Artist Employment Program Guidelines

Creatives Rebuild New York’s (CRNY) Artist Employment Program (AEP) will fund employment for up to 300 artists, culture bearers, and culture makers (artists) in collaboration with dozens of community-based organizations across New York State for two years. Participating artists will receive a salary of $65,000 per year, plus benefits, with dedicated time to focus on their practice. Participating organizations will receive funds that range between $25,000 and $100,000 per year to support artists’ employment.

We are no longer accepting applications to the Artist Employment Program. The program guidelines will remain archived below for reference.

Hearkening back to the success of the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act—a federally-funded initiative that supported artists’ projects in New York State and across the country from 1974 to 1981—artists and arts advocates have called for a workforce program to address the recent under- and unemployment of artists.* CRNY’s Artist Employment Program will fund employment with salaries and benefits for up to 300 artists and their organizational partners—thus demonstrating the importance of artists as key workers within the labor force.

By supporting artists working in collaboration with community-based organizations, AEP will offer a pathway to transforming relationships between artists and organizations. Equitable relationships encourage creative solutions, expansive thinking, and new methods of engagement while building capacity and stability for all involved. CRNY believes such partnerships can also support and enrich communities, demonstrating the power of artists as agents of social change and the importance of their labor to New York State’s social and economic vitality.

Building off vital relief programs that put artists back to work amidst the ongoing global COVID-19 pandemic, AEP seeks to support artists and organizations within historically marginalized communities—as well as artists who face systemic barriers to employment.

Collaborations between artists and community-based organizations can take many forms. These collaborations do not need to be new relationships or involve new work. An artist may work as an artist-in-residence, teaching artist, artist organizer, documentarian, or creative consultant, for instance. Organizational partners may be arts and cultural organizations, government entities, or non-arts community-based organizations.

*https://www.artistsallianceinc.org/art-work-how-the-government-funded-ceta-jobs-program-put-artists-to-work/

Goals

The Artist Employment Program seeks ecosystem-level change and has three primary stakeholders: artists, community-based organizations, and communities. CRNY has identified the following goals for each of these stakeholders:

ARTISTS

• To provide financial stability for artists, especially under- and unemployed artists across New York State, given the catastrophic impact of the pandemic on artists’ livelihoods and incomes.
• To provide salaried employment that is in line with artists’ skills and expertise while allowing artists to deepen their artistic practice.
• To help artists grow in their understanding and capacity to work with organizations and communities.
• To foster a collective infrastructure to maximize artists’ influence within funding and policy systems.

COMMUNITY-BASED ORGANIZATIONS

• To support the financial recovery and stability of community-based organizations, both arts and non-arts, that suffered tremendous financial strain and loss because of the pandemic.
• To deepen organizations’ ability to work for and with communities and constituents.
• To develop new models for mutually beneficial collaborations between artists and organizations.

COMMUNITIES

• To create partnerships that support and enrich communities and meet community needs and desires.
• To increase the visibility and understanding of artists as workers; communities will be able to witness artists’ labor and processes.

How This Program Was Designed

In the fall of 2021, Creatives Rebuild New York convened a Think Tank—a diverse coalition of New York State artists, scholars, strategists, and activists with wide-ranging identities and lived experiences. Through bi-monthly facilitated digital meetings, this group determined the overall direction of both the Guaranteed Income for Artists and Artist Employment Programs.

Compensation

Participating artists will receive a salary of $65,000 per year (commensurate with median income in New York State) plus benefits and dedicated time to focus on their practice.

Participating organizations will be awarded funds to support their employment of artists. This support will range between $25,000 and $100,000 per organization, annually; the amount each organization receives will depend on the number of artists employed and the impact on the organizational budget.

Benefits

AEP funding will support employment benefits—such as medical, dental, vision, and all compulsory benefits—through the organization that holds the artist’s employment. These benefits will be administered in accordance with that organization’s standard Human Resources practices.

Who Holds Employment

Artists’ employment will be held in one of two ways:

1. A collaborating organization holds employment: The applying organization must have a reliable payroll infrastructure; be able to provide workers’ compensation; provide tax withholding services; and have a Human Resources system in place.
2. Employment is held through an intermediary: For applying organizations that are not able to hold employment and benefits, artists will be employed by an intermediary organization that will facilitate payroll and provide Human Resources services.

CRNY is in active conversation with a workers’ collective to act as an intermediary that can hold employment and provide benefits for a portion of artists in AEP. This intermediary will support organizations that want to hire artists but have limited capacity to hold employment and/or provide benefits.

