Low Barrier Emergency Relief Grants
New Orleans was one of the first locations in the United States to suffer a severe COVID-19 outbreak, necessitating a complete shutdown of the city in March of 2020. Unfortunately, COVID hit at perhaps the worst possible time for the city’s artists and musicians—just before the start of “Festival Season”, a several months stretch where the weather is great, tourism is at its peak, and when workers in the creative, tourism, and service industries make their highest income of the year. The bottom fell out of the cultural and tourism economy overnight, and musicians, artists, and culture bearers of all types—from street performers to Grammy winners—needed almost immediate assistance.
Within the first few weeks of the shutdown, it was clear that many of the initial relief grant processes were cumbersome, slow moving, and inaccessible to those who worked in a largely cash-based economy, or did not have easy access to the internet or the required documentation. Beginning with a small, $5,000 grant, we developed our own process to provide assistance to members of the cultural community who were being left behind. Initially we reached out to some of our partner organizations, asking them to provide us names of 10 individuals they knew were most in need of assistance, and to let them know we would be reaching out. Rather than an application process, we simply called each grantee and verbally gathered some information, then sent them a $250 to $500 grant via their payment method of choice. During that call, we also asked them what other forms of assistance they may need, ranging from food/nutritional assistance, to help applying with unemployment or additional financial support, and then connected them with other service providers—and also asked them if they knew anyone else who needed help. As we received more funding, we expanded the program through both partnerships and existing community and cultural networks and, when combining two rounds of COVID relief and one post Hurricane Ida, disbursed over 1,000 grants to 828 unique individuals (grantees were eligible for one grant per round) totaling nearly $350,000.
While we currently are not offering Low Barrier Emergency Relief Grants, we are working to stand up an ongoing emergency grant program for cultural practitioners that is not tied to a regional or global disaster but rather tailored to individual crisis.