Application process for Shuttered Venue Operators Grants will not restart this week

Broadway News: The application process for the Shuttered Venue Operators Grants will not reopen by this weekend, a spokesperson for the Small Business Administration told Broadway News Thursday.

San Francisco rolls out a guaranteed income program giving artists $1,000 a month

Datebook: More than 100 San Francisco artists will be guaranteed $1,000 a month for six months under a pilot program set to launch in May, following similar efforts by Stockton, Oakland and Marin County to support struggling residents during the pandemic.

The Actors Fund Distributes A Record $19 Million In Year Of Covid

Deadline: In the year since the Covid-19 pandemic shut down the Broadway industry, The Actors Fund has distributed more than $19 million in direct cash assistance to more than 15,000 people, with more than 40,000 individuals receiving assistance of one form or another from the Fund, a massive 71% increase from 2019. The 2020 distribution of funds is nine times that of an average year.

The Case for a New Federal Theater Project

Variety: The $15 billion Shuttered Venue Operators Grant — the federal program formerly known as Save Our Stages — isn’t exactly a new Federal Theater Project. But according to Nataki Garrett, the arts leader who has become one of the country’s most vocal advocates for government support of the theater sector, the SVOG represents a dawning bipartisan realization of just how important the arts are to the health of the nation’s economy.

New York State Council on the Arts Awards $40M in Funding to 1,225 Arts Organizations

www.broadwayworld.com: The New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) just announced that 1,225 arts and cultural organizations across New York State will receive $40 million in grant funding. "During an unprecedented and most challenging year for our sector, New York State arts and cultural institutions have continued to showcase their inspiring resiliency, creating and connecting with their communities in the most innovative of ways"

IATSE Lauds House Passage of American Rescue Plan Act, Urges Swift Senate Action

IATSE Cares: Early this morning, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the American Rescue Plan Act, the first step in providing comprehensive COVID-19 relief to behind-the-scenes entertainment workers still reeling from the pandemic. The bill passed largely along party-lines, with all but two House Democrats voting in favor and all House Republicans in opposition. IATSE lauds House passage of the American Rescue Plan Act, which contains vital assistance for our members and all Americans.

American theater may not survive the coronavirus. We need help now

Jeremy O Harris | Opinion | The Guardian: Recently, I was in a taxi and the driver asked me what I did. When I told him I’m a playwright, he looked back at me with true pity. “I feel for you people. I’m real poor on money right now, like most cab drivers, but at least I can work … for hospitality and the arts it’s like the light just got turned off. It ain’t right.”

How Can We Get the Arts Some Bailout Money?

Token Theatre Friends: Recently, the advocacy group Be An Arts Hero was trying to get a meeting with Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski about why there needs to be a federal bailout for the arts. Suffice it to say, it was not going well. “Her person got back in touch with us and was like, ‘Oh, you know, it’s not a big deal up here.’” said Carson Elrod, one of the cofounders of Be An Arts Hero, an independent non-profit advocacy group.

BRIT Awards donates £54,000 to Stagehand COVID-19 Crew Relief Fund

Audio Media International: The BPI, music industry trade body and organiser of the BRIT Awards, has donated £54,000 to the Stagehand COVID-19 Crew Relief Fund. The donation will go towards supporting live music and events professionals whose livelihoods have been devastated by the COVID-19 pandemic. So far, the fund has received approximately £240,000 in contributions.

Sweetwater Commits $500,000 To Little Kids Rock Organization

ProSoundWeb: Sweetwater has announced the continuation of its partnership with Little Kids Rock, a national nonprofit devoted to transforming lives through music education, with a pledge to donate $500,000 over five years to help the organization accomplish its mission.

Save Our Stages re-emerges in new Senate small business bill

Broadway News: The $370 billion bill, entitled the Heroes Small Business Lifeline Act, contains the small business provisions of the most recent Heroes Act, including extending the Paycheck Protection Program through March 2022 and supporting theatrical venues and restaurants through the Save our Stages Act and the Restaurants Act. The introduction of the bill Tuesday comes as the fate of a larger stimulus package remains uncertain.

RESTART Act Update From Capitol Hill

LiveDesignOnline: The Senate Leadership has announced that Monday October 19, when the Senate reconvenes, the first action item will be a vote on a new relief bill to assist those most devastated Americans.

Specifically mentioned was a second round of PPP for those in need.

This will help a lot of small business, including those in Live Events.

San Francisco Will Pay Artists $1,000 a Month in Universal Basic Income

Reason.com: San Francisco will become the latest city to experiment with a universal basic income (UBI). Sort of.

In an effort to assist the city's struggling arts community in bouncing back from the pandemic, Mayor London Breed announced last week that she'd be rolling out a cash transfer program for artists.

Indiana coronavirus: Entertainment workers rally for pandemic relief

www.indystar.com: More than 100 workers from one of the industries hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic rallied Monday in downtown Indianapolis and called on federal lawmakers to pass legislation to provide another round of the pandemic unemployment benefits they have relied on for the past half year.

Arts bailout delay leaves jobs at risk in UK and theatres on brink of ruin

Arts policy | The Guardian: None of the £1.57bn arts rescue fund announced by the government in July to great fanfare has yet been handed out to theatres in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, leaving many organizations on the brink of collapse.

Many had hoped to hear what they would receive this week, but because of what officials have called “the complexity and volume of applications”, there has been a last-minute delay.

Broadway leaders applaud inclusion of Save Our Stages in revised Heroes Act

Broadway News: The Save Our Stages Act has made it into the latest version of the House Democrats’ Heroes Act.

The provision would provide $10 billion in grants to live venue operators, producers, promoters and talent representatives in the entertainment industry whose business has been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Equity Points to Disney Layoffs to Urge the Senate to Act Now

www.broadwayworld.com: "A bill that could provide these laid-off employees with unemployment insurance and a pathway to affordable health care has been sitting on Mitch McConnell's desk for months," said Mary McColl, executive director of Actors' Equity Association. "In Florida, laid off Disney workers can only receive $275 in unemployment benefits, which is unconscionable. The Senate must help these workers."

We Need A New Federal Theater Project!

New York Theater: “One of the things we’re talking about internally has been the way in which the scale of this catastrophe — a wholesale shutting down of the field — is only really comparable is the Great Depression. We’re looking at 20 percent or higher unemployment! So what lessons can we find in the Federal Theater Project? Under the New Deal, the government’s super-spending effort that put America back to work in the ’30s, the Federal Theater Project only accounted for 0.5 percent of the Works Progress Administration spending, which, if you applied that to the current bailout, would come to $10 billion.

Ford Foundation announces $150 million in grants to arts groups of color

The Washington Post: Eduardo Vilaro, the artistic director and chief executive of New York’s Ballet Hispánico, has tried to ignore the slights. Well-heeled patrons who wouldn’t join his board because they favored older, Whiter organizations. Theater managers telling him they couldn’t present the company because they had already programmed a “minority-themed” group.

Artist Relief Fund Raises Nearly $20 Million

The New York Times: The Artist Relief fund, a national coalition of arts grantmakers that distributes $5,000 grants to creative professionals affected by the coronavirus pandemic, has awarded $13.5 million to 2,700 individuals since April.