New Report Finds Artist Employment Program Improved Artists’ Wellness, Practice, and Community Connections

Evaluation by Rockefeller Institute of Government also shows impact on organizations and communities across New York State

Albany, NY — A new report released today by the Rockefeller Institute of Government found that Creatives Rebuild New York’s Artist Employment Program (AEP) improved artists’ ability to meet basic needs and to prioritize and grow their practices. The two-year program also strengthened the work culture, community relationships, and public initiatives of community-based organizations.

From July 2022 to July 2024, the Artist Employment Program provided $65,000 annual salaries to more than 300 artists and annual funding between $25,000 and $100,000 to community-based organizations that partnered with the artists. The program was launched and administered by Creatives Rebuild New York (CRNY), a three-year initiative funded by the Mellon Foundation, Ford Foundation, and Stavros Niarchos Foundation in response to the severe challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic on the creative workforce in New York State.

The evaluative research, performed by the Rockefeller Institute of Government with support from independent researchers Sol Aramendi and Ryan Westphal, was commissioned by CRNY to assess the extent to which the program’s goals—improving artists’ lives and livelihoods, bolstering community-based organizations, and enriching communities through these partnerships—were achieved. Through surveys and interviews of participating artists and organizations, the research found numerous positive benefits. These include:

• Ninety-one percent of artists who responded to the evaluation’s survey reported that the two-year stable employment and income provided them with a sense of financial safety. In interviews, artists shared that this stability in turn enabled them to focus on and expand their artistic practices. Artists also reported the ability to leverage professional development opportunities, including networking and training offered through the AEP.
• For 73 percent of community-based organizations that participated in the survey, the AEP funding enabled them to expand operations by creating new programs, and to achieve deeper engagement with their communities. Seventy-seven percent of surveyed organizations reported achieving greater visibility, and 50 percent reported increased outreach capacity. Findings from interviews revealed that the AEP funding strengthened the organizations’ ability to support better salaries for artists.
• CRNY’s emphasis on recruitment of AEP artists and organizations from underrepresented communities drove transformational changes, as these artists helped to expand the reach of their partner organizations into new communities and increase access to the arts for underserved populations.

The report concludes that the AEP signified an important investment in the arts workforce and includes recommendations for future programs and policy that would help address the employment and income instability that artists face due to the contingent nature of their work.

“The findings from our research on the Artist Employment Program suggest that changing the contingent nature of artists’ work could improve artists’ quality of life and provide benefits to their local communities,” said Maria Figueroa, director of labor policy at the Rockefeller Institute and lead author of the report. “While further  research can increase our understanding of the structural challenges facing the creative workforce, the experiences reported by artists and organizations in this program are clear: steady employment and regular income represented a sea change in their work.”

“This report brings rigorous analysis and nuance to stories the CRNY team heard from artists and organizations in the program,” said Jamie Hand, Director of Strategic Impact and Narrative Change at CRNY. “There’s tremendous value in having intended and unintended impacts spelled out so clearly by the Rockefeller Institute, not just for policymakers or funders but for the participants themselves. This research effort was deeply participatory from the start, with AEP artists and organizational staff driving the inquiry and shaping the questions that got asked. That makes the findings all the more meaningful.”

On February 6, the Institute hosted an event featuring panel and group discussions among artists, organization representatives, researchers, and policymakers about the program’s impacts and implications for future policy. Recordings of the event are available on the event webpage.

The full report is available on the Rockefeller Institute website.