIPA. Remind me exactly what happened. Five years ago last week, more than 50,000 websites made their homepages dark, uniting to protest both censorship and threats to Internet freedom posed by two bills in Congress: the House version, the Stop Online Piracy Act (“SOPA”), and the Senate’s Protect IP Act (“PIPA”). Participating websites included such recognizable names as Google, Amazon, Reddit, Craigslist, Wikipedia, and more. The move made Congress take notice, resulting in the failure of both bills. What was wrong with SOPA and PIPA? While the bills claimed to protect copyrighted works from piracy, their enforcement mechanisms would have had a dangerous effect on the Internet power balance, promoting censorship. The proposal was essentially a “guilty until proven innocent” model — it would have been easy, for example, for an organization to claim copyright infringement against a competitor in order to shut down the competitor’s website. Even if the accused party was innocent, they would need to pay expensive legal fees to defend themselves. It’s important for us to note that we at Fractured Atlas believe wholeheartedly in copyright law, as well as the importance of artists being fairly compensated for their work. We simply felt strongly (and still do) that the solutions proposed in SOPA and PIPA were tremendously flawed and posed dangers to the constituency of artists that we serve. Did Fractured Atlas speak out against SOPA and PIPA? We’re proud to say that we did — in fact, we were the first major national arts services organization to take a stand. Adam Huttler, our founder and CEO, urged in a letter to Senate leadership to consider other solutions and avoid passing PIPA. We were soon joined by a number of other arts organizations, who together signed onto a second letter to Senate leadership. The coalition consisted of friends like Dance/USA, OPERA America, Theatre Communications Group, and Chorus America, among others. Our efforts were part of a large coalition of Internet defenders, large and small, that spoke out against this harmful potential legislation. Has anything major happened in this space between then and now? In February 2015, the Federal Communications Commission adopted strong rules to protect net neutrality. This victory was largely a result of yet another large-scale advocacy effort that caught the attention of policymakers — 4 million people submitted official comments in support of strong open Internet rules. What does this mean to the arts and Internet communities today? As has historically been the case when the D.C. power balance shifts to a new party, the Trump administration and Congressional Republican majority will put forth their own broadband policies. There is a strong possibility of new FCC commissioners overturning the net neutrality rules, as well as other rulings made over the last several years that could resemble the frameworks of SOPA and PIPA. As artists and Internet users, we must actively keep ourselves informed about these developments, and vigilantly defend an Internet that allows for continued creativity and innovation on an even playing field. Where can I find more information? A new Medium post called “Keep Watch, Stay Free,” is chock full of additional resources. You can also check out this video about the blackout, along with articles from TechCrunch and BoingBoing. You can find Courtney on Twitter @cduffy90, and join the conversation by using hashtags #InternetFreedomDay, #SOPA, and #PIPA. Courtney Duffy is the Robert W. Deutsch Arts & Technology Policy fellow at Fractured Atlas, a nonprofit technology company that helps artists with the business aspects of their work. To learn more about Fractured Atlas, or to get involved, visit us here.

by Aisha Jordan, Program Associate at Fractured Atlas Each month we feature one of our fiscally sponsored projects who have been successful at using our program to advance their art/cause/career. This month’s featured project is Doppelgänger Dance Collective

Being an “innovative workplace” isn’t just about having a great idea. Great ideas are a dime a dozen. The halls of history are littered with great, unrealized innovative ideas. Innovative workplaces instead are about the people and systems that allow and support ideas to be explored, nurtured, and often, nixed.