Joint Application

The Artist Employment Program requires a joint application between artists and organizations. Either the artist(s) or the organization may initiate the relationship, and both the artist(s) and the organization must be specifically named and have agreed to work together at the time of application.

Collaborations can include one or more artists. Organizations can apply to employ a single artist or multiple artists. In situations with multiple artists, those artists can work collaboratively or in distinct ways. The entire proposed collaboration will be evaluated as a unit, and thus all collaborating organizations and artists will be funded or none will. Collaborators will not be evaluated individually.

Who Can Apply

To be eligible to apply to AEP, organizations must:

• Be a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) public charity or a government instrumentality, and/or fiscally sponsored by a 501(c)(3) public charity
• Have their principal place of business in New York State
• Serve one or more of the following communities:
  • Black, Indigenous, and/or People of Color
  • Immigrants
  • LGBTQIAP+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer/Questioning, Intersex, Asexual/Aromantic, Pansexual+)
  • Deaf/Disabled
  • Criminal legal system-involved
  • At or below the poverty line (low-income)
  • Rural

To be eligible to apply to AEP, artists must be:

• Primary residents of New York State
• An artist, culture bearer, or culture maker
• Not a staff member or related to a staff member (e.g., an immediate family member) of Tides or Creatives Rebuild New York.

Artists who are under- or unemployed and/or who are Black, Indigenous, People of Color, immigrants, LGBTQIAP+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer/Questioning, Intersex, Asexual/Aromantic, Pansexual+), Deaf/Disabled, criminal legal system involved, living at or below the poverty line, and/or living in rural areas are encouraged to apply.

Definitions

An artist, culture bearer, or culture maker (‘artist’) is someone who regularly engages in artistic or cultural practice to: express themselves with the intention of communicating richly to or sharing with others; pass on traditional knowledge and cultural practices; offer cultural resources to their communities; and/or co-organize and co-create within communities toward social impacts. Artists aspire to sustain themselves through their practice and maintain a commitment to continuing their practice. Artists can work both individually and collaboratively, or as educators within their field of practice.

Artistic and cultural practice includes: Craft, Dance, Design, Film, Literary Arts, Media Arts, Music, Oral Traditions, Social Practice, Theater, Performance Art, Traditional Arts, Visual Arts, and Interdisciplinary Arts. Click here for a detailed description of each discipline.

Community-based organizations are nonprofit organizations, government entities, or fiscally sponsored organizations that work at a local level to improve life for residents of their communities. Community-based organizations can focus their mission or work within the arts and culture sector or within another community development sector (health, education, environment, etc.) while working toward a vision of equitable and sustainable communities.

Rural is defined in nearly a dozen different ways within New York State; however, for the purposes of the CRNY’s funding programs, ‘rural communities’ are those outside of metropolitan and micropolitan areas with a population of 10,000 or fewer residents.

Restrictions

Multiple Applications

Artists and organizations may participate as part of only one application to the Artist Employment Program. Artists cannot seek to be employed by multiple organizations; organizations cannot submit multiple proposals involving different artists or collaborations.

Artists are not permitted to apply to both the Guaranteed Income for Artists Program and Artist Employment Program. We encourage all potential applicants to consider which CRNY program is best suited to their needs prior to submitting an application. For more information about Guaranteed Income for Artists, click here.

Fiscal Sponsorship

An LLC or other non-501(c)(3) organization cannot apply as the primary organization, but may apply with a fiscal sponsor that is a 501(c)(3) public charity or as a collaborating partner on a 501(c)(3) organization’s application. Either the fiscal sponsor or the 501(c)(3) organization must be the primary organization, and will receive all funds associated with the AEP grant.

An artist may work with a non-501(c)(3) organization only if that organization is fiscally sponsored by a 501(c)(3) public charity.

A fiscally-sponsored individual artist is not eligible to apply without a 501(c)(3) organization that will employ them.

Intellectual Property Rights

Participating organizations will not have or obtain any intellectual property rights to works created by the artists during the time the artists are working independently from (although employed by) their partners

Applications that meet the following criteria will be prioritized:

• Strength and integrity of the proposed collaboration
  • Is the proposed work jointly developed and/or co-authored by the artists and the organization?
  • Does the proposed work align with both the organization’s mission and the artists’ practice?
  • Is there a clearly articulated plan or time allocated for the artist(s) to pursue their personal artistic practice outside of the proposed work?
  • Is the proposed work being done with the community and/or driven by the community needs and opportunities?
  • Can the partners define success and sustainability of the partnership?

