Mink, KaTinka & Friends? Gettin' Money4Arts...
|
What Do We Have To Do?This website is an Act of Protest as much as it is about Arts Awareness and what it takes to be an artist or produce the arts. Sign up to Stay Informed!
Money4theArts.com is dedicated to letting the world know what it takes! for the artist and those who would like to see the arts go from struggling to thriving. The arts are as important as the air we breathe but Why are The Arts so hard to fund? A Kickstarter Campaign will be initiated soon to support the big project - there's more than just this website. We need to tell the world what we do so The Art gets done. It's funny, sad, but all too true. What will it take to make a change? Check out the Artist Doings page! as it grows...and join us on the Stay Informed! page...We Love You...KaTinka and Mink! |
Whatever It Takes!
WHATEVER IT TAKES!
How did this idea come about? I'm a director of a large non-profit arts organization in New York City and in 2008, New York's Governor Eliot Laurence Spitzer stepped down due to some poor judgement - a prostitution scandal. He'd spent over $80,000 in service of having a good time. Meanwhile, I was in court fighting for the organization so we wouldn't be evicted. In my exhausted state I thought to myself, "Wow, What if I sold my services at the going rate? My organization could thrive." The point is, not that our Governor was naughty (tsk tsk), nor that I, and my colleagues who often ask the same question, could earn a bucket load of $ for the arts by selling a good time, rather, it was the idea that "dang - I'm even thinking about how $ for sex would fix the problem." This leads to other thoughts - not many good ones. All of us have these types of stories about what we've done for art, but what if each of the thousands of people paying for a prostitute's services gave a single evenings value ~ $5,000, quarterly, to struggling arts organizations, the arts would thrive.
We in the arts spend more time struggling to find Money4theArts instead of actually DoingTheArt. We have become slaves to a system that is failing us - the non-profit system. This system was created in 1894. People cared and understood the necessity and power of social good. The government and the public initiated the non-profit system; the equation: people get a tax write-off to support society's development and in return the non-profit system allows them to direct where their money goes. We in the arts, who are legally bound to work within the system, have become more and more perplexed because the once advantageous system, that was set up to support us, is failing us. As non-profits we are being expected to behave like profit making entities; we must achieve profitability to receive funds from foundations. The value of the non-profit outcome is therefore measured by money instead of the quality of social development. The problem is that we enter the system knowing we need the foundations' funding but we can not get funded by foundations unless we are able to ensure profitability. It has become a travesty, what was set up as the means to support social good is being torn apart by a process that supports for-profit values. What Do We Have To Do To Get Money For The Arts?
If you ask any artist how they create their art and live - they will tell you, that to survive they have or have had to do things so distant from their artist training that they feel disconnected from their identity as an artist and a valued citizen; so many artists do Whatever It Takes. Tell us how you do it - the site will be upgraded to offer you the opportunity to upload your art, your ideas, your image of Whatever It Takes! Artists have a job - it is Making Art. So, why is it so Hard to get Money for the Arts? What is the solution? Is it really WHATEVER IT TAKES! ?
Tasja Keetman www.tasjakeetman.com is the amazing photographer/videographer who did all this work for Free! along with the video editors and artists.
We in the arts spend more time struggling to find Money4theArts instead of actually DoingTheArt. We have become slaves to a system that is failing us - the non-profit system. This system was created in 1894. People cared and understood the necessity and power of social good. The government and the public initiated the non-profit system; the equation: people get a tax write-off to support society's development and in return the non-profit system allows them to direct where their money goes. We in the arts, who are legally bound to work within the system, have become more and more perplexed because the once advantageous system, that was set up to support us, is failing us. As non-profits we are being expected to behave like profit making entities; we must achieve profitability to receive funds from foundations. The value of the non-profit outcome is therefore measured by money instead of the quality of social development. The problem is that we enter the system knowing we need the foundations' funding but we can not get funded by foundations unless we are able to ensure profitability. It has become a travesty, what was set up as the means to support social good is being torn apart by a process that supports for-profit values. What Do We Have To Do To Get Money For The Arts?
If you ask any artist how they create their art and live - they will tell you, that to survive they have or have had to do things so distant from their artist training that they feel disconnected from their identity as an artist and a valued citizen; so many artists do Whatever It Takes. Tell us how you do it - the site will be upgraded to offer you the opportunity to upload your art, your ideas, your image of Whatever It Takes! Artists have a job - it is Making Art. So, why is it so Hard to get Money for the Arts? What is the solution? Is it really WHATEVER IT TAKES! ?
Tasja Keetman www.tasjakeetman.com is the amazing photographer/videographer who did all this work for Free! along with the video editors and artists.