Americans for the Arts News - 2020
Read the latest arts news
On April 8, 2020, Americans for the Arts hosted a webinar titled “How the CARES Act Supports the Arts Sector” to discuss the recent COVID-19 relief package passed by Congress at the end of March. Americans for the Arts Government Affairs staff and valued guest speakers discussed the various pieces of the legislation that pertained to the arts sector.
Nationally, financial losses to the nonprofit arts sector are estimated to be $4.5 billion as of April 6 (up from $3.2 billion on March 20). Americans for the Arts estimates that nonprofit arts organizations already have experienced an estimated 197 million lost event admissions due to cancelled or postponed events.
This week, we explored the CARES Act stimulus relief package and which parts of the law relate to the arts and culture sector, creative pricing strategies for artists (becoming ever more important in the current economy), and a new resource to help artists and municipal governments partner on community-minded projects.
The application deadline for the 2020 Fellowship cohort has been extended until July 5, 2020, and the full-time job eligibility requirement for the program has been waived in order to expand access to those whose employment has been affected by the economy due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Animating Democracy, a program of Americans for the Arts, and A Blade of Grass have published the Municipal-Artist Partnership (MAP) Guide, a free, online, practical resource to help artists and city and county administrators build partnerships that benefit their communities. The MAP Guide responds to growing interest in engaging artists’ creative thinking and skills in municipal government work toward achieving internal and community goals.
This week, all eyes have been on Capitol Hill as Congress proposed, debated, revised, and voted on the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, which would provide two trillion dollars in relief funds to the nation. As we all work to adjust to this new reality, we’re pleased to share perspectives and ideas to stay connected and creative while social distancing, practical measures to keep your work moving forward, and our annual “top ten” list of reasons to support the arts.
How do you sum up a week like the one the country has just been through? We at Americans for the Arts hope you and yours are keeping safe and healthy during the coronavirus outbreak. We are working hard to ensure that the arts and culture sector can weather this storm, together, and with appropriate and necessary financial relief from the federal government. Read on for tools you can use in this critical time for the arts.
During this unprecedented time of crisis in our nation’s cultural, educational, economic and healthy well-being, Americans for the Arts calls on our nation’s public and private sector grantmakers and individual philanthropists in the arts to help respond to the impact of COVID-19 on the infrastructure of our nonprofit cultural organizations and artists.
This week, the world's focus turns squarely to the evolving Coronavirus pandemic—and so does ours. Regrettably, this has meant cancelling our upcoming National Arts Action Summit and postponing the Nancy Hanks Lecture on Arts & Public Policy. We've also created a new Resource and Response Center for the arts & culture field, including a short survey asking you to tell us the economic impact the crisis is having on your organization.
Americans for the Arts has made the difficult decision to cancel the 2020 National Arts Action Summit, which was to take place March 30-31 in Washington, D.C., and to postpone the related Nancy Hanks Lecture on Arts & Public Policy. The cancellation of the Summit comes out of an abundance of caution and to align with COVID-19 health recommendations and warnings issued by the Washington, D.C., government against mass gatherings in the city until March 31.
