Local artists look for new ways to survive COVID shutdown
17th August 2020 · 0 Comments
By Fritz Esker
Contributing Writer
For decades, the arts have been a vital part of New Orleans’ economy and that of the state at large. With the cancellations of festivals, closure of public spaces and performance venues, many artists and arts and culture organizations are looking for creative ways to generate revenue in what has been a disastrous year for artists, venues and arts organizations across the country.
On July 17, AOS Interior Environments – a local design assist firm – hosted “Arts, Music + Entertainment Resiliency,” a virtual panel featuring five local leaders in arts and entertainment to discuss how artists and arts institutions are coping with the ongoing economic impacts of the COVID-19 shutdowns.
The panel was composed of speakers representing a variety of local arts, culture and entertainment institutions, including Bryan Bailey, Tara Hernandez, Donna Santiago, Alphonse Smith and Reid Wick.
Bryan Bailey, owner of the Civic Theatre, said the theater is currently bringing in no revenue but is still paying employees and working on needed renovations. Bailey stressed the importance of taking care of artists’ financial and health-related needs (including mental health) during these difficult times. “Without them, there’s no art,” Bailey said.
Reid Wick, senior membership and project manager of The Recording Academy and a member of the Bucktown Allstars, said a significant part of his income comes from playing live shows. In the post-Katrina landscape, New Orleans musicians were at least able to travel to other cities and play there. But that is not possible with music venues shuttered across the country.
The Bucktown Allstars have done virtual fundraisers and live performances. Wick said these shows are helpful on one level because they introduce new audiences around the world to their music. In the future, those people might attend a Bucktown Allstars concert if they visit New Orleans or if the band is playing elsewhere. However, the virtual shows are still not a replacement for the energy of a live performance.
“There’s nothing that can replace the feedback you get from an audience,” Wick said.
Tara Hernandez, the founder of the New Orleans Music Economy initiative, said she thinks music performances will learn a lesson from video game broadcasts. On the website twitch.tv, users can interact with their favorite gamers while watching them play video games. Hernandez said this is a tool musicians and bands can use to attract new fans, and cited a John Legend virtual performance where he chatted with fans during the show. The ability to talk to other fans as well as the artists themselves provides a unique experience that can only be achieved virtually. Ads can be sold on these broadcasts and donations can be made to the artists.
In an effort to help musicians make more money in times when performance venues are shuttered, the Recording Academy is trying to educate musicians on ways to earn passive income by shoring up the intellectual property rights of their work.
“So many artists in New Orleans haven’t even thought about copyrighting or registering their work,” Wick said.
Wick said the royalties are often small at first, but “those pennies add up over time.”
The New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and Foundation, Inc. of course depends heavily on revenue from Jazz Fest every year. Kia Robinson, director of programs, marketing and communications for the foundation, said Jazz Fest accounts for over 50 percent of their annual budget. The remainder comes from donations and grants. She said the foundation plans to increase their fundraising efforts this year and anticipates using some of their reserve funds. Fundraising will include streaming concerts with local musicians and virtual versions of their free festivals.
Robinson said the foundation has given over $1.2 million to Louisiana musicians, music industry workers, and Mardi Gras Indians through the Jazz and Heritage Music Relief Fund. They also increased their community partnership grants to over $1 million this year, and added a new category of grants for people of color.
The Contemporary Arts Center does not have a single event on the scale of Jazz Fest, but it hosts many smaller events, parties, and conferences throughout the year. It hosts events for White Linen Night and has been a venue for the New Orleans Film Festival. George Scheer, executive director of the CAC, said the loss of convention revenue has hurt the most.
“Nothing replaces convention revenue for the city or the CAC,” Scheer said.
Scheer said the CAC and other arts organizations will rely heavily on private donors and charitable foundations to help weather the storm. While this has been a difficult time for the CAC, Scheer said they are using the shutdowns to do long-term planning.
“This is a year for reflection on the role of arts organizations in our society and in our economy,” Scheer said. “Who are we? Who do we serve? How can we best serve our communities?”
