In case you missed it this week: applications are open for the 2021 Jorge and Darlene Pérez Prize in Public Art & Civic Design, new research reaffirms the power of the arts in promoting mental health and wellness, and a student filmmaker's story of creating a documentary on the plight of artists and creative workers during the coronavirus pandemic.

Americans for the Arts is pleased to announce the release of the 2020 Statistical Report on Campaign Revenues of the Nation’s United Arts Funds during the Fiscal Years 2019 and 2020. During a singularly difficult year, UAFs rose to the challenge to secure needed funds for their communities, reporting aggregate 2020 campaign revenue of $73.9 million.

In February 2021, the Wallace Foundation is exploring issuing a Request for Proposals (RFP) to a select group of researchers for one or more studies related to an initiative to invest in BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) arts organizations. Researchers and scholars who meet the criteria should submit materials by January 4, 2021.

Americans for the Arts, in partnership with over 775 cultural organizations and creative workers, has proposed a 15-action national recovery strategy that the next Administration can use to put creative workers to work—activating the creative economy and drawing upon the creative energies of the country’s 5.1 million creative workers to energize Americans, reimagine how communities can thrive, and improve the lives of all. Organizations and creative workers who wish to endorse this proposal can do so via the Creative Workforce Proposal Endorsement form.

We are excited this week to have launched #ArtsCreateHope, a new social media campaign designed to remind the public that the arts are essential to the fabric of our lives. We hope you will watch and share our short, uplifting video with your networks and friends, and please take to social media to share your stories of how the arts create hope for you. We could all use a little lift from each other!

Dr. Elizabeth Alexander is the President of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the country’s largest funder of arts and culture. This year, they’re working with a grantmaking budget of $500 million, every dollar of which will go towards social justice projects. On the NBC news podcast “Into America,” host Trymaine Lee spoke with Alexander about pain, philanthropy, and poetry.

As we close out July and begin to round the corner toward the end of summer, things are heating up on the arts advocacy front. Congress is currently negotiating a new coronavirus relief bill, and two letters asking for relief for the arts went to Capitol Hill this week: one signed by one of our longest-standing strategic partners, the U.S. Conference of Mayors, and another led by our Artists Committee and signed by more than 260 artist advocates.

The U.S. Conference of Mayors (USCM) recently adopted a resolution supporting the arts and culture sector amid the COVID-19 crisis.

More than 260 artists and creative economy leaders signed on to a relief advocacy letter sent to top leaders in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, including Annette Bening, Tony Bennett, Josh Groban, Vijay Gupta, Moisés Kaufman, Jeff Koons, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Gabourey Sidibe, Holland Taylor, and Alfre Woodard.

Cultural equity is at the heart of this week's roundup. Read on to learn more about Eddy Kwon, a musician whose work is centered in equitable community development; to meet this year's Diversity in Arts Leadership interns; to explore self advocacy and self care for artists and administrators of color; and to see how civil rights hero Rep. John Lewis was true champion of the arts. 

The coronavirus has had a devastating impact on America’s arts sector. Nationally, financial losses to nonprofit arts and cultural organizations are an estimated $9.1 billion as of July 13, 2020, and 62% of artists have become unemployed. An analysis by Americans for the Arts reveals the how the arts and creative economy sector performed in securing Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans. 

New York City's budget plan for the 2021 fiscal year includes devastating cuts to art education in the city’s public schools, despite a celebrity-backed campaign, Arts are Essential, to keep funding in place. These funding cuts further deprive all students of receiving an equitable education through the public school system. 

Americans for the Arts is pleased to announce a generous gift of $250,000 from The Jorge M. Pérez Family Foundation establishing a first-of-its-kind national program, the Jorge and Darlene Pérez Prize in Public Art & Civic Design. The program, which includes an award benefitting an artist, public art administrator, or representative from the civic design field on a rotating basis annually, seeks to celebrate and highlight the work of individuals who support, develop, and manage the incorporation of art into the design of places and spaces across the United States. 

The COVID-19 pandemic continues its stranglehold on the nation’s arts sector. In addition to losses tracked through four national studies led by Americans for the Arts, new research by the Small Business Administration shows that “Arts, Entertainment, and Recreation” is now the sector of the economy with highest percentage of “temporary closings” (53.3 percent of businesses surveyed). 

The coronavirus pandemic continues to gnaw away at the nation’s arts and cultural infrastructure. Nearly every arts organization has postponed or outright cancelled performances, exhibitions, and events. Similarly, there is a great number of working artists who have lost work. Americans for the Arts continues its tracking of the human and financial impact of the COVID-19 crisis on the arts through its four national studies.

If you have applied for CARES Act funding, please help us collect data on the process and whether you were successful. This will help Americans for the Arts quickly inform Congress and other decision-makers how the CARES Act impacted the arts sector—and what the needs are for the future. 

This week, we hosted the latest in our Supporting Individual Artists monthly "coffee chat" series on ArtsU, a project supported in part by the Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation; explored the challenges of fundraising amid the COVID-19 pandemic; and extended two online engagement opportunities.

Nina Ozlu Tunceli's popular office hours on Zoom helping artists and arts leaders navigate the complex web of relief measures in the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act have been extended through July 29, 2020.

This week, COVID-related losses and challenges continue to dominate many stories about the arts and culture sector, but we're also focusing on hopeful opportunities for leadership and community engagement. Our three-part DIAL Labs series began on ArtsU; the free professional development webinars are for early- and mid-career arts leaders who want to hone skills for navigating the field. We also republished a conversation with a California arts champion who's using her dance studio and its deep community roots to keep youth and families safe and informed during the COVID-19 crisis.

On April 8, 2020, Americans for the Arts hosted a webinar titled “How the CARES Act Supports the Arts Sector” to discuss the recent COVID-19 relief package passed by Congress at the end of March. Americans for the Arts Government Affairs staff and valued guest speakers discussed the various pieces of the legislation that pertained to the arts sector.

The $2 trillion emergency stimulus package that Congress passed this week includes $300 million in economic relief to support nonprofit cultural organizations, museums, libraries, public broadcasting, and state and local arts and humanities agencies, as well as substantial additional economic relief opportunities for independent contractors like "gig economy" workers such as actors, musicians, and artists and nonprofit organizations and small businesses, including those working in the creative economy.

How do you sum up a week like the one the country has just been through? We at Americans for the Arts hope you and yours are keeping safe and healthy during the coronavirus outbreak. We are working hard to ensure that the arts and culture sector can weather this storm, together, and with appropriate and necessary financial relief from the federal government. Read on for tools you can use in this critical time for the arts.

During this unprecedented time of crisis in our nation’s cultural, educational, economic and healthy well-being, Americans for the Arts calls on our nation’s public and private sector grantmakers and individual philanthropists in the arts to help respond to the impact of COVID-19 on the infrastructure of our nonprofit cultural organizations and artists.

This week, we look ahead at education policy trends for 2020—and how the arts intersect with them all! Plus, explore with us the role of State Arts Agencies and our State Arts Action Network in increased cultural funding at the state level. Catch up on all the week's news and analysis in the Weekly Web Roundup.