THE END OF ARTS FUNDING MIGHT ACTUALLY BE THE BEGINNING / 'SAYWUT' LANDS 60K ARTISTS AT WORK GRANT

  It's been about five months since I soft-launched Creative Structures, and in this time, I've loved the sheer variety of creative folks I've gotten to work with.

  Already, I’ve helped a Beatboxer land a $60,000 grant (more below!), built websites for several visual artists, supported a musician with time management as he works to complete a new album, and offered ongoing writing support to an activist working on his memoir.

    It's been a real crash course in the diversity of ways of thinking, creative processes, and goals that people have, while also highlighting some very universal hurdles that many struggle with.

    I've also loved the eclectic mix of makers that I've been able to support, and I’ve been surprised to discover that the work I do with "Artists with a capital A" is in no way more meaningful or rewarding than the work I do with so called, "non-artists" who are pursuing a passion project.  If anything, this has only reinforced my belief that everyone is an artist in some form or another.

It is with all of this in mind that I thought I’d use this mailer to share a few reflections on creativity and highlight some of the amazing people I’ve worked with so far:

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ARTIST SPOTLIGHT: NM Beatboxer, Ashley 'Saywut' Moyer lands 60k 'Artists at Work' grant

This past month, I worked with Ashley 'Saywut' Moyer on her application for the prestigious, 'Artists at Work' grant. This program provides artists a year and a half of salary and benefits to "deepen their art practice and work collaboratively in response to local community needs."

Getting to work with Ashley on her application was a deep dive into her creative practice and output, and it was astonishing to wrap my brain around not only Ashley's truly awe-inspiring talent, but also how she uses her passion to inspire, teach and care for the young people in her community. It was a true honor to help Ashley put together an application worthy of her, and for the granting committee to agree. Check out Ashley's performance below at the Women's March in Santa Fe.

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CREATIVE STRUCTURES REFERRAL PROGRAM

Know someone who could use a little creative structure?

If you refer someone and they book a session, you’ll receive a FREE 30-minute consult or work session—my thanks for spreading the word.

Whether you’re an artist, a creative dabbler, or just someone with a friend who’s working on something big (or stuck on something small), this is a great way to share the care and get a little support yourself.

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THE END OF ARTS FUNDING MIGHT ACTUALLY BE THE BEGINNING.

Arts funding is bleak right now. Institutions are losing funding, closing their doors, and countless artists and culture workers are losing their hard-earned jobs and opportunities.

And it sucks. The United States already had crappy arts funding. Though it's hard to find conclusive data, rough estimates suggest that countries like Canada, Germany and Finland spend 8 to 15 times more on arts and culture than we do. That means, for every artist who gets a grant here, there are 8-15 getting that happy email elsewhere. Or, for every $1,000 micro-grant in the US, there's a significantly more substantial $8,000-$15,000 grant abroad.I know I'm just doing basic math here, but damn. 

And that was before the NEA started getting gutted. So yes—bleak. Very bleak.

This ongoing lack of meaningful support explains why, for many scrappy, self-directed makers and artists in the United States, institutional support was never accessible to begin with. The dream of being paid a fair, livable wage to do the creative work has always been out of reach. 

And it's this scarcity that reinforces the idea that only a select few get to be "real" artists. That a panel of strangers gets to decide whose work is worthy of support and whose isn’t. That art is a competition.

But what if that whole structure fell apart? As it does seem to be doing now. 

Instead of a world in which a select few get chosen to make art, I want to live in one in which people don't need to get paid to make art at all.

So as long as people don't have living wages, affordable housing and health care, AND on top of that, the free time to pursue their big, weird, beautiful, profitless visions, I'm not going to cry for the loss of an already paltry amount of arts funding.

Okay, I'm still going to cry for arts funding, and I'm still going to keep helping incredible people like Ashley navigate the systems we’ve still got. I’ll help them write the applications, get the residencies, and get the grants. Because people deserve whatever support is still out there, now.

But when the leftists win (and we obviously will, no doubt) and we are given the opportunity to rebuild our broken systems from this crumbling heap of an empire, let's drastically rethink the way that the arts are valued and incorporated into everyday life, not as a prize, but as a right and a pleasure.