The ESSENCE Festival hosted a virtual event online over two weekends in June and July featuring panel discussions, wellness classes, and musical performances from artists like John Legend and Common. Donna Santiago, the Superdome Talent Director for ESSENCE Fest, said that the virtual event exposed new viewers to the ESSENCE experience. While she said ESSENCE plans to return to its on-site event in 2021, the organization plans to incorporate more virtual events into its yearly programming.
“This has inspired people to think in new ways,” Santiago said. “What are new ways we can engage an audience?”
Lena McCloskey, president-elect of the Young Leadership Council’s Board of Directors, said the organization’s popular Wednesdays at the Square concert series costs close to $650,000 to put on each year, but raises over $800,000 through sponsorship and sales for the YLC’s community programs. All funds raised go to those programs. She estimated this revenue accounts for approximately 45 percent of the YLC’s yearly budget.
McCloskey said the YLC is still hosting leadership programs virtually and hosted a virtual Wednesdays at the Square fundraising concert in conjunction with GiveNOLA Day. The YLC was able to raise just over $13,000 from GiveNOLA Day.
Aside from fundraising efforts, McCloskey said the YLC is fortunate to have an endowment to fall back on in challenging times such as these.
Government Grants and Programs
In 2017, the last year for which data is available, the U.S. Dept. of Commerce’s Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) released its Arts and Cultural Production Satellite Account (ACPSA), an analysis done in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts outlining revenue, employment and compensation figures for the state’s arts and culture industry.
According to that analysis, in Louisiana, arts and culture accounted for $5.9 billion (2.5 percent) of the state’s GDP for that year (down by 1.68 percent from the year prior), 2.6 percent of state employment, and $2.8 billion in compensation (2.3 percent), including wages, salaries and benefits.
Facing the potential of such a large amount of revenue, for both artists and institutions, both government and nonprofits have stepped up ways to offset some of that economic loss.
The Louisiana Division of the Arts (LDOA) received $455,700 through the NEA CARES Act funding. The LDOA awarded $5,000 grants to each of its General Operating Support (GOS) grant recipients, as well as an additional twenty $3,000 grants to specific organizations through a partnership with South Arts and funding via the NEA CARES Act. Barry Landry, communications director for the Louisiana Department of Culture, Recreation, and Tourism, said the remaining CARES funds will be distributed as $1,500 grants to approximately 60 small-to-mid-sized 501©3 arts organizations who do not qualify as GOS grant recipients once all approvals are met.
The LDOA’s project grant program this year is being diverted to an individual artist support grant program (CreativeRelief-Louisiana.org).
The LDOA conducted an impact study in March 2020 on the effects COVID-19 will have on the arts and culture industry from March to May. Eighty percent of the 1,077 responders reported a loss or an expected loss of income ranging from $10,000 to $100,000. Sixty-four percent of the individual artists surveyed had already lost over 20 days of work. Most respondents indicated they were concerned with “possible irreparable damage” to future business and sales.
Another government program that helps support artists is New Orleans’ Percent for Art Program, administered by the Arts Council of New Orleans. A percentage of eligible expenditures goes towards the creation of art or the purchase of art for public spaces. In 2019, the New Orleans City Council unanimously voted to increase that percentage from one to 1.5 percent.
Alphonse Smith, executive director of the Arts Council of New Orleans, said he hopes in the future the city can expand the Percent for Art Program to include private ventures. Here, a developer would be incentivized to donate a percentage of their funds to support public art. Such projects have worked well in cities like Oakland, Calif.
The Future
Smith said that many arts organizations will incorporate more virtual events in the future even after the COVID-19 crisis is over. However, he does not see it replacing face-to-face events.
“The arts will never fully go away from in-person gatherings,” Smith said. “But we should ask ourselves how do we use a mix of physical gatherings and virtual tools to give artists the greatest amount of exposure we possibly can.”
Santiago, who along with her work for ESSENCE Fest is on the board of directors for the New Orleans Film Festival, said her organizations hope to get back to their in-person events in 2021.
“We remain optimistic 2021 is going to happen,” Santiago said. “We’re not planning to live like this for an extended period of time.”
This article originally published in the August 17, 2020 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
