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COVID-19 Resources for Artists and Arts Organizations

Below is a list of websites we hope you will find helpful. If you would like us to add others, please feel free to submit them for consideration. We will continue to expand this list.

Please note that none of the following sites are affiliated with or maintained by RAC. RAC is not responsible for their content.

Career Opportunities in the Arts
General Arts Resources
Multidisciplinary
  • Foundation for Contemporary Arts provides Emergency Grants ($500-$2,500) by application to U.S.-based artists in all disciplines who have sudden opportunities or unexpected expenses to present work to the public.
  • Freedimensional offers Distress Services, which are intended for activists and culture workers in situations of distress as a result of their professional work. Distress situations may include verbal threats, imprisonment or legal persecution, violent attack, professional or social exclusion, or harassment. Services include a safe haven program, emergency grants, and referrals to other resources.
  • Midwest Artist Project Services (MAPS) offers low-cost or free services and resources to artists of all disciplines, collectives, and emerging nonprofits in the St. Louis region. 
  • The Haven Foundation gives financial assistance to provide temporary support needed to safeguard and sustain the careers of established freelance artists, writers, and other members of the arts and art production communities who have suffered disabilities or experienced a career-threatening illness, accident, natural disaster or personal catastrophe.
  • J. Happy Delpech Foundation grants up to $250 to artists in the Midwest with AIDS or serious illness. Telephone: (312) 342-1359 (No website.)
Resources by Discipline

Art Educators and Teaching Artists

Craft and Traditional Arts

Cinema, Film, and Motion Pictures

Literature

  • American Poets Fund assists poets of demonstrated ability who are in a state of urgent financial need.
  • American Society of Journalists & Authors created the Writers Emergency Assistance Fund to help established freelance, nonfiction writers who, because of advanced age, illness, disability, a natural disaster, or an extraordinary professional crisis are unable to work. A writer need not be a member of ASJA to qualify for a grant.
  • Authors League Fund helps professional writers and dramatists who find themselves in financial need because of medical or health-related problems, temporary loss of income or other misfortune.
  • Carnegie Fund for Authors offers grants-in-aid to qualified commercially published book authors who have suffered financial emergency as a result of illness or injury or who have suffered some equivalent misfortune.
  • Dramatists Guild Foundation provides emergency financial assistance to individual playwrights, composers, lyricists, and book writers in dire need of funds due to severe hardship or unexpected illness.
  • Human Rights Watch administers the Hellman/Hammett grant program for writers who have been victims of political persecution and are in financial need.
  • The Maurice Sendak Foundation has seeded a program that will provide one-time grants of up to $2,500 to children’s picture book artists and writers.
  • The PEN Writers Fund offers emergency funds for professional, published or produced writers with serious financial difficulties.
  • Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America Emergency Medical and Legal Fund offers interest-free loans to science fiction and fantasy writers facing unexpected medical expenses. (Membership required.)

Media Arts

  • Broadcasters’ Foundation of America provides Emergency & Disaster Grants to radio and television broadcasters find themselves in acute financial need and do not have insurance to cover their losses after a natural disaster or other serious misfortune.
  • Directors Guild Foundation provides no interest, confidential loans to Guild members in good standing who are in need of emergency financial assistance. (Membership required.)

Museums and Galleries

Music

  • American Federation of Musicians (AFM): Lester Petrillo Memorial Fund for Disabled Musicians  provides a modest grant to temporarily or permanently disabled musicians who are members of the AFM.
  • American Guild of Musical Artists Relief Fund provides support and temporary financial assistance to AGMA members who are in need.
  • Bagby Foundation for Musical Arts offers small grants to support opera and classical music professionals, with a focus on pensioners.
  • Blues Foundation HART Fund has established a fund for blues musicians and their families in financial need due to a broad range of health.
  • Grand Ole Opry Trust Fund  provides financial assistance in time of extraordinary need, emergency or catastrophe to individuals who are or have been employed full time in a facet of the country music industry (i.e. performer, songwriter, publisher, radio, session musician, etc.).
  • Jazz Foundation of America provides jazz and blues artists with an experienced social worker to assess his/her situation and provide rapid assistance including financial support, legal services, housing counseling, and more.
  • Jazz Road Quick Assist Fund is a new, temporary emergency relief fund for jazz artists who have lost work due to COVID-19 and offers $1,000 grants to artists whose tours and gigs in March, April, or May 2020, have been cancelled.
  • League of American Orchestras has many links to information for orchestras.
  • Music Maker Relief Foundation offers emergency funds, monthly living stipends, and assistance in obtaining social services to artists working in the Southern musical tradition, focusing on those 55 years or older with an annual income of $18,000 or less.
  • MusiCares Foundation  provides a safety net of critical assistance for music people in times of need.
  • Musicians Foundation assists professional musicians (who have worked at least 5 years) with grants for medical and allied living expenses in the case of emergency situations.
  • Sweet Relief Musicians Fund provides financial assistance to all types of career musicians who are struggling to make ends meet while facing illness, disability, or age-related problems

Performing Arts and Theatre

Social Practice

Visual Arts

  • Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation, Inc. provides financial assistance to qualified artists with at least ten years of involvement in painting, sculpture, or printmaking.
  • The Artists’ Charitable Fund assists visual artists facing financial crisis by paying a portion of medical/eye/dental bills directly to the provider.
  • Artists’ Fellowship, Inc. is a private, charitable foundation that assists professional fine artists (painters, graphic artists, sculptors).
  • Joan Mitchell Foundation Emergency Grant provides emergency support to artists working in the mediums of painting, sculpture, and/or drawing after natural or manmade disasters that have affected a community.
  • The Maurice Sendak Foundation has seeded a program that will provide one-time grants of up to $2,500 to children’s picture book artists and writers.
  • Rauschenberg Emergency Grants will provide one-time grants of up to $5,000 for unexpected medical emergencies. The grants are available to visual and media artists and choreographers.
Additional Resources
Health Organizations
While You’re Staying Home…