The COVID-19 IMPACT STUDY assesses how coronavirus has affected our Queer|Art|Mentorship artist community in order to better advocate for their needs.

In response to the unprecedented nature of the COVID-19 outbreak and related shutdown in New York City, Queer|Art reached out to our entire network of Queer|Art|Mentorship artists to hear about how their work and their lives had been affected, and to learn how we could best provide support.

After sending out an impact survey on March 27th to our community of 161 artists, we have now heard back from 80 individuals, giving us a thorough, if incomplete, picture of how our community is doing. The numbers are clear: our community has lost out on hundreds of opportunities to create, develop, and present their work leading to a financial loss of more than $650,000.

This financial impact has resulted in two thirds of responding artists being uncertain of their ability to afford rent or mortgage payments, and nearly half being uncertain of their ability to afford basic needs.

In response to this massive need, Queer|Art has been organizing a mutual aid group to help activate the storied queer tradition of community caregiving. We have also put together a Queer|Art|Mentorship Giving Circle to pool and distribute financial resources within our community to ensure everyone’s basic needs are met.

Below is an Executive Summary of the survey data, or to read the full report click here.

As more responses to the survey continue to be gathered, we will be updating our reports to reflect the new data. The report below was generated on 04/29/20.