A Nonprofit Formed After the Ghost Ship Fire Is Paying Artists $100,000 for Advocacy Work

It’s been a challenging year so far for artists. In May, the National Endowment for the Arts rescinded grants for hundreds of organizations across the country — including dozens in the Bay Area. In Oakland, the situation is even more dire: the city has wiped out its cultural grants to help mitigate its budget crisis.

Meanwhile, one Bay Area nonprofit is not only encouraging artists to be advocates — it’s paying them for it.

On June 23, Vital Arts opened applications for a new initiative called the Bay Area Artist Census Fellowship, which will pay six artists $1,000 a month each for 18 months, totaling $108,000, to survey the creative community on its needs, such as housing, health care and fair wages.

The Bay Area Artist Census promises to be the most comprehensive survey of its kind in years. In 2015, the San Francisco Arts Commission polled 600 artists in the city and found that over 70% of respondents faced displacement from their workplace, home or both. In the 10-year interim, rising rents, a pandemic and inflation have made the landscape for artists even more difficult.

Rather than focusing solely on San Francisco, Bay Area Artist Census is seeking representatives from Alameda, San Francisco, Santa Clara, Contra Costa, San Mateo and Solano counties, plus a project lead. The six artist fellows will collect data, host community events, develop storytelling tools to share their findings and lead a coalition of artists to advocate for policies that would improve their quality of life.

The leaders of Vital Arts know what’s at risk when artists don’t have access to safe, affordable places to live and work. The organization was founded by Edwin Bernbaum, whose son Jonathan died in the Ghost Ship fire of 2016; the executive director, Sharmi Basu, lost numerous close friends in the tragedy and has been an advocate for survivors, as well as working artists more broadly, ever since.

Applications for the Bay Area Artist Census Fellowship are open through July 23.