The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Awards $200K To The Cultural Solidarity Fund In Direct Support Of NYC Artists And Cultural Workers

The Cultural Solidarity Fund today announced a $200,000 grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Launched in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the CSF provides $500 microgrants to artists and cultural workers who are facing immediate challenges with rent, food insecurity, and medical, child, and elder care emergencies. The initiative is administered by the Indie Theater Fund with leadership by the arts collective LEIMAY and is organized by a consortium of 16 NYC arts and cultural organizations.

The Mellon Foundation's significant investment follows a $100,000 challenge grant from the Howard Gilman Foundation and support from: Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS; Dance/NYC; Fund for the City of New York; Stavros Niarchos Foundation; The New York Community Trust; The Renate, Hans and Maria Hofmann Trust; Venturous Theater Fund of the Tides Foundation; Thompson Family Foundation; and more than 80 arts and cultural organizations and 120 individuals. The CSF invites interested organizations and individuals to join this Cultural Solidarity Coalition: culturalsolidarityfund.org/sponsor.

New York's creative economy generates $123.2 billion and 7% of the annual GSP from over 500,000 workers and 50,000 businesses. The sector will be integral to recovery for the state, which was devastated early on by the pandemic and has lost more than 52,000 lives. The CSF recognizes that individual artists and cultural workers must be centered in order for a thriving creative economy to return, particularly as 78% of Black, Indigenous, Arab, Asian, Hispanic, Latinx, Middle Eastern, and Pacific Islander cultural workers and 67% of white cultural workers are unemployed (Americans for the Arts).

With funds from the Mellon Foundation, the CSF will have provided a total of 978 unrestricted microgrants between March and June 2021. The organizing group will continue to fundraise as nearly 3,000 artists and cultural workers in need applied for support in March.

"Along with our colleagues in the cultural sector and philanthropic community, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation is proud to support the Cultural Solidarity Fund, led by the Indie Theater Fund and LEIMAY," said Emil Kang, Program Director for Arts and Culture, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. "The CSF places artists at the center of its relief efforts and addresses long-standing inequities by prioritizing arts workers from historically under-resourced communities. These beliefs dovetail with the Foundation's vision of a more complex and just society that values artists as the chroniclers of our humanity."

To learn more about the Cultural Solidarity Fund, please visit: culturalsolidarityfund.org.