20 Sep 100 Minnesota Artists Receiving Guaranteed Income for Next Five Years

Source Credit:  Content and images from Artnet News.  Read the original article - https://news.artnet.com/art-world/springboard-for-the-arts-five-years-guaranteed-income-minnesota-artists-2540125

In a welcome bit of good news, 100 artists in Minnesota are receiving five years guaranteed income as part of an expanded pilot program for St. Paul nonprofit Springboard for the Arts. The no-strings-attached payments are $500 a month.

It’s one of the longest-running guaranteed income pilots ever staged in the U.S., which Springboard hopes will provide key data demonstrating the value of guaranteed income and its positive effects on recipients’ lives.

“We’re excited to contribute research in order to better advocate for statewide federal guaranteed income,” Ricardo Beaird, Springboard’s community development director, told me.

Springboard’s guaranteed income program emerged in 2020, when the organization was able to provide 4,000 artists in the region with $4,000 in emergency relief funds.

“We were thinking how we can address this at a systemic level, to make it so that there’s not a need for emergency relief for artists and for people in our community,” Beaird said.

Springboard believes that guaranteed basic income would benefit all people—and was inspired in part by the city of St. Paul’s People’s Prosperity Guaranteed Income Pilot, which served 150 local families between October 2020 and April 2022. But the organization believes that artists in particular benefit from this kind of support because of the nature of their work: they are often effectively small business owners, paid on a project-by-project basis.

“I’ve always thought guaranteed income is something that we should all have,” Springboard pilot recipient Kashimana, who recorded an album inspired by the experience, told the Guaranteed Income Pilots Dashboard, which is collecting data from 30 pilots across the U.S. “Everybody in society deserves to be taken care of, no matter what circumstances we’re in, no matter where we find ourselves in life.”

Thus far, the dashboard found that the largest portion, or 35.94 percent, of the guaranteed income funds went toward retail purchases, followed by 30.26 percent for food and groceries, and just over 10 percent for housing and utilities.

The nonprofit’s initial 2021 pilot benefitted just 25 St. Paul artists, selected via lottery from applicants to Springboard’s emergency relief funds and to participants in the organization’s other programs and workshops.

Originally set to run just 18 months, it has grown in phases. First, Springboard added 25 more artists St. Paul, then 25 more in rural Fergus Falls, Minnesota, where the organization has an office, and the surrounding Otter Tail County. The last phase will add 25 additional rural artists, all of whom will enter the program with the security of knowing they will be getting the extra funds for half a decade.

“We’re curious what people will dream up or vision when they know for sure that they will have guaranteed income for five years,” Beaird said. “Because of the gig economy, artists are always thinking about the next six weeks or the next six months. This will provide space for artists to dream up what their next five years might look!”

Springboard has also been promoting the guaranteed income pilot through the artist’s work, including a commissioned billboard by pilot artist Kandace Creel Falcón titled Guaranteed Income is the G.O.A.T. And for International Basic Income Week, the organization is currently hosting a group exhibition, “Exhale,” at its St. Paul headquarters.

Though guaranteed income might be a hard sell among conservatives opposed to government handouts, Beaird believes one only has to look at statistics to make a strong case for implementing the payments nationwide: a troubling 64 percent of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, according to a December report from financial services company Lending Club.

“That means regular, everyday people are one emergency expense away from chaos and calamity,” he said. “If we want to restore economic power and stability to families and people, the guaranteed basic income movement says that we can do this through a very simple and effective tool, which is cash.”

Beaird also disagrees with critics who worry that guaranteed income will encourage people to drop out of the workforce—at just $6,000 annually, the program functions as an added safety net, not a replacement for a job, he argued.

The artists who have benefited from Springboard’s pilot program have great things to say about their experience.

“This is the first time I’ve really felt supported as an artist,” 64-year-old Fergus Falls fiber artist Torri Hanna told the Minnesota Star Tribune.

“Having a little comfort means I can go back to creating. Before, I couldn’t create unless it was generating income,” one artist told Springboard for the organization’s impact report on the pilot. “I couldn’t justify it.”

Another spoke of being able to buy back the DJ equipment he had been forced to sell to make rent, saying: “I’ve literally been using [my guaranteed income] to restart, or kickstart, my career from a bit of a dead zone.”

There is a push in Minnesota to implement statewide guaranteed income. A bill introduced this year by Representative Athena Hollins did not pass, but would have provided government funding to organizations like Springboard to run additional programs providing guaranteed income. (Springboard’s program is privately funded.)

“I feel really hopeful and optimistic that a guaranteed income bill could be passed in the next legislative session in Minnesota,” Beaird said. “Moving from pilot to policy, it’s really possible in this moment.”

Artists also received guaranteed basic income through a now-completed 2021 pilot program run by the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. A similar program, still ongoing, launched in New York in 2022, through the Creatives Rebuild New York program. Some 2,400 artists are receiving $1,000 payments for 18 months.

“Exhale” is on view at Springboard for the Arts, 262 University Ave W., St. Paul, Minnesota, September 17–30, 2024.

Source Credit:  Content and images from Artnet News.  Read the original article - https://news.artnet.com/art-world/springboard-for-the-arts-five-years-guaranteed-income-minnesota-artists-2540125