Organizations
Artist, Rachel List paints mural. Photographer: Lee Smith of REUTERS
In this section you will find organizations with programming efforts responding directly/specifically to COVID-19 awareness-building, prevention, coping or recovery and which also employ an arts-based approach. Please consider submitting organizations working in the areas of arts and culture, public health, mental health, healthcare, emergency preparedness, community development, policy development, education, jobs training, etc.
Based in St. Louis, Missouri and incorporated in 2014, the Story Stitchers Artists Collective uses a collaborative model to create social justice art. The mission of Story Stitchers is to document St. Louis through art and word and to promote understanding, civic pride, intergenerational relationships, and literacy. Story Stitchers works to promote a better educated, more peaceful, and caring region through the creation and dissemination of original art.
Texas Folklife is a statewide non-profit organization dedicated to preserving and presenting the diverse cultures and living heritage of the Lone Star State. As the state-designated public folklife program of Texas, Texas Folklife promotes cultural sustainability through a commitment to support artists, tradition bearers, and communities. Recently, Texas Folklife has begun working with a variety of artists and community collaborators to produce arts-based public health messaging for communities that have experienced high levels of infection and low vaccine rates during the pandemic. This work seeks to engage Austin-area community members in conversations that respect community knowledge, embrace lived experience, and help identify and overcome the complex barriers affecting equitable access to the COVID-19 vaccine.
Founded in 1997, Alliance for California Traditional Arts (ACTA) is a non-profit that serves as California Arts Council's official partner in serving the state's folk and traditional arts field. ACTA aims to serve as a bridge between cultural communities, providing opportunities for exchange, collaboration, and connection to new resources. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, ACTA produced new works in Spanish and Mixtec in music, poetry and theater by four beloved Latinx artists and ensembles in the San Joaquin Valley. These new pieces all animate public health messaging for the prevention of COVID-19 in the valley, a region which has experienced both high level of infection and low vaccination rates during the pandemic. Through regional music, multilingual poetry, and even a radio drama, these ACTA artists are encouraging San Joaquin Valley residents to get vaccinated and protect their communities and families from COVID-19.
Arts & Democracy provides a safe, collaborative space for the minds of artists, cultural organizers, and activists to come together and benefit our communities. The arts are used as a platform to communicate messages of activism and transformative change.
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Project Knitwell is helping nurses relieve stress during the pandemic by teaching knitting -- a proven wellness tool. Project Knitwell is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization operating in the Washington, DC area, offering knitting as a wellness tool to help people cope with stressful situations at more than a dozen hospital and community settings. Founded in 2010, Project Knitwell is celebrating its 10th Anniversary. With minimal paid staff, over the last 10 years, Project Knitwell has proudly served more than 5,000 participants with more than 30 volunteers.
The National Consortium for Creative Placemaking is collecting stories of how artists and arts organizations are helping communities through the COVID-19 crisis. The aim of this work is to help strengthen support for the arts amongst civic and cultural leaders. The first story highlights a Facebook group which serves as a marketplace for Native American artists to sell their craft and support their communities.
National Organization for Arts in Health provides transformational leadership to bring the field of arts in health together, and to move the field forward. Our focus in on the field of arts, health, and well-being; and creating tangible impact from our goals and initiatives. We know through research and experience that the arts are an integral and we are committed to shaping a reality where that fact is accepted fully, and incorporated into medical treatment, medical education, prevention, public health, and well-being.
DC Metro Theater Arts, 4/21/2020: “The Pandemic Players’ mission also fits in with a wonderful emerging trend—artists making art to help others who are struggling. For each performance, the group partners with an existing theater company to raise funds for them during the COVID-19 shutdown. This self-described ‘temporary’ organization, founded by Kay-Megan Washington and other prominent Baltimore actors, focuses on free live theatrical performances of beloved classic plays. In return, they request small donations from audiences at home.”
The Louisville Arts Network was founded in response to our times by artists to help artists meet the cultural and spiritual needs of our community. Artists have guided, comforted, entertained, and inspired us for centuries. If we are to retain our spirit and spiritual outlook as well as our humanity and dignity, we must engage our creative voices and see them as cultural resources. As a caring society, it is our job to enable artists to continue their work in helping build a better community and forging essential connections between us all. The Louisville Arts Network (LAN) is offering micro-commissions for artists working in all media, ages 18 and up, who live in the greater Louisville area. LAN seeks to present a variety of projects including visual, performing, and written works that define the diversity of our great community of Louisville. Selected artists will receive a $150 or $200 honorarium for their participation in this project through the creation of an original, new work within three (3) days of acceptance of their proposal by the LAN Selection Committee. The works will be published as part of Lift Up Lou’s Arts and Entertainment program and presented through social media at 3 pm ET daily.
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