New Report: The Art of Economic Justice
From Springboard for the Arts: This innovative pilot and narrative change strategy was designed in partnership with the City of St. Paul's People's Prosperity Pilot guaranteed income program. The City of St. Paul is a leader in the national Mayors for Guaranteed Income network, which works to incorporate learning and research from local pilots into state and federal policy recommendations.
Springboard undertook this work to demonstrate that artists should be recipients of economic system change and that they are powerful allies in movements for economic justice.
There is little to no safety net for most individual artists. This creates a pressing emergency of equity in economic opportunity and
representation in our field, especially for artists who are Black, Indigenous, and/or People of Color, artists in rural places and underinvested urban neighborhoods, and artists identifying as LGBTQ+ or from the disability community. In 2022, the National Endowment for the Arts reported that the overall unemployment rate for artists was still twice what it was pre-pandemic.
Springboard's guaranteed income pilot is the result of our work to transition from providing emergency relief for artists to laying the groundwork for larger systems change. This report provides a summary of the impact we are seeing and the steps we are taking to extend the impact of this work.
The goals of Springboard's GI original pilot were:
- Provide 25 artists and creative workers located in the Frogtown and Rondo neighborhoods of St. Paul, MN with $500 monthly payments for 18 months.
- Support a cohort of artists to lead narrative change projects to build understanding about the need for economic justice in our community.
- Develop research and inform policy by specifically demonstrating the impact that guaranteed income has on artist communities and the ways in which artists can contribute their skills to movements around economic justice.