Struggling artists get a new lifeline
Making a living, never easy, is crushing now — but there’s help
Like nearly every other artist out there, Angela M. Wellman, a musician, arts educator and founder of the Oakland Public Conservatory of Music, is grappling with a livelihood upended as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
“Our way of making money has ended,”
Wellman said. “Not just making money, but making a living.”
In response to the stark realities that most within the arts community are now facing, San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts has launched the Artist Power Center, a new website and hotline focused on helping artists in the age of the coronavirus.
Constructed as a free, comprehensive onestop support system for artists of all practices, the Artist Power Center includes daily oneonone phone consultation support, a community forum page and a continuously updated resource list detailing funding opportunities and sources of emergency relief.
“Our plan was to launch something that will most immediately be about helping artists navigate all of the relief funds that exist right now,”
YBCA CEO Deborah Cullinan told The Chronicle by phone. “It will be an opportunity for us to build toward a true, robust online community and platform that connects artists to each other, to resources, to opportunities, to access to training.”
The center, which went live Tuesday, May 12, and is supported by a sixmonth grant from the San Francisco software company Zendesk, was built in direct dialogue with artists, including Wellman, scouted from across the country and primarily coming from marginalized backgrounds.
“We engaged 20 artists to be part of a closed beta test of the site and to be a focus group so that we can learn more about what artists need, how they think we would best organize a community forum, how the platform can support them in the long term,” Cullinan said.
A recent survey conducted by Americans for the Arts indicated that 95% of artists have reported loss of income during the pandemic, while almost twothirds have become fully unemployed.
“It’s exhausting,” said arts organizer Ashara Ekundayo, who served as a consultant and strategist for YBCA in building the Artist Power Center. As gigs and projects have dried up, Ekundayo and countless artists have scrambled to find and apply for relief aid, though the vast majority have found little help. “60,000 artists are saying, ‘I can’t pay my rent. I can’t buy groceries. I can’t turn my phone on.’
“You have to be ready to write a grant to advocate for yourself. Many creatives and artists live gig to gig, paycheck to paycheck, project to project, and they don’t write grants. That’s not what they do,” Ekundayo said.
Ekundayo sees the Artist Power Center as a crucial portal to help streamline this process of scouring for financial support, while in the long
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts has launched the Artist Power Center.
run building a community of support where artists can give and share resources and information.
The new initiative is the most recent way YBCA has mobilized to support artists reeling from widespread financial destabilization, along with the mental and emotional toll of the coronavirus. In April, YBCA partnered with notforprofit accelerator Zoo Labs, Black Joy Parade and Always Win Together to launch the Artists Now relief fund, which provided $500 grants to Bay Area artists.
But Cullinan is quick to note that these efforts are part of a larger mission that extends beyond the current crisis.
“Many, many artists were already living at the edge,” Cullinan said. “As we know, the pandemic has just further revealed what we already knew, which is that we’re living in a very inequitable world, and this kind of thing will hit artists of color and artists who have been working in their communities harder.”
Ekundayo sees the pandemic as an opportunity to imagine a new world postCOVID19, one that, like the Artist Power Center, reconfigures our understanding of the importance and fragility of our arts communities.
“We’re talking about a holistic, multifaceted paradigm shift that we’re living in,” Ekundayo said. “What we know is art is power. We know this — that culture precedes policy — so there have to be conversations on (artists’) personal wellbeing so that we can move forward and navigate and really be buoyant in this shift that’s happening right now.”
Ekundayo refers to everyone’s daily lives under lockdown: the DJs playing ninehour sets online, the virtual museums people are visiting, the various creators entertaining and inspiring those sheltering in isolation.
“We would all be absolutely devastated right now if the artists were not showing up first to save us every day,” she said. “Where would we be without the artists right now?”