Coalition of Arts Funders Launches Emergency Artist Relief Fund

Have you been affected by COVID-19? Performance spaces, galleries, libraries, theatres and studios closed and the temporary halting of most cultural production, artists are some of the hardest hit among the millions of Americans currently unemployed and facing financial hardships.

Young Arts is working on two different programs to provide emergency support for working artists – Artist Relief and YoungArts Alumni Emergency Microgrants. Artist Relief, is an emergency, non-restricted $5,000 grant for individual professional artists to alleviate the financial hardships created by the current COVID-19 pandemic. With seed funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation of $5 million, which matched $5 million provided by foundations nationwide, the fund launches today with $10 million in initial funding. Academy of American Poets, Artadia, Creative Capital, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, MAP Fund, United States Artists, and National YoungArts Foundation helped launch Artist Relief.

In addition to Artist Relief, YoungArts is launching an YoungArts Emergency Microgrant program to support YoungArts alumni who are experiencing loss of income due to the cancellation of scheduled professional engagements or unexpected expenses related to COVID-19 precautionary measures. YoungArts Alumni Emergency Microgrants are an unrestricted $1,000 grant, that will be distributed in three cycles over the next three months, from April through June 2020. Applications will be selected using a lottery system, with the goal of awarding more than 80 emergency microgrants each cycle.

For more information about Artist Relief, or to apply if you are an artist in need, visit artistrelief.org.

For more information on the YoungArts Alumni Emergency Microgrants, click here.