Forecast launches toolkit on creative alternatives to in-person arts-based activities, for artists and administrators
Artists and communities need the transformational power of creativity now more than ever. Forecast recognizes the economic crises facing artists during this pandemic and we want to provide guidance on how to keep arts projects active and moving forward, even as we physically isolate.
In response, we created a toolkit with artists, arts organizations, presenting organizations, and others collaborating with artists in mind. It contains strategies for adapting in-person arts-based activities during the COVID-19 pandemic. We are launching the first iteration of this toolkit now and will continue to develop it based on open-source input from you. See below on how to submit examples of how you are adapting your in-person arts-based projects. Each time it is updated, Forecast will automatically email a revised copy of the toolkit to anyone who downloads it.
About the Toolkit
The toolkit currently includes guidance around:
- Continuing a project or event that an artist is collaborating with you on
- Engaging a community in a time of physical distancing
- Innovating and moving forward rather than freezing a project
- Keeping artists working during this time
The toolkit includes real-time examples of how these ideas are being carried out, organized by categories that represent a larger idea or structure. We recognize that there is overlap in many of these examples and so have also denoted other categories they fall within. These categories are:
- Taking it virtual
- Using what you already have
- Practicing radical generosity
- Creating new partnerships
- Pollinating ideas
View a webinar of case studies
On Wednesday, May 6, 2020, Forecast consultants Candida Gonzalez and Hawona Sullivan Janzen, along with special guests, presented case studies from the toolkit to help you:
- Continue a project or event that an artist is collaborating with you on
- Engage a community in a time of physical distancing
- Innovate and move forward rather than freeze a project
- Keep artists working during this time
Submit Your Examples
Forecast will continue to update this toolkit as a resource to the global artistic community. Please share stories on how you or other artists and organizations in your community have been creatively modifying and innovating in-person arts-based projects by using the submission form via the button below. The examples provided will be incorporated into the toolkit and a new version will be re-uploaded to our website. Forecast will automatically email a revised copy of the toolkit to anyone who downloads it each time it is updated.
We want to acknowledge the work that the world-wide disability justice community has done prior to this global pandemic to advocate for and innovate many of these event modifications and accommodations. We hope that we can continue with these accommodations after our time of pandemic isolation.
More Recent Initiatives From Forecast
A national initiative to support public artists and public art program administrators during this pandemic
On April 2 we began to offer pro bono consultations and technical support to any public artist or public art administrator based in the U.S. and the Native nations that share the same geography until May 31, 2020, as a response to the mounting effects of the coronavirus pandemic. Our team spent over 300 hours talking with more than 150 artists and leaders nationally in nearly 50 cities across the country as well as Puerto Rico.
New mini-grants for artists
Forecast asked artists how we can best help them and their communities NOW. In response, we reallocated $10,000 of our own resources to quickly provide mini-grants to 20 public artists to safely create and share messages of hope within their communities. These twenty grantees began their projects on April 10, 2020. Because we received hundreds of incredible applications for our first round of 20 Mini-Grants, we raised funds to support additional artists, and were thrilled to be able to fund 10 more projects.
Weekly conversations for BIPOC artists who work in public
We’ve been talking to artists and hear that space is needed to connect with one another as we physically distance and projects are halted. In response, we launched a series of conversations for BIPOC artists who work in public spaces and/or in community. These weekly conversations, occurring in April and May of 2020, had loose agendas and were open to BIPOC artists around the country.
Learn more about Forecast’s extensive public art consulting and artist support services.
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