GIA Blog

In GIA's March 19 webinar “Emergency Preparedness and Response: COVID19 and the Arts Ecosystem,” Caitlin Strokosch, president & CEO of the National Performance Network (NPN), reflected on the importance for the philanthropic field of not going back to "normal."

On April 27, the U.S. Department of Education (ED) announced a new grant competition which would allow select States to expand access to arts courses in K-12 schools. Applications for the Expanding Access to Well-Rounded Courses Demonstration Grants program must be submitted by June 26. ED has outlined that this competitive grant program will have $6.47 million in total funds and estimates it will award about $2 million per year to 2 to 4 States.

For the month of May, GIA’s photo banner features work supported by First Nations Development Institute.

From Dance/NYC by Alejandra Duque Cifuentes and Rosemary Reyes

Reflecting on: What are grantees asking for? How can funders listen and respond accordingly?

As a major service organization for dance in the metropolitan New York City area, Dance/NYC had to move quickly to address the needs of all of our constituents when COVID-19 arrived in March 2020.

The Flamboyan Arts Fund and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, with additional support from Broadway Cares, launched a $1 million emergency relief fund to support individual artists and cultural organizations in Puerto Rico to help mitigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the arts and culture sector in the island.

"Approaching your grantmaking with a racial justice lens is not just for times of crisis. By employing this lens at all times, funders can unlock long-term transformational impact and strengthen the community-wide infrastructure needed to foresee, respond to, and avert potential damages from crises like the COVID-19 pandemic."

Reflecting on: What are grantees asking for? How can funders listen and respond accordingly?

I have cried more in the last few weeks than I have in my entire life. My grief began the day Washington State Governor Jay Inslee banned large events in Seattle-area counties, effectively closing all cultural institutions, performance venues, and arts spaces. It was one of the State’s first steps in an effort to slow the spread of COVID-19. Soon, a stay-at-home order would be issued, shuttering all non-essential businesses across Washington.

In a recent Monument Lab podcast, artist Mel Chin says the lesson from the coronavirus pandemic situation and other situations “is to exercise self-critique and empathy. How do you have to rekindle it for each situation,” he says.

Reflecting on: What strategies exist to support, regrant to, and advocate for cultural organizations (without formal audits)?

The current crisis has necessitated that we — as with many of our colleagues around the country — reassess our “normal” way of conducting philanthropic business because these are not “normal” times. The crisis we are facing is of an existential nature — the very survival of our cultural organizations and artists is at stake.

When the research started in 2017 for Freedom Maps: Activating legacies of culture, art, and organizing in the U.S. South, an upcoming report, the authors could not have imagined our current reality.