• Alignment of the proposed collaboration with CRNY values
  • Is the proposed collaboration equitable and non-extractive?
  • Does the proposed collaboration center the knowledge and expertise of artists, culture bearers, and culture makers?
  • Do the organization’s leaders and the artists reflect the identities and cultural practices of the community or communities they support?
  • Does the organization have the infrastructure necessary to serve their communities well (e.g., language and cultural competencies, physically accessible spaces)?

• Capacity of the organization to support artists
  • Does the organization demonstrate a strong commitment to employee-centered practices?
  • Does the organization understand how to support artists?
  • Does the organization have a history of collaborating with artists? Are the organization or its programs artist-led?

• Impact on organization’s financial capacity
  • Is the organization’s current financial need and capacity clearly stated?
  • Can the organization articulate how this funding will change the trajectory of the organization?

In keeping with CRNY’s commitment to an equitable distribution of funds, final selection will be balanced to ensure:

• ​Geographic distribution across the ten regions of New York State, including substantial representation from rural communities
• A range of organizational sizes
• A range of artistic disciplines and approaches to collaboration
• A mix of collaborations that involve multiple artists and collaborations that involve one artist

The application review process will occur in two stages:

Stage One: Application Review

Stage One applications will be assessed by external peer reviewers—artists and organizational professionals who have deep experience in their geographic regions and who share affinity with applicants. Between March 28, 2022 and April 8, 2022 CRNY staff and external reviewers will review applications and make recommendations as to which partnerships will be invited to Stage Two. On April 11, 2022 CRNY will notify finalists to advance to Stage Two.

Stage Two: Interviews

Artists and representatives from each finalist organization will be invited to schedule an online interview between April 25, 2022 and May 20, 2022. Two external peer reviewers will be present with one CRNY staff member for each of these interviews. Feedback from these interviews—documented according to a rubric that aligns with the selection criteria—will inform the final grant decisions. All external peer reviewers will meet to discuss and make final recommendations to CRNY staff. CRNY staff will take these recommendations and make final decisions, ensuring that the final distribution matches CRNY’s values and organizational balances across New York State.

Finalists will be notified of all decisions by June 6, 2022. We expect that employment for the artists will begin no later than June 27, 2022.

Disbursement of Funds

• Artists will be paid on the payroll schedule (e.g., biweekly, bimonthly) of the organization that holds their employment (either the collaborating organization or the intermediary).
• Multiple organizations may apply together, but one must be designated as the primary organization; this is the organization that will receive all funds from CRNY. The primary organization must be a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) public charity or a government instrumentality, with its principal place of business in New York State.
• CRNY will disburse funds to the primary organization in four equal installments: beginning upon the start of the collaboration and then every six months following, through the end of the grant period.
• In lieu of reporting, prior to the third disbursement of funds, participants in funded partnerships will meet with CRNY staff and/or regional artist liaisons to discuss the growth and challenges of the collaboration. These meetings will confirm alignment of program requirements and are intended to support artists, organizations, and the evolution of the partnership.
• If the primary organization or any artist needs to end their participation in the program (due to a change in primary residence, personal situation, an unforeseen obstacle in the collaboration, or any other reason), they must immediately alert CRNY. CRNY will approach these situations from a care framework, working with the organization and artists to find an equitable and restorative way forward.

Other Activities

• CRNY will collaborate with the organizations and artists involved in AEP to co-design capacity and network building opportunities that directly respond to their needs and are informed by the communities they serve.
• CRNY will carry out a range of research, advocacy, and narrative change efforts over the next two years, with a strong commitment to equitable evaluation practices and artist-centered storytelling efforts. Artists and organizations selected for the Artist Employment Program will be given the option to participate in CRNY’s research and advocacy work. Those who elect to participate will be compensated on top of the funds received through the Artist Employment Program.

CRNY will establish and maintain appropriate security measures designed to ensure the confidentiality of applicant information and to prevent unauthorized access, destruction, loss, or alteration of such data. Submittable, CRNY’s application platform, has a variety of security features and compliance certifications that can be found here: https://www.submittable.com/security/.

Information submitted as part of the Artist Employment Program application process will be shared only with review panelists who are assisting with the selection process, and with partners involved in CRNY’s research and advocacy work. Responses will be anonymized before they are analyzed, and applicants will not be personally identified in any outputs from the research or advocacy work unless additional consent is sought and secured.

Applicants’ data will be kept until the end of the Creatives Rebuild New York initiative (December 2024). Additional documentation is available upon request.