Boston Center for the Arts (BCA) has partnered with the City of Boston to create the Boston Artist Relief Fund to support artists living in Boston who have lost or anticipate losing income due to COVID-19.
The partnership will allow individuals and private entities to make donations to the Boston Artist Relief Fund through the BCA website. One-hundred percent of all donations to the Boston Artist Relief Fund go directly to artists.
“At Boston Center for the Arts, we live by our commitment to support Boston’s working visual and performing artists,” said BCA Co-Executive Directors Emily Foster Day and Kristi Keefe. “The citywide event, program, and performance cancellations are having devastating and immediate effects on artists’ livelihoods. In this spirit, we are excited to partner with the City of Boston to facilitate individual and or-ganizational support of the Boston Artist Relief Fund.”
The Boston Artist Relief Fund will award grants of $500 and $1,000 to artists living in Boston whose creative practices and incomes are being adversely impacted by cancellations related to COVID-19. The Boston Artist Relief Fund will be open on a rolling ba-sis and will replace the Opportunity Fund through June 30. All artists living in Boston are eligible and welcome to apply. The City of Boston will prioritize lower-income artists and artists who have not previ-ously received a City of Boston grant this fiscal year (July 1, 2019-present).
“We are so proud to partner with the City of Boston on this important initiative to support our valued creative community during these challenging times,” said BCA Director of Visual Arts Randi Hop-kins. “It is core to our mission to provide a wide array of resources needed to keep art and artists thriving here, and the City’s innovative response to an un-precedented situation gives us a welcome chance to connect and have a meaningful positive impact.”
The Boston Artist Relief Fund is open for, but not limited to, the following uses: the recouping of finan-cial losses due to cancelled events, such as perfor-mances, readings and speaking opportunities; reim-bursement for travel expenses related to an artist’s discipline, including residencies, conferences and touring; the offsetting of lost income for teaching artists who could not teach during this time; and support for artists working in the service industry who have lost supplemental income to support their artistic practices.
“We’ve already seen an overwhelmingly positive re-sponse to the Artist Relief Fund,” said Kara Elliott-Ortega, Chief of Arts and Culture for the City of Bos-ton. “We are seeing Boston’s cultural community and the city as a whole band together to help each other and those most in need.”