Creatives Rebuild New York (CRNY) applauds the Urban Institute’s release today of a new report detailing the impacts of CRNY’s groundbreaking Artist Employment Program (AEP). Building off vital relief programs that put artists back to work amidst the earlier period of the COVID-19 pandemic, the AEP was an innovative program that supported 300 artists working in collaboration with over 126 community-based organizations, municipalities, and tribal governments across New York State. Program funding supported artist salaries of $65,000, offered medical benefits, and provided resources to organizations collaborating with artists.

The report, Empowering Artists through Employment, along with an accompanying web feature, captures the results of this two-year-long employment program. Funded by CRNY, the research focuses specifically on the two employment models comprising the AEP: artists were either employed directly by their partner organization or employed by Tribeworks, a worker cooperative that provided salaries and benefits for artists. Tribeworks made it possible for smaller organizations with less infrastructure to support employment and benefits for AEP artists. The report analyzes the implementation, outcomes, and impact of the AEP through these employment models.

Key findings of the report include: 

• Overall, both artists and partnering organizations viewed the AEP as a positive. This finding holds true for both employment models—whether artists were directly employed by their partner organization or via Tribeworks.
• For artists, AEP involvement led to increased personal well-being and financial stability and helped them develop new artistic practices and technical skills. 
• The AEP preserved the autonomy of artists in numerous ways, with the role of Tribeworks in particular being central, as it mediated the employer-employee relationship. Having a partner like Tribeworks support smaller organizations opened the opportunity to a broader range of collaborations across the state and ensured that more artists had benefits.
• Organizations reported that the AEP increased their capacity, influenced their community relationships, and had an impact on their organization’s culture and practice. The AEP expanded the scope of the work and engagement these organizations could do in their communities, showing those with less experience working with artists the value of incorporating art into their approach. 
• The AEP’s flexible model provided benefits and challenges. Since artists and organizations set the terms of their relationships, some partnerships had greater clarity than others in coming to agreement on roles and working approaches.  Building in supports, as CRNY did, to help work through issues in such an open-ended program is important.
• Providing employer-sponsored health insurance to all participants highlighted the importance of benefits. However, the range of benefits offered to artists illustrated the inequalities of the existing health care system in the US. While having access to medical insurance was literally life-saving for some artists, for others, health care coverage did not meet their needs.  

“This report demonstrates the benefits for artists, organizations, and our communities when artists’ labor is acknowledged and they collaborate with community based organizations,” said Sarah Calderón, Executive Director of CRNY. “It also shows the importance of identifying policy innovations, such as portable benefits and support for cooperative models that can better serve artists, other workers, and our communities. Policymakers need to prioritize protecting and supporting the labor of creative workers who power a statewide economic engine. New York’s cultural sector accounts for nearly $144 billion in economic activity and is powered by 450,000 jobs. “  

“Extending benefits and protections to AEP artist participants had positive effects on their emotional and financial well-being, and illustrates the value of extending wage and hour, anti discrimination, and health and safety laws to independent contractors,” said Mark Treskon, a Principal Research Associate at the Urban Institute and a co-lead of the study. “This research highlights the importance of treating artists as workers within the larger context of workforce policy. It also underscores the problems inherent in systems that link benefits and protections to jobs rather than people.”

As an AEP host organization said in the report, “CRNY artists have been critical anchors in this moment of organizational transition and building post COVID. They have created and nurtured powerful spaces for community healing, creative processing as well as collective visioning. They have also helped to galvanize our arts for social justice model.”

Photo of Dances For A Variable Population programming — an Artist Employment Program collaboration with Myna Majors and Sandra Rivera. Photo by Meg Goldman.