Wednesday, October 06, 2021
What Happened to Save Our Stages?
Technicians for Change: Way back a dozen years ago at the beginning of the pandemic, a lot of folks in the industry organized around #SaveOurStages. In the Twin Cities, we joined in the national effort for Red Alert and turned dozens of our local venues red for a night. We did a Road Case Push through downtown Minneapolis in solidarity with an international effort to raise awareness about the plight of the unemployed workers. We joined in a chain of Empty Events in which we set up and tore down a corporate-style event without ever having an audience. All of these were national and international efforts focused on telling our story to the public and to the people elected to power.
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I read an article last semester about the Save Our Stages Act done in quarantine. I wanted to learn more about it, so I looked into another article. In the last article, I learnt that the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant (SVOG / Save Our Stages) was supposed to give out grants to those in the arts, who were all heavily impacted by covid 19. However, I read that, as of June 2025, they demanded 100% repayment.
Reading this article gave a bit more information on why. SVOG was “rolled into” the American Rescue Plan Act, which set aside $12.5 billion to be distributed by the Small Business Administration. However, the SBA was not practiced at handing out grants. Due to interpretation of the law, it was hard to qualify for a grant. The grant program opened and closed multiple times, but successfully helped many venues. However, the article notes that many small businesses had trouble receiving financial aid. Therefore, the grant only helped a subsection of the theatre scene.
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