mutual aid

The Chicago Artists Relief Fund was founded in response to the devastating impact of the quarantine on the performing arts community. Recent surveys have indicated 95% of artists have lost income due to the pandemic.

We didn’t need a poll to know that thousands of our peers, friends and collaborators lost their jobs and income overnight. The service industry jobs, the teaching artist jobs, and the wide variety of survival gigs artists rely on simply evaporated. The need is immediate and urgent. The founders of the Chicago Artists Relief Fund rose to the occasion.

Since March 15th The Fund has raised over $75,000 and distributed emergency grants to over 315 artists in need across a variety of disciplines. Today (May 4, 2020), they are announcing an updated goal of $150,000.

I caught up with two of the founders, Cruz Gonzalez-Cadel (Jeff Award Winner, one of my favorite Chicago actors and fellow theater mama) and Elle Riley-Condit (Co-Artistic Director of The Syndicate). Continue reading “‘The Chicago Artists Relief Fund’ Raises $75000, Doubles Fundraising Goal”

“Mutual aid projects are a form of political participation in which people take responsibility for caring for one another and changing political conditions, not just through symbolic acts or putting pressure on their representatives in government, but by actually building new social relations that are more survivable.”

This quote comes from the Big Door Brigade, a multi-regional collective inspired by scholar/lawyer/organizer Dean Spade’s uplifting of mutual aid “as a strategy for survival and mobilization.”

In the wake of CDC recommendation to halt public gatherings of 50 people or more, theatre has been especially affected. Broadway has closed down, as have many theatres in Chicago. Google docs and GoFundMe’s are ripping across our social media feeds as part of an endeavor to lift up and provide support to those who need it. (Local Chicago journalist Kris Vire is keeping us up to date on arts cancellations, and it is staggering.) Writing from the perspective of an artist and graduate student, I’ve seen and felt the economic and emotional impact of the collapse of jobs and social support systems. We are witnessing how the intersection of human rights and our government interests continue to butt against each other — when they don’t have to. Continue reading “Chicago Financial Aid Resources for Artists During COVID